Cannabis Aug 12, 2015 at 4:20 pm

The Joint You're Smoking Is Contributing to Climate Change. That Needs to Stop.

Comments

1
There are several million undersea volcanoes currently erupting, as always happens every 13,000 years and before cyclical ice ages. This heats up the oceans, creating warmer climates in the largest population centers which are located along coast lines. As the ocean heats up, seawater evaporates and falls as precipitation which lowers the temperature inland, beyond the warmer tropical latitudes. The oceans are currently overloaded with green house gas which escapes into the atmosphere and insulates planet Earth from the cold. We aren't entering a full blown ice age this time around, but colder weather is on the way.
2
Portland Yeehaws don't give a shit about poisoning wells in Montana and the Dakotas. But thanks for trying, Dirk.
3
Now do one on how masturbating with your off-hand contributes to climate change.
4
Nowhere in this article does it speak to utilizing what mother nature provides, sunlight. At this point in time the regulations require that you have a constant grow and harvest that can only be provided by an indoor growing system. You can only have 4 plants at a time and 8 oz of dried cannabis at a time. With only one natural growing season that would mean you would have to make 8 oz last a year, not very practical.
5
In Humboldt County, they grow huge plants outdoors which yield ten pounds each. That can't be done with indoor lights.

35 Outdoor Organic 10lbs Plants with Jorge Cervantes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM0N3z_Kik…
7
I think this whole article reeks like a sack of bunk weed. The vast majority of info seems to come from one source: Buckley's office. Flashy, uncredited graphics and "oft-cited reports" don't help lend merit to the far-fetched idea that pot smokers are somehow a major part of global warming. If one joint costs as much energy as 18 pints of beer it's only because the sheer volume of beer consumption would skew the comparison beyond recognition. Yes we should do everything we can to support sustainable growing practices for everything we consume. But to imply that people opposing giant drilling operations are hypocritical for smoking some weed is just cowardly and divisive. The container ships that bring that oil back get a gas mileage of ONE FOOT PER GALLON. That's like 5,000 gallons a mile. Now tell me I'm killing the planet by smoking a joint! Anyone can play with statistics but I call bias on this one. Nothing but one more villification of marijuana under the guise of environmental concern. Nice try.
8
Hey, Aurelius! Input for this article came from dozens of sources. A slight fraction of the ones you take issue with come from Buckley's office. Many more come from a study done by a researcher named Evan Mills—a study, by the way, that was highly respected by everyone of the sources I asked about it. There are also figures from at least four utilities, local industry and conservation groups, the State of Oregon, producers, and others in the industry.

You're not "killing the planet" merely by smoking a joint. We should also be doing more to make sure that joint was produced efficiently, which is completely possible and not something to get angry about.
9
In order to comply with the pigs with a secure grow room, a greenhouse is a great, energy efficient way to grow huge crops with natural sunlight, if not comply with the pigs about weight. Carve out a sunlight in you attic and super-crop to keep the height down. Super cropping, of course everyone knows, is to pinch and bend without breaking the colas, rather than to clip them.

Soma's Sacred Seeds - Soma's grow secrets: SUPERCROPPING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIvrK1fTsk…
10
I read the article "Getting Baked" in this weeks Mercury. I was dismayed to find that there was no mention of Mother Nature´s illustrious sunlight that comes to us free of charge. Sun-grown cannabis consumes carbon dioxide (CO2) and releases oxygen, actually diminishing the carbon footprint.
The Portland area and the Willamette valley has a perfect climate for growing cannabis outdoors. I have much hands-on cultivation experience in this climate.
Organic cultivation was not mentioned.
I will stop by your office today, Thursday 13 August to drop off a copy of my new book, the Cannabis Encyclopedia (596 pages, 8.5 x 11 format, 2,000+ color images, and Foreword by Vicente Fox Quesada, President of Mexico 2000-2006) so that you will have an adequate background for subsequent articles.
¡Saludos!
Jorge Cervantes, author
11
I'LL DO MY PART BY GROWING IT IN THE ORGANIC GARDEN IN MY BACKYARD, FED WITH KITCHEN COMPOST AND CHICKEN MANURE, AND I'LL SHARE WITH FRIENDS. TAKE THAT, CLIMATE CHANGE.
12
Jorge Cervantes, this is Josh, the Cannabis Correspondent and Cannabuzz Columnist for the Mercury. I'd love to chat with you, please email at cannabuzz@portlandmercury.com, or leave contact info with your book when you come into the office. Thanks!
13
Wow, humans continue to use more power. More power will always be needed as populations grow. Maybe you should kill yourself.
14
Ay, caramba! With don Jorge Cervantes on board, the Merc will be at the cutting edge of Cannabis cultivation technology.

For those still interested in less conspicuous indoor gardening as pioneered by the Dutch, here's the state of the art, high output, low power consumption, LED lighting system with even light distribution.

http://www.grownorthern.com/holographic-se…
15
Moral of the Story: Don't try to enlighten folks that the great bud they enjoy is the result of GMO modification or uses far more energy than they like to acknowledge.

Don't be harshing on the high man!
16
I think this whole issue is a bit overblown.

Each bowl uses roughly six cents worth of energy to produce. Now that's not saying the industry couldn't stand to become more efficient, but the grid has already been supporting a huge number of guerrilla and medicinal grows for years, and hey, how about encouraging practices that use that big ol' grow light in the sky? ...and maybe we ought examine how much energy is being used by similar industries and compare that to the cannabis industry. Beer certainly comes to mind, what with the boiling of the wort and subsequent rapid cooling to fermentation temperature, and then cold storage up until consumption ...seems to me, there's a lot of BTU's per pint being shuffled around. ;)
17
It takes around 15,000 kWh to smelt one ton of aluminum (about 60,000 aluminum cans or a couple cars and appliances). The average American home uses about 11,000 kWh per year. One 1000 watt light left on for 1 hour full blast uses 1 kWh. You show me one indoor grow that uses 15,000 1,000 watt lights and then maybe we can start comparing it to an industrial scale, or cut the theoretical lights down to 10,000 lights with the other 5 megawatts (whee) going to ACs, dehumidifiers, pumps, fans, etc. Maybe one or two out there but I doubt even that.
18
Why not grow it outside, FFS? Thought that was a big point of legalizing it - so people don't have to do this crap anymore. Growing it indoors on an industrial scale seems absurdly expensive.
19
Wow, c-

I own 5000 + square foot climate controlled indoor grow using 1000w gavitas and my power bill is about 95% less what it would cost to power 300 houses. Also, Portland to NYC is 2900 miles X 7 = 20,300 miles = 461 gallons of gas. I can grow 2.2 pounds of pot in two months under one 1000w bulb. This light power costs me about $100 for the two months in my county. This author believes 461 gallons of gas produces the same emissions as one 1000w hps bulb run twelve hours a day for two months.

Take this researchy speculation with a grain of salt and an ounce of actual facts.
20
http://potlander.com/half-baked-the-mercur…

"There is one big thing the Mercury itself could do to be more environmentally friendly: stop publishing."

lulz.
21
Why no mention of the 100% Renewable Power Option offered by PGE ???
22
Dirk,

To piggyback off of your reply to Aurelius, do you think that it makes more sense to build in better efficiencies from the get-go in an industry that's still in its nascent stages? I would venture to guess that if more efficient lighting technology exists and can be adopted and standardized early on, that that would be easier than to try and tackle the issue years later when growers might be set in their ways with the less efficient lighting they have on hand, and also reluctant to absorb the cost of switching to more efficient lighting.
23
Ice ages coincide with the cycle of Precession, where the Earth is at it's farthest most distance from the Sun. Why this causes an increase in volcanism, may have to do with internal planetary heating do to friction from rounding the apex of the elliptical path.

See Earth curst displacement theory:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm
24
I know plenty of people, myself included, who use LED. You didn't find ONE of them for this story?
25
Led Zeppelin was ahead of their time. Dirigibles make great , large, grow rooms and can be anchored to a bicycle parking slot at an apartment complex. If the City of Portland want's denser housing, it ought to subsided the homeless to live in blimps.
26
I work for Attis Trading Company here in Portland. We have a dispensary location on SE Gladstone. We actually just replaced all our HID's with LED lighting systems. They are NOT cheap, however we do believe it is important to get ahead of this issue, the current indoor set ups are antiquated and grossly inefficient. The amount of air conditioning you need to use to cool Gavita's is disgusting. We already have been doing our part with outdoor and greenhouse grows, however we were not happy with the consumption of Gavita's. LED seemed like a natural choice, especially now that the technology can match the yields the grower's desire and the quality the consumer's desire. I hope the prices of LED's come down so more people can afford to use them. Oregon needs to lead the way for sustainable cannabis cultivation. We do also agree with Jorge, sun grown is the best and we also only grow organic medicine.

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