wolfchild

Anything to do with electric vehicles. renewable energy, e-bikes etc is just about politics....Politicians know how to manipulate people to get votes from them.

livedarklions

So you're pretending that burning non-renewable fossil fuels isn't actually posing an environmental threat?

Take that bs to P&R.

wolfchild

Manufacturing of electric vehicles, e-bikes, batteries and an entire cycling industry is heavily dependent on using fossil fuels...Carbon fiber manufacturing is more polluting and requires a lot more more energy from fossil fuels than steel manufacturing...Personally I don't even believe in man-made climate change and all the carbon footprint non-sense, so it makes no difference to me. It's all about politics and politicians hungering for more power. These type of threads have nothing to do with cycling and should be posted in P & R...

livedarklions

If it's legislation possibly affecting the costs of some type of bicycle, and I include ebikes, then I think it's fair game for discussion on General Cycling. When you start blathering on about whether you believe in climate change, then you're drifting off into generalized politics, which really doesn't belong here.

indyfabz

Posted in P&R? Try to keep up.

indyfabz

Not possible, at least at this time​​​​​​.

mstateglfr 

In other words...'I am wrong, but I will not admit I am wrong, even though I recognize I am wrong and explain why I was wrong.'

mschwett 

i mean, this is the same person who also said

im not sure if it’s willful ignorance, irony, or something else. sure, there are those who debate the semantics but carbon dioxide emissions from human and human supporting activities is considered by most (not all) to be a pollutant. ruled by the supreme court in 2007 and affirmed by hundreds of studies since.

UniChris

Except that the main point of the post you attacked was actually this:


Everyone knows actual cyclists run on gels and beer.

livedarklions

Actually, my quote, if you had any reading comprehension at all, was referring to ebikes specifically. CO2 emissions are not the primary ecological concerns with the batteries and motors.

If you're claiming that I denied CO2 was a major pollutant, you're either lying or completely illiterate.

livedarklions

No, I admitted I misread their number, but the way they wrote that number caused my misreading. I'm not sure I've ever seen someone put a decimal point immediately to the right of a colon before.
": .12 lb CO2e" is friggin' hard to read in a sentence on a tablet. When they responded to my error, they announce it's "ZERO POINT TWELVE pounds" like that's what they wrote. Notice the "ZERO"? That wasn't there, and it's a pretty great example of why we have that convention.

Now, you want to explain what the comparison between ebikes and human-powered bikes has to do with the comparison of the carbon footprint of beef production vs. other foods? Because I don't know about you, but I don't think grossly exaggerating the carbon footprint of pedaling a bicycle is a rhetorical strategy we should encourage.

livedarklions

If they're serious about the subject, they should go crazy about the ecological impact of keto diets.

mstateglfr 

I do not want to explain the comparison you asked about.

livedarklions

Nah, you'd rather do a drive-by cheap shot.

mstateglfr 

Or maybe I don't want to explain it because I don't fully follow it.
I also don't want to explain quantum mechanics.

UniChris

Exactly. So much of the benefit of habitual utility cycling would be as an alternative route to health that's not a high-resource-cost fad diet.

If someone's actually burning up enough energy propelling themselves that they need to up the energy content of their food intake, the difference can be low impact sources like grains.

Commuting on an e-bike isn't quite driving a fuel vehicle to the gym, but it's removing one of the huge benefits of cycling, and still leaving most of the main sticking points like:

- rain
- cold (actually makes that worse!)
- snow & ice
- safety on poorly designed roads that see driver misbehavior
- travel time (if the motor is substantially shortening that, it's also making things less safe)
- personal safety
- bike storage / theft
- child hauling capacity
- grocery hauling capacity
- complications of going into additional stores after making large volume purchases at the first

It's hard to think of many trips not presently made by bike, where putting a motor on the bike would make change the decision - maybe if someone has a short commute in extremely hilly terrain, or needs to pull kids in a trailer.

The more likely actual wins for those "bike is a hard sell" trip are going to be compact plug-in ev's with the weather independence, capacity, and security people are accustomed to from their cars.

What "normalizing e-bikes" is likely to actually do, is make the idea of simply pedaling a bicycle seem to the mainstream something best reserved for pre-teen children below 12 or whatever when they get their first motorized one, and oddball lycra types, rather than something very practical in its own right.

livedarklions

So to be clear, you chose to jump into an argument you don't understand just to accuse me of.... something?

mstateglfr 

No, I chose to jump in and respond to something I found funny.
I like responding to things that humor me.

I understand your point and the other poster's point. I haven't opined on that topic because I don't know if what the other poster is accurate in their claims. To be clear, I think it's odd to compare the things that poster has compared..

livedarklions

So falsely accusing me of lying is funny? Have a nice day.

mstateglfr 

Nope, I didn't falsely accuse you of lying.

I will walk away so that you can hopefully move on from my observation.

livedarklions

Now you're lying. You accused me of denying by omission that I was wrong about his math, which would have been a lie. I didn't deny it, as you note I explained why I made the error. What exactly did I fail to "admit"?

You accused me of something I didn't do because you found it " funny". Yes, I take offense at your "observation".
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