tomato coupe

oooooh. The odds of thread lock just jumped 87%.

wolfchild

Some types of innovation within bike industry are great and there is no doubt that there have been improvements, but there are also some which are just pointless.

BillyD

Pardon me for veering off topic just a little, but can you imagine the cataclysm that would result if that was a pile of carbon bikes, and they detonated?

BillyD

I couldn't resist.

VegasJen

Why? I'm not the one injecting politics into this thread. It started off that way. Should have been posted in Politics from the beginning.

tomato coupe

I didn't say it was totally your fault. But, you nudged it closer ...

tomato coupe

Apparently, all those bikes quit working when the manufacturer switched to a different head set standard on their new bikes. This is what incompatibility does.

cyccommute 

Somewhat agree. I find most any article that says bicycling is planet harming to be akin to the biblical references to motes and logs and eyes. Automobiles are around in greater numbers and have a far larger carbon footprint than bicycles ever will.

While I agree, I did find the amount of carbon dioxide output for making virgin carbon fiber to be somewhat staggering. To make virgin steel from ore to finished product, roughly 5 tons of CO2 is produced per ton of steel. For aluminum, it’s 16 tons CO2/ton of aluminum. For carbon fiber, 29.5 tons of CO2 is produced for each ton of carbon fiber. That is a huge footprint! Less carbon fiber is made than steel and it takes less carbon fiber to equal steel but that’s still a large initial deficit.

Additionally, the amount of energy needed to recycle steel and aluminum drops significantly. For steel, recycling of the steel produces about 5 times less carbon dioxide…1.4 tons CO2/ton of steel. Recycling aluminum reduces the carbon even more dramatically…0.5 tons of CO2/ton of aluminum.

Carbon fiber is problematic since the fiber is difficult to recycle. Currently the fiber is pyrolized to recycle which requires a considerable amount of fuel to do. Recycled carbon fiber does significantly reduce the carbon footprint but only to about 4.5 tons CO2/ton of recycled carbon fiber. That’s almost the same as virgin steel.

Yes, his estimates seem low for a lifetime of a bicycle. Although from my own records of bicycles…40 of them…I average only about 2600 miles per bike with a high of 22,000 lifetime miles and a low of 57 miles. Four of those bikes were disposed of because they broke (3) or were wrecked due to a car accident (1). Most of the rest passed out of my hands so I have no idea how long they lasted.

But, over all, the article has a bit too much self-flagellation to be taken seriously.

cyccommute 

Even biodegradable vehicles aren’t that “sustainable”, particularly at our current population level and current plant production levels.

VegasJen

I don't live in an echo chamber.

shelbyfv

Yeehaw! We don't need no pointy head science! Hold my beer....

mstateglfr 

The author is complaining about cheaply made mass produced transit bikes?

Fredo76

The "hysteria" arises not so much from immanence, as from inevitability. Nothing, including mass death, will prevent it. It's effin' SCHEDULED.

C'mon, sing along! "We are marching to Dystopia..."

I do agree that avoiding fancy bicycles won't help a bit, though.

mstateglfr 

That isn't the same math though. You are just claiming so as a way to try and inject your views of a tangentially related topic into the conversation.
You aren't actually adding to the conversation. Your response didn't address the quoted post it was tied to and your response isn't even true.

It's really sad to see how common this type of behavior is on message boards and in social media. It shows the person saying it actually thinks they made a good point.
It all goes back to what Carlin said- think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize half the people are stupider than that. Many people are too dumb to even realize, upon reflection, that what they said was dumb.

BillyD

You're trying too hard to push this political. Not good.

jon c. 

Appreciate your expertise in this arena.

Koyote

Dunning Kruger Effect. Also, traces of confirmation bias and the backfire effect.

Maelochs

Regarding the Thunburger .... yes, she has been commodfied, yes, she has been co-opted but seriously ... he re is an uncommonly intelligent young lady with mild Aspbergers who is honest and aware enough to see that all the adults in the room are saying "The world is ending" while thinking, " ... but it won't end until I am dead." Greta T is complaining because it Will end .... whatever form that takes .... while She is alive, and she is absolutely right about that. Selfish, childish hyper-consumerism at every level has pushed us past the tipping point, where Nothing which could be done in the next couple decades will make any real difference. We have stupidly crapped in our nest, our food and water supplies, everywhere we could dump crap, and now we are being forced to eat a little more crap every day .... and by the time Great T is middle-aged, there will be only crap to eat. Not too surprised she is upset.

Sure, the Left has made a huge, overblown thing out of her .... but even an idiot can speak the truth. And only idiots, when they hear an unpleasant truth, deny the truth and ridicule the messenger. We have well and truly rogered this planet, and we will be seeing the costs increase slowly and steadily for quite a time to come. Our grandkids will wonder how we could have been so stupid .... and all I can say is, it has taken a lot of people a huge amount of effort to be so idiotic and ignorant for so long.

Yeah, some of climate change is just naturally cyclic climatic fluctuations which have always happened ... read a little history. Problem is, "climate change" is just a buzzword which describes the entire mindset of using the entire planet as a wastebasket, and then wondering why we are poisoned by our trash. It is more than seas levels ..... and we are going to be forced to accept what we can now afford to deny.

The most wonderful and simultaneously the most horrible aspect of reality----sooner or later we get what we deserve. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

PeteHski

"The main reason why I have opted for old bicycles is that they are much better than new bicycles. Most people don’t realize that"

Hard to take the article seriously with comments like this. Is sustainability the author's real agenda here? Or is it just a rant about modern bikes and tech?

veganbikes

Yes because children cannot think on their own and anytime they do it must be abuse on the parents part? That is poppycock. If you want to talk child abuse look up Hans Asperger to whom people still name that syndrome after even with his history.

Child abuse is no joke! Having known victims of child abuse and grown up around two medical professionals who spent their careers working with children, I can say it isn't funny and quite terrible when it happens and will effect you for the rest of your life. It doesn't have anything to do with politics and shouldn't be dragged in the muck of politics it is just an abhorrent practice that has nothing to do with free thinking children.

Fredo76

From the article:

Low quality affects some parts of expensive bicycles but is especially problematic for cheap bicycles made entirely of low-quality components. Cheap bicycles – bike mechanics refer to them as “built-to-fail bikes” or “bike-shaped objects” – often have plastic parts that break easily and cannot be replaced or upgraded. These vehicles typically last only a few months.

drlogik 

I'm not sure I understand the point of this article.

The choice is ours. Do we want to live in the modern age, or do we want to go back to 10,000 years ago, or even 3,000 years ago?

Do we want Tik Tok, Gmail, Instagram, iPhones, electric cars, Nike shoes, Patagonia shirts, Pelotons, motorcycles, electric power, running water, flushing toilets, Dawn dish washing liquid, Kindle books, advanced weaponry to send to the bottomless pit of Ukraine, air conditioning, heat in our apartment or home, Lululemon pants and shirts, rechargeable portable appliances (lithium-powered), AirPods, ApplyPay, modern medicine, modern medications, covid masks, water bottles, fancy coffee, electric scooters, electric bikes, anything electric powered at all, solar panels, wind farms, beanie caps, hemp clothing, "organic" vegetables and fruits, and yeah, steel, aluminum or carbon bikes, etc, etc, etc, etc...?

The choice is ours. I don't care how conscientious, how environmentally or ecologically responsible, a person is (including Greta the hypocrite). ALL of it requires energy and raw materials to produce and a certain margin of by-products to provide us with everything we use every day. If we all are willing to give up the things above, then let's tear everything down and go back to the way humans lived 10,000 years ago when the glaciers that covered almost all of North America finally melted.

BillyD

Give me my iPhone and my Dawn dishwashing liquid.

shelbyfv

I like my Kindle and my wife likes her lululemon () but no kids. Do we get a pass since our transgressions end with us?

Fredo76

While I totally agree with your "drop in the bucket" point above, I would point out that it is possible to criticize marketing-driven manufacturing decisions without denigrating any riders, or their rides, even. Feeling judged for riding carbon seems a bit Rorschach to me. Criticizing trends in the bicycle industry is not the same as criticizing you.

Anyway, have a great trip!