Never Really Thought it would Happen

meanredspider

Well let's add some numbers just to make some sense of this

a 50cc moped does about 100mpg or (round numbers) 20 miles per litre

a litre of fuel produces 2.5kg of CO2 or 2500g per 20 miles or 120g per mile

A human breath apparently generates 1g of CO2

At 15mph a mile takes 4 minutes

The question then is do you breath more than 30 times a min? I think it has to be close.

I think we can discount the energy it takes to get/produce the food & the fuel.

The clincher though is that the moped rider will be breathing too.

t4tomo

SimonAH wrote:

I'm very disappointed. I thought this thread was going to be about a girl from Clapham.

:-)

no really?

JamesB5446

A cyclist will be taking much bigger breaths than the person on a moped though.

On the other hand, most scooter riders are fat skin heads and they probably eat more food than the average cyclist.

meanredspider

JamesB5446 wrote:

A cyclist will be taking much bigger breaths than the person on a moped though.

Of course - but I think the numbers for the cyclist and the moped are pretty close - so the difference is probably the moped rider.

Headhuunter

JamesB5446 wrote:

A cyclist will be taking much bigger breaths than the person on a moped though.

On the other hand, most scooter riders are fat skin heads and they probably eat more food than the average cyclist.

There are too many variables to make it comparable. As you say, the moped rider might be a fat bloke who eats a lot of imported food with lots of "food miles" on it as well as riding the moped, the cyclist on the other hand may eat locally sourced food which he/she picks up himself from a local farmer.... or it could be the other way round. However the fact remains that the moped rider has to eat AND consume petrol (which is also transported many miles by tanker ship and truck, both producing CO2), whereas the cyclist only needs to eat. The question is what does the cyclist eat?

SimonAH

Fair trade cardboard.

SimonAH

If you're worried about CO2 though consider concrete. I'm sure I read somewhere that one tonne of concrete involves the production of one tonne of CO2. Both the cyclist and the mopedder can go a very long way on one curbstone.