heypaul

On Monday, I found this calculator for the number of calories a cyclist burns depending on weight, speed and number of minutes riding.

https://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/calories_burned.asp

This is good information for people who want to lose weight, but it got me to thinking (which is always a dangerous thing).

If I'm riding for 4 hours, at speeds less than 10 mph (try going faster on an 82 pound Huffy cast-iron bike) and I weigh 125 pounds, I will burn 942 calories.

So, what's the carbon saddleprint of these calories? Surely, carbon dioxide must be one of the byproducts of my internal combustion engine. What other gases am I producing? I know that I've been leaving a foul smelling brown cloud of gases as I ride up some of the hills in the Bronx.

Could I be doing the environment greater harm by riding my bike than riding my 5000 pound Hummer?

If I were a vegetarian or vegan would I have cleaner tailpipe emissions?

Bacciagalupe

gearhead.ny

I second that!

NickDavid

I hate you.

heypaul

While Mr. Bacciagalupe and gearhead.ny added almost nothing to the substance of this thread, try not to hate them.

gearhead.ny

damn I did it again. sorry everyone

Bacciagalupe

Please tell me you can't seriously believe that:

• you have an "internal combustion engine" that produces greenhouse gases
• that you, operating a bicycle, use up nearly as many resources as a 6,600 pound SUV
• that building and shipping a 20- or 25 pound bicycle uses up anything but a tiny fraction of the same resources as a 6,600 SUV

If you are even remotely serious, one gallon of gasoline provides about 31,000 calories. If you do the conversion, apparently a typical cyclist gets about 900 MPG. This should be excruciatingly obvious.

Now do you see why you get the Picard Face Palm?

Stacy

This thread really belongs in the Road forum

roadiejorge 

The output is quite significant and a little known threat to the environment, but the cycling lobby spends millions of dollars suppressing this fact. Mongolian scientists are suggesting that the exercise culture we see in the west should be eliminated and people should instead sit in their homes doing nothing.

roadiejorge 

incorrect

Stacy

No? When have we ever had Capt. Picard in the Northeast forum?
Next it'll be Tammy Thomas.

heypaul

At last, someone willing to speak up against the vast cycling-lyecra industrial complex, who are responsible for pushing up the price of a barrel of oil to the point where people would be willing to spend their money on overpriced bikes and synthetic garments.

roadiejorge 

you rang?

roadiejorge 

Yes, it is nice that there is the glimmer of hope in the battle against synthetic apparel and over priced bicycles. This theme will hopefully spread throughout the road cycling world and we abandon these light, expensive bicycles and go back to the days of 30lb steel bikes (we'll ignore the carbon footprint of producing steel frames for now). Now any racer who can ride up the Alp D'Huez on a hefty bike is the real athlete. 15Lb bikes that improve cycling efficiency...pffft.

Stacy

Huffys probably leave thrice the carbon footprint of one of these bamboo bikes.

roadiejorge 

Kevrob

Obviously, we must get scientists involved in a Manhattan Project-style effort to sequester CO2, in the form of carbon-fiber bike frames!

Kevin

Stacy

roadCruiser76

First of all, let me preface this by saying that I think man made global warming is total hogwash. The average global temperature hasn't increased in 8 years, and New York has had the coolest July in 58 years, I believe.

That aside, if one looks into the energy consumption of an automobile versus a bike, one must take into account all things. Clearly a cyclist on a bike directly consumes much less energy than an automobile directly consumes. However, one must also look at the energy it takes to produce the energy used for each. Let's say a bike rider burns 1000 calories on a ride. How much energy was consumed by the farm equipment used to produce the food that the cyclist ate which provided the 1000 calories? Farming is a rather energy-intensive activity. I'm betting it takes less energy to produce a given unit of energy of petroleum as compared to a given unit of energy of food. This is because petroleum is much more energy-dense than food. In other words, one pound of gasoline contains a heck of a lot more potential energy than one pound of pizza. It would be my guess, then, that a vehicle that consumed a pound of gasoline in a given ride would ultimately be more energy efficient than a vehicle that consumed a pound of pizza, when you count all of the energy used down the line of production.

A good analogous situation to this is the question about which has a greater carbon footprint, a car that uses gas or one that is purely electric. Most people would immediately say the gas car does. However, if you take into account the fact that most electricity is produced by burning coal, the answer is no longer so obvious.

heypaul

Thank you for your very thoughtful analysis of the energy requirements of cars and cyclists.

Have you done any research comparing the emissions of cars and bikes. I believe that the Federal Governments standards for limiting the levels of the gases in automobile exhaust should be immediately applied to cyclists whose weight & speed paramaters result in their burning more that 800 calories per hour. I've been looking around New York City for a gas station with emissions testing equipment that would be willing to let me ride my bike under test conditions on their dynameter with their exhaust hose placed right near by tail pipe. I would like to get a readout of my carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide levels, sulphur dioxide levels and then consult with my gastroentrologist to see if we can get these levels down to the emission standards of California.

v70cat

I ride so that I can eat steak and not be fat.

If you really want to be green you could be a vegetarian but I like steak and other meats to much and your only live once.

v70cat

You could be very green and kill your self, that would reduce your carbon foot print to zero.

sukram

RIGHT ON! Like I've been telling everyone I know, it's THE MARTIANS!

Bacciagalupe

Discussions of the validity of global warming don't belong here, so...


By any possible standard, a cyclist uses fewer resources than a car.

• Manufacturing a bicycle requires a tiny fraction of the resources to manufacture a car.
• Apparently, close to 1/3 of the carbon footprint of an auto is in just the manufacturing phase.
• Transporting a bicycle to the retailer requires a tiny fraction of the resources to transport a bike to the dealer.
• Growing and transporting food is more efficient and less damaging to the environment, generally speaking, than finding, pumping, refining and transporting fuel. (Not to mention that the food has other benefits and utility for the consumer).
• Bicycles require a tiny fraction of the resources to maintain and operate a car.
• Bicycles do not produce greenhouse gases, do not pollute the atmosphere, and do not cause smog.

The idea that any car has a greater carbon footprint than a bicycle is rather amusing.

roadiejorge 

I can't say I'm a fan of the alarmists who run around telling everyone the sky is falling but it doesn't take a scientist to figure out putting harmful pollutants into the environment is going to have negative effects on the planet, especially in developing nations that have lax or non existent environmental laws. Petroleum is a finite resource which has been the cause of human conflict in trying to secure it, to find an alternative which minimizes pollution and is available to all to produce doesn't seem like a bad thing to research. Climate change has been a part of earth's history, something no one is debating but given all of the issues around our current form of energy consumption and the effects of industrialized society on our planet I can't imagine why we wouldn't pool our knowledge to reduce our impact as a whole; no easy task of course but certainly worth while.