Bicyclists are a drain on the environment?? #2

Now I'm actually reading the article, and there are some interesting little
facts along the way.

There's also a discussion on rec.bicycles.misc here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.misc/browse_frm/thread/a6a739a9a02b0b59/37366830108b9b3a?hl=en#37366830108b9b3a

Some of those facts:

Average automobile in US uses 3.8 MJ/km. This is substantially higher than
the average for the OECD countries of 2.5 MJ/km. So, roughly speaking, if we
drove the smaller, more efficient vehicles common elsewhere in the developed
world we could drive just as far just as often and still use one-third less
gasoline.

A person on a bicycle uses 17kJ/km directly, or 77kJ/km in terms of food
energy (since the ratio of work done to food energy consumed is about 22%).
The energy required to produce, process, and transform the food is 5.75
times greater than the energy in the food, so the total energy cost is about
0.44MJ/km, or about 1/6 to 1/9th that of the automobile.  There's a lot of
difference between 17kj and 440kj, which might explain some of the
discrepancies in some of the discussions on this newsgroup over time over
the food energy cost of cycling.

Several dozen studies show exercise expenditure of 4.2 mJ/wk (about 1000
kcal, or what we usually call 1000 calories) is associated with a reduction
in all-cause mortality.

The fatality rate (from accidents) is assumed to be 12 times as high per
kilometer for cycling as for driving. Fatalities, of course, lower future
energy consumption.

Increasing logevity does not change end-of-life healthcare requirements, but
extends the healthy years.

Ulrich's conclusion is that bicycling that replaces automobile use (even if
you still own the automobile) lowers total per capita energy consumption
from all sources by -.005 (i.e. half of 1%), even allowing for the increased
energy used by living longer.  0.5% is well within the error range of his
analysis, so the effect could be zero.

However, if your biking kilometers don't replace automotive use, you don't
save energy, but still live longer. Therefore your energy use increases by
.037 (3.7%)  This makes sense -- many of us have noted that driving to a
ride uses up energy rather than saves it.

Electric scooters or electric bicycles have similar energy patterns and
fatality patterns as a bicycle (they just use electricity instead of food),
but don't increase longevity. Therefore, they have a more positive impact on
energy use over a lifetime.

As others have noted, Ulrich assumes the cyclist still owns the same number
of vehicles so he misses the energy benefits of not manufacturing the car.
Are there a lot of such people with "one less car" in their household (who
aren't posting on this newsgroup)? Is there an estimate somewhere of how
many? If there were such an estimate, this could be factored in.

All in all, the study documents its assumptions and is presented in a clear
manner and is worth a look.

Earl wondered who paid for the research. The paper doesn't say, but Ulrich
does have another bicycle paper in his resume, and this usually doesn't
indicate hostility:

Taylor Randall and Karl Ulrich, "Product Variety, Supply Chain Structure,
and Firm Performance: Analysis of the U.S. Bicycle Industry," Management
Science, Vol. 47, No. 12, December 2001, p. 1588-1604.

There's also this chapter:

Karl Ulrich, Taylor Randall, Marshall Fisher, and David Reibstein, "Managing
Product Variety: A Study of the Bicycle Industry," in Managing Product
Variety, Tech-Hua Ho and Chris Tang (editors), Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1998.

There's a bit of small-world theory involved here, since I just presented a
paper extending one of Reibstein's other models at an INFORMS conference,
(and Management Science is an INFORMS journal).

Bicyclists are a drain on the environment?? #1

I'm indebted to Richard B for this gem:

"Research by UPenn professor Karl Ulrich came to the conclusion that
bicycles offer little benefit to the environment.

Why you may ask...

Because Cyclists live longer and therefore are more of a drain on energy
and resources!

Here is a link to the research paper in Adobe format.
http://tinyurl.com/eae2d:   or

http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~ulrich/documents/ulrich-cycling-enviro-jul06.pdf "

This reminds me of some of the old smoking arguments.
Governments argued that they should be compensated because of the cost of
taking care of sick smokers.
Tobacco companies argued that no compensation was appropriate because, since
smokers died sooner, they collected overall less in government benefits over
their lifetimes.

As I work on retirement planning -- retirement not being imminent, but
planning being necessary -- it's pretty clear that one of the big factors in
how much money I need to save up in retirement is how long I should plan on
living after retirement.

 

Where to deleted characters go?

Although many of these entries read as though nobody even wrote them, let alone bothered to edit them, there is a certain amount of re-reading and editing going on. In the course of this, the backspace and delete keys are used heavily. 

So, where do those deleted characters go?

The laws of thermodynamics would seem somewhat relevant here. If letters can be neither created nor destroyed, then am I really destroying them? Do they go into some sort of letter sink, waiting to be recycled (self-plagarized) later?

If a humorous sentence is deleted, do the characters go to live in the Old Jokes Home?

What about quantum effects? When I delete something here, does it show up in somebody else's blog in some parallel universe? (In reverse, this effect would explain why sometimes these entries look like they were written by somebody else not in complete contact with this universe.)

More answers here: http://www.JumboJoke.com/ask_the_computer_guy_755.html 

Home bike mechanics prayer

    God, grant me the courage to fix what I can
    The money to let somebody else fix what I can't
    And the wisdom to know the difference.

Triking Grandmother Triumphs

The grand award winner float at the local July 4th parade consisted of an 80+ year old woman on a tricycle "towing" a pickup truck full of people (her children, grandchildren, and maybe a great-grandchild in there).

 

Nancy switched to the trike a few years ago because balance problems made it hard for her to ride her regular bike, and she's a frequent sight around the neighborhood -- and an inspiration to those a generation or more younger.

Chase reluctant to give me my money, part 2

In a previous entry, I noted the difficulty I had getting OUR money from a matured CD out of Chase Bank:

http://journals.aol.com/mikekr/ZbicyclistsZlog/entries/750

So, last Friday I had another one that had renewed. Given wise advice from my wife, I decided to try a different branch.

Different branch, same experience. [Well, this time, I didn't lose my temper but it took even longer, about an hour and fifteen minutes from the time I first asked to get my money. I'm not counting wait time.] Obviously, Chase wants to make the experience of getting your money out so painful that you will renew the CD's even though their rate is over 1% lower than competition.

So, it's obviously not the banker him/her self. And it's obviously not the branch. It must be the entire bank. I plan to continue my current policy of moving CD's and other accounts from Chase as they mature.