I’m truly sorry for the title, but it says what I think about this succinctly. I tried half a dozen variations and kept coming back to the one word.
There are days when I think I just won’t see anything stupider cross my inbox. Then, today brings a new surprise on the winds of change. Carbon Free Sugar. Let me repeat that. Carbon Free Sugar – certified even.
Those of you who remember their basic high school chemistry might remember this simple and indelible truth: sugar contains carbon.
There is no getting around that. Don’t believe me? Try frying up some sugar in a sauce pan and watch the results. Or just pick up a used mass spectrograph on Ebay and run an analysis.
Or just consult any number of chemical handbooks. Sucrose is common table sugar (as pictured in the bag) and has the chemical formula: C12H22O11
Looks like twelve atoms of carbon combined with eleven molecules of H2O doesn’t it? That’s why it is called (drum roll please) a carbohydrate.
Eating and digesting sugar turns it into water and carbon dioxide that we exhale, so for it to be truly “carbon free” as the label says, we have to get those twelve molecules of Carbon out. So how do they get the carbon out of that sucrose anyway? It’s really easy, all we need is a catalyst.
Reacting sucrose with sulfuric acid (H2SO4) dehydrates the sucrose and forms the element carbon, as demonstrated in the following chemical equation:
- C12H22O11 + H2SO4 (as catalyst) → 12 C + 11 H2O
So assuming they get the acid out of the mix, we are left with some pure carbon and a bunch of water. Yummm! Perfect for cereal in the morning.
Ok, I’m being a bit extreme, I realize the idea is to promote a carbon neutral production of sugar.
But really, couldn’t the marketing people at Domino realize how stupid this claim sounds? I’ll bet the guys at the Domino company labs are having a fit. I’d love to see the emails that went flying when they learned of this one. Beakers were probably flying across the lab too.
But some companies will do anything to appear green these days, because they want to keep that “other green footprint” high.
Ah, the sweet smell of success.
This thread demonstrates (over and over) how leftists have no sense of humor.
The article is hilarious!
The quote one respondent tried for was from Mencken, not Barnum; and it said, “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” Mencken also said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
99% of the respondents have missed the point. Yes, we all know that sugar contains carbon. Domino is trying to seem “environmentally sensitive” because they burn their cane wastes for milling. It so happens that it saves them a fortune in electricity, and it’s what any smart sugar business does. The main deal in the “carbon-neutral” issue is really the fact that Domino, like any other big farmer, GROWS PLANTS. In that sense, they are indeed sequestering carbon, just like planting forests (or any crop) would do.
But all this is a cover. We in Florida know what degenerate polluters the sugar companies are. They use incredible quantities of fertilizer; poor management causes huge amounts of run-off, thus the eutrophication (choking) of our streams and lakes by algae and other water plants. It’s caused vast damage to the Everglades and other areas far beyond the sugar fields.
How can we tell? Upstream from sugar farms, the streams etc. are fine; downstream, they’re a slimy mess. You do the math. They’ve been told to either treat or recycle this run-off, but can’t be bothered to do it properly. (The state is paying a fortune to buy back fields from the sugar companies, just because of this polluted mess.)
So Domino is merely trying to look environmentally conscious, as a cover for the fact that they’re one of the biggest polluters — just not of smoke and CO2. (Oh, BTW, they still run all the tractors and reapers on diesel. Perhaps the sugar fields sequester as much carbon as the tractors emit, though that’s debatable.)
For those ~snip~ here who buy the right-wing pap that “carbon dioxide is harmless” — Even leaving aside the greenhouse gas aspect, CO2 is our waste product, every time we exhale. And NO CREATURE CAN LIVE IN ITS OWN WASTES. By vastly overproducing our waste product, we make our globe a little less habitable every day. That panicky feeling you get when you hold your breath underwater for too long? It’s not from oxygen deprivation; it’s from carbon dioxide build-up.
Don’t believe me OR them, please. Do your own UNBIASED research.
Back to Mencken’s point: lots of folks say they’d sooner believe an ignorant dirt farmer than some professor. But as in all things, follow the money. If it’s gonna cost that dirt farmer more not to pollute, he won’t believe in pollution, even while his own family is choking from the smoke.
Without going overboard — when are we going to grow up as a species, and take responsibility for ourselves, look after one another, and clean up our messes before they get out of hand? So okay, don’t be an environmentalist. But please — be an adult.
Peace,
David
David305: “99% of the respondents have missed the point.”
Nope. You missed the point. Read the post right above yours.