"Y'all" should just get your facts straight. There is nothing wrong with a bit of knowledge. No real offense intended here, and I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you, but its hard to make a strong argument based on information that you made up, and then get defensive when someone calls you on it.

So it's ok to have a 4WD if it's a hobby?

Wait. Do you ride a bike? Do you know that you don't actually need to ride a bike? You could just walk everywhere... naked. The industry to support a bike sucks up resources. Even talking about it sucks up resources. Every byte of your message takes up a certain amount of energy to not only propogate but store and this increases at an exponential rate beyond your control due to the one-to-many sender-receiver relationship. Where do you think that energy comes from? Is posting on Bike Forums a necessity or is it a hobby? Please dismount off that high horse or take a step down from the soapbox because the thin air up there seems to be causing your brain to undergo oxygen deprevation.

How come you're not complaining about boats?
No one needs to be out wasting gas in a boat do they?
Or doesn't that matter because they don't get in the way of your "bikey"?
Man your world would suck if those semitrucks stop running up the road.
On the other hand, you could turn off your energy wasting computer and "go Amish"
They allow bike riding.
Mandatory jail sentances for not using your signal...You just make yourself look worse

Another thread about SUV's with both side yelling and talking past each other, and very little sense on either side.

Rationalizing the use of SUVs by pointing out the bicycle production uses resources as well is a nonsense argument, BTW. It's a matter of scale and after-effect. You're comparing two very different things in an extremely weak attempt to make a point, and unfairly paint your opposition as total luddites.

Since most of the cars on the road are single passenger (just go out and watch traffic one day), and many car trips are short, perhaps the argument should not be over the SUV, but the use of the automobile as a whole. This, of course, leads to facts about neighbourhood design (why no sidewalks in so many developments? Why no bike lanes along major arteries?) and more irritating facts about our style of living.

The car is not an evil device. The incredible over-use of them is, however, patently ridiculous. Most folks do not need a car for a sizable percentage of what they do with them. My lonely little ridiculed (on this thread, anyway) Subaru is the only car on my block that is not driven on a daily basis. Why is that?

Hey I love subies!
The truth is though they aren't fuel effecient...and how many people NEED that AWD?
It's the same argument.
As far as calling people luddites, we have heard people say we should ban all cars LOL
I'd love to see raods that are safer for small microcars, even fuel effecient go karts and mopeds, like a smaller 2 lane road, especially in congested areas.

So I'm to say "well, seeing as how I already use X amount of power, I might as well go ahead and use as much as I can. Use more then I need. I should buy a big SUV. I should use non-rechargeable batteries." If I do come to that conclusion, I should go f**k myself.

Part of his point is that you wouldn't have all that "stuff' without industrialization and energy consumption.
Oh and BTW, we've established that SMALL gas guzzling SUV's are "acceptable".
oh, and also, only you can determine what you "need", when someone else determines how big of a house we can own, how much gas we can buy, and how high our electric bill can be, that will be a sad day.

Here, here. I too, agree. Driving one block to the grocery store in your SUV is. Unnecessary trips like that are wasteful. Take a walk with your kids or bike to the corner store. The percentage of obese people, including kids, in this country is ridiculous!

I admit I do have a car mainly for commuting purposes (too far to drive) and my wife does have a minivan that sees minimal use during the week.

Thr problem with car culture is that somewhere along the line, americans got the idea that we are "entitled" to a car. And furthermore, that we have the right to drive any car we want. "It's america, we're free, we have the right to clog the roads with 8-cylinder monsters if we want." yeah, just the same way that we have the "right" to eat however much we want, even if it means half of the population becoming overweight. Consumer culture is like sugar, it destroys the earth just like sugar rots your teeth and destroys your body.

tim

I think you're missing the point that the main problem is this culture of over consumption. Furthermore, the point with progression is that we continue to do so. The internal combustion engine is so last century. I think it's clear that we can do without the oil industry being nearly as big (if not obsolete all together), powerful and controlling as it is.

And, I never "established" small gas guzzling SUV's are "acceptable." Who are you to tell me that's what I think.

Oh and BTW, it will be a sad day when everyone has what he or she needs.

Only those who work...

Move to a 3rd world country (shrug)

If energy is energy, why hasn't anyone come up with an alternative that is just as cheap, just as efficient, and just as *powerful*?

If it was possible to improve the human condition through bicycle engine power, why wasn't it done in the thousands of years before the invention of the internal combustion engine?

You all have to face the facts. BY FAR, even the poorest people in the world are vastly better off. Every person on this forum, comparatively, lives in a luxurious world full of comforts and conveniences that were made possible by the internal combustion machine. We are talking about an advancement that allowed for social, cultural, and economical advancements (including making slavery irrelevant) that the world had never seen before.

I love to ride my bicycle and I also love to drive my car, cut my grass, travel on airplanes, eat at restaurants, surf the web, sleep in my temperature controled house, etc...

Without internal combustion engines, we would mostly all starve to death within a couple of years. Those of you that preach this goofy rhetoric wherein we should all peddle everywhere need to open your eyes to the real world. Take off the tinfoil hat and appreciate what you have.

Not surprisingly...You couldn't be much more wrong about the internal combustion engine.
We continue to make them more efficient.
see below:

especially this quote:


-----------------------------------------------------------

With oil prices hovering above $50 a barrel, some of the world's major auto makers are accelerating efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of cars without resorting to expensive batteries or hybrid gas-electric systems.

Their goal: to enhance today's gasoline-engine technology so that cars can travel vastly more miles per gallon of fuel.

"Even the best of today's most advanced gasoline engines on average waste more than 80% of the [thermal] energy they create by burning gasoline," Honda Motor Co. Chief Executive Takeo Fukui says. "We think possibilities for improvement are almost infinite there."

Archrival Toyota Motor Corp. has a similar goal. "Everybody wants to double the efficiency of gasoline engines, and we are all working on similar technologies," says Masatami Takimoto, chief of Toyota's power train development in Japan. "Most likely it's going to be a dead heat."

At General Motors Corp., engineers are working on a new type of gasoline internal-combustion engine that could provide "80% of the efficiency of a hybrid or a diesel for 20% of the cost," says Scott Fosgard, a GM spokesman.

Underlying many of these efforts is a renewed interest in a technology automotive engineers call "homogenous-charge compression-ignition," or HCCI. The technology, which is believed capable of providing as much as a 30% boost in the fuel economy of a gasoline engine, is a hot topic in automotive research labs at GM and Ford Motor Co. in the U.S., Volkswagen AG and DaimlerChrsyler AG in Germany, and Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda in Japan.

Mechanically, an HCCI engine, like a conventional gasoline engine, sends a finely balanced mixture of air and fuel to the cylinders. In a conventional gas engine, a spark plug ignites the air-fuel mixture to create power. But in an HCCI engine, the air-fuel mixture is compressed by the piston until rising heat inside the chamber ignites the mixture -- a process similar to that used in a diesel engine.

Daniel Flowers, a combustion engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California, says vehicles powered by gasoline HCCI engines are a "strong contender" in the competition to create an affordable, high-mileage, clean-burning vehicle. HCCI could create a new class of power trains that match the eye-popping fuel economy of a diesel without high emissions of nitrogen oxides, or NOx, and sooty particulates -- a problem that hampers the wider use of diesel engines. Mr. Flowers says an HCCI engine would significantly cut the emission of particulates while producing "close to zero" emissions of NOx, which are blamed widely as one of the chief causes of smog.

(Click here to view image)

Even some environmental activists say all the talk about the promise of hybrid vehicles -- which are powered by a combination of batteries and gasoline engines -- misses a larger point. Even if, by 2025, all new vehicles sold in the U.S. were hybrids that averaged double the fuel economy of today's vehicles, the best result would be that the nation would hold its overall fuel use at today's levels, they say. That's because there will be many more vehicles on the road then, and many still will have internal-combustion engines. A better way to measurably curb oil consumption, these groups say, is to significantly improve the fuel economy of the internal-combustion engine, since many more of these will be sold.

Standing in the way of that vision, however, are obstacles that have sidelined HCCI technology since auto makers first began experimenting with it in the 1970s. For one thing, it's extremely difficult to make an HCCI engine run smoothly at very low and extremely high speeds because engineers cannot control the spontaneous combustion in those ranges.

Now, however, auto makers say new computerized electronic controls are improving the odds. Already, some car makers are deploying a precursor to HCCI called gasoline direct-injection technology.

Gasoline direct injection differs from the fuel-injection technology used in many cars today. In fuel-injected engines, gasoline and air are mixed together before they are introduced into the combustion chamber. In gasoline direct-injection engines, the air and gasoline are introduced into the combustion chamber directly and separately. The system helps boost fuel efficiency.

Honda last year launched in Japan a version of its Stream car with a gasoline direct-injection engine. VW's Audi brand will use the system on its 2005 A6 model. It's a key technology to achieve the finely balanced charge of air and gasoline necessary to make HCCI combustion work, although HCCI requires much faster and more accurate fuel injectors and a higher-powered computer control system, says Udo Ruegheimer, an Audi spokesman.

There are other signs of progress on the road to HCCI. One recent afternoon inside GM's Powertrain Systems Research Lab in Warren, Mich., researcher Paul Najt demonstrated an experimental HCCI engine that idled effortlessly -- a big achievement for such engines since they typically have trouble with low speeds.

Mr. Najt says GM has found ways to control HCCI combustion in an engine's low to mid range, which he says should represent about 65% of the load range necessary to run a gasoline engine properly on the highway. GM, like other auto makers, has trouble controlling combustion in the higher range. Still, Mr. Najt says, "We have our arms around this combustion process."

GM's current thinking is to deploy the HCCI process from idle to the mid range and handle the engine's initial cold-start and heaviest loads by using more conventional approaches, such as spark plugs, to smooth out kinks in combustion. Such an approach, Mr. Najt says, should allow GM to boost the fuel economy of a gasoline engine by 25%.

Honda and Toyota are aiming even higher.

Honda earlier this year opened an Advanced Powertrain Research center in Japan to focus on improving internal-combustion engines. The aim, Mr. Fukui says, is to tap on average as much as 40% to 50% of the thermal power generated by a gasoline engine per unit of fuel through things such as HCCI -- more than doubling the efficiency of a typical gasoline-powered engine now.

Toyota's Mr. Takimoto, meanwhile, says his company's objective "for the time being" is to boost the average thermal efficiency of a gasoline engine to 40%. He deems achieving that objective as "critical" to making its gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles even more fuel-efficient.

Both Honda's Mr. Fukui and Mr. Takimoto say doubling the efficiency of combustion roughly should translate into doubled fuel economy. Honda officials say their goals could translate to a gasoline-fueled, V-6 Accord sedan that would get 50 miles per gallon -- double the 25 mpg such an Accord gets today. Gas-electric hybrid versions of HCCI Accords might go more than 70 miles on a gallon of gasoline.

Aaaaw, thanks WK.

When someone disagrees and it appears that they might actually have a valid argument, stun them with your blindingly pointless rhetorical gymnastics. Way to go...

Nicely stated

can you elaborate on this? when you say "poorest people," who are you talking about? furthermore, what do you mean by poor? and by "better off," you're obviously implying that you know what their situations were/are like both before and after some kind of change (which is still ambiguous). this statement needs some "facts" to support it.

i would argue that the poorest people in the world are/have been the most exploited (not just by the US, but by all imperilaist regimes) or who's daily way of life is contrated to the western ideal. why don't most people in the world have potable water? is there anything "poor" about subsisting, having what you need every day but not (by choice or not) consuming more?

the "need" part seems to be where no one agrees.

eff it. this is stupid anyway.

habitus - I think what he meant is that when our car-centric world falls down on around our ears, the people that are living closer to the earth - IE without the insulation our technology provides us from nature - will survive it fine. How many people in the city don't even have a place to grow food for sustenance? We'll all be fighting over canned goods and twinkies to eat, they will live exactly as they have lived for centuries.

Those of us that survive the collapse will sit and miss what we had before. We will miss the internet. We'll miss Lasik. We will piss and moan and cry "WHY WHY WHY WHY" to the sky. They don't have anything to miss.

I don't know, I'm not carpediem, but that's how I took his post.

makes sense to me!

My brother and I used to want to make a version of the internet back when we were dumb high school kids that would have everyone so dependent on it that they ABSOLUTLEY could not live without it - full immersion, IV's, etc.

The plan was to have a virus attack all the life support systems for the western world and leave the underdeveloped countries as the only people on the planet. Luckily, we weren't smart enough or motivated enough to make it happen...

That doesn't really mean much, unless you want civilization to fail. "when our car-centric world falls".
You either believe that will happen or want it to.
Actually you can say the same thing about people who didn't farm and lived in cities centuries ago.
BEFORE CARS
If I'm fishing for my supper, I'm not going to be whining about missing the internet LOL
How smart does a person have to be to have some livestock and a garden? Like it's some kind of black art or something.

The world's population has doubled in the last 40 years. The survival of all of those people, and their opportunity to reproduce on a scale never witnessed before is irrefutable proof that the quality of life, at its most intrinsic level, has improved vastly.


On the contrary, my friend, if the so called "car-centric world" falls down around our ears, we are all in a great deal of doodoo. Do you think that the population explosion is happening only in the most industrialized and "car-centric" countries? If the poop hit the fan tomorrow, the poor folks doing their best to scratch out a living in the soil (and benefitting from globalized transportation, technology, irrigation, farming techniques etc...) will suffer just as much, and probably more, than the rich folks living in industrialized urban centers. If for some reason society collapses and all of the food runs out are you telling me that the once industrialized groups aren't going to simply kill all the helpless third world buffalo farmers and steal their rutabagas? If we ran out of oil this afternoon, the guy with the biggest gun will shoot you, steal your bicycle, and eat all your food. That being said, the poor people with little or no self-produced technology being able to survive to reproduce on a scale never seen before, is a testament to the western world and their "car-centric" society.

For a lot of the people I interact with on a daily basis, it is some kind of black art. It's sad, but it's true. The same with hunting, fishing, whatever.

The thing I would miss would be glasses. Because I would be blind (pretty much) and not able to hunt/fish/keep from being hunted. I'd be a total loss without corrective lenses, no matter what other skills I had - I can't see 2 feet in front of my face without them.

There are three ways that our car-centric world could fall :

Cataclysm - all the sh*t hits the fan, and everyone panics, and it becomes anarchy.
Slow Takeover - A newer technology takes hold allowing transportation of goods and persons across the world without involving cars. Eventually cars are museum pieces.
Fast Takeover - A company goes against the other corporations and introduces something that is so revolutionary that it becomes the hottest thing to have since cars first arrived. Everyone and their dog MUST have one to keep up with the Jonses. Extremely unlikely.

I don't know - I kind of would like to civilization fail. Probably not enough to whipe everyone out, but a nice slap in the face would probably be a good thing at this stage in our evoloution as a species/planet. Because at this point, humans aren't just another species spread about the planet. We have taken ourselves to the point where we are a measurable force just like the weather. We need to get our heads out of our wallets and realize that there is a bigger goal that we should all be working towards together...

Am I ranting yet? Or is this still conversation?

Well, you pop onto a forum where you never post, get involved in a conversation and don't really have a point other than you think that a big car is ok. You back it up by industry based fact. Then you sit there with your thumb up your ass and the theasorus near by so you can feel that you posted something really smart and witty.

Really. I own a SUV that I use (remember the 4wd lever). Most people who own them don't use them for thier purpose. I'm not against them purchasing them, or driving them. It's my opinion that it's stupid and unpratical. And I'm waiting for the out cry when gas reaches 3 dollars a gallon.

Your arguement that these purchases drive the economy is short sighted. When gas prices go up, disposable income will go down, as people who drive things that get 14 - 18 miles per gallon will be dumping lots of cash into the gas hole.

I know this, as if I were to drive to work everyday instead of ride I'd pay 176 dollars for gas a month. If I were to only drive to work, to school and to home. In riding, I pay 31 a month. I'm sure the average person tops out at more than 1k per month, more likely 1.2k per month on the milage side. So, figure thier gas cost. With gas going from 1.20 a gallon 4 years ago (when the SUV crux started really flowing), cost now at roughly 2.25 a gallon, prices have doubled. So, that portion of income goes down the drain.

On a commercial side, the cost of transporting goods is going up too. You can talk about the need all you want, but if the average commute/family user got a better MPG vehicle, the demand for gas would go down, and the commerical cost of transporting goods would go down too.

So, are SUVs good for the economy? Nope, not in the long term. But you go ride on your happy little horse calling us, ME a @#$# granola boy. I'm sure you do.

Just remember, in my 98 TJ Jeep, (Auto/4.10 gears, ARB front and rear, 35" MTR's) , I get tagged for "destroying the enviroment", and I get **** for riding my bike and promoting cycling as a different way to get around. So I get both sides of the coin.

So, yes, you're a troll, no you don't know what the **** your typing about and have a nice day.

Keyboard cowboy.