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."
If you eliminated all the CO2, the plants would die. I think you mean limit it to some given level.
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.
Does the House GOP caucus have a minimum stupidity requirement?
'Your brain is God.' -- Dr. Timothy Leary
I sighed while reading this, fatigued by the comments of the congressman. Sorry for the extra CO2 guys.
Waiting for you by the bridge
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely
Plants need CO2 to produce food. If you eliminated CO2 we'd die as a species, along with every other species.
Also, by his reasoning we should start killing our population off, because then we'll produce less CO2 when they're dead. What a moron.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'm not holding my breath for Mr. Orcutt to get his sense. Moving on...
You failed biology, didn't you. No CO2 means no O2 (we breath this), no food. getting the picture? Now, go away and don't come back until you get a clue.
Set up two sealed rooms with a glass wall.
In one room have a car outside the window with its exhaust piped into the room.
In the other have a cyclist on an exercise bike working out. Pipe his exhalations into the room.
Outfit the room with a nice desk and sofa and other accouterments. Then ask the esteemed congressman which room he would like to spend the day in.
For myself it would depend on if the cyclist had eaten garlic recently!
Silence is a state of mime.
By his own reasoning, Rep Ed Orcutt needs to lower his CO2 production by keeping his mouth shut. He would do both the planet and his colleagues a favor.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's clear that he is just lobbying, and that's just not true. But the benefits of people commuting aren't only in helping the atmosphere, but our society, full of obese people that doesn't interact with others and act like retards with their cars.
If your ideal world is one without life as we know at, then sure eliminate CO2 completely.
I suspect most people consider being alive part of an ideal world though and wiping out all the photosynthesizers, followed shortly by the rest of the food chain isn't doesn't count as ideal.
Kill off poor people, burn their bodies as fuel. Win/win for the 1%!
Plants emit CO2 at night, let's have a tax on people who have plants too!
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely. And ultimately, if we as a species are going to survive, we need to do that. But in the here and now, we have to do the best we can. And cars produce way more of that poison than anyone on a bicycle. The Congressman is just an ignorant jackass who has no understanding of how our biosphere works.
Not sure if this is a troll, or an example of someone who has their head so far up the ass of the radical green movement that their brain has stopped working due to lack of oxygen...
Both of these are true. The only one he is actually using to justify his position (that bikes should pay road tax) is the former, the second point is refuting the point that bikes are environmentally friendly. The second point is debatable: it's a question of what the basic comparison is. Cycling is more polluting than staying at home, less polluting than driving a car.
There are lots of valid reasons to mock Republicans, we don't need to make more up.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Can we mod parent as a troll? I mean, you suggest knowledge of how the biosphere works, but you do realize that survival on this planet is a bidirectional thing made possible by the fact that animals take in O2 and give off CO2 and other gasses, which are then "Breathed" by plants that take in CO2 and produce O2, right? So, then by eliminating all CO2 from our atmosphere, we would destroy half of the life on this planet by starving them of the very gasses they require for respiration.
It is a more logical thought to suggest that:
1. The person talking about taxing cyclists and such was being sarcastic,
2. That the answer to resolving global warming and also the CO2 pollution in our atmosphere is to develop new biomass that can process out CO2 into O2 at a higher level of efficiency than current plant matter.
A perfect example that is easily achievable: I've read about certain species of algae that process more CO2 than much larger sections of rainforest which currently are the largest carbon sinks/producers of O2 on the planet. Cultivating these species of algae (or even genetically modified species of plants that are much more efficient) in sections of large buildings (or empty buildings) in larger urban areas could do far more to reduce the overall scale of pollution than simply cutting emissions alone.
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely. And ultimately, if we as a species are going to survive, we need to do that. But in the here and now, we have to do the best we can. And cars produce way more of that poison than anyone on a bicycle. The Congressman is just an ignorant jackass who has no understanding of how our biosphere works.
Not sure if this is a troll, or an example of someone who has their head so far up the ass of the radical green movement that their brain has stopped working due to lack of oxygen... (Sorry I didn't mean to post as AC).
This can be solved by a simple test.
Put several plants and some animals in a closed garage and ride your bike all day long. Take note of any sick or dead plants/animals afterwards.
After this if you are still convinced bikes are bad for the environment, do the same test using your car instead of the bike.
Did a representative of MY government just try and tell me that my breath is somehow more harmful to the environment than the Hummer exhaust I'm choking on?
Where is the damn toilet handle on Congress already...Will someone please go tell Nicolas Cage to go find THAT please? I could care less about a fountain of youth if the world is going to be run by this level of ignorance.
CO2 isn't a problem, it's part of a cycle for Carbon in the biosphere. Adding significantly more Carbon to the biosphere from sources which have been locked away hundreds of millions of years in the form of CO2 is a problem.
Even if people produced more CO2 than cars to travel the same distance (which they don't) it still wouldn't be a problem because the Carbon the cyclist is using is already part of the biosphere.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
...we'd die as a species
No more AGW, success!
If you eliminated all the CO2, the plants would die. I think you mean limit it to some given level.
Yes. When you think about the fact that the GP posted this on a "Geek" website, I am deeply saddened and worried by the lack of basic science education.
Consider that this politician is a product of that system, I can't really blame him for making such an ignorant statement.
Next time you see a tree, I hope you realize that all the carbon in it came from the CO2 in the air. We need the name of your biology teacher, pronto.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely.
No need to wait! Make a difference and stop exhaling today!
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely. ... The Congressman is just an ignorant jackass who has no understanding of how our biosphere works.
thank god we'll never fully eliminate irony from the planet.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely.
Sigh. We need a certain amount of greenhouse effect in order to make the planet habitable. Nature, itself provides the required amount of CO2 to create that effect and that is a significant reason why life arose on this planet in the first place.
Things get dodgy when human activity causes the release of a shitload of extra CO2 and therefore amp up the greenhouse effect.
TCAP-Abort
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.
Brought to you by Carl's Jr
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Is there an online random troll post generator somewhere? This sure looks like it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely
Plants need CO2 to produce food. If you eliminated CO2 we'd die as a species, along with every other species.
The Earth also needs CO2 to stay warm. We'd be in a permanent ice age if there was literally zero in the atmosphere.
Moderation. People have surprising difficulty with the concept.
The story does illustrate one of the many issues. Different people need information communicated in different ways. Some want CO2 exhaust listed in tonnage, others need comparison charts. Personally, I find comparisons to "average households" to be meaningless, but a comparison with "middle-aged bicycle commuters, both by time and miles" would be great
20 characters max for the password? How will I use my favorite poems as passwords?
The eco-taxes are out of control in general and really it needs to stop. It's not helping the environment and it's making the economy worse.
Seriously... we can all come up with ways to f' each other over. Can we just stop it? Because every time one group comes up with a nasty way to hurt another group the second group just responds in kind.
And then what do we have?
Moral of the story? Stop acting like children and play nice.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This news looks like one of The Onion great news... but I just checked, and I couldn't find it.
Anyway, one should point out that biking produces less CO2 than walking or using any other vehicle, for a given distance.
We need the name of your biology teacher, pronto.
Don't be so quick to blame the teacher. You can lead a moron to knowledge, but you can't make him learn.
What is remarkable about this exchange is not that bike riders are enhanced CO2 producers, but that a republican legislator has acknowledged the CO2 needs to be recognized as a greenhouse gas, which in excess is bad.
It is a start...
Expect additional taxes to be levied soon on things that potentially increase heart rate and respiration, and therefore CO2: running shoes, swimming pools, gyms, and beds.
... Congress critters can be morons. Film at 11.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I don't know why they don't just drag some trees from the back of aeroplanes. Or perhaps a small shrubbery on the roof. That'll get rid of the CO2 in the stratosphere, surely?
Clinton did not inhale. Now we know the reason.
Or does he assume that all cars fun of biofuels.
The point being that food is carbon neutral - the carbon used in growing the crops is the same as than emitted by eating the food and exhaling. Technically so are fossil fuels over long periods but that's over millions of years.
Also it's not that simple because farm machinery uses fossil fuels, but the State Rep didn't mention that so I assume he's a moron.
Wish I had mod points for this. Well said.
Why not put a tax on thingy? Would feel as stupid as to call for a tax on standing in water, once you realize what you're standing in.
Ok, please mod parent as a troll. He might rightfully say the Congressman is just an ignorant jackass, but in all his reply that CO2 should be eliminated, ignoring what people are telling him that's it's vital to our survival, he proved he is one too.
It would not surprise me, if the production of the bike causes more CO2 to be released than all the extra CO2 that is produced while using the bike. Also, one would also need to look at the life style effects of people who do bike and who don't to determine if cyclist do produce more CO2.
Since any form of exercise does this then, by the Congressmen's reasoning, all Americans should stop exercising. To make sure we don't exercise, we should make physical movement difficult by, say, adding two hundred pounds to every person. McDonald's is now proud to announce the McPatriot. It's a five thousand calorie burger that all patriotic Americans should eat. By eating five of these a day, you should put on your two hundred pounds of patriotic, exercise-preventing fat very quickly. (Don't worry about the lack of competition. Burger King is coming out with an All-American Whopper. KFC has said that they were ahead of the curve with their Double Down sandwich.) As a bonus, all of this fat will mean that Americans won't live as long which should solve the Social Security crisis.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
So let me get this straight... Someone wants to tax us for breathing? Regardless, I think we're tired of being taxed for everything. And if it came down to paying a registration fee for my bike or some nonsense like that, I assure you I just wouldn't do it.
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 ?
... but no one is home in Rep Orcutt's skull.
how much CO2 was emitted by the linked blogs' servers catching on fire.
i'm sure 'a million nerds clicking on a link' has to be responsible overall for at least .1C of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
I am sad to report that another source also verified with the lawmaker that he does beleive cyclists are bad for the enviroment... http://seattlebikeblog.com/2013/03/02/state-lawmaker-says-bicycling-is-not-good-for-the-environment-should-be-taxed/ (site is a little slashdotted at the moment but some requests are getting through)
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
I think many of you are missing the point by engaging in the merit of the argument. Politicians raise taxes to gain and extend their power. If they could do so at will they would. However they need some level of acceptance by their marginally informed constituents. So they throw out explanations that only need to sound legitimate enough to let them proceed. I doubt the good congressman cares squat about the co2 generated by a biker.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely. And ultimately, if we as a species are going to survive, we need to do that. But in the here and now, we have to do the best we can. And cars produce way more of that poison than anyone on a bicycle. The Congressman is just an ignorant jackass who has no understanding of how our biosphere works.
A good start to limiting CO2 production would be by killing off this particular congressman.
Most rational people rate things like CO2 based on the amount given off per mile travelled, I'd be willing to bet that cycling gives off far less CO2 per mile than driving a car with no other occupants apart from the driver.
Of course, there are plenty of ways to make car travel more efficient such as car sharing and tons of other things I can't be bothered to list but if you are only talking about 1 person getting themselves to work then bike is better than car in terms of CO2.
Also, the energy used in cycling is basically food, which grows quickly even if you consume it in cow or sheep form. Oil on the other hand takes slightly longer to "grow" so keeps carbon locked up under ground for longer during the process of it forming.
There are plenty of times you cannot cycle and car or van becomes the only option, such as when carrying lots of people or luggage so it not an option in many cases. When it is possible and practical though it is certainly more efficient.
I dont read
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely.
Please, stop breathing: your body (and especially your brain) is wasting O2, and rejecting too much CO2. :)
Well yes, but not because its Asparagus, but rather because it's grown in Peru and imported at great CO2 cost using petroleum fueled ships and truck:
http://www.coopfoodstore.coop/content/what-price-asparagus
In fact, thin air is a strong CO2 producer..... if you bottle it in Peru and ship it to the breather in trucks.
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely. And ultimately, if we as a species are going to survive, we need to do that. But in the here and now, we have to do the best we can. And cars produce way more of that poison than anyone on a bicycle. The Congressman is just an ignorant jackass who has no understanding of how our biosphere works.
Wow! Either you are trolling or you have no understanding of how plant life works.
Who is voting for this guy? It must be a corner of WA where stupid is a virtue.
An average car produces 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The average resting human produces 170,000 liters, or 340kg carbon dioxide per year. With a moderate level of activity, we can increase this to a conservative 500kg. There is simply no comparison. Clearly, this guy is an idiot masquerading as a "representative" of people's needs.
This sketch from Studio C applies: Going Green
No, that would release CO2 into the atmosphere. Simply burying them is better - sequesters it in the soil.
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.
Annual miles traveled x weight x lane width needed. Here's my nickel, kid.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
I'm struggling to see the relevance but if you insist: Your average politician prefers wearing 40 denier stockings under their trousers. Garters are optional.
Indeed. I was amazed by the "special" nature of the original poster. On par with being as special as the congressman in the article.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Next he will be taxing running, walking, having sex, masturbation, all sports ... basically anything that raises your breathing rate.
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).
remember these are the people who wanted to ban dihydrogen monoxide...
This is why I kept an objectively ugly plant alive in my office, since it had previously been in the office of a dear mentor of mine prior to his death. I liked the fact that it was made out of some of the CO2 he had exhaled over the years.
"Beam him up?" Come one, that would assume he's a member of a non-human race with greater intelligence (or at least once that would take him). The correct response would be "somebody put this knuckle-dragger in the zoo already."
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Cars don't produce C02; People do!
Did a representative of MY government just try and tell me that my breath is somehow more harmful to the environment than the Hummer exhaust I'm choking on?
Betteridge's Law of Headlines needs to be expanded to cover comments on websites. No, he didn't say that at all, as you would know if you'd RTGodDamnA. He said that your breath while cycling is more harmful to the environment than your breath while driving a car, as you release more CO2 because of the physical exertion. Where I come from, we learn that in science class at around 10 years old. Secondly, the tax is separate from this issue. It was pointed out that car drivers currently pay road tax to cover maintenance costs while bicycles do not, yet bicycle riders contribute to wear and tear on the roads (even if only in a minor way). I disagree with this, as tax isn't paid specifically to care for roads. Instead all taxes are put into the public coffers, and then divided up amongst various departments.
Insert joke about ironic use of "ignorance" here.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
If that kind of person really held to that then the problem would solve itself. I say let them!
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/mpg-of-a-human/
I'm fairly sure that crazy jj was joking.
Me, I'm in favor of eliminating all the CO from the atmosphere. It's just nasty.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
When you think about the fact that the GP posted this on a "Geek" website, I am deeply saddened and worried by the lack of basic science education.
I too, am heavily ensaddened.
crazyjj is clearly the stupidiest scientition in the internet.
You are quite "special"...
(1) CO2 is require for plants. Without it, they won't photosynthesize.
(2) Without CO2, most of the oxygen in the CO2 would likely be atmospheric - things would more readily burst into flames.
(3) Some global warming is useful... Do you think the biota of the planet would be healthier if it were several degrees cooler?
Now, we are actually still in an ice age, just not at a glacial maxima. A little bit of global warming could get us out of it. In fact, given the break up of the ice at the north pole, I'd say we are close to there. This is not necessarily a bad thing like people thing - though slowing it down could be beneficial, due to the slow rate at which plants migrate (literally it's a generational thing - so a couple miles a year). But too far would also be a problem...
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
you got it all wrong : soylent green
42
You can lead a moron to knowledge, but you can't make him learn.
You just won the award for the new slashdot tagline. 'News for nerds, stuff that matters' is so out of date.
If he's that concerned about bicyclists contributing CO2, he should propose something similar to California's smog checks.
In order to breathe on public roads a person must go to a licensed CO2 Test Only Station where they put you on a treadmill, stick a wand in your throat and another up your rear end, and attach electrodes to your ears. If you exhale more CO2 than the government-set limit, you must see a doctor and get fixed, then come back and re-test. This test station could be in a 7-Eleven, or a gas station, as long as it's not any place that could potentially be related to medicine, like a hospital or a pharmacy. This is to ensure doctors and pharmacists are not failing you on the test just to make you buy medicine or therapy from them.
People who do not plan to breathe on public roads would pay a small "Planned Non-Breathing" (PNB) fee of about $35 and would be allowed to breathe in their homes or while laying on cinderblocks in their front yard.
I know, it sounds crazy, but look at what it's done for L.A. The air is now clear enough to actually see the smog cloud overhead.
No, no CO2 means none of the O2 is sequestered by carbon - we'll probably breath just fine for a few weeks/months.
This means, however the plants can't photosynthesize. Many large plants will die out and then CO2 will increase and it will swing the other way and most animal life will die out... During the process we'll go through extremes of heat and cold as well. It wouldn't be pleasant.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Not all cyclists are rude on purpose. I might inadvertently make a you have five fathers gesture to oncoming traffic with my left hand while slowing for a right turn, but that's it.
since methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas.
You know what else is sequestered in the soil?
Dinosaur bodies and prehistoric forests.... All turned to thick black carbon compounds. But we keep DIGGING THEM UP by giant truck fills every hour.
Parent has a very valid point:
@ First sight you might think a cyclist taking food as fuel, is very environmentally friendly. But chances are that multiple fossil fuel-derived calories were used to produce each food calorie. Especially with modern, processed foods like your put-into-oven pizza, microwave dinner, or that ready made sandwich you pick up on your way to work. And the human body has its own fuel efficiency, just like a car engine.
If it were possible for humans to eat fossil fuels, cycling could be equally bad as pouring gasoline in your car. If that food was grown in the cyclist's back yard & eaten as is, cyclist would have the edge.
And then there's the whole issue of how much mass you drag around (driver + 1 tonne vehicle vs. cyclist + 12 kg. bicycle), and the amount of power it takes to do so. FYI: a 100 kW car engine is pretty normal, human power is measured in hundreds of Watts.
Speak the truth and the hate mongers want to have you killed off.
I am not sure, I think he is just an idiot.
Looks like whoever operates that alt got sick of it and is fine using it to troll until he has no karma left.
CO seems to eliminate itself pretty well.
We have these other things that store carbon compounds in 100' tall columns!!! Imagine how much carbon per acre they could store... Everybody's gonna want on on this tech!!!
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
So what should a cyclist do facing a red light at the bottom of a hill that has stayed red for several minutes because the bicycle doesn't have enough metal surface to trip the induction sensor that it has remained stopped over? I've reported it to the city, but the city claims that fixing the sensor isn't in its budget. No, there's no marked crosswalk or pedestrian call button. No, leaning the bike doesn't help on this particular signal. Not even carrying a loop of patch cable in my left shoe works. I guess the city finds rejecting semis in the adjacent lane more important than detecting bicycles.
I'm not sure what's sadder... That the poster does not understand basics biochemistry; or, that he has been modded insightful by several /. users.
I liked the fact that it was made out of some of the CO2 he had exhaled over the years.
I hope it won't ruin your nostalgia to point out that it's probably using some exhaled CO2 from anyone who's ever lived (up to, say, X months ago so there's enough time for the atmosphere to mix).
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Alternative title: Congressman asks entire constituency to drop dead.
"It's the best thing for our planet" he told the press.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
"eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely" ?? My heartiest applause to those who have moded this comment as insightful.
That I can believe, and I almost mentioned that in my original post but it detracted from the simplicity of the point I was trying to get across. I was starting to sound like a laywer. "This is true, unless you use this source for fertiliser and if you live away from rural areas you have to account for transportation fuel." etc.
The figure I've heard is something like 10 times more kJ in fossil fuel relative to the kJ consumed as food, as a species we literally eat fossil fuels by temporarily converting it into carrots and potatoes and beef steaks, it why I'm so afraid of peak oil, as a species since the industrial revolution we've thrived and the population has expanded well beyond the naturally sustainable population by using an energy source which almost no other animal on the planet can use. When it's gone we had better have a significant alternative to both the energy and the chemical feedstock aspects of fossil fuel because without it a lot of us are going to starve to death.
Having said that, I have an allotment plot and about 50% of my yearly calorie intake comes from a source without any fossil fuel usage, I could bump that up significantly but to do it I would need to put far more time into the plot. The equivalent of doing it as a full time job and it would be pretty much subsistance farming which isn't alot of fun.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
The fact that Rep Ed Orcutt (R â" WA) wants to tax bicycle use is not extraordinary.
Yes, it actually is. Why not just tax running or walking while you're at it? Or simply cut to the chase and tax breathing?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Did a representative of MY government just try and tell me that my breath is somehow more harmful to the environment than the Hummer exhaust I'm choking on?
Betteridge's Law of Headlines needs to be expanded to cover comments on websites. No, he didn't say that at all, as you would know if you'd RTGodDamnA. He said that your breath while cycling is more harmful to the environment than your breath while driving a car, as you release more CO2 because of the physical exertion. Where I come from, we learn that in science class at around 10 years old. Secondly, the tax is separate from this issue. It was pointed out that car drivers currently pay road tax to cover maintenance costs while bicycles do not, yet bicycle riders contribute to wear and tear on the roads (even if only in a minor way). I disagree with this, as tax isn't paid specifically to care for roads. Instead all taxes are put into the public coffers, and then divided up amongst various departments. Insert joke about ironic use of "ignorance" here.
#1: I don't care how you want to slice this. This is a public declaration on a tax on breathing. The only thing that outshines the utter stupidity of that concept is the sheer arrogance that Representatives have the gall to word it that way to my face. Shit, at least call it a damn paint surcharge or reflector subsidy or something. This is how bold they are, reflecting just how weak and apathetic we are.
#2: Cycling provides health benefits making healthier citizens. Let's discourage that shit and put them back in their cars or at home, making them unhealthy and therefore far more profitable for our next business venture, socialized medicine.
All one has to do is follow the money anymore, and remember who pulls the strings. Common sense is clearly irrelevant. I learned that in 3rd grade social studies.
What about oil??? What did the dinosaurs eat???
That just means they should pay a smaller tax, thats all.
A 2000 pound passenger vehicle in use weighs 1000 pounds per axle. A 200 pound bicycle in use weighs only 100. Because road wear increases as the fourth power of weight per axle, ten times the weight implies roughly 10,000 times the road wear. How much do you charge each driver per year in road tax? And how much would it cost the state to bill each cyclist 1/10,000 of that?
Weeds are plants in the wrong place. And pollutants are chemicals in the wrong place. Dihydrogen monoxide certainly can be a pollutant. In times of flood for example. Or in my whisky.
Maybe the people who set up this vox-pop trap weren't as clever as they thought they were.
No, he said bicycling is, in absolute terms, more harmful to the environment than doing nothing.
Of course, driving a Hummer is relatively more harmful to the environment than bicycling, but he didn't add that to the conversation.
So his argument depends on the ability of the reader to understand the difference between "absolute" and "relative."
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The 2nd point could be refuted by cyclists having fewer long-term medical expenses due to increased well-being.
Counterbalanced by increased medical bills in case a collision does happen. A helmet and lights will not keep an intoxicated SUV driver from crippling or killing a cyclist.
we should start killing our population off, because then we'll produce less CO2 when they're dead.
I say we start with the cast of the Jersey Shore and pretty much everyone that works on Captiol Hill. Especially ignorant fools that have minds akin to that of the representative from Washington and any idiot that is on the science committee, that believes evolution is a fallacy.
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
It's bad enough when people with degrees in Law or Political Science or Business Administration try to legislate on scientific questions. What's even scarier is the fact that this guy received an A.S. in Forestry from the University of Maine, and a B.S. in Forestry Management from the University of Idaho. Which I'm sure is a lot less biochemically rigorous a field of study than, say, Botany, but someone with that kind of credentials ought to have a better understanding of environmental science than he shows.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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.
I say we cut down the CO2 emissions... with a herring.
There is no minimum IQ requirement for state representatives. Nor is there an IQ requirement to post on slashdot. Apparently, there is no minimum IQ for moderating either, since parent post has been modded "insightful".
What happens to the human body when CO2 is absent? Oh yeah, we forget to breathe, right? A minimal level of CO2 is necessary to stimulate breathing, as I recall.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Or does he assume that all cars fun of biofuels.
Another comment points out that the representative's donors include producers of alcohol. Alcohol is a biofuel that makes up 85% of E85 motor fuel.
the carbon used in growing the crops is the same as than emitted by eating the food and exhaling.
Including the carbon used in making the fertilizer?
Can we please institute basic tests for elected officials.
Say something like basic grade 8 science, math, history and english.
Decomposing bodies release Methane, which is worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas by an order of magnitude. Best you burn them.
P.S. What a morbid discussion.
I don't think we should pay tax on gas, I think we should pay it on road use, and bicyclists should too. Everyone should pay their fair share.
That's a fair system but would you really want a government tracking device on your car or bike reporting exactly when and where you go?
Objection - assumption of facts not in evidence.
Viz.: existence of brain; oxygen-requiring activity of brain.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
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
And considering that we have only a few places in the world with the right conditions to eventually produce petroleum, we need to engage in active research how to bury tons of dead bodies to get a big ball rolling a bit more quickly!
Or, he's trying to irritate you people who keep trying to correct an obvious sarcasm.
And he's doing a pretty good job at it.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No, no CO2 means none of the O2 is sequestered by carbon - we'll probably breath just fine for a few weeks/months.
It took a whole long time to build up O2 levels when plants first started churning it out, without anyone working to breath it in. I suspect it would take multiple centuries to breath up a planet's worth. Not that it would all be lightness and joy....
...due to distracted driving should be fined heavily and should be the first ones contributing to this new tax.
If you're going to now charge me for using the road, then I'd like to feel a little safer doing it by punishing those who are careless.
Actually, I think the animals would die out first, from Oxygen poisoning.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Decomposing bodies release Methane, which is worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas by an order of magnitude.
That's why you bury them real deep...
And these are the kinds of uneducated idiots we continue to elect to the house and senate. I wonder what lobby group or groups payed this clown to spout his complete bullshit. This moron, like just about every other politician in Washington, should be thrown out! I would call for a stronger response but considering that the government monitors these sorts of forums of expression and opinion I suspect it would be unwise.
I thought bullshit gave off more methane than CO2.
Quick! To Kickstarter!
I don't know how you can get much more efficient than cycling for getting from a to b.
The additional mass of a bicycle is small compared to a human and the low rolling resistance conserves momentum.
Lots and lots of studies.
Rep Ed Orcutt (R — WA) is off is rocker, but we knew that already. I wonder where the $$ for this opinion came from. We need good reports that can ask
"Cycling is more efficient that walking for distance covered, energy wise and CO2 burned. Is this bad opinion against cycling yours alone or did someone pay you to say that?"
The "stuff that matters" is that Americans elected that kind of people to make laws based on his knowledge.
The politician cited in this story makes laws based on the wishes of his largest contributors, not his personal knowledge.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Judging by his mental faculties, this politician is clearly having trouble with his own oxygen supply.
Average gasoline vehicle produces 19.29 lbs /gal CO2 emissions. An average North American mid-size car travels 21 mpg. So, in an average 21 mile commute the vehicle would travel 21 miles and release 19.29 pounds of CO2 emissions.
.074 KW = 500)
An average person’s respiration generates approximately 450 liters (roughly 900 grams) of carbon dioxide per day (CO2#Human_physiology). The amount of CO2 released by human per day is 0.9 kg/day or 1.9 lbs.
It is an absurd comparison because there is no way a human can produce the amount of energy in one gallon of fuel. In fact, one gallon of gasoline is equivalent to
1 Barrel of Oil = 5,800,000 BTUs Source: Louisiana Oil and Gas Association
1 Gallon of Gas = 125,000 BTUs Source: US Department of Energy
1 Barrel of Oil thus contains the energy contained in 46.4 gallons of gas (5,800,000 divided by 125,000 = 46.4 )
1 Gallon of Gas = 500 hours of human work output (37 KWH in 1 gallon of gas divided by human work output in agriculture of
1 Barrel of Oil = 23,200 Hours of Human Work Output (Energy equivalent of 46.4 gallons of gas per barrel of oil x 500 hours of human work ouput per gallon of gas = 23,2000 hours)
We'll fill up the internet if we start a new thread for every stupid statement by a politician. Heck, Joe Biden could fill up the internet all by himself.
In other news: Congressman tried biking in college, but didn't exhale.
It seems we are electing complete morons to Public service now.
When a senator or rep says something this stupid, they should be kicked out of office right away... Tar them, roll them in feathers, and force them to walk from the capitol for 10 blocks carrying a sign that says "IDIOT" with an arrow pointing down at them.
Why in the world do we not only allow but freaking encourage the stupid people to be elected officials?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
.. because they read good speeches.
Read speeches well.
I don't know. I think you are both right: They read good speeches well. Because most of them have the sense to hire someone to tell them what to say.
If your going to be a pendant, at least be correct. This is quiet ironic.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Even if that food had never been grown, the plant or alga that grew in its place would have eventually decayed, emitting the same CO2.
It might even decay at the bottom of an ocean over millions of years and turn into oil and gas!
I say we cut down the CO2 emissions... with a herring.
I think that herring produces CO2 as well, so we should probably forbid that too!
So does farting, burping and almost everything else you do. Should we tax those?
He didn't have to. That intern did all the inhaling for him. :)
I understand how he got elected. People just check the box for whatever with little reasoning or research. What I can't figure out is how someone this stupid figured out how to run for office in the first place.
As others have pointed out, the goal for this legislation is to get everyone using the roads to help pay for them via a "use tax" rather than from general taxes. This is a trend (a bad one, in my view) pushed heavily by the Right and by Libertarians. Basic idea is "I don't use it, so I don't pay for it" where "it" can be schools, bridges in another town, firemen (when my house isn't on fire), etc. This concept is, IMHO, what's pulling this country apart as a community and turning us into little enclaves of selfishness that remind me of the seagulls in the movie "Finding Nemo" (as in "mine mine minemineminemine ..."). I'm not sure this is progress.
Kill all humans. Sincerely, Mother Nature
The G
We really need to limit the stupidity - or ignorance of basic science - in our elected officials.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
http://science.time.com/2012/06/28/epas-co2-regulation-upheld-as-unambiguously-correct/
Correct me if I'm wrong but the EPA insists that CO2 is a regulated pollutant.
Emitters of such need to be regulated, and there needs to be calculations to determine their carbon-offset, no?
-Styopa
How?
We would only remove the CO2 not the Nitrogen. The partial pressure of Oxygen would not change much. CO2 is about 0.04% of the atmosphere.
we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely
As long as it is safely sequestered in my gin and tonics, I'm "cool" with that.
Sorry.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is why I pick up fresh organic carbon each day at the Whole Foods. The idea of using someone else's sloppy seconds carbon is just... nasty.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely
Plants need CO2 to produce food. If you eliminated CO2 we'd die as a species, along with every other species.
That doesn't necessarily contradict the quoted statement, depending on how you define the term, "ideal world."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Perhaps you're right; I haven't read his other comments;
Now, with regard to carbon monoxide, I was joking, myself. In fact, CO is thought to play a role in biochemical pathways, as a neurotransmitter and as an immune response. We'd be dead without it. But, I guess most people don't know that :)
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
When I was in high school I did a science fair project studying the levels of CO2 generated by exhalation from different people. The most interesting finding was that there was a high (positive) correlation between average exercise levels and CO2 exhalation levels. Given this highly scientific finding I propose extending this new tax on bicycle riders to all healthy people: They are ruining the environment with their toxic exhalations.
That dozen doughnuts? That's my tax shelter.
People like you who. Thanks, I learned something new today.
Yes, excellent. Let's take that further; We're all made of space dust, and will all return to space dust eventually, because we're all within the same closed system.
Micro-scale, though, a person at rest releases less CO2 than a person exerting themselves, and that's the only statement made. Nobody really thinks he meant that the car exerts less CO2 than the cycling man, just the man inside it. Yes, it's a stupid point to make, and he's stupid for making it, but it doesn't make it any less factually correct.
All I meant was that before OP starts writing to his congressman about it, he should actually comprehend the article correctly. The guy isn't saying they should tax exercise.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
See The Yes Men's Human Candle proposal to Exxon:
http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/vivoleum
Because, now that the government derives an income stream that is inversely proportional to how healthy people are, people will become more healthy to avoid the tax.
So, the government will start having to tax healthy activities to make up for the loss of income.
This is no different than road tax based on mileage because cars are getting more efficient.
The government is going to get the money it wants, one way or another, because the American People are collectively too chicken shit to get its own government under control.
If you eliminated all the CO2, the plants would die. I think you mean limit it to some given level.
I'm thinking, eliminate some of the excess CO2, starting with politicians, continuing through bankers, and work our way down through lawyers. Give scientists and engineers irrevokable permits to create CO2 by breathing.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
http://houserepublicans.wa.gov/ed-orcutt/
He welcomes calls and messages.
ed.orcutt@leg.wa.gov
Office: (360) 786-7990 Toll-free: (800) 562-6000
Personal: (360) 673-4978
I say we start with people that make this kind of suggestion. How about that? You volunteer? No? Thought so.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
If you assume the biomass and metabolisms are roughly equivalent now and then.
More biomass, faster metabolism (especially with O2 users vs. producers).
From Wikipedia - Atmospheric O2:
5×10^18 kg x 0.20946 = 1×10^18 kg
For people: http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/respiratory/question98.htm
550 L * Mol/Liter * 0.032kg/mol = 17.6 kg
With 365.25 day/year and 7 billion people, this is: 4.5 * 10^13kg/year
Humanity, with zero population growth could go for 100,000 years without exhausting the complete O2 supply (though probably more like 25k, if we assume we need O2 levels of at least 15%).
Using the wet biomass, taking out the non-photosynthetics in the table, and assuming the average terrestrial uses the same O2 as humans per kg, aquatic at 50% and 10% for the rest (yes, these percents are out of my ass, though terrestrial should be fairly close).
Terrestrial:
== 7.6 * 10^14kg/year ( < 2000 years, complete use)
Aquatic: (using 3:1 wet:dry weight estimate, since it's not listed. Removing cyanobacteria, and krill, Should be higher, but I'm aiming for a "best case" scenario)
== 2.5 * 10^14kg/year
Fungal (25% of average, of the rest @ 10% human O2 consumption):
== 1.3 * 10^15kg/year
all three together give us 417 years. If we assume humans need 15% O2, that's 104.1 years.
Notice that there are a lot of species not mentioned there, and this doesn't include microbial O2 consumers other than fungi, nor does it include a lot of macroscopic O2 producers. I would be surprised if adding those in didn't decrease the timespan to less than 20 years.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
In other news: Congressman tried biking in college, but didn't exhale.
Yeah but that would be impossible anyway, because I'm pretty sure he didn't inhale.
The actual problem, in terms of what the CongressCritter doesn't understand (unless is deliberately acting on behalf of Big Fossil Fuel), is that the fuel used by bicyclists comes from renewable sources, while the fuel that runs cars --even electric cars-- mostly doesn't. So cyclists don't increase the net CO2 level, while cars do.
...riding a bike actually has a bigger carbon footprint than a city bus...
I assume you're joking, the book you mention shouldn't be read, because such comparisons doesn't deserve any attention.
(Unless you're looking for entertainment).
Medical treatment for all sorts of bad things you get from not exercising, surely outweighs carbon footprint from an even extremely asparagus rich diet.
2012 Honda civic CO2 emmision rating: 200g/mi (Note, converted to mi from km)
Daily Human CO2 (no excercise, 60bpm:) 900g/day (38g per hour)
Now we do some math here: assume we cycle for an hour, reaching a peak of 3x consumption (180bpm vs resting rate of 60), that's 113g. My average biking in 1hr is about 12mi, so my exercising is 9.4 grams per mile. Now contrast that with the 200 grams per mile...
Efficency wise, my car is 3400lbs, I am 180lbs. It is 19 times heaver than I am. It's CO2 g/mi is 21 times mine per mile, meaning I am slightly more efficient per pound than the car. (Note: I did not include my bike weight.) The car's downfall is all t he additional weight.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I'm highly embarrassed to be from the same state as this guy. My sincerest apologies everybody! Next time we'll try and elect a box of hammers instead.
-Bob-
Give the GP credit, at least when being pendantic he didn't dangle his participles, quietly or otherwise.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
OK, OK, it came from supernovas prior to that, don't be so smart, mmkay?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Most of the calories you eat are being made with lots and lots of fossil fuels both for fertilizer and even basic processing like separating wheat from chaff.
Sure a car is worse, but cyclists and all humans at this point are increasing net CO2 just by eating.
hmm... Would be fun to light up a smoke... or just wait for the next thunderstorm then... *whoooof*
I'm not against it. I'm a firm believer that there's a large portion of the general population of the world that should be trimmed down. Just as I believe that birth control should be mandatory, there should be a limit on how many children people are allowed to have, world wide. In general, I don't see why anyone should procreate, when there are an over abundance of kids out there that need a home now. On the same note, I think adoptions should be taken care of within a country before outside adoptions are allowed (i.e., Brad and Angelina, should have to give homes to kids from the US, before they go giving a home to a Cambodian kid; people in the US, should be adopting kids from the US, before they can get a kid from Russia, etc.)
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
Nice math.
I wonder if the aquatic biomass has much communication with the atmosphere? If the O2 cannot get into the water efficiently it will remain in the atmosphere.
Plants do fine at night without producing O2 by burning their sugars and producing CO2 - I wonder how long they could survive with a very low C02 level? Probably about as long as they can survive in the dark - but I don't know how long that might be.
We might be able to mitigate some of this by quickly setting huge tracts of land ablaze to build up the CO2 levels at least locally....
I would support this tax only if Rep Orcutt and his ilk all stopped producing any CO2 themselves.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Why doesn't this representative sponsor a bill creating jobs planting trees and other plants in state-owned land? It doesn't take a lot of training or skill digging holes in which to plant a tree, but it would create jobs and the trees would absorb some of the CO2 and release oxygen as part of the normal photosynthesis process.
Being accidentally not entirely wrong is about the best you can realistically expect from a politician anyways.
Each Carbon atom (atomic weight of 12) binds with two oxygen atoms (atomic weight of 16 each) to produce a CO2 molecule with molecular weight of 44. Ignoring the Hydrogen, 6 pounds of gas would theoretically produce 22 pounds of CO2. Factor back in the Hydrogen and ~19 pounds seems about right.
Have gnu, will travel.
Informative??? The atmosphere is 21% O2, you think literally 21 parts per hundred, you think adding ~390 parts per million to that value is going to make things "more readily burst into flames"?
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Having said that, I have an allotment plot and about 50% of my yearly calorie intake comes [such sources]
But you will not survive the "Great allotment war" that will be fought. In worst case you will be forced to farm your allotment and give 90% of the produce in protection fees. So the problem isn't what you do now but what your neighbours will be doing..
So is an extension of this that fat people carry more weight, get tired more quickly, and therefore pant and generate more CO2.
Their additional weight also wears sidewalks more quickly...
Should we tax fat people under the same rules?
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
it would be very interesting to see the demographics on who voted for orcutt
Really, I thought more since that is what plants breath.
I do not know how they survive on that tiny percentage.
But you are right, that obviously would make no effect towards Oxygen poisoning.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Actually, water vapour is a greenhouse gas. Dunno how much it contributes to keeping us warm. With no greenhouse gases, we'd all be cadging nickels for ice skates on the bank of the river Styx.
This is embarassing. Yes, these are the people who believe they are competent to legislate on matters like IT Security, privacy, science and space funding, healthcare and other critical matters. And it is not party driven. Both parties are rife with elected people who would fail basic high school proficiency exams. Other examples that come to mind are the representative who is worried that Guam might tip over and sink due to poulation increases, Rep. Maxine Waters who warns that budget sequestration could eliminate 170 million US jobs and a certain President who thinks 'Austrian" is a language. You could ranomly select each of our represenatatives, senators and presidents from a phone book and not do any worse than we are doing now, IMHO. I think Jay Leno should do "Jaywalking" from the floor of the US House of Represenatives. People would be shocked.
Have been saved till April 1st, I mean really....seriously? Seriously?
Oh I know, the bit about my allotment was more to do with my current consumptions rather than my food security post peak oil.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Nope, but I didn't say anything remotely like that either.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
They don't get elected because they give good speeches, they get elected because they are willing to advance the petroleum industry's agenda.
errm read that wrong, nm. I was thinking you were talking about global warming issues.
Did I really write burst into flames. OK, the would more readily combust, but not by much.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
If I was a Republican or a state representative I would be very careful about making accusations about other people's hot air emissions
Beans beans the musical fruit
We already have "ideal" worlds of this sort in the solar system. We don't need another.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Pedant. Quiet.
Politicians are not earth friendly either due to the high methane content of all the manure they're constantly regurgitating.
-- L8R, guitardood
No level of ignorance and stupidity from the Right in the US surprises me any more.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Pedantic. Not pendantic.
Does that make him a zombie?
Oxygen used to be a pollutant, produced by photosynthesis, poisoning the other forms of life - until some enterprising life form managed to use it metabolically.
Until photosynthesis, everything used non-renewable chemical resources to get their energy... hey, that sounds familiar...
Oil, being a product of life, *is* renewable, but only in geological time frames.
Doesn't take much to get a BS these days. Most universities are turning into cash registers.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Wow, with mistakes like that, you'd think I was doing it on porpoise.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Reminds me of an issue I've had with some intersections while driving.
The sign says "Left turn only on green".
The light changes to flashing red after 11pm.
Taken literally, the sign would seem to require waiting until morning.
Intelligent Design (guffaw), trickle down economics, .....
It's no wonder America is in trouble, it's run by complete idiots! If Rep. Orcutt is representative of the future of America, Americans are doomed.
No, you'd have natural runaway NATURAL global warming ; after all the plants died, there would be nothing keeping the corrosive, highly reactive oxygen in the atmosphere topped up. It would rapidly combine with all the decaying organic matter, etc, and produce a huge amount of CO2.
Fortunately, it's a hypothetical scenario that can't occur - long before the CO2 level dropped low enough to kill ALL the plants, the human race would be dead.
No, pendantic is right, he's hanging around making comments.
I think this is either just another case of a politician being completely ignorant when it comes to technological or scientific matters, or just another case of a politician trying to create a new revenue stream for the State. Some have postulated that he might be cleverly trying to highlight the seriousness of the global warming problem and the bill in question is actually just a stunt to that end, but I am too cynical to expect that sort of cleverness from any politician.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It's not neccessary the case.
I did some research a few years ago comparing the total carbon footprint of
a bike messenger, riding 8 hours/day, who eats meat and a lot of vegetables,
and a messenger in a low-carbon-car, driving the same distance.
A large factor is the carbon footprint of the cars manufacturing,
as I can only guess that it's rather more than of a bike.
However, the footprint is rather dependent on the type of food.
The human body is not particularly efficient, so a bad lunch choice can
easily make a large dent in the carbon budget.
I can't find my calculation and the references, but if you have one hour,
it's not that hard to google various carbon footprints, and do some basic math.
But anyway, it's clearly a corner case :-) Most of us need the bike ride,
and would either just deposit the carbon as fat, and burn the carbon in either
a gym or a crematory.
They elected the jackass not based on his knowledge at all, but on a number of things: their perception of his values (political and "practical"), his party, media coverage, and more. All that came from images created by the kinds of lies, um, I mean advertisements and commentary, that were disseminated prior to the election.
Then there are more intangible but very important things, like his looks, his name, the degree that the local elections were "crafted" by arranging the polling environment and ability to register, the weather on election day, etc.
You should have said in prehistoric times CO2 was far higher than it is today. It's probably been at least 20 million years since CO2 was as high as it is now.
get with the times, pal. the catalytic converter turns most of the CO into CO2. As some farmers have found out, CO2 in high concentration is maiming or lethal, the carbonic acid will make your lungs bleed.
because most cyclists in the USA don't own cars?
because people who lie around at home and never cycle generally eat less and use less electricity than cyclists?
Don't read too much into this - He's being a pedantic weasel, intentionally.
Here's the gist of what dude said, albeit worded far more clearly:
A human body currently engaged in riding a bicycle outputs more CO2 than the same human body would if it were, instead, sitting in the seat of a car.
Technically, he's correct. Morally, contextually, and every other applicable -ly, he's wrong as hell and knows it.
Welcome to the world of American Politics.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Huh? If you stop breathing, your lungs will fill with CO2 from metabolism... making you breathe again.
In the Gemini and early Apollo programs, the Astronauts breathed low pressure 100% oxygen without any problems. Well, until the Apollo 1 oxygen fire, that is.
That is all...
I thought that supernovas were only necessary for elements heavier than iron. I thought even our sun is making a tiny bit of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen right now: CNO cycle.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Motorcycles are more efficient than cars up to 2-3 people total, depending on the motorcycle. 30mpg cars only seem to get 22-24 (I've made mine get 37mpg by fancy driving, but it gets 22 combined city/highway plenty), and they lose mileage as they age, and replacing them is more energy-intensive than the excess fuel use. Motorcycles at the 250cc range get between 50-70mpg. Cars with passengers quickly start to burn excess fuel--my car weighs 2800 pounds and the average 150-250lb person adds 5%-10% weight!
Honestly the most efficient way of traveling is to use a combined approach. Bicycle/ebike or even Zboard for short trips to the light rail--bicycle can haul groceries; motorcycle and motorscooter for puttering around the city on long trips (160mpg on a scooter?!); 2 motorcycles or 2+ in the car. You can take the bike/ebike out further--based on fitness, enjoyment, time constraints (I was doing a 7-9 mile trip to work in 5 minutes longer than driving the car, so I biked it), tolerance for weather conditions, etc. Similarly, drive the car more based on constraints.
It's funny because you can personally cut out 80% of your travel costs by skillful use of multiple transit methods including public transit, bicycles, ebikes, and even motorcycles.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Breathing is only necessary to remove excess CO2 from the body and introduce new oxygen.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
And so little of it touches the only salient point: This politician wants more money to go into the states coffers where he can play with it. He will make any statement, create any mind-bending rationalization, to do that. There's no need to go further in your evaluation of his statements.
I was assuming we're getting rid of all CO2 as OP suggested, including the stuff generated in the lungs as TFA refers to. Yes, you do make your own which is why we tend to see Cheyne Stokes rather than people just dying - at altitude the mechanism is due to reduced partial pressure of atmospheric CO2, so scrubbing all CO2 from the atmosphere could still cause problems in people who are already in O2 debt for whatever reason.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
So from the 3 kinds of fertiliser (potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen) one would become a lot more expensive after Peak Oil, the other two indirectly (transport costs go up and mining costs go up). :-)
On the other hand, there are areas of the globe that have been cultivated for more than 5000 years, and that proves that with manure and compost you can stick enough nutrients back in the ground to keep going forever. But not at current "green revolution" yields of course, no...
Keep your compost, and grow clover and beautiful lupine on the bits of your plot that are fallow, and some beans or peas amongst your other veggies
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Quite correct. So the question becomes, to reverse this, we need to figure out ways to once again lock away that carbon. Perhaps will giant algae farms that pump the algae back underground to where we originaly got the oil.
Very well - I invite you to enter a closed room with a controlled atmosphere. Remove ALL of the CO2 from the room, leaving all natural levels of all other gases. Record your respiration pattern over the next several minutes, and see how unnatural it gets.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Give him a choice between being locked in a closed garage with one car running or 10 people breathing and see which one he picks.
Yes, there appears to be an increase in the amount of plant growth, measured in a Gabon rain forest, which will help greatly in giving us more time to prepare: http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0218-forest_carbon.html
The way to understand an incredibly complex system, is to first start with first principles, making a crude model, seeing if it fits the data, and then gradually refining the model by adding more complex interactions and factors. The basic idea was already documented in 1906 in a popular scientific work by Svante Arrhenius (yes *1906*) so his hunch about the CO2 variable was pretty much right. You're deluding yourself.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Oil, being a product of life, *is* renewable, but only in geological time frames.
So for practical purposes, it isn't.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Ha, one learns something new every day. Thanks!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Bloody hell! Hitler was on to something there!
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
....we would have millions of more plants and trees to consume our CO2 levels.
Building a road isn't always bad if you don't destroy everything around that road for more pavement cities. I'm not proposing a ban on all construction of roads and buildings, but I do think that construction doesn't have to consist of full destruction for construction to take place.
As a whole the populations of this planet waste reusable resources continuously, and I'm no worse nor better than anyone else. We've begun some initiatives to reuse in many cities, and yes recycling is expensive, but where possible, it's beneficial to re-use resources that have a longer lifespan of one use.
Ways to reuse available resources before depleting existing or new resources.
I recently went to a Habitat for Humanity build and to a degree, they reuse lots of donated / purchased materials, but for all their efforts to re-use, they waste too.
* Groups bring Water bottles and paper cups and one drink and they are thrown in the dumpster. Why not keep a construction site recycle dumpster?
* The left-over scraps of wood used in the construction of the home could be donated to Boy Scout / Girl Scouts for their camping trips, or even for some other form of recycling.
* Mangled cardboard boxes can be reused and put to great use. I watched a local boy scout troop used ruined cardboard boxes and cut them into strips and are then rolled and put into old tin cans, left over candle wax is then melted and poured into the can saturating the cardboard in the cans to be used late for a camping trip. When set afire later, the paraffin allows the cardboard to burn a little more slowly and these little cans serve as stenos on camping trips or small lights in a camping area.
Sorry this went off on a bit of a tangent...
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
As my body metabolizes, it will react carbohydrates and potentially lipids with oxygen in my cells, producing biproducts of heat, water, and CO2. The CO2 levels in my bloodstream will increase as oxygen bound to hemoglobin in the blood is exchanged off for CO2 in the cells. Eventually CO2 concentrations in the cells will increase, which is irritating and will cause a strong desire to respire and remove the CO2 from the blood and exchange it with oxygen in the atmosphere.
I would probably respire less in an atmosphere without CO2 due to the reduced partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, allowing for more rapid exchange of CO2 for O2 and thus keeping blood levels of O2 high and CO2 low more efficiently. There's not much CO2 in the atmosphere to begin with, so the effect may be minimal. Likely any deviation will be overshadowed by natural variation in my base respiration rate.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
How about the historical average value for CO2?
Question is what period to average over
Over hundreds of millions of years we'd end up with a very high average. In fact the further you go back, the higher the average. There's something wonderfully twisted about the idea of pitching a plan to set an industry friendly high target CO2 level to US right wingers by explaining that we should set it at the average over the last say 100 million years given that a sizeable minority of them would be young Earth creationists who don't actually believe the Earth is 100 million years old.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
How about the average over 400,000. That looks like it would be about 250ppm, i.e. quite a bit lower than today. On the other hand consider
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html
Do rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations cause increasing global temperatures, or could it be the other way around? This is one of the questions being debated today. Interestingly, CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
So either way it seems like we need to get those SUV engines running. Also tell the Brazilians to fell more rainforest to stop them sucking the valuable CO2 out of the biosphere and causing an economically disastrous ice age.
Luckily the Chinese are doing a heroic job emitting CO2.
http://photos.mongabay.com/09/forecast_co2_line.jpg
So it doesn't really matter what the US tries to do - even if it could somehow magically cut its CO2 output to zero in the long run we'll have a lot more of it around thanks to China. And over a few decades it is almost certain that Burma, Vietnam and the like will industrialise in much the same CO2 intensive way China has. Taiwanese manufacturers have a "China+1" strategy - i.e. build factories in China plus one other country. In fact China is a big country and it is only the coastal regions that are highly industrialised and thus emit the CO2. Unfortunately that pattern is unlike to be repeated in smaller developing countries that make up the rest of Asia - they are likely to end up as industrialised as Japan over the whole country.
So the odds of humanity as a whole agreeing to cut its total CO2 output is zero. That's not really unreasonable actually - the US and Europe industrialised in a CO2 intensive way. Their CO2 outputs are now flat or falling because the factories have moved to Asia. If I were in China, Burma or Vietnam I'd be very hostile to the idea that my country should stop industrialising because of concerns about CO2 affecting the climate in the future. Especially if those concerns came from countries who have already passed through that stage of development. Even a new Cultural Revolution in China would only cause a pause in the process. Once it was over it would resume.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
No level of ignorance and stupidity from ANYONE surprises me any more.
There, fixed that for you.
I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
Yup, these are the people running this country. Do they just think we are all stupid and will put up with it? What a douchy parasite!
But when you breathe it in, it binds to the haemoglobin in your blood and stops its ability to transport oxygen. Takes quite a while for it to get out of your blood. That's the reason smoking effects your fitness level.
Whenever I see the word pendantic it reminds of those shiny things fly fishermen use to catch fish.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
People produce CO2 when they decompose. You'll need to bury them deep (much more than 6 feet) underground to eject them from the atmosphere.
B.S. in Forestry Management from the University of Idaho
I like the way they call it a B.S. It's like a good con man dares his marks to object, secure in the knowledge he can convince them they're terrible people when they do.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
> In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely
This is almost as silly as what Orcutt said. With no CO2, what would the trees breathe? Don't they teach biology in high school anymore?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Only it catches grammar Nazis. They all fall fore the delicious mistakes.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Any relation to Hank Johnson?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
But if you want someone who isn't afraid of cold-calling, Mormons are a safe bet.
There is a reason they live in expensive houses and can afford to have 67482368 children.
As a cyclist, I have to chime in here a bit. Even though I bike to and from daily to work, I'm pretty sure I eat less food calories than the average person in the population. Cyclists (in general) don't like any extra weight. It's way easier to lose 20 lbs than it is to cut 20 lbs off the bike. Even a decent bike won't weight much more than 30 lbs anyway, and the best of the best bikes are about 15 lbs. Also, I tend to travel less far, to work and otherwise, than the average person in my city. Because I don't even own a car I find it much more important to live a reasonable distance from my work. My commute is only 7 km each way. Also, I don't make many long trips in the evening or on weekends. I know people who will easily drive 30-40 km across the city to save $10 on groceries.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I've got a relative on a Non Invasive Ventilator and the doctors that tweak it were very averse to giving him pure O2 because your brain monitors CO2 levels and uses it to control breathing rate. So if you breath an atmosphere with no CO2 at all your breathing reflex is suppressed.
It's actually funny how much of hack evolved organisms are - put them in a novel situation like pure O2 and they will crash and burn because they monitor CO2 levels instead of O2 ones - presumably because sensing CO2 levels in easier to do because you can look at blood pH or something.
But then again I suppose it's unreasonable to expect evolved organisms to not crash and burn when put in a situation that never occurs in nature. Probably if you put a lot of organisms into pure O2 a few of them would survive because of some other strange metabolic misfeature (it's not like there is a shortage of CO2 when you're burning sugar and O2 to make it constantly, so you could just use that to keep the sensors in your brain stem happy) and their offspring would end up dominating things.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Rep. Orcutt is on the leading edge of science, according to the EPA and judges, since CO2 has been legally declared to be a pollutant. Obviously anything that produces CO2 is a danger. Now you're telling us that special interests need to be exempted? I am doing my part by scarcely breathing, and not working, so no more carbon dioxide than necessary is produced. The Rep. has stated an obvious truth, namely, that bike riding produces more carbon dioxide than normal, and should be taxed. The other obvious truth, which you are missing, is that bicyclists, notwithstanding their self-interested chirping about their superiority, are using the roads and streets for which they are paying no direct tax to support, unlike car drivers. Bicyclists should no longer be a protected class in these hard times. Walking also produces excessive carbon dioxide, so all pedestrians need to avoid the public right-of-ways or pay a commensurate tax.
What did the dinosaurs eat???
The cool ones ate other dinosaurs ...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Extra tax for running shoes?
I wish universities would nullify your degree if you did something monumentally stupid such as this. For somebody who got educated at that university to say something so ridiculous and on such a large stage paints a really bad picture of the quality of education offered by that university. If they can give honorary degrees for good work, they should be able to nullify even a non-honorary degree for gross incompetence.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
All living things pollute.
Therefore all living things are dangerous.
Dangerous things need to be stopped.
Therefore life itself needs to be stopped.
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/2/22955/854494-judge_dead_4_large.png
This is a discovery of EPIC magnitude! A entirely new kind of stupid has been discovered. I will simply call it the "Ed particle" from now on. I wonder if he's gonna tax shoes because people walking and jogging expel more C02. What about a pet tax while he's at it because pets add more C02 then not having one. Don't even think about sex - $25.00 pay up, oh /. never mind...
You could make it from algae if you really needed to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (39,000 km2) which is only 0.42% of the U.S. map,[10] or about half of the land area of Maine. This is less than 1â7 the area of corn harvested in the United States in 2000.[11] However, these claims remain unrealized commercially. According to the head of the Algal Biomass Organization algae fuel can reach price parity with oil in 2018 if granted production tax credits.
It's just that there are currently cheaper sources than that.
Also farmers prefer to grow corn because it is heavily subsidised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States
Corn is the top crop for subsidy payments. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into vehicle fuel each year, guaranteeing demand, but US corn ethanol subsidies are between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion per year. Producers also benefitted from a federal subsidy of 51 cents per gallon, additional state subsidies, and federal crop subsidies that can bring the total to 85 cents per gallon or more. However, the federal ethanol subsidy expired December 31, 2011.[16] (US corn-ethanol producers were shielded from competition from cheaper Brazilian sugarcane-ethanol by a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff, however that tariff also expired December 31, 2011
Of course corn has the benefit that you can grow it on fields. Algae biodiesel would require covering 15,000 square miles of the US with huge tanks of water. Which, US agriculture being what it is, would need to be paid for by the US tax payer to keep the farmers happy.
What needs to happen is for subsidies to be phased out and then let the market decide what is worth growing. But that will never happen - it would be political suicide to even suggest it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So you want to use "CO2 emissions permits" to kill the people who say things you don't like?
That's just super.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Of course, that is assuming that oil is indeed a plant byproduct and not something entirely unrelated that we're confused about, which is a distinct possibility.
Other than 'we found bits of decayed plant matter in it' there really is nothing that indicates oil comes from living organisms.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I think you mean dolphin.
I think not enougth O2 is reaching his brain.
The atmosphere is 0.04% CO2, your exhaled breath is 4-5% CO2. That's not enough to trigger the reflex?
They all fall ... FORE!!! ... the delicious mistakes.
Broke that moar for you.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So is this the first attempt to tax the air we breathe?
Read speeches well.
I really meant 'read good speeches', as in the writers of these speeches are the real talent.
But if you are saying that reading a prepared speech well is a skill then I do agree with you.
Aren't you supposed to have your fine single-malt neat with a small pitcher of room-temperature water to add?
Ah, baloney!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The OP was talking about the geologic processes for turning Dino's into oil. For our time scales that isn't a practical solution.
Your points, pro and con, are certainly valid, but represent a different process than I believe the OP was talking about.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The way to understand an incredibly complex system, is to
1) first start with first principles,
2) making a crude model,
3) seeing if it fits the data, and then
4) gradually refining the model by adding more complex interactions and factors.
Ah, so step 3 is not "Run to the media screaming that the sky is falling and that we'll have to dramatically and catastrophically change our way of living" after all then
This has nothing to do with CO2 emisions, I don't think republicans are supposed to believe in CO2 and they certainly don't believe in some hippy-dippy "biosphere" that humans could affect.
It is however a possibly good way to target taxes at people that are considering not filling oil companies' coffers and, by way of extention, paying the tax on that which "pays for the roads." This tax is then used to bribe state governments so that they will enact state laws and regulations that the Supreme Court has (or will likely) deem their right to decide.
Or it could just be an attempt to remind republicans that a good citizen consumes conspicuously.
It might be fine to ride a bicycle in a club or for health reasons, but only if you have to drive your truck to the meet up point or trail (you wouldn't mount a bike carrier to your Mercedes afterall) and wear specialy purchased clothing while you do so.
It is, however, completely disgraceful to use a bicycle for transportation. Goodness, you'd look like a chinese laborer.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
"Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl. "Do people want trees that can be fitted nasally?"
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Maybe we could just eliminate the CO2 from ignorant jackasses....
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
biking burns less calories per mile than walking.
If you are going to tax biking, you must tax walking (and higher.)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Good thing or all the mantle would fall into the hollow core.
I used to bike commute and I consumed way more calories than my peers who did not, once I dropped down to my healthy minimum. In fact, it was more expensive to bike commute than drive (first level analysis neglecting health benefits, quality of life, etc), because I have an efficient cheap car, and (decent) food is expensive. I guess it would have been cheaper eating raw sugar cubes and canned beans, but I was going to all you can eat places and loading up and it was still pricier.
Not that I wouldn't recommend biking more, especially for ordinary tasks. I have bought exactly one tank of gas this year so far, and am trying to keep it under four tanks for the year (excepting out of town travel). But I don't think bike vs drive has any real impact on carbon balance, unless the need to limit travel distance keeps commutes/stores/etc closer. All money spent eventually generates carbon, whether you do it yourself or the processes that generate the things you spend money on do.
andy
That's true... but the CO your cells manufacture has a very different pathway.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
> What makes you think he actually believes what he's saying?
bingo
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
can't edit, dammit. You are correct that eliminating CO from the atmosphere will *probably* not affect our health negatively; but I'm not sure even about that.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Your force. My decision. I decide not to let misanthropes like yourself limit human potential by forcing population limits. You hate humans. I believe only humans can enjoy a pristine forest, save the whales, or bicycle through the countryside just for the fun of it.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
I know Marijuana is legal in Washington State (Woot!), but our State Reps should not smoke before doing interviews, they might say something that is pretty fucking stupid.
Be seeing you...
s/say/do/
This looks entirely possible. The paragraph in question (I had to hunt for this supposed email, links were both down) appears to have been more of an aside, where the bulk of the message was, "normally I oppose transportation taxes, but people in cars are paying for car lanes on roads with the gas taxes they pay, but people on bikes aren't paying for their bike lanes on those same roads."
Whether or not the email actually exists, if it was written by this person, if that paragraph is actually a meaningful part of the debate they're having, etc. seems a little sketchy.
Except here, where everyone saw an "R" in the summary and abandoned all usual skepticism. Just sayin', folks.
Oh, that's still a colossally stupid fucking thing to say, and no amount of hair-splitting bullshit is going to change it.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Stand back everyone! His head might implode if there's a hairline crack in his skull.. Just another stupid politician elected for his looks and how loud he can talk. Happens on both sides of the aisle these days. How about a Constitutional Amendment requiring all political candidates to pass a HS exit exam before they can be on a ballot?
Organization? You must be joking..
From the Devil's advocate position, the politician has reasons to say what he says. I don't know if the numbers work out. But here is the story.
A car is big and heavy. It needs a lot of energy to move. But it runs on a simple fuel, and losses on delivery of that fuel to your local gas station are relatively low. A car is also a simple mechanism; if it breaks you fix it or get a new one.
A bicyclist is smaller and lighter than a car (at least most bicyclists are like that :-) However a bicyclist runs on very expensive fuel. It has to be grown with use of oil; then it has to be delivered by many supply trucks to processing facilities; then it has to be delivered by other trucks to stores; then the bicyclist drives to those stores (or has himself driven) and buys that food. Then it has to be prepared at home (or at least reheated) which takes more energy. Overall, human food is very expensive, compared to gasoline.
A bicyclist is also subject to wear. Some say they get healthier and stronger. However is not a recommended activity to breathe car exhausts for an hour or two per day . In case of an accident your bones cannot be welded or replaced as easily as a steel part of a car. The hospital bill can exceed all your savings ten times over. White bicycles along the road are not that rare either. But even when you survive the trial by the road, you take a shower after every trip, which adds to your energy needs - and somewhere else, at a power plant that you do not know, another entirely innocent dinosaur flies up the chimney.
A bicyclist also loses some of his personal time to ride the bicycle. It's not a loss if you enjoy riding; however I am unsure how many enjoy riding in rain, or at night, or in other adverse conditions.
All in all, a bicyclist's CO(2) contribution is not negligible, and that should be kept in mind. A horse, on the other hand, that feeds at your own, all-natural pasture, is as close to zero CO(2) as it ever gets for muscle-driven locomotion.
This man needs to be show how much CO2 he himself has exhaled over his lifetime and continues to do so. Perhaps then he will realize that his best bet to save the world will be to kill himself. Dunno about you guys, but if this were the man's policy, I'd so vote for him.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
s/do/alternet said they do/
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You stated it wrong, Water vapor IS the greenhouse gas, and does the biggest contribution to keeping us warm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_vapor
I say we start with the cast of the Jersey Shore and pretty much everyone that works on Captiol Hill.
Hey now. Okay, there're the elected officials, but for every representative or senator, there're a couple hundred other people who work on Capitol Hill.
It's pretty easy to find out firsthand what politicians, bankers and lawyers do to you. You learn that when you pay your taxes, when you visit the bank, and when you are sued by RIAA. For some it's when the policians try to take your guns away; for other it's when other politicians refuse to acknowledge their approach to marriage. For yet another it's when you buy GM Volt and get a tax credit; for others it's when their neighbor buys a Volt and they pay for his tax credit. We know pretty well what this crowd does, along our wishes and against them.
200 pound bicycle?! What the hell kind of bicycle are you riding?
A bicycle with a cyclist on the seat.
I've reported it to the city
Well, you have two legal choices apart from calling the city.
Go ahead.
Call the police and ask that they trigger it for you
If I'll be making these "flag me through" calls often, I'd have to put the PD's non-emergency number in my cell phone's speed dial and change from a pay-per-minute plan to a pay-per-month plan.
No, there's no [...] pedestrian call button.
after you trigger it to permit you to walk
How would I go about doing that?
I don't know of any states that have any exceptions for cyclists when it comes to red lights.
Google dead red law to see news stories about some states' exceptions for small , but I haven't been able to find a U.S.-wide list of these laws organized by state.
Walk signs actually mean cycle on through at top speed
I cycle on the road, not the sidewalk, to avoid several kinds of collision. On streets with a walk sign, I use the walk sign mostly to estimate how stale the green light is.
cyclists must dismount
Which state is that?
Yes, in many states it is LAW that slow vehicles MUST allow faster traffic to pass.
As I understand it, this happens when three motor vehicles are lined up behind a slow-moving vehicle. In such a case, I do yield the lane to motor vehicles.
I know what the safe thing to do is: come to a complete stop and wait for a long enough break in traffic to cross. I just want to know what the ticket-avoiding thing to do is.
I'm not sure what your point is with this comment as it relates to the subject at hand. Are you attempting to in some way support the congressman's view or perhaps just suggesting we need to find more energy efficient ways to produce, process and transport food? Whether a person is riding in a car or on a bike, they're going to ingest food. Is the difference between the food intake of the car passenger and the bike rider (with the commensurate net CO2 output difference) enough to validate the congressman's implication about the bike rider producing more CO2 than the car passenger? I doubt it.
Anyone who wants to run for office has to pass both the standardized testing they give to K-12 students and the ACT. All scores must also be published regardless.
Following up: it's C8H18 for octane giving you a molecular weight of 114 for the molecule, with 96 of that contributed by carbon. Ergo: (((96/114)*6.3 lbs/gallon)/12)*44 = 19.45 lbs of C02 per gallon of pure octane burned (with 100% conversion). But then, you're never putting 100% octane in your car, and you'll never get 100% complete conversion either. So I would say 19.29 lbs C02 / gallon of gas is well within good experimental error.
Of mild interest: in a perfect yield you would also get (((18/114)*6.3 lbs/gallon)/2)*18 = 8.95 pounds of pure water out of the reaction as well, which is more than a gallon of water.
When someone suggests this, they almost always don't want to be first.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The only one he is actually using to justify his position (that bikes should pay road tax) is the former, the second point is refuting the point that bikes are environmentally friendly. The second point is debatable: it's a question of what the basic comparison is.
Roads are not paid for by drivers. They're paid for by the public, overwhelmingly via property taxes. Everyone who walks, takes public transit, or bicycles is subsidizing drivers. People who walk or ride bicycles don't impact the road surface at all (bicycles exert so little force on the road that they don't cause any wear at all.) Every person who gets out of their car and onto a bike saves the government in road maintenance, and saves their healthcare company in health costs.
Furthermore, the gas tax hasn't been adjusted in decades for increasing fuel economy standards; as cars have become far more efficient, drivers have been paying less per mile for road costs. Politicians won't increase the pittance of a gas tax because it's political suicide.
Please help metamoderate.
He said that your breath while cycling is more harmful to the environment than your breath while driving a car, as you release more CO2 because of the physical exertion. Where I come from, we learn that in science class at around 10 years old.
Texas?
> In general, I don't see why anyone should procreate, when there are an over abundance of kids out there that need a home now.
After we bought the house, we looked into adopting a child, but the process was unbelievably long, intrusive, and expensive. It was by far quicker and less expensive to have our own child; there were fewer forms to fill out, and we didn't have to pass an inspection first.
That's messed up.
But going along with your premise, you get into a situation where irresponsible people are the only ones who procreate, with the responsible ones caring for the offspring. (One could argue that this is what's happening now.) I wonder if this is one of the steps that leads to Idiocracy?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Speak the truth and the hate mongers want to have you killed off.
If you thought I was being serious you are pretty dumb
I dont read
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.
I thought I remembered this from high school biology also, and looked up the wiki entry for breathing to confirm. The wiki seems to say that hyperventilating (for instance) drastically reduces CO2 levels which paradoxically causes reduced oxygen to the organs including the brain, but on the other hand, the atmosphere in space suits is pure oxygen, which seems a contradiction. Do astronauts really have to remember to breathe during EVA?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
BOTH out-of-control population growth as well as waste/ridiculous levels of "luxury" for a select few need to be eliminated. This will take force.
For the good of humanity, you ought to be shot.
As long as he's considerate enough to keep his participles from dangling in public, I can forgive almost anything... S
No he had it right... their frontal lobes are so weighty that they tend to fall forward... its why they tend to have flat faces...
Safe bet he's too chickenshit to be a threat. But he should be shot, just to improve the species.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You thin it until you can taste it. At full strength the flavors are hidden in the alcohol taste for most. Drinking proof is a matter of taste and experience.
Some people claim to get the full taste at full strength. Then again some people claim 'Southern Comfort' is whiskey.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Reading comprehension fail: 'only in geological time frames.'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
All of this is moot, Global birthrates are plummeting. As women all over the world are getting contraceptives, and their partners see the possibility of limiting family size with the growing availability of health care and access to education, it's almost certain that the global population problem is about to fix itself. The mid-century predicted population topping out at over 10 billion will almost certainly be dramatically smaller (provided backlash from Muslims and Catholics regarding the use of contraceptives by women isn't too severe.)
This effect is most pronounced in the third world and was accurately predicted at the 1995 Cairo Conference, when the top women leaders in the world proposed that women be given global access to education, health care and contraception. It was predicted then that if proper action had been taken that peak human population could have been limited to 7.4 billion (and would have been reached around the early to mid 2030s.) The male leaders ignored the summit, looking to treat the symptoms instead of the pathology. So now we have a great shot at stopping human population growth at between 8 and 9 billion. That would be amazing. More over, the population would slow drop, and in a couple centuries approach that sweet spot around a billion people (this would be slow as human lifespans expand up to and including virtual immortality, though migrating off of protein would dramatically reduce a human footprint... physically and logistically.)
But that CO doesn't come from the atmosphere.
In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely
Are you insane or just suicidal? Funny fact, CO2 isn't a poison, but (at the right partial pressure level) O2 is.
I was aiming that at Congress and the White House. You know, the ones that really keep the country from running smoothly.
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
I wouldn't say that the irresponsible ones are the ONLY ones that procreate, but yes it does seem like idiocracy as they're doing it at a much higher rate. I mean walk into a Walmart....'nuff said.
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
Federal gas tax roughly covers federal expenditures on roads
State gas tax does not cover the entire state expenditure on roads
The local government's expenditure on roads -- covered by property tax.
In my town of ~60,000 people, we spend ~$3M/yr on roads. Not one dime comes from motorists per se. It comes from property tax.
Cyclists do pay for local roads via property tax, pay for some of state roads via income or state property tax (and some state roads prohibit bicycles) and you won't cyclists on interstates.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
That stuff is dangerous. It can kill you.
I've heard that stuff can even destroy rocks. ROCKS!
This is the Pacific Northwest you are talking about. We don't have any of those 100' tall columns around here.
He said that your breath while cycling is more harmful to the environment than your breath while driving a car, as you release more CO2 because of the physical exertion.
What he (and you apparently) fail to realize is that the CO2 you exhale has zero harmful effect on the environment. The carbon in the CO2 you exhale comes from CO2 that is drawn from the atmosphere by the plants you eat in the first place* **. After all, the environment has been humming merrily along for well over 500 million years while animals exhaled CO2 yet the levels in the atmosphere have generally been going down in all of that time. What is harmful to the environment is taking carbon that's been sequestered from the environment and not part of the active carbon cycle for 100's of millions of years and putting it back in rapidly. If we took the CO2 we've emitted over the past couple hundred years and spread it out over a couple thousand years the effects wouldn't be bad because the environment would have plenty of time to adjust.
* Or the plant the animals you eat ate.
** Yes I'm ignoring the fact that a lot of fossil fuel energy goes into producing, delivering and preparing your food but it's possible to produce the energy needed by other means that don't produce a net increase in CO2. It's technologically feasible to do that right now but economically it will take 30-50 years to build out the infrastructure necessary to make the transition from fossil fuels.
Yes, physically there is no difference between the CO2 you exhale and the CO2 from a Hummer. But that's not the issue. The issue where the carbon in emitted CO2 comes from. Did it come from carbon in the active carbon cycle or carbon that's been out of the cycle for hundreds of millions of years? If it's from the first it makes no net difference to the environment, if it's from the second you are adding carbon to the active carbon cycle. If you can't understand the distinction between those things maybe it's you who is the moron.
Rep Orcutt also issued some clarifying comments and apologized for the 'confusing' email.
Howdy howdy howdy
It's what you expect when you're paid scale. You can't even spare a fin.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Actually, with a well set-up organic, in particular permaculture, system you can easily establish a closed nutrient cycle at or even over our current "green revolution" yields. What you can't do, however, is producing those yields with the minimal amount of manual labor we are utilizing today.
That said, easy it is not. I keep my garden running well without adding synthetic fertilizers. Still, I bring in foreign biomass - vegetable trimmings from bought vegetables in the compost, chicken manure from my neighbours chickens. I'd need substantially more area to really establish a closed circle.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Although we could factor in the linked causes of co2 from the breathing to the extra wear and need for more sneakers, I'd just want a world where people biked instead of all drove cars. That being said the health benefits of everyone biking over driving cars would have a cascading positive effect on health care resource consumption and therefore co2 it can be assumed.
As lots of people have pointed out, the body produced CO2 which is what triggers the breathing reflex, I was working on the OP's basis that we've "erradicated all CO2", including the stuff produced by the body. Astronauts haven't used pure oxygen in a long time, it was initially used because it allowed lower pressure, meaning space suits were easier to move around in, but the fire risk turned out to be way too high, so these days it's simply normal air.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I'd still do it, just for the halibut.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would say that's a pretty fair argument, but there are some real difficulties in calculating those numbers, not the least of which is how to compare the carbon footprint of the food production for your average, health conscious cyclist to that of your average, overweight american car driver. I will say, though, that I do like the horse idea.
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
Ok, thanks. Sounds like the wiki entry could use some clarification. And yes, I do remember Apollo 1.
Eradicating all CO2 is a little like that community that decided to completely ban Chlorine. Um, really?
I blame public schools...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The politician forgets he is adding to the CO2 with all his hot air.
....next thing they're going to say is that we can't fart, or that we should hold our breath 15 seconds everytime we inhale.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
I guess if you already own a car, then going by car can be cheaper. But if you choose to not own a car, then money for insurance, plus gas, maintenance, and the cost of the car very much outweigh the cost of the extra food required to bike. Also, you should eat high quality food anyway, regardless of whether or not you commute by car or bicycle. My diet changes very little between the cycling season (april-november) and winter.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
My asparagus only has to be shipped 30 meters. And I don't use a bike to ride out to the garden.
If you eliminated all the CO2, the plants would die. I think you mean limit it to some given level.
I think this whole discussion can be short circuited by the following realization:
DEN_GUY's rule: The amount of crazy shit that comes out of a politician's mouth is inversely proportional to the number of people that it took to get them elected.
Pres. - BS, but not crazy BS
Fed Senate - BS mixed with partisan BS (borderline crazy)
Federal House of Representatives - All of the above with the occasional crazy shit statement
[and...so on down the line]
Which brings us to State Representative...Snake shit crazy with the occasional good idea. This is not one of them.
No, the people think that the "strong leader" will abuse The Other, Wrong, Kind Of People, and Not Us Honest God-Fearing Folk That He Likes.
They are unwilling to believe that Romeytypes think every one of us is the Wrong Kind Of People.
I've noticed over the years that the Republican Party can come up with all sort of little taxes here and there to help them keep their pledge to not increase taxes on their wealthy overmasters. How fitting that this congressman now proposes taxing breathing! What's next Ed, kill off all the old folks to stop them from emiting too much CO2?
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Without reading any further than just the headline I new it had to be a Republican that said something stupid again. Maybe he could get together with the ones that believe women have special lady parts!
Which produces more CO2? Is it bicycling or sex?
The next step is to tax sex. Don't worry, you get it back and have to enjoy the result until the teenage years, when enjoy turns to "what next".
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You only exhale that CO2 from food due to - in general - energy
FTFY. There is a lot of energy that goes into growing, processing and transporting food but nothing requires that the source of energy has to be fossil fuels, it is merely the most convenient at the moment.
Did a representative of MY government just try and tell me that my breath is somehow more harmful to the environment than the Hummer exhaust I'm choking on?
The CO2 you exhale is no different from the CO2 from a Hummer, you dumb, fucking moron.
It may be less reasonable to tax one versus the other, but the affect on the environment - CO2 molecule for CO2 molecule - is the same, you dumb, fucking slut.
Science is a bitch, motherfucker. Don't expect the demonization of CO2 to end at a tailpipe, dipshit.
You might have a point here, if there were a set of lungs underneath the fucking hood of a Hummer. My breath is not the same thing as vehicle exhaust, dumbass.
Clearly I'm arguing with a scientist here, for they would be the only ones to try and break down this argument to the fucking molecular level when common sense would tell you otherwise. Go back to your lab, and take the politician who wants to tax molecules with you.
Listen to what he actually said and move along to real news.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Sigh... The carbon in fossil fuels has been out of circulation for hundreds of millions of years. The carbon you exhale was already in circulation before it got to you. Putting fossil fuel carbon back in circulation is going to change things. The last time CO2 in the atmosphere was as high as it is now was over 20 million years ago and sea level was about 70 feet higher then.
You seem awful pessimistic about the prospects for renewable energy. I remain optimistic. It's going to take 30-50 years to replace the current fossil fuel infrastructure but it's going to happen.
You need to go find a forest where you can get 2 days walk from civilization or do like I do and spend a week floating on a raft down a river. They don't close places like that down at night.
The human* brain accounts for 20% of the energy a person uses, and thus is responsible for 20% of their CO2. I appreciate the tireless efforts of Rep. Orcutt in personally reducing this amount as much as possible, and in trying to extend this benefit to as many of his constituents as he can. It seems he has found a great deal of success in this endeavor.
* probably the same for politicians, couldn't find reference to any study of politicians brains.
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1981
By bike commuting, you are burning a lot more calories per day than the average person. You need to replace those calories, so you need to eat more than I do just to maintain your current weight. Granted, it makes a lot more sense to burn the calories actually accomplishing something than going to the gym. But if the average person ate more calories than you do when you're burning off several hundred extra calories per day, they'd all look like Honey Boo Boo's mom... oh wait, the average person DOES look like than now, don't they? (My daughter is a cheerleader. I have to buy her 3 full size cheeseburgers and a milkshake after every practice... she's frickin' 12 years old and weighs about 80 pounds, and she still eats twice as much as I do at more than twice her weight!)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
There's a problem with that reasoning. 95% of the wear-and-tear on public streets is done be trucks. Damage increases exponentially with the weight on each tire (and probably with speed). The wear caused by a bicycle on the street is basically immeasurable; the ocaissional motor vehicle that wanders into the bike lane does far more damage. When was the last time you saw a bicycles-only path the showed _any_ signs of tire wear?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In fact, I have a new belief, that the extreme right is anti-education for the exact same reasons the Taliban are, because educated people are far less likely to support their misguided causes!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The way is was explained to me is: We all know BS stands for "bull shit". MS stands for "more shit", and PhD stands for "piled higher & deeper"!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Right, because if all those people WERE NOT riding bikes, they wouldn't be consuming food or producing carbon dioxide at all, right? I'd much rather people get their exercise by foregoing the use of their SUV than by going to a health club to work out -- even moreso if they DRIVE to the gym!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Forestry management covers the same ecological standards as golf course management. If the the EPA can't shut you down, you're golden. (Or else you need to start greasing Congress.)
Only pinko hippies worry about the air.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Everybody's gonna want in on this tech!!!
I wouldn't mind the competition even a little bit.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I was always amused and scared at that. Running the country, doesn't know how to properly use a cigarette.
Yes he does. He just doesn't know how to tell the truth.
And yet it seems he does not know how to lie properly either. People would have believed him if he had said "I never smoked marijuana", but instead he went with "Yeah, but I didn't inhale". I don't think I know anybody that believed that. What a goose!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
(provided backlash from Muslims and Catholics regarding the use of contraceptives by women isn't too severe.)
You know that for instance the Islamic Republic of Iran has one of the lowest reproduction rates in the world? It was different just 25 years ago, but currently it's at a rate of around 1.7 births per woman (according to the World Bank 2010), nearly on par with most catholic countries in Europe (Austria: 1.4, Italy: 1.4, Poland: 1.4, Portugal 1.3, Spain: 1.4) and lower than the predominantly protestant countries (The Netherlands: 1.8, Finland: 1.9, Norway: 1.9, UK: 1.9, Sweden: 2.0). It seems that we have to readjust our perception of which countries have which fertility rates...
They are slightly shorter than what you call Trees - Redwoods....
can't tell if troll or serious. this may be a perfect post.
we'd only need a dozen Earths at current population.
you fail to realise the good that can be done with some warmongering. kill off your competition, live like a king. simple.
btw, breeding is fun. it starts with getting laid.
I agree with your post, but your sig makes me want to kick you in the cunt.
i don't think a zero protein diet would be conducive to longer lifespans, somehow.
you think GM plants are bad (well, i don't know if you do or not tbh - this is hyperbole after all), but GM humans would be required to eliminate protein.
unless you just mean animal protein. that's more do-able. even the tough-to-synthesize stuff could be supplemented as our understanding of microflora increases - we could brew omega-3 fatty acids in a bucket like we would brew beer... yum. i like that idea. i love meat, but i'm not so attached to it, given how good a cook my wife is - i can go weeks and not even notice that i haven't had any meat, but vegan rhetoric makes me want to stab things just from the tiresome politics of it. i'd rather eat food, not bland ideology.
perhaps religion is not as good a predictor as education level, population density, standard of living, or in the case of Iran, who-knows-what? (i don't know much about Iran except their hilarious drones, unreliable centrifuges and beautiful saffron).