Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

keith.seas.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#11

Post by Analemma_ »

squidfood wrote: post #10

In my city, they've just taken some two lane roads down to one lane and eliminated car turning lanes, to add bike lanes. Those bike lanes see maybe 1 bike every 15 minutes, while the cars are now significantly more backed up (I've noted an extra 5-10 minutes of idling to travel a mile during busy times, no idea how many cars total in a day). Without denigrating the need for bike safety and separated lanes, I really w…

To some extent, that's working as intended. If bike lanes reduce throughput for cars and decrease their utility, that pushes people towards using means other than cars, even if that doesn't mean biking.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#12

Post by ysea »

alephnil wrote: post #8

You can't turn off the body, and you need exercise to stay healthy. Thus it does not really make sense to compare cycling to driving like the article does. If you are driving to the gym, and then using the energy you would have used biking at the gym, you will cause the combined emissions of both cycling and driving. The only way to get away from that is to be more passive, so that you would require less food, and th…

Precisely, I either bike or bus to work every day. If I take the bus I do some other form of exercise instead. And I certainly don't eat less on the days I ride the bus. I would imagine most people that get around by bike maintain a steady level of exercise during times when they are biking less.

Whether or not the author's intent was to discourage biking and encourage driving they have done exactly that.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#13

Post by millettjon »

This completely ignores the fact that grain fed factory cows are a problem but pastured cows actually store carbon in the grass roots and also reduce emissions by not tilling, and using less fossil fuels, fertilizers, and herbicides.

Protein doesn't directly fuel exercise. Most people on paleo type diets target a specific number of grams of protein for muscle maintenance and use carbs or fat to fuel the exercise. So biking more distance would mean eating more rice or potatoes or coconut oil for fuel. So the CO2 impact of the biking calories would be similar to the vegan levels.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#14

Post by timthelion »

Things the author failed to include in the study:

1) Road land use, a bike lane is narrower than a car lane.

2) The energy invested in building the car. Aluminium parts, which cars are made of, have very significant energy investments.

3) CO2 emissions of asphalt used to pave the roads that cars drive on.

4) CO2 emissions of the cars tires vs the bikes tires

5) Calorie consumption of the person driving/riding in the car!!!!!!!

6) Parking land use.

7) Land use associated with mining the materials used to build a car vs bike.

8) Land use of pollution barriers to protect residential areas from car intensive ones.

9) CO2 emissions associated with heavy raised roadways made of concrete and steel, such as highway overpasses.

Basically, this analysis is laughably absurd and is an insult to the Harvard name.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#15

Post by squidfood »

Analemma_ wrote: post #11
squidfood wrote: post #10

In my city, they've just taken some two lane roads down to one lane and eliminated car turning lanes, to add bike lanes. Those bike lanes see maybe 1 bike every 15 minutes, while the cars are now significantly more backed up (I've noted an extra 5-10 minutes of idling to travel a mile during busy times, no idea how many cars total in a day). Without denigrating the need for bike safety and separated lanes, I really w…

To some extent, that's working as intended. If bike lanes reduce throughput for cars and decrease their utility, that pushes people towards using means other than cars, even if that doesn't mean biking.

Except: I don't see any evidence that it has worked at all - at least not in the 2 years the lanes have been there. Nice idea, but data would be nicer. (aside: always nice to see downvotes for wanting observations and data - if the data belies my observations, I'm all for that).

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#16

Post by thinkmilitant »

millettjon wrote: post #13

This completely ignores the fact that grain fed factory cows are a problem but pastured cows actually store carbon in the grass roots and also reduce emissions by not tilling, and using less fossil fuels, fertilizers, and herbicides. Protein doesn't directly fuel exercise. Most people on paleo type diets target a specific number of grams of protein for muscle maintenance and use carbs or fat to fuel the exercise. So…

As someone who has been shifting their diet over to vegetarian for environmental reasons, I am interested in this. Can you provide any support for your claim that pasture cattle are less damaging then factory cattle?

I know that pasture raised cattle are not sustainable to feed the masses, but at this point I would just be glad to enjoy a guilt free steak every now and again. ;-)

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#17

Post by VLM »

I think the author is interpreting paleo as "high protein" whereas most people doing paleo are "low/no grain". Some people focused primarily on trendiness seem to insist their low carb diet is paleo no matter how heavily processed and weird it is (like those weird soy bar things)

I pretty much don't eat grains but almost certainly vegetables are more energy intensive than grains so maybe my paleo salads are killing the planet almost as well as the vegans eating processed soy products and baked wheat products all day.

Then again no matter how thinly you slice it theres not a lot of calories in a carrot so even if volumetric intake looks near vegan most of my calories might be coming from meat/fish/oil sources.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#18

Post by ABCLAW »

The Keith Group, responsible for the article, are an academic group advocating the use of solar geoengineering (aka, putting aerosols and solar shades up to stop global warming, rather than focus on carbon sequestration).

This weak attempt to indicate that transport choices do not substantially change carbon emissions is in line with their pre-existing position.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#19

Post by timthelion »

squidfood wrote: post #15
Analemma_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent, that's working as intended. If bike lanes reduce throughput for cars and decrease their utility, that pushes people towards using means other than cars, even if that doesn't mean biking.

Except: I don't see any evidence that it has worked at all - at least not in the 2 years the lanes have been there. Nice idea, but data would be nicer. (aside: always nice to see downvotes for wanting observations and data - if the data belies my observations, I'm all for that).

This comes down to a tragedy of the commons thing. No data needed. Cars are using a commons (the roads and the air) and causing a tragedy.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#20

Post by timthelion »

squidfood wrote: post #15
Analemma_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent, that's working as intended. If bike lanes reduce throughput for cars and decrease their utility, that pushes people towards using means other than cars, even if that doesn't mean biking.

Except: I don't see any evidence that it has worked at all - at least not in the 2 years the lanes have been there. Nice idea, but data would be nicer. (aside: always nice to see downvotes for wanting observations and data - if the data belies my observations, I'm all for that).

This really comes down to a "moral health of the citizenry". In Germany and the Netherlands these programs work. In the US, less so. If you were to take a %100 data based approach, and not take into account the choices of people, you would no longer be studying sociology but rather mind control. If you have a way, that actually is effective at changing peoples behavior, regardless of what the people want then that is mind control. Do you think that mind control is what we need in order to fight global warming, or do we just need to become better people?
Post reply on HN