What's the Carbon Footprint of Bicycling? 542
Hugh Pickens writes "Brian Palmer writes that although none of the major manufacturers has released data on their energy consumption and how much greenhouse gas making a bicycle requires, Shreya Dave, a graduate student at MIT, recently estimated that manufacturing an average bicycle results in the emission of approximately 530 pounds of greenhouse gases. Therefore, given a 'typical U.S. diet,' you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint. However, calculating the total environmental impact of a mode of transit involves more than just the easy-to-measure metrics like mileage per gallon. Using a life-cycle assessment, Dave concluded that an ordinary sedan's carbon footprint is more than 10 times greater than a conventional bicycle's (PDF) on a mile-for-mile basis, assuming each survives 15 years and you ride the bike 2,000 miles per year. What about other ways to get to work? According to Dave's life-cycle analysis, the only vehicle that comes close to a bicycle is the peak-hour bus — and it's not really that close. A fully loaded bus is responsible for 2.6 times the carbon emissions total of a bicycle per passenger mile while off-peak buses account for more than 20 times as many greenhouse gases as a bicycle. What about the carbon footprint of walking? 'Walking is not zero emission because we need food energy to move ourselves from place to place,' says environmentalist Chris Goodall. 'Food production creates carbon emissions.'"
seriously..? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole carbon footprint thing is overrated. and the carbon credits is just a way to make businesses feel better about wasting and polluting. What's the carbon footprint of sleeping? What's the carbon footprint of sitting on the couch watching TV? What's the carbon footprint of eating a microwave pizza? What's the carbon footprint of teleporting? geez
Re:seriously..? (Score:4, Insightful)
the carbon credits is just a way to make businesses ...
... more money. Yet another reverse robinhood deal, steal from the poor and give to the rich.
Re:seriously..? (Score:5, Funny)
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But then the study of the carbon footprint needed to do the carbon footprint study of the carbon footprint of bicycling would need to be included. But then the carbon footprint of the study done of the carbon footprint of the study done of the carbon footprint ob bicycling would also have to be done, and so on, and so on, and so on. . . .
If only we had come up with some concept that would let us estimate these residuals...
We could call it... multiplication.
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Overrated (Score:2)
The carbon footprint thing is overrated, but not useless. The problem is that it is often used without context. Canada is replacing their paper currency with plastic, for example, and it has a much better carbon footprint, in part because the plastic does not break down and thus does not release carbon into the atmosphere.
But that also means that what goes into the landfill does not biodegrade, and that we are using a non-renewable resource rather than a renewable resource for the money. (Even though it
No standard so useless (Score:3)
The carbon footprint thing is overrated, but not useless.
No it is useless because of the lack of consistency. For example in this study did they consider the food usage of someone sitting on a bus or driving a car in their study - I would guess not. In fact since generally our food usage is in excess of our body requirements the difference between a cyclist and passenger is probably not that great, not to mention the health benefits of cycling which will reduce health care needs and so reduce the carbon footprint of that. Hence you end up with some apparently sc
Re:seriously..? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the entire population of the Earth died off tomorrow the release of thousands of tons of carbon that is locked up under ground in oceans of oil and mountains of coal would cease to be released into the atmosphere and the carbon dioxide - oxygen exchange would be balanced out, as you point out.
What the 'environmental wackos' are going on about is the EXTRA thousands of tons of carbon being released by human activities that WOULDN'T be there if the entire population of the Earth could die off tomorrow.
To say that we aren't creating any addition of carbon to the ecosystem is disingenuous at best.
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Which London is that? It's clearly not London, UK, because in that city, the queue of cars, buses and lorries (as we Brits call them) is caused by other cars, buses and lorries. The bikes actually move faster than the cars in peak periods.
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Good point. When I ride my bicycle I'm never bothered by slower cyclists. When I ride my motorcycle I'm never 'stuck' behind bicyclists. However, in both cases do I get stuck behind slow cars. Cars can't pass slower vehicles because of their sheer size, and they block everyone behind them as well - something rarely on the mind of drivers. The problem isn't the slowness of others, the problem is the sheer size of the car. Basically, it's proportioned for 4-5 people with some amount of luggage, regardle
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When autos drive slower they consume less fuel, which means that not only are those cyclists reducing their own carbon footprint, they are reducing the footprint of the drivers as well.
That depends on the speed. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, most cars’ fuel efficiency peaks at between 35 to 60 mph. [http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.shtml]
A car going 10 miles behind a cyclist at 13 mph will consume about 75% more gas than one traversing the same distance at 35 mph. In addition t
No, he had it right. You've got that backwards. (Score:3)
No, your assumption is incorrect for the situation of following slow moving bicycles in traffic. Ever notice how a vehicle's mileage is stated in two ways, city MPG and highway MPG, and that city MPG is always less than highway MPG? All the reasons that make city MPG less efficient are present when the drivers have to follow the bikers.
Every time they have to hit their brakes, they waste the energy that went into accelerating the vehicle. Any revolutions the engine produces while idling (at stop signals,
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On the other hand, corporations produce all that CO2 because private individuals buy their stuff.
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Re:seriously..? (Score:4, Insightful)
"... but what about all the other energy and nasties (waste) that comes out of making a single panel."
In business those things are called "costs", and factored into the price of each panel sold. That includes materials, electricity, plant waste disposal and treatment, labor, etc.. Drop down to materials and utilities, and the suppliers of those have figured their costs into the prices of their products, and so on.
Thus, if you can amortize the price of a panel in electricity produced over it's lifetime to less than zero, either in savings or, in many cases, selling power back to the utility during peak usage/production, then that panel has a net benefit, producing more energy than it consumed.
As such, we can rely on facts, and we don't need myths, your "opinion", nor the opinions of politicians.
I also find your distain and concern for waste more than a little hypocritical, being that you probably posted your message on a computer powered by your local coal or gas plant, each of which producing tons of greenhouse gases and waste. Not to mention "digging (or drilling) up the materials, processing, post-processing, etc.."
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Final Carbon Footprint (Score:3)
Since the whole carbon footprint thing is so grim, what way of doing myself in has least impact on the atmosphere. I was thinking of getting sucked into a jet engine, killing two birds with one stone as it were.
Re:Final Carbon Footprint (Score:4, Funny)
Freeze yourself in dry ice in a water proof container and have that sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Your carbon will be sequestered.
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what way of doing myself in has least impact on the atmosphere
I would suggest perhaps dying in a mine collapse; then your decaying body would leech back into the ground and very little would make it back up to the atmosphere.
The worst would probably be incineration in a giant kerosene fire.
On that happy note, enjoy your Sunday.
This manufacturer may have changed the numbers... (Score:5, Interesting)
By growing his bamboo bicycle frame into the shape he wants. Fairly cool!
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/growing-bamboo/ [wired.com]
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If it costs $2700, that implies there's a fair bit of energy going into making it, whether directly or indirectly. If that's mostly labor costs, what do you think those employees do with that money?
Certainly there are greener and less green alternatives when looking at similar price points, but I don't see how spending 10x the amount on a bike could possibly be considered a "greener" alternative.
Re:This manufacturer may have changed the numbers. (Score:4, Informative)
Not at all. I'm guessing it's mostly labor cost and profits.
Probably the same things the customer would have done with the money if he hadn't bought the bike, so it doesn't matter.
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It costs $2700 because these are basically prototypes; from the article, the guy talks about how sales have been growing in "double digit numbers" - they probably make less than a thousand of these per year. If they increase production, the price will probably come down.
Re:This manufacturer may have changed the numbers. (Score:4, Insightful)
That selfish polluting bastard!
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Sounds pretty easy (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be surprised if there were many bicycle owners who didn't do 400 miles in one year, especially if they're using them for a daily commute. 2 miles each way every weekday will do that in 6 months. And bikes last for years. Mine used to belong to my father, who did 20 mile rides on it on a regular basis.
The 'instead of driving' thing makes this a bit more complex though. I don't have a car, so most of the time I use the bike the alternatives would be walking or getting a bus. The energy usage of the bike versus walking is difficult - going in to town I need to pedal about three times to coast there. Coming back, there's a gentle slope where it's about as much effort as walking, followed by a steep hill where the wheels aren't much help and I have to lift the mass of the bike as well as myself up the hill. If I bought a car, then I'd have to factor the cost of producing the car into the calculations.
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I live in Portsmouth. We have lots of cycle routes and many, many people who cycle everywhere. Admittedly Portsmouth is a relatively small city geographically, but biking is a very popular option for getting around here (especially given the absurdly tiny initial and ongoing investments for a cycle compared to a car, and the absolutely insane parking problems we have here).
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I doubt even your 2 mile one way guy will do it (Score:2)
because just like with motorcycles... one day its too hot, then its too cold, oh I am late, its raining or will, snow?!?!, rabid weasel alert, and so on.
People make all sorts of wonderful justifications but most never stick with it. Many also don't have the opportunity to ride to work. We usually settle down and work where we can especially in a market like this. Let alone having a job where riding to work and being able to clean up is a possibility.
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The average person rigs the outcome far worse than that by favouring modes of urban development and taxation that create a warm, fuzzy, happy place until someone mutters "peak oil" under their breath.
Peak oil is a stupid phrase. It doesn't exist to describe the world, where the situation resembles more of a plateau, but it is useful to poke pins into the psyches of people who
Flawed (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see, walking is not zero carbon because of the food energy.
After the carbon cost of making the bike, biking's not zero carbon either, for the same reason.
But I only ride my bike for exercise, thus I don't save anything vis-a-vis my commute to work, and I have the food energy cost. Therefore my bike riding definitely has a carbon footprint.
Oh noes. Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
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Or you could just exercise on your way to work, saves time too. :) (or if its too far to bike, bike to a train/subway station or bus stop and use public transit from there.)
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There are no buses, subways, or trains that go anywhere near my office. The most direct route is 17 miles on freeways and what I consider to be bike unfriendly roads. Getting there on a bike on friendlier roads is probably more like 20 miles, and is probably at least a two hour trip each way -- not really how I want to spend 25% of my waking hours each day. Not to mention the prospect of riding 20 miles in a blizzard leaves leaves me cold, even if that's only a potential problem two months out of the year.
B
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Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
For the sake of the environment, you'd need to stop eating too, since that has a carbon footprint.
The whole idea is ridiculous because all paths lead to the ultimate conclusion of ending it all and saving the world from your carbon footsteps.
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Oh noes. Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
Clearly you are trying to be funny, but it is still worth pointing out that - despite what many Americans may believe - lack of exercise on its own does not automatically turn one into an "obese blob". One becomes a blob through a multifactorial process of poor diet and lack of exercise (as well as other factors).
Re:Flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
But I only ride my bike for exercise, thus I don't save anything vis-a-vis my commute to work, and I have the food energy cost. Therefore my bike riding definitely has a carbon footprint.
Oh noes. Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
But you need to look at the *net* carbon footprint. If you didn't bike for exercise and instead drove your car to the gym to ride an electrically powered exercise bike, then you still have a net reduction in carbon footprint.
This study isn't telling you how to have a zero carbon footprint, but just telling you the carbon footprint of some alternatives. No one can have a zero carbon footprint, but (at least in the USA), there are many things people can do to reduce their carbon footprint to match that of other developed countries. The per capita carbon footprint of the USA is about twice that of the UK.
Even if you don't believe that CO2 contributes to global warming, most of the USA's energy use comes from oil, which means vast quantities of money flowing out of our country, much of it into the pockets of regimes that aren't exactly aligned with our interests.
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That wouldn't make you a religious man. It would make you an idiot. Jesus specifically said nobody can know when the end will be to prevent idiots from screeching "The end is near!" The only Christians you will here saying that are ones that don't understand their own religion, and I don't know of any other religion that has given an end date to the world.
To be fair, the bible contains so many contradictions that you can't blame Christians for not following any specific part. It's not like they could follow all of it anyway, so which parts you think they should follow is just as much a choice as what parts they think they should follow.
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Let's go down that list.
Clothing and helmets - Helmets are necessary only to the extent that other road users make them so; in the Netherlands, they're used only for sport cycling -- nobody uses them for simple commuting -- and head injuries among cyclists are basically nonexistent. As for dedicated clothing, that's the domain of sport cyclists rather than commuters.
Showers can be shifted rather than increased to a substantial extent -- I personally tend to go for a fast morning commute (followed by a showe
Even if making a bicycle leaves a carbon footprint (Score:5, Interesting)
...it is still going to save the rider in gas money (provided they're riding the thing whenever they can, obviously a bike rotting in a garage does no one any good).
I see a lot of people screaming left and right about how all these technologies like mass transit and solar power and such are "just as bad", but the end result is always the assertion that "we should just do whatever because nothing we do will ever help so screw it". Here in Madison, WI, where there are a fair number of cyclists, there are still those people that go out of their way to prevent them from riding. Every article about a bike riding event warrants thousands of comments about how much these people wish they could go drive over the riders in their Canyonero and other such crap.
Every little bit helps, does it not? And why so much hostility for green energy initiatives? Are we just going to keep on burning oil and coal for power? I mean, clearly we need to start coming up with alternatives, right?
Pedestrians are green and can bleed red, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like pedestrians . . . (cue snare drum rim shot).
Have you ever tried to cross Randall at Dayton on foot? With the walk sign on? With some fine upstanding citizen on a 15-speed bombing through the red light? Or at that marked crosswalk across University near where Bob's Copy Shop in University used to be? When that walk sign is on, I guess the red light for the cross traffic doesn't apply to cyclists in the bike lane.
Of course, as a pedestrian, you are never of any danger of being hit, with the force of an NFL free safety making a flying tackle, only taking the hit, on cement, without helmet or pads, because the cyclists know how to weave around any pedestrian who dares to enter a crosswalk.
Seriously and all snark aside, I would have a lot more sympathy for the concerns of cyclists if there was a little more respect for people on foot. Is that so anti-green?
Re:Pedestrians are green and can bleed red, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are shitty riders out there, just like there are shitty drivers. There are even shitty walkers, too...I've spent upwards of 20 minutes at various lights all over the downtown area because I had the bad luck of being at that intersection during change of classes and the 12,000 students in the building started streaming across the street whether there was a WALK symbol or not.
I will be the first person to cheer when they put crossing guards at every intersection that can ticket people for jaywalking and ignoring the laws concerning biking in traffic, believe me. But I'm not gonna advocate building retaining walls around every sidewalk in the city to prevent it because that's ridiculous, just like how I would never just drive through the red I've sat through 18 times because the kids changing classes couldn't care less about the light because pedestrians have the right of way no matter where they fuck they are.
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Don't overgeneralize. The same jerks that ride their bikes like asses are the jerks that drive their cars like asses.
I understand your sentiment. A cyclist should treat a pedestrian like the cyclist would want to be treated by an automobile.
The cops should ticket the cyclists you describe.
Re:Pedestrians are green and can bleed red, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I sometimes wonder about this.
I've heard all sorts of horror stories from bicyclists about cars. But, you know, I've never experienced it myself. I've been yelled at once or twice. Gotten a few cat-calls while wearing my bike shorts. I've been merged into and cut off. But that's about it.
I hear this comment from time to time: The real problem is the automobiles and their entitled belief the road was built for them. Of course, I usually hear it from those who believe that bicyclists are allowed to do
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I do find it stupid how people seem opposed to getting off fossil fuels etc because "it won't help". Yeah... but how about we not burn fossil fuels and drive everywhere because pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere and slowly getting fatter are bad things?
That said, I've seen plenty of inconsiderate dickish cyclists who cycle on pavements and such. Of an evening I usually walk for exercise along Southsea Esplanade in Portsmouth (esplanade = long paved section alongside the sea), which itself has a long
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The hostility comes because most green initiatives involve the use of force. Either force to collect tax money to be wasted on things that are never used like many mass transportation systems. Or force to hike up the prices of things people want to use like gasoline. I have no problem with environmentalists that live their own lives and use them as an example. When they use force to make other people bend to their will is when I object.
The point should be reducing carbon emissions inst (Score:2)
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Hell I don't think most people realize that buying a new car instead of fixing an old one is better for the environment.
I'll spare you the "fixed that for you" but you totally got that backward.
Easy solution (Score:2)
I bought a used bike.
Additional benefit: I can leave it outside in the city all the time without worrying about it being stolen.
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Like I care. Not only is my bike unattractive enough to discourage stealing, it was also cheap enough that I can replace it many, many times for the price of a similar new bike.
My habit (Score:3, Interesting)
you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint.
And my 11 mile round trip to and from work? Already covered in two months of the first year.
Bikes also damage roads far less than cars do. A heavy bicycle weighs around 30 pounds
Slightly misleading, as it doesn't take into account the 170-pound rider on the bicycle. But I've read that the damage done to a road by a vehicle is somewhere between the third and fourth power of the weight per axle.
My current way of getting to and from work is a bicycle during good weather or an off-peak bus during rain and during late fall and winter. But the article says off-peak buses are horrid. Should I change it?
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The city is going to run the bus anyway - your best bet is convince other people to ride the bus with you.
Re:My habit (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's a tricky aspect of public-transit accounting. In particular, you can't decouple every bus from every other bus, because choices to use the system depend in large part on the overall system. If you cut all past-9pm buses, you might save a bunch of money and carbon emissions looking just at those buses, but you might also depress ridership on the daytime buses, because suddenly people are worried that they'll get stranded at work if something comes up and they have to stay late, so better play it safe and drive.
To properly account for what, say, the 10pm-midnight buses are doing, you need a more systemic analysis that predicts what would happen to the usage of various modes of transit, including at other times of the day, if those buses were decreased/increased/cancelled/kept-the-same.
This is also a common problem with spacing: it's tempting to think, we have N passengers an hour and run a bus every 10 minutes, but N/2 totally fit in a bus, so we could really improve our finances if we just ran a bus every 30 minutes instead. But when the bus runs every 30 minutes rather than 10 minutes, a lot fewer people take it.
I wonder what ManBearPig's carbon footprint is? (Score:2)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e06-manbearpig [southparkstudios.com]
Footprint? (Score:2)
Walking IS zero! (Score:2)
To say "walking isn't zero" is an obvious case of having an incorrect measure. A human needs food energy to exist. The increase in food energy used for the human to walk isn't necessarily a subtraction from the input. The human might eat 3 big macs a day. Just one of them might be necessary to fuel the humans walking energy needs (I'm assuming the walk less than 100 meters per day). if the human eats 3 big macs per day; walks monday through friday but does not walk for the rest of the week there is no
Does not compute (Score:5, Insightful)
The manufacturing process of the bicycle will have roughly the carbon footprint of manufacturing a car door. And these researchers want us to think you have to put 400 miles on the bike before break-even?
I'm sorry, but if they can make such an obvious biased mistrake, why should anybody give even a moment's thought to the rest of their study?
Cheers,
b&
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Not that I agree witht the article... but I think they are assuming you already own a car... and are thinking of buying a bike to be "greener".
In that scenario you've already expended the carbon for manufacturing the car and they are trying to tell you how much you would have to bike to break even on carbon after purchasing a bike...
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They began with the assumption you still bought a car so the bicycle was additional.
The math is quite different if you buy the bicycle instead of a car.
Some people should just shut up. (Score:2)
Ride the wave, get some public exposure, but in the end they just spouted some rubbish.
I wonder what the carbon footprint of all that fake research is.
fake? (Score:2)
I wonder what the carbon footprint of all that fake research is.
I would like to know what part of it you think is "fake", and why. If you actually read the links you can get to the sources for their research, and how they arrived at the numbers mentioned.
Need for exercise. (Score:2)
WFH, Bitches. (Score:2)
Photosysthesis (Score:2)
'Food production creates carbon emissions.'
luckily photosysthesis eats up some of that carbon...
The world cannot be completely 0 emissions or all the plants would die off once the CO2 is all gone.
(But yeah, we still need to reduce the amount of CO2 we pump out)
a bit smaller (Score:2)
than the blood splatter with ancillary innards.
Reduced Carbon Cycling in Austin (Score:2)
Dead people have a smaller carbon footprint. Cycling in the current 107 degree heat through heavy traffic is a sure way to achieve that reduction.
Zero carbon footprint (Score:2)
Therefor, given a 'typical U.S. diet,' you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint.
So building a car has a zero initial carbon footprint? Seriously, I consider myself to be a pretty environmentally friendly, but these studies are ridiculous because they imply that we shouldn't put out ANY carbon into the atmosphere. Well, why don't we just wipe out all life on earth then? What we should be more concerned about is carbon balance. If we produce carbon emissions, we need to find a way to convert that carbon back into a non-gaseous form. Without industrial production, plant life can easi
But... (Score:2)
What's the carbon footprint of reading yet another absurd study on carbon footprints?
It takes less to build a bicycle then a car. It takes a lot less to power it. As a bonus, the human powering it gets exercise while doing so (which a lot of humans really need). We really needed a research grant to figure this out?
The only solution (Score:2)
Get off my carbon emitting lawn (Score:2)
.
Based on my personal expenses, bike commuting and car commuting work out to be about the same. I'm old fashioned enough that I figure carbon costs are a proxy for energy costs and energy cost
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Sounds like you have seriously messed up costs for your bike. I take my bike in every year to the bike shop to have it checked and fixed, and that costs about $40 each time. A flat tire I can usually fix myself for $1 in materials.
A similar yearly checkup for my car costs several times that amount. Insurance is even more. That's without even considering gasoline.
This Article is Just Silly (Score:4, Informative)
The article over simplifies the concepts of sustainable transportation and calorie consumption in the same ways thinly veiled "anti-green" articles attack more sustainable forms of energy production. In the energy debate, there are arguments against solar because of the lack of sun in Seattle, arguments against nuclear energy because of the waste that would be created if the entire world was put on nuclear power, and arguments against wind farms in natural wildlife reserves. They use worst-case scenarios to judge methods of alternative energy creation instead of how they would actually be implemented.
The same goes for sustainable transportation and this article. FTFA: "If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip." And that assumes I'm going to drink a milk. From a cow. After a warm walk. Who the hell drinks milk after getting sweaty? People drink water or have some fruit! Instead of postulating what the worst can be, why not survey people to find out what *actually* happens? Or worse-- why bother considering food at all?
Even in the "worst-case" scenario where everyone in the USA stopped driving private vehicles and just rode bikes and public transit as necessary, would we all focus on beef to make up for our additional caloric needs? And would it make such a massive hit to the environment when compared to to complete loss of people buying and driving their own cars? -- Not that I'm advocating such pie-in-the-sky thinking, but if you want to bring in cow-pollution, let's really compare it to the pollution from manufacturing, transporting, using, and disposing of cars. I can be disingenuous, too!
Lastly, focusing only on the mythical carbon footprint or GHG emissions of any mode of travel is BS science. It's only for "wow" and "fear" effect. You have weigh to the relative benefits of a mode for the passenger, operator, and third parties (cost, health, pollution, etc.), and the habits that may come along with regularly using a mode of transportation (lethargy and car driving for example). There are entire schools of study on sustainable transportation and summarizing it in a childish (trollish?) article is silly.
It's not about finding single a form of transportation that is a "winner"-- it's about finding a mode that is best for you, where you are now, where you need to be, and when you need to be there. Sometimes driving your truck alone on the road is sensible-- like when you're heading over to buddy to help him move. Other times, it's stupid-- like when you drive 3 blocks down the street to pick up some tic-tacs.
Regular Trips:
Walking is suggested for round trips under two miles -- It helps keep the person healthy and burns no fossil fuels in the process. When you get home, don't raise 40 cows for slaughter.
Bicycling is suggested for trips for round trips under 15 miles (fitness and competency varying) -- It helps to keep the person healthy and burns no fossil fuels in the process. See above comment about raising cows.
Bus Transit is suggested for round trips under 15 miles or longer trips depending on availability-- It burns fossil fuels, but it's like a giant carpool.
Train Transit is is suggested for round trips over 30 miles or longer trips depending on availability-- It burns fossil fuels (directly and/or indirectly), but it's like a giant carpool.
Carpooling and Vanpooling is suggested for 20+ mile commutes -- It reduces the amount of pollution per user in areas where transit is not an option
Irregular Trips
Carpool (see above)
Passenger Jet - In a packed jet and for trips greater than 700 miles, you're actually doing pretty good when it comes to your share of greenhouse gases. The longer the trip, the better since the largest concentration of fuel burning comes at take-off.
You al
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Walking is great, but most suburbs were built around the car and thus aren't very walkable communities.
Which leads to an inevitable conclusion: Don't live out in the suburbs if you want to have a low carbon impact.
Especially if you're single, the one choice you can make that will have a gigantic impact on your CO2 emissions is living very close to your work, or at least close to your work via public transit. Even without the environmental benefits, it often gives you an hour of your life back every day. If you have a family, this obviously gets more complicated, but it's still something to think about.
why do we take this seriously (Score:2)
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What is the carbon footprint of getting the first post? Have some consideration for the planet, man!
Re:First! (Score:4, Insightful)
My favorite is the leap from "Well, making solar panels and other clean energy technologies, as well as buses and bicycles, causes pollution, too, so we might as well just keep on truckin' because fuck it."
You know, it doesn't happen very often, but sometimes I really envy those that think that they're going to be raptured up to heaven or something one day, or that the world is going to end in 2012, so that they don't have to worry about a fucking thing in their lives beyond the immediate future. Must be nice to not care at all about the effect you have on the world around you, but I still don't understand why they have to try to prevent anyone else from at least trying. Even if I thought every person around me was going to die in a zombie apocalypse, I'm still not going to slash the tires on their getaway vehicle. Why so many others feel the need to do so is beyond me...
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There's more reason to question clean energy than that strawman though. Alternatives to gas and coal are expensive and difficult. Realistically solar and wind can only ever provide a fraction of what we need, hydro is regional and situational and has its own environmental issues, as does nuclear, and many such as tidal, thorium and geothermal are a long way from being effective. The easiest way for a western economy to reduce their CO2 output today, right now, is to go nuclear or to build modern coal fired
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What's the carbon footprint of a plant? It's negative right?
Wrong. The plant's carbon footprint is only "negative" when photosynthesis happens, and not all the time even then.
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You're doing it wrong.
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Even worse, don't forget that it takes ten pounds of crude oil to deliver a pound of food to a plate, when everything is added together.
Look, you need to be careful when you use statistics from sources that don't spell out exactly how the figure is generated. A quick google http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_one_gallon_of_crude_oil_weigh [answers.com] search of how much oil weighs per gallon comes up with about 7 pounds per gallon for light sweet crude. Now, today's oil price for West Texas Intermediate is $85 per barrel http://www.oil-price.net/ [oil-price.net]. There are 42 gallons per barrel so the cost per pound is
42 gallons * 7 pounds per gallon = 294 pounds for a barrel
$85 / 294 pounds = .29 cents per pound
So according to your statement above, food requires 10 pounds of oil per pound of food, SO the average pound of food should cost at least $2.90 because that is how much it would take to cover just the cost of oil. It ignores cost of land, labor, equipment, seed, or processing and profit to farmer and retailer. Sorry, that doesn't sound right. Staples (corn, rice, wheat, potatoes) certainly don't cost that much per pound. Legumes don't. Most fresh fruit doesn't. Milk doesn't. Cheese will, but some cheeses on sale won't. Vegetable oil doesn't. Olive oil might. Most meat will cost at least that much. Maybe the figure you quoted was just referring to meat or processed foods.
In any case, before you use figures, just make sure that number makes sense. (I am reminded of the time in college when as a grader in a physics class, the students were asked to find how high a pressurized leak on a water tank would shoot into the air. Two student's answers had the water at escape velocity speeds, sending them into orbit the earth.)
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...but as an aside, any velocity straight up without a sustaining acceleration will eventually come back down.
No, escape velocity is an initial speed that will "escape" without a need for additional acceleration. You can escape a gravitational effect without achieving escape velocity as long as you have some form of continuous propulsion providing acceleration, but the definition of escape velocity itself assumes no additional acceleration.
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I think you need to back this up with numbers. There's an awful lot of diseases-of-the-unfit that cycling makes less likely, to the point that in one Danish study, non-bicycle commuters were observed to have a 39% higher mortality rate [ama-assn.org]. Could just be a coincidence, of course. In my own anecdotal case, riding a bicycle allows me to avoid various forms of medical care -- in my 20s, with a cranky knee, whose symptoms were relieved by cycling, the knee doctor offered the advice, "I can cut you open, or you c
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Well, obviously, carbon is consumed when they make your shoes, so that means there is no benefit to walking and you might as well get in your car and drive everywhere because global warming is a myth, just like peak oil, foisted upon the masses by liberals who want to make everyone miserable by, uh, making them walk everywhere or ride smelly buses because they hate freedom and/or democracy!
At least, that's what I keep hearing anytime anyone brings up any way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
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The carbon footprint of insomnia is pretty high too, as you produce more CO2 in a waking cycle than in a sleep cycle, not to mention your likely increased activity levels on electronics or other equipment while you are awake. You're pretty much hosing us all. Get a Humvee, burn a bunch of gas going to the mall, but for heaven's sake, calm down and sleep at night!
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The costs and resources for segregated lanes should be assigned to motorized traffic. Cars and trucks are what make roadways so dangerous that people can't walk or ride bikes on them without putting their lives in peril.
Without cars and trucks, you wouldn't need separate bike lanes.
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There was a lot of carbon locked up in oceans of oil and mountains of coal underneath the earth's surface which is being increasingly released into the atmosphere over the last hundred years. This amount of carbon was not 'floating' around in the ecosystem because it was locked up underground but now, since the industrial revolution, it is being released into the ecosystem at a rate that would never be possible naturally. This is otherwise known as the 'carbon footprint'.
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probably not, and you're forgetting the side effect of better health.
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Why do you need a shower after biking 2-1/2 miles? Just don't go to fast (around 15km/h) and you won't sweat (even in summer).
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to calculate something that is fairy obvious and intuitive to most people.
Really? You intuitively knew those numbers? Sure, it is obvious that a bicycle is better than a car in terms of fuel economy, but the difference has been a subject of debate for some time.
This person didn't set out to prove something that was previously thought untrue, but rather to quantify that which was understood to be generally true.
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While this is more or less true, "self correcting" is a euphemism for all sorts of nastiness that most people who aren't sociopaths aren't willing to just passively allow. What you call "correcting," I call "living in a dystopian shithole that could have been avoided."
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Unfortunately, it has a systemic bias in favor of human-powered transportatio
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Walking IS less inefficient compared to cycling. According to Bicycling Science, 3ed, p. 166, cycling 15mph is about 24 kCal/km (38/mi), walking 4mph is about 55 kCal/km (88/mi). Cycling at 10mph is 15.6 kCal/km (25), 4mph is 8.4 kCal/km (13.5) (assuming you don't waste too much energy staying balanced).
These figures are "incremental above resting". Resting metabolic rate appears to be about 75 kCal/hour, so the 4mph figures for walking and cycling are 19 kCal/mile higher -- 107 and 22.5, respectively.
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aack -- walking is less EFFICIENT.