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Comment by allthetime | Hacker News Reader

Just here to remind you all about bicycles.

Climate and terrain allowing, bicycles reign supreme as a transport. Especially with all the new adaptive-, electric-, accessible- cycles out there, cars should be "rare but welcome strange guests" in many neighborhoods, downtowns, etc.

As you mentioned, electric bicycles flatten terrains (so do wide gear ranges), and jackets neutralize climate. There seriously isn't anywhere that is inappropriate to cycle. The only major limiting factor for people feeling comfortable biking everywhere is the threat of violence due to people driving cars.

Lightening is another limit. I'm going to drive to work today because there is a 20% chance of thunderstorm when I'm planning to going home, and that is too much risk.

Without studded tires it’s very difficult to ride a bike on snow or ice.

Have you ever tried on snow ? Many bikers roams winter Finland and Russia without studded tires.

Avoiding the ice is a great advice indeed, with or without those tires.

Actually no I can’t recall the last time I tried to ride a bike in the snow. But I know inherently that snow itself would be alright, but snow is almost always accompanied by a layer of ice below, which simply can’t be fine. This is the case in Canada at least.

Fun fact:

e-bikes are more climate friendly than human-powered bikes.

5 grams CO2 equivalent emissions per mile e-bike, 40 grams per mile for human eating exclusively bananas. Much, much worse for other dietary choices. Embodied carbon emissions in the bike itself are essentially equivalent.

The Carbon Footprint of Everything (2022)

The carbon in food is not captured or emitted in any coherent sense here. The crops are grown (capturing the carbon in the first place) for the purpose of feeding people -- in the same way that modern American forestry for paper is functionally carbon neutral (ignoring transport and processing) because the trees are in equilibrium. The counterfactual of not eating the food results in fewer crops and basically the same atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Edit: if you only mean food transportation carbon, it seems impossible bananas are literally optimal per calorie.

From the end notes, I think the author's response would be that the carbon equivalent emissions come from the fossil fuel used in growing, fertilizing, harvesting, transporting, refrigerating, packaging, and so-on.

The larger point of the book is that specific accounting is messy, but if we proceed anyway we can get to the rough orders of magnitude that are more useful.

Bananas are like transport and refrigerator maxing! It can't possibly be the literal optimum of that metric.

Is this accounting for the production of batteries and electrical components?

That asked, some things I do for myself, and self-propelling is great for my health and longevity.

Yes. I wrote a paper on it a long time ago. Even on the lowest carbon footprint, vegan, diet and even with coal power and even accounting for production and lifetime costs, electric bicycles have a smaller footprint than walking or traditional bicycles. Probably even more so now as the numbers I were using were 20 years ago when e-bikes were not fully enjoying economies of scale.

E-bikes are really power efficient, and food production is very inefficient. Your average American commute probably uses less power per day than a refrigerator.

That said, it’s not really meaningful when comparing to the carbon footprint of driving. Diet and e-bike vs bike just really does not matter compared to the choice of driving an ICE or not driving an ICE. It’s more of just a neat fact.

I wait impatiently for the vegan e-biker dominated future

Motorcycles broadcast an equal amount of data as bicycles.

Are you sure? Motorcycles already have computers, it isn't a stretch to think they could broadcast data about you. Maybe they are a decade behind cars in doing this, but I doubt it is anything else.

Bicycles don't have enough power to spare to broadcast data. (but my ebike could and I wouldn't notice the difference)

Yes. Point out the modem.

https://www.bike-parts-honda.com/honda-motorcycle/500-MOTO/R...

You are confusing what currently is for what will be. Even if there is no modem today, what makes you think they won't do one in the future?

You could argue this for any mobile product, including bicycles. There are already subsidized trackers for them. It isn't much of a distance to the future when someone is to just build them into the frame.

License plate, drivers license, gas purchases.

That isn't the car manufacturer being evil, that's your government.

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