Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

It doesn't count what the impact of extracting gasoline is, or the effect of transporting it on a supertanker. And what about feeding all those people working in the oil industry? and the energy used by lobbyists to convince people to drill in Alaska. And aren't they eating meat themselves? And the BP leak? How much km of cycling did that cost? This kind of study is completely bogus.

Oh it's not about you feeling bad. It's for the drivers to feel good too!!

Not to mention whether exercise is substituted. What about a driver who runs on a treadmill, or does some equivalent amount of exercise without getting transportation in return?

Plus, did I miss something, or was food not counted as a renewable resource? While agriculture is not carbon neutral, it's also not a 100% carbon source.

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 thus cause less emissions. That is hardly an attractive option.

It is better to start with the most avoidable emissions first. Driving is obviously more avoidable than respiration, and coal fired electricity generation is likely even more avoidable. After that the next step will be to reduce the CO2 footprint of food production as well as changing to a diet with lower CO2 footprint.

Comparisons like the one in the article only give the message that it is really nothing you can effectively do about climate change, so why not continue as usual.

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 wonder about the numbers on the carbon trade-off there!