Thanks to “Climate Desk” for pointing out this gem of an article.
These factoids are from the earth-friendly “Mother Jones” magazine “24 Mind-Blowing Facts About Marijuana Production in America”, referencing several federal data sources.
A few of those points:
- 80 percent of all marijuana grown in the USA comes from California, Tennessee Kentucky, Hawaii, and Washington. The vast majority comes from California.
- In 2013, California authorities seized 329 outdoor pot grow sites with: 1.2 million plants, 119,000lbs of trash, 17,000lbs of fertilizer, 40gal. of pesticides, 244 propane tanks, 61 car batteries, 89 illegal dams, and 81 miles of irrigation pipe.
- During California’s growing season, outdoor grows consumed roughly 60 million gallons of water a day – 50% more than is used by all residents of San Francisco.
- In California, indoor pot growing accounts for about 9% of household electricity use.
- For every pound of pot grown indoors, 4600lbs of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. California’s production equates to emissions of 3 million cars.
- The energy needed to produce a single joint is enough to produce 18 pints of beer, and creates emissions comparable to burning a 100 watt light bulb for 25 hours.
Source: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/marijuana-pot-weed-statistics-climate-change
References: Jon Gettman (2006), US Forest Service (California outdoor grow stats include small portions of Oregon and Nevada), Office of National Drug Control Policy, SF Public Utilities Commission, Evan Mills (2012).
I’m sure eco-activists will jump right on this trash-making climate-killing water-sucking pot problem we have here in California and include it right up there with the urgency of the proposed statewide plastic bag ban and banning fracking by chartering buses:
Mitchell explained that as San Diegans living at the end of the water pipeline, it is even more critical that we participate in this rally to convince Governor Brown that water is a precious natural resource more necessary than fracked oil and gas. “This awful drought effects us all and we need to stop wasting that water on fracking,” she said.
Yeah, but dude, pot is a life necessity.
DirkH says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:47 pm
Not true if you include the Nobel Peace prize.
None of this makes sense, but 10 million tons of CO2 could be produced by growing/using pot and it wouldn’t make one scintilla of difference in the climate.
Chad Wozniak says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:38 pm
None of this makes sense, but 10 million tons of CO2 could be produced by growing/using pot and it wouldn’t make one scintilla of difference in the climate.
Chad,
That’s the Straight Dope, Holmes!
All that fuming about plants per kilo-watts is just a smoke screen for more CO2 fraud.
It’s harshing my WUWT buzz, Man!
Mac
@gaelansclark says:
March 17, 2014 at 6:01 pm
DJHawkins……”he says 200 watts per sq ft, maybe an extra 50 more”–my paraphrase…..
You are kidding me right? 4 by 4 table = 16 sq feet x 200 = 3200watts of lights!!! That is beyond ridiculous and patently absurd.
No person on this planet has ever used that much wattage per square foot. Period.
This is not an argument, I am telling you how it is.
I beg to differ.
I work in a building about the size of your average bowling alley that consumes more than two megawatts of continuous power, 24×7, and all we do is push a few electrons around inside some computers to do studies in quantum electrodynamics, cataloging the results of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and X-ray crystallography, and to record the mundane day-to-day inner-workings of a big-pharma company (which keeps all of the accountants and auditors at the FDA happy).
The entire building, including where us humans hang out, consumes more than 100 watts per sq ft. The portion where the computers reside consumes more than 500 watts per sq ft. Our standard 10 kVA rack is only 24 inches wide, and 30 inches deep, which works out to 1,666 watts per sq ft. If you include the required air-conditioning load to remove that heat, the load tops 2,100 watts per sq ft on a rack-by-rack basis. There are almost 1000 racks. The electric bill for all of this runs more than $ 1.4 million per year.
We have another building just a tad larger that has an electric bill of more than $1 million per month! Just a few more computers doing no real work from a thermodynamics point of view.
Speaking of thermodynamics, at 2,100 watts per sq ft we are pushing the density limits of what can be handled by traditional air handling methods. Most of the heat ultimately leaves the building via air-to-water heat-exchangers and a pair of 12 inch water mains. Google has some interesting computer rooms (acres really), that push way beyond that density by doing away with the air altogether and supplying the cooling water directly to the servers. (see http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/ )
This is not an argument, I am just telling you how it is.
Never would have imagined the traction this post garnered. Lots of rush to judgment. There are plenty of skeptic hipsters. I say we send a bag to Mikee. He could totally use the “clarification”.
@ur momisuglyp@ur momisugly Dolan says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:29 pm
100 modules is not that big a house. That’s just 1,600 sq ft. If all you did was grow pot in the house, do you think it would be hard to find one? In NJ, you can’t hardly find new construction under 3,000 sq ft unless it’s city rehabs. You admit it’s pretty logical; take it line by line and play with the numbers yourself. People have to remember this is not your puttering-around-in garden. These are commercial push-the-product-out-the-door operations. They’re not growing for home consumption.
@ur momisugly D. J. Hawkins, re your 1.07 AM 18 March:
Roger that these are commercial hustlers. Also that new construction is up there a skosh, and 3000ft isn’t a manse. but while it’s true that 100 modules is only 1600 sq ft, that’s entirely 1600 sq ft. No room edgewise between them to get equipment in or out, no way to harvest and drag that out, etc. I do integration design work inside structures. You would need space around or on one side of each of those modules to access them and the product. You would end up with a lot more than just a 1600 ft house, and when they build houses, they build houses, not warehouses. To build an essentially empty building, like a storage warehouse or godown, would be a dead-giveaway in a residential neighborhood, doncha think? And as some else said, while the energy use quoted in the study isn’t excessively large, compared to the use of an office building in a large city, it would be extraordinarily large in a residential neighborhood, once house that used as much energy or more than the local strip-mall, with Walmart, BJ’s, MacDonalds, Pizza Hut and Cinema-plex.
I’m not saying it can’t be done or hasn’t been; I just don’t believe it’s being done on the scale they claim as even the minimum in the study. I believe that anyone pursuing such an enterprise would distribute it much wider, and not try to maximize the produce from each location, in order to spread out the power/water etc. consumption. And it’s such a large cash-crop, it would support such inefficiencies, if their numbers are correct.
Even so—I still haven’t heard or read anything which relieves some of the shock at the thought that growing one, single pound of fiberous green, leafy material (and a few seeds) creates a byproduct of Four Thousand, Six-Hundred pounds of CO2. I can follow the math which proves that the use of a Prius actually creates more CO2 as a hidden cost than it saves. I’ve seen that math. This study hasn’t done that math (or if it has, it’s buried where I haven’t dug it out yet), but makes a similar claim—based on various sources for the numbers.
I’m not saying it’s wrong—-just that I’m having a hard time believing it. Color me skeptical, but it just doesn’t seem possible—and I’m not talking about putting hundreds of 4x4x8 units in a condo, but the 1:4600 lb ration, grass to gas.
rgbatduke says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:34 pm
============
You make some good points.
“Who says plants can’t think. They found a way to cultivate humans in order to benefit and expand themselves via chemical manipulation, even indoors in protected environments at great expense”
Someone should cross weed and pot?
‘Dave’s not here!’
First of all, in states where it’s legal “Grow houses” aren’t really HOUSES…like residences. They are warehouses the size of large nurseries. From the Denver Post-
“Commercial real estate tracker Xceligent Inc. estimates that marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facilities in the city occupy about 4.5 million square feet — the equivalent of 78 football fields.”
http://www.denverpost.com/marijuana/ci_25316132/pot-growing-warehouses-short-supply-demand-legal-weed
So JUST in Denver, you’re talking about about 4.5 million square feet….lights, electricity, fans, water etc.
If the guy who did the study is talking about “grow houses” of the same size, then his calculations might be close to accurate. I don’t really care enough about the topic to do the research. But here’s some links for consideration among those who do.
“collective grows” in California are technically legal, as a STATE venture, but the feds aren’t happy about it.
http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2013/12/21/california-medical-marijuana-laws-starting-a-grow-collective-and-dispensary/
Article about grow house bust in which “each house contained 1,000- 2,000 plants.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/10-arrested-charged-for-alleged-roles-marijuana-grow-house-ring.html
Here’s video footage inside a secret warehouse GROW-
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/video/#!/on-air/as-seen-on/Inside-a-San-Fernando-Valley-Marijuana-Grow-House/179110991
Images and story of a grow house in Santa Barbara
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Huge-Pot-Grow-House-Captured-in-Santa-Barbara-100587329.html
My point-whatever Joe Schmo growing pot in his HOUSE is doing, is NOT on the same scale or quality as what professional pot growers are doing.
Ok…let me try this again.
The idea that the article is talking about HOUSES…as in residences, is inaccurate. These “Grow Houses” are the size of warehouses-nurseries….like this:
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Huge-Pot-Grow-House-Captured-in-Santa-Barbara-100587329.html
Here’s one in the San Fernando Valley-video-
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/video/#!/on-air/as-seen-on/Inside-a-San-Fernando-Valley-Marijuana-Grow-House/179110991
Or this:
“Ten people were arrested Wednesday by state and local authorities and charged in connection with a ring that operated marijuana grow houses across Southern California.
Authorities served search warrants at 26 locations, including 15 that were grow houses, across Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Authorities seized more than $250,000 in cash, seven guns–including an assault rifle–and more than 8,000 marijuana plants. Each house contained an average of 1,000 to 2,000 pot plants.”
From a Denver Post article-
“Commercial real estate tracker Xceligent Inc. estimates that marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facilities in the city occupy about 4.5 million square feet — the equivalent of 78 football fields.”
http://www.denverpost.com/marijuana/ci_25316132/pot-growing-warehouses-short-supply-demand-legal-weed
Whatever Joe Schmo is doing in his HOUSE, is more than likely NOT the same thing that professional pot growers are doing in their warehouses.
It’s just like climate science; you don’t have to put your coat on and go out in the weather, you just have to read some stuff and proclaim your truth. Sure, you might be out by a factor of two or three on six or seven points, but they probably cancel each other out! Right?
Then you could completely ignore the most salient point, do you get a pound a light or a pound and a half? Do you go 60 days flowering or 70? Do you force a hundred plants after one week or five plants after a month?
If a pound of salable product costs you 750 kW hours for light , can you imagine that climate control and irrigation will triple that figure?
And no, C3H8 isn’t CO2 exactly, but when you burn it …
The Grauniad is a go-to source for a few people, but if I wanted to grow plants under LED’s, I would only install red and blue diodes, not the yellows that dominate in the picture but that don’t interest plants. Also, I would suspend them much closer to the growing canopy since they don’t put out much heat and the light becomes more diffuse with distance. There’s probably an inverse square elaboration for that. I don’t think I’d bother with the cooling ducts for the lamp arrays, either. Maybe they just adapted a high pressure sodium system.
And then there’s convection!
The climate people are very keen on radiation and, I’ll grant you, it’s a fascinating topic.
Now I see that building managers are fond of the latent heat of evaporation and that’s very cool, too.
Pot growers like convection, dude. It’s blowing in the wind.
If you don’t like the temperature of the air you’ve got, get rid of it. The air and the temperature, not just the temperature. A nine amp (120V) squirrel cage moves 1,000 cubic feet per minute.
Plants don’t complain if you give them 32C air; your office occupants might find that uncomfortable. They might also object to having to work the night shift, when the outside air is cooler. Out with the old and in with the new! But don’t neglect to pass the old air through activated charcoal, lest your neighbors get wind of what you’re up to and want to lock you up with a bunch of climate deniers and other users of unapproved intoxicants.
Just the facts mann.
Only the facts
Nothing but the facts man.
Some facts are a Skunk heads dream.
Here’s a funny poster to go with that:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y254/RogerKni/Politics%20%20Finance/skepticaleagle_zps9d625f0b.jpeg
1. How could we falsify that?
2. Carl Sagan gave it a try though!
How much oxygen do cars produce compared to marijuana?
I’d rather have the beer, if it’s all the same to you.
So prohibition is expensive in so many ways. Who knew?
DirkH says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:47 pm
…Nobody ever smoked himself to a Nobel price…
That may be true. But some one LSD’d his way there. The discoverer of PCR in genetics. Whose name escapes me at the moment.
MJ users are time bombs when behind the steering wheel.
Funny that. A study was done and came to the conclusion that drivers on pot were safer than those on alcohol.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/02/why-medical-marijuana-laws-reduce-traffic-deaths/
And those switching to pot saved lives.
Regardless of its global warming or not connection or whether or not it makes you eat potato chips, Pot. a rather harmless drug, smells like baby poop after a skunk has sprayed it and ruins good brownies of their chocolate flavor. Yuck. I would rather clean outhouses.
Upstream, someone has read a book or two about human cellular molecular docking sites. We all have docking sites on our cell walls that are specific to specific molecules. Over time, humans have developed rather interesting docking sites to certain molecules. Guess which one in particular. The fact that it smells like acid farts doesn’t seem to have been a part of the genetic development.
DJHawkins……1985 called, they want their metal halides back! Lots of laughs duuuuuuude.
10 of these bulbs over two mothers and an extra 4 over clones gets you to the flowering room.
(****Verilux Instant Sun® Full Spectrum 15 Watt T-8 Lamp)
I don’t know what you are smoking, but 1000w MH over mothers and clones is overkill, a waste of money and unnecessary in today’s technology.
I like my MMJ, I don’t like stupid.
PhilJourdan….did you even notice Anthony Watts creating his own headline? That’s okay for him to say 80% out of Cali when it was written 80% out of 5 states?
The mother jones article states “grown”, where in that piece did they divvy out MMJ and MJ in their stats?
And, what of the 29 refrigerators comparison that I demolished?
Take your little mother’s helper (valium, in case you didn’t know) just because its FDA and govt approved, and understand the big picture.
@gaelansclark – so you are saying your are justifying your lying by saying others lie? That is the defense of your lies?
I can see what other parts of the brain are affected by dope.
Tommy E …. sorry for the confusion, I meant…..no grower would use that wattage per square foot.
I take it the buildings you are describing are not growing operations.
Can you tell me “how it is” again, in context?