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Well-Known Member
By Joshua Green
There's nothing green about growing the green stuff in your house--that's the upshot of a surprising, even mind-boggling (but lamely titled) new study on the carbon footprint of marijuana-growing operations by a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Evan Mills, who conducted the study in his spare time, and even so may get a stern talking to from his supervisors tomorrow, found that indoor growing operations use lighting as intense as hospital operating rooms, ventilation more powerful than that in a biotech laboratory, and power intensity equal to a data center. In other words, pot farmers are huge energy hogs who are obviously destroying the planet. How much energy?
The analysis performed in this study finds that indoor Cannabis production results in energy expenditures of $5 billion each year, with electricity use equivalent to that of 2 million average U.S. homes. This corresponds to 1% of national electricity consumption or 2% of that in households. The yearly greenhouse-gas pollution (carbon dioxide, CO) from the electricity plus associated transportation fuels equals that of 3 million cars. Energy costs constitute a quarter of wholesale value.
So I wanted to say a few things about this ridiculous article that appeared recently in The Atlantic.
The first is the obvious I would have loved to have spend the last three decades mastering the art of outdoor cannabis farming but its prohibited pretty much everywhere on the planet.
Even now to openly grow cannabis outdoors risk a visit by the black copters and the blackwater thieves that work for our government.
But how much electricity do you think the distilleries use in the production of all that booze the politicians swill down while they pass laws condemning our way of life?
I drive by massive green houses with so much HID lighting it lights up the country side many filled with pretty flowers to look at not FOOD.
WE could pick a hundred other industries that waste energy needlessly so to me its just another needless jab at our culture.
Sub
There's nothing green about growing the green stuff in your house--that's the upshot of a surprising, even mind-boggling (but lamely titled) new study on the carbon footprint of marijuana-growing operations by a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Evan Mills, who conducted the study in his spare time, and even so may get a stern talking to from his supervisors tomorrow, found that indoor growing operations use lighting as intense as hospital operating rooms, ventilation more powerful than that in a biotech laboratory, and power intensity equal to a data center. In other words, pot farmers are huge energy hogs who are obviously destroying the planet. How much energy?
The analysis performed in this study finds that indoor Cannabis production results in energy expenditures of $5 billion each year, with electricity use equivalent to that of 2 million average U.S. homes. This corresponds to 1% of national electricity consumption or 2% of that in households. The yearly greenhouse-gas pollution (carbon dioxide, CO) from the electricity plus associated transportation fuels equals that of 3 million cars. Energy costs constitute a quarter of wholesale value.
So I wanted to say a few things about this ridiculous article that appeared recently in The Atlantic.
The first is the obvious I would have loved to have spend the last three decades mastering the art of outdoor cannabis farming but its prohibited pretty much everywhere on the planet.
Even now to openly grow cannabis outdoors risk a visit by the black copters and the blackwater thieves that work for our government.
But how much electricity do you think the distilleries use in the production of all that booze the politicians swill down while they pass laws condemning our way of life?
I drive by massive green houses with so much HID lighting it lights up the country side many filled with pretty flowers to look at not FOOD.
WE could pick a hundred other industries that waste energy needlessly so to me its just another needless jab at our culture.
Sub
