3 ms·

My bicycle is infinite times better than an electric car but it doesn't really serve the same purpose does it?

notatoad 7y ago
They could. LA has been painting their streets white to combat the heat island effect, think how much more effective it would be to replace all their roads with canals!
- T3OU-736 7y ago
  I think LA is a fairly bad example - drought, desert earthquakes all conspire very much against that use case
  - notatoad 7y ago
    Yeah, it was maybe not an entirely serious suggestion
- dylan604 7y ago
  They may not have to wait long, nor do any replacing. Just let the ocean levels continue to rise, and flood the LA basin. Venice's canals will be useless, but downtown LA will be just about right ;-)
Robotbeat 7y ago
A bicycle is not infinitely better. In fact, due to emissions from agriculture and livestock and inefficiency of conversion of food to mechanical work, if you have a heavily meat-based or fresh-fruit-Based diet (neither of which are common, I admit), the extra calories spent biking can actually have worse CO2 emissions than an electric car per mile.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Source for this?
  - aitchnyu 7y ago
    Here is the assertion: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/are-meat-eating-cyclists-worse-for-the-planet-than-drivers https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/are-meat-eating-cyc... I believe most people don't need extra calories from carbon intensive sources.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Thanks. I think you missed some rather critical bits in your comment: that such an already extreme cyclist might produce more gases than the most efficient gasoline powered vehicles. It's quite misleading when you don't mention that, since then people think of the average car to compare against.
      - Robotbeat 7y ago
        Yeah, the focus was on "might", not on typically (and an electric car, not a gas car). The comment I was replying to was that bicycles were infinitely better. tl;dr: diet is also very important, and human labor is not necessarily a good substitute for machine labor.
- cmcaine 7y ago
  This is hardly a full lifecycle assessment. The assertion is true only for cyclists eating a mad diet and only if: 1. Motorists really do eat less food than cyclists, controlling for other factors. 2. You only count transit-energy emissions (not construction or recycling or road maintenance or healthcare etc). To my knowledge, there is no evidence that active travel modes are associated with greater calorie consumption. There is plenty of evidence that all kinds of important externalities are worse for any kind of car-travel versus cycling. You can perhaps make an argument based on average lifespan that motoring is better for the environment because it costs more life years per km, but advocating for shorter lives in the name of carbon emissions is not going to be popular (and if so, there are less polluting ways to do it).

They could. LA has been painting their streets white to combat the heat island effect, think how much more effective it would be to replace all their roads with canals!

T3OU-736 7y ago
I think LA is a fairly bad example - drought, desert earthquakes all conspire very much against that use case
- notatoad 7y ago
  Yeah, it was maybe not an entirely serious suggestion
dylan604 7y ago
They may not have to wait long, nor do any replacing. Just let the ocean levels continue to rise, and flood the LA basin. Venice's canals will be useless, but downtown LA will be just about right ;-)

Robotbeat 7y ago

A bicycle is not infinitely better. In fact, due to emissions from agriculture and livestock and inefficiency of conversion of food to mechanical work, if you have a heavily meat-based or fresh-fruit-Based diet (neither of which are common, I admit), the extra calories spent biking can actually have worse CO2 emissions than an electric car per mile.

mehrdadn 7y ago
Source for this?
- aitchnyu 7y ago
  Here is the assertion: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/are-meat-eating-cyclists-worse-for-the-planet-than-drivers https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/are-meat-eating-cyc... I believe most people don't need extra calories from carbon intensive sources.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Thanks. I think you missed some rather critical bits in your comment: that such an already extreme cyclist might produce more gases than the most efficient gasoline powered vehicles. It's quite misleading when you don't mention that, since then people think of the average car to compare against.
    - Robotbeat 7y ago
      Yeah, the focus was on "might", not on typically (and an electric car, not a gas car). The comment I was replying to was that bicycles were infinitely better. tl;dr: diet is also very important, and human labor is not necessarily a good substitute for machine labor.
cmcaine 7y ago
This is hardly a full lifecycle assessment. The assertion is true only for cyclists eating a mad diet and only if: 1. Motorists really do eat less food than cyclists, controlling for other factors. 2. You only count transit-energy emissions (not construction or recycling or road maintenance or healthcare etc). To my knowledge, there is no evidence that active travel modes are associated with greater calorie consumption. There is plenty of evidence that all kinds of important externalities are worse for any kind of car-travel versus cycling. You can perhaps make an argument based on average lifespan that motoring is better for the environment because it costs more life years per km, but advocating for shorter lives in the name of carbon emissions is not going to be popular (and if so, there are less polluting ways to do it).