Re: Electric bikes?

On 2009-09-09, Just zis Guy, you know? <guy.chapman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 09 Sep 2009 17:18:59 +0100 (BST), David Damerell
<damerell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But you weren't planning to eat the extra food you need to power the
bicycle.

I currently eat about the same as I did when I was 17 stone. I weigh
13 stone and ride briskly for over an hour most days. I don't know
where the extra used to go but I suspect that a lot of what inactive
people eat is simply excreted because it is so far in excess of their
body's needs (and a fair bit that is processed, turns to fat). There
are non-cyclists who go to the gym to manage their weight (what's the
energy cost of that, with its air-conditioned rooms full of expensive
machinery?) and a lot of overweight people, but the group of inactive
people who are not overweight is of unknown size.

If you want to get down to the final details I think it will be a very
complex equation. It will have to include things like tyres,
replacement components, disposal of waste oil, energy costs of
manufacture and disposal of vehicles (as noted elsewhere), energy
costs of cycle clothing (mostly man-made fibres) and so on.

The food mix will also be important. Is a cyclist who eats organic
and vegetarian food bought from local markets actually imposing more
food-related energy costs on the environment than a non-cyclist who
eats processed and junk food?

Vegetarian food saves some solar energy, but why should organic farming
or buying things from local markets be more energy-efficient (and why
save solar energy anyway)?

Organic farming as I understand it means basically not using chemical
fertilizers and pesticides. That's got to mean more labour and lower
yields, hence more energy per unit of potatoes or whatever, unless it
really takes that much more energy to produce the chemicals (which I
doubt, because of the economies of scale).

A similar argument applies to local markets. Growing loads of something
the same in huge fields in East Anglia and raking it all up in one go is
likely to be more energy-efficient than managing little tiny plots all
over the place. Yes you've got to then transport it, but you can fit an
awful lot into a lorry.

Are the overlaps of different eating patterns in any way correlated
with mode, or are they completely random and thus can be controlled
out? In my experience cyclists tend to be rather more aware of what
they eat than non-cyclists, though dieters and gym rats are also less
likely to eat crap. But then again, the foods sold by popular diet
plans are often overpackaged.

And then you get to the really tricky bit: what proportion of the
energy cost of maintaining roads should we apportion to each mode? A
cycle road is substantially less massive than a road built for motor
traffic as well - narrower and with much less depth. How about the
energy costs of parking spaces?

You could try these: http://www.solarroadways.com.
.

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