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A comment on Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by basseq on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @10:33AM (#11430657)
Scientifically-speaking, is any water "lost"? Thinking back to those pictures of plains and mountains with a big circular arrow in my seventh grade science textbook: couldn't you say that even the water used by crops, turned into coke, and consumed by humans is eventually returned the ecosystem in some form or another?
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Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by ninkendo on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @10:49AM (#11430785)
It's "lost" if it's taken from where it's needed (the water table near farm land, for instance) to where it isn't (the ocean).

In plenty of areas where water is needed, the time it would take for the big circular arrow "water cycle" to replenish it is so long, it should be considered a finite resource.

Ars Technica had a great article about this a few years back, likening "peak water" to "peak oil": http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/05/not-just-oil-us-hit-p...

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Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by wavefunction on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:04AM (#11430884)
Water vapor is lost to the vacuum of space, though it's obviously not enough to make a perceptible difference, at least on a human scale.
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Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:06AM (#11430904)
...and replenished from space through slushball comets!
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Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by snuxoll on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:36AM (#11431206)
(Almost?) All water on Earth came from a comet, pretty amazing when you think about it.
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Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by codeisawesome on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @03:13PM (#11433425)
Extremely. I just can't reconcile the fact that all this water came from multiple comet impacts. It somehow feels wrong.
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Re:Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and pub... by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @03:52PM (#11433772)
...and if even one of the trillion comets over a billion years had some spore or cell frozen inside...
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