Cycling isn't green - apparently.

Parkey

Or so this guy believes in his response to a (completely unrelated) article in the Nottingham Evening Post.

Here's the quote, which I found so amusing I simply had to share it with you all:

...If you fail to understand how a "clean" and "green" vehicle like a cycle can be responsible for as much pollution as a car that's because you can't, or won't, understand that cycles are responsible for a very large amount of pollution in relation to the mileage they do (especially if manufactured in and shipped from China), and that pedalling cyclists pump out a lot of excess CO2 per mile in comparion to a resting car passenger.

Mr B J Mann, Nottingham

So stop pedalling so hard everybody! You're destroying the planet.

What a genius!

homercles

BJ Mann? Come on, he's taking the p* surely??

Docgeoffyjones

Fundamently this guy is saying if you really care about the enviroment you should'nt breath as much?

Parkey

homercles wrote:

BJ Mann? Come on, he's taking the p* surely??

I thought he was, but he's deadly serious. A little bit of digging reveals he's spammed loads of articles on that and many other news websites much to the irritation of everyone else using them.

Poacher

The guy's a complete pain in the backside, always getting nonsense like that published in the Nottingham Evening Post, and arguing black is white. If you want a laugh, visit his website Bogush

Eat My Dust

It's true..........that is.....there's a co_ck born every minute!!!

Parkey

What a sad little website. It even has a forum where hardly anybody but him posts, and those that do only do so to berate him.

Almost makes me start to feel sorry for the guy.

Almost.

eternal_headwind

The bicycle made in China has minor validity, but compared to a car made in China it represents a carbon saving even if you assume every car is always full to capacity for every journey. Perhaps Mr Mann is under the impression that motor vehicles are produced in local shops on the high street?
Last I checked I run on renewable energy (something called food) and am therefore almost carbon neutral. I say almost because there is a family tradition of cremation, but this is cycling independant.
I suppose you could argue that consuming non locally produced food would have an impact via transport emissions, and cycling would exacerbate this, but really...

I like the bit about a fast pedalling cyclist and the car passenger at rest. No doubt the car itself is excluded from the calculation.

The Bogush website is unpleasant. Part of me wants to berate them but mostly I want to sort out their source code. The thing is painful to look at.

BigWomble

Eternal_headwind wrote:

The bicycle made in China has minor validity, but compared to a car made in China it represents a carbon saving even if you assume every car is always full to capacity for every journey. Perhaps Mr Mann is under the impression that motor vehicles are produced in local shops on the high street?
Last I checked I run on renewable energy (something called food) and am therefore almost carbon neutral. I say almost because there is a family tradition of cremation, but this is cycling independant.
I suppose you could argue that consuming non locally produced food would have an impact via transport emissions, and cycling would exacerbate this, but really...

I like the bit about a fast pedalling cyclist and the car passenger at rest. No doubt the car itself is excluded from the calculation.

The Bogush website is unpleasant. Part of me wants to berate them but mostly I want to sort out their source code. The thing is painful to look at.

I wanted to respond earlier, but couldn't find the web-page I was looking for:

http://constructal.blogspot.com/2006/03 ... cycle.html

I guess there are two ways of thinking about this. One is that bicycles are not as energy efficient as is usually thought. The other is that car drivers eat that much anyway, and burn it off down the gym, or put it on as extra weight.

MattBlackBigBoysBMX

It's not worth discussing.
Anyone trying to say that cars are greener than bikes is either a trolling liar or an idiot.

Incidently, my car was made in the UK, my bike came from America.

eternal_headwind

A car made in the UK? Surely that's a steaming great lie?

The problem with this line of thinking is that about 50 or so lazy and incompetent journalists will pick up the lie and spread it around. One hard working and talented journalist will research, consider and be ignored.

chrisjsmith

I used to work for the Nottingham Evening Post - they post any old shit as not a whole lot happens in Nottingham.

Just to add, it's completely hyprocritical of them to print this. NEP's offices are in Nottingham city center. If you go there on a nice hot sunny day, you can see the pollution decreasing visibility to less than 1km on a bad day! I now live in South West London and it's cleaner there. There are also more cyclists compared to Nottingham.