Slashdot Mirror
State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2
terbeaux writes "The fact that Rep Ed Orcutt (R — WA) wants to tax bicycle use is not extraordinary. The representative's irrational conviction is. SeattleBikeBlog has confirmed reports that Orcutt does not feel bicycling is environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have 'an increased heart rate and respiration.' When they contacted him he clarified that 'You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car...' Cascade blog has posted the full exchange between Rep Ed Orcutt and a citizen concerned about the new tax."
For those interested, I'd recommend the book How Bad is a Banana, which examines the carbon footprint of various foods (which varies greatly).
Fun tidbit: If you were to take your calories from asparagus (which has a big carbon footprint), riding a bike actually has a bigger carbon footprint than a city bus. Yea, I know we don't eat only asparagus, but the point is still valid: you can just look at the surface and ignore the externalities of your actions.
I think that maybe some people just find it too hard to believe that all the carbon in the plants actually comes from the air. This gives you an idea about how much the atmosphere weighs -- CO2 is merely 0.04% of our atmosphere! Heck, forget the plants that are alive now, just look at how much of this stuff was in the atmosphere long time ago. Every bit of carbon in coal deposits came from the atmosphere!!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The difference between the CO2 you exhale and that exhaled by your car is that yours come from the food you ate: plants (even if indirectly you ate animals that ate plants). And those plants got it from the atmosphere. So you are just returning CO2 to where it came from. A car takes it from the ground where it's been slowly accumulating for tens of millions of years and dumps it into the atmosphere. It's NOT the same CO2.
Now if we go into externalities such as "how must CO2 from petroleum did it take to bring that food on the table", then it gets a bit more tricky.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The "stuff that matters" is that Americans elected that kind of people to make laws based on his knowledge. Don't worry, probably have more clue than the rest.
And there is the real problem. People are elected into positions of responsibility not because they can do the job, but because they read good speeches.
Yes, this is correct, but what many people forget is that the calories you ingest as a first world eater include pretty substantial amounts of fossil fuel use in fertilizing, care-taking, and transport. More energy from fossil fuels, in fact, than you receive in calories(or so I've heard).
Actually shipping is very efficient. It can take far more fossil fuels to grow crops outside their ideal area vs transporting them.
I guess we could all only eat things grown in a 20 mile radius, but that would be pretty limiting.
That's the last of our problems- we'd all be dead within 72 hours or so. CO2 is required to make the human respiration system work, the breathing reflex is triggered by too much CO2, not by a lack of oxygen, this is why hyperventilating before holding your breath can make you pass out, you scrub lots of CO2 out of your system and then run out of O2 before your brain forces you to inhale. This is also the mechanism behind Cheyne Stokes respiration, where high altitude climbers don't breath enough while they sleep.
Erradicate all CO2 and you have to consciously breath, on purpose - if you forget, or fall asleep, you're dead.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
There are as many idiot on bike as in car. BUT and that is a really important point, idiot biker are far more likely to damage themselves than to damage other, on the contrary to idiot in car. In fact for many of the point you cited above , I saw in the last years at least one car doing it. Up to the point of having a geisterfahrer (guys which take the highway on the frigging wrong direction going coutner sense of the other car).
"- Let's speed down the middle of a one-way street, going the wrong way."
Have had car do that on me. At 40 mph in a city road because they were in a hurry.
- Let's ride down the middle of an actual highway... yeh, nothing bad will happen here. (Seriously, saw that and went WTF)
As said above see my paragraph about geisterfahrer.
- That red light (or stop sign) at the bottom of the hill is only for cars... I don't need to stop or even slow down
Was badly hurt by a car which tought red light don't count. There was no policeman so hey who the fuck care about red light, right RIGHT ? And I don't count the number of time where car think stops sign and "right of way" do not count if you ride a bike. And seems surprised when you fume at them ("You should not be in the road , it is for car only fucktard")
- Let's make a left turn here while on this 40MpH road without indicating or looking, I'm sure the car behind me can stop in time
My colleagues fumes about cars doing that all the time, never putting the blinker light. So I am guessing ehre it is actually a widespread "sport" of forgetting for everybody to put a indication. On the other hand nearly 1/3 of the time if I put my arm to the left, the guys whicha re up to 100m behind me REEVES their motor up the wazoo and accelerate to pass before I go to the left. I dunno for the US, but here once you put your harm to the elft, unless they were already engaged to pass over you, they should not accelerate , they should slow down and let the bike pass. As I said a full 1/3 of the population ignore that fully.
- Hmm, I think I'll dig in my pocket and look for my cellphone, then start talking on the cellphone, while weaving around like a drunk idiot
Like cars. Which is why there are so many law against driving with cellphone and so many fines distributed.
- Hmm, I'm obviously not a great cyclist... so let me ride carelessly on a 40MpH road, fall down in the middle of the road without a helmet, and nearly cause a bunch of accidents as they try not to drive over my head.
How often that happens ? get real.
Oh yeah and my all time classic. old driver thinking they will brake and accelerate instead
I was nearly killed by one guy and his wife parking in a sport car, thankfully a tree stopped the car right in its track and they were not wounded,, the car totalled, but there hadn't been the tree I would probably be in a hospital or gone.
At least old biker are not a menace to everybody else.
Facts is, I frankly think there are a higher number of idiot on bike than there is on car. But the idiots in cars provocate hundreds, thousands of death every year. Those in bike do not.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Actually shipping is very efficient. It can take far more fossil fuels to grow crops outside their ideal area vs transporting them.
I guess we could all only eat things grown in a 20 mile radius, but that would be pretty limiting.
Something like 10% of the carbon footprint of agriculture is due to transportation to the consumer. While "eating local" is generally a good idea, by itself it is not a complete solution. Winter hothouse tomatoes in Britain contribute significantly more CO2 than importing Spanish field tomatoes to Britain, for example.