Food for thought

Riding your bike does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to ride to work than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

We have industrialised our food production. Three quarters of supermarkets’ energy is to refrigerate transport and freeze food prepared elsewhere.

Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you rode instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 200g of food to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

w*nkers!

Yeah, cos we all buy our food from supermarkets, and only get air-freighted, inorganic, out-of-season stuff, wrapped in manifold layers of packaging ;-)

Couch potatoes don't eat less per se and will still drive places to get food.

And drivers will still eat food even if they don't exercise.

The reported comparison is too black and white.

Sounds like a silly-season study story to me.

MA3K Sounds like a silly-season study story to me.

That's a bit of a tongue twister.

right everyone stop typing.....we must consider the co2 output

The demand for food is not regulated by our individual physical demand for energy. In other words people don't consume what they "need", but what they want.

Save the planet! Go kill yourself.

really....oh alright then

aidan really....oh alright then

Shit. a Corpse releases over 100 pounds of CO2.

the planet aint that great anyway

Nonsense !

It is established knowledge that the manufacture of a car takes much more energy than the entire fuel consumption over a cars life time. (a credit to the efficiency of the car design)

This is often expressed, rather graphically, with the (correct) proposition that if you want to buy the most environmentally friendly car then you are best getting a second hand old banger (regardless of its fuel consumption profile) and running it until it dies. This, believe it or not, will cause less environmental impact than the purchase of even the most benign motor vehicle, even a hybrid or electric.

Put simply - an old Jaguar or Ford Escort run for an additional decade will use XXXX fuel (X = it's fuel consumption) - A brand new electric or hybrid run for the same decade would use XX fuel (let's call that half the fuel of the Jag/Ford) in addition to NNNNNNNNNNN (N = fuel used in the manufacturing process).

The car industry, rather conveniently, ignores the manufacturing process when selling.

My point is, fuel consumption is almost irrelevant (really I am not exaggerating here - look into it) in the wider picture as manufacture so heavily outweighs it with regard to fuel use.

Bike = good.

"Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said

yeah, and it takes at least 1 hour in central London.

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

checkout the no. of cars vs. bikes being produced....

this is a pretty flawed/complex argument
200g's of soya beans uses fewer resources to produce the 200g's meat etc etc.
I guess driving does help more because of all the people that die in accidents and the people
that oil companies kill.

I work for an oil company and I havent killed anyone. not today.

well i know im not leaving the house then

better switch of the computer too

The car vs. bike argument, as already mentioned MA3K, is much too black and white. looking at statistics, we can isolate certain comparisons, but outliers will always exist. there was this great study that showed a positive correlation between ice-cream sales and murder rates. the more ice cream was sold, the higher the murder rate. statistically true, but looked at one aspect instead of considering the increase in temperature and how that affects people's tolerance. similarly then, we have to take into consideration the impact of couch potatoes on the health care system, the costs of buying an italian-made vs. british-made bike, the difference in CO2 in steel, aluminium, titanium, and carbon frames, etc etc.

i suppose that to make direct comparisons between cars vs. bikes is impossible due to the global economy of production and consumption being tied together much too closely. it always reminds me of people who don't drive who say that they are not affected by an increase in petrol prices.

i see a lot more people smiling while cycling than those sitting on a bus.

lies, damned lies and statistics!

As HB says, you can use them to make whatever point you point. Makes it harder to get to the actual facts in these issues.

"i see a lot more people smiling while cycling than those sitting on a bus."

Can I get a 'Hell Yeah!"

Hovis Brown, I have also made a very solid link between a reduction in the number of pirates and the rise of global warming.

Wow. I've been pondering this global warming issue an all the time it was staring me in the face!

Yaaaarrrrr...

The world could definitely use more pirates...

Shiver me timbers!

I knews it, me hearties!

I think the point of the study was to highlight and SHOW how ridiculous the CAPITALIST CONSUMERIST SOCIETY has become, when you can argue, consider, even for ONE SECOND, that DRIVING A CAR would be more ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND than riding a lovely BIKE. Of course THE person who wrote this study does not advocate that we HOP off two-wheels, RATHER THAT WE:

DISSEMINATE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION and FIGHT THE BOURGEOIS OPRESSORS AT EVERY TURN.

BIKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE.

Was that one of Rik's quotes from The Young Ones?

Ok from now on we can breathe in, but not out. and no farting. that way we can ride our bikes.