He has now compensated all his gliding incuced emitted CO2 for more than a decade of flying for less than 200€.
How does he get airborne?
Peter wrote:
How does he get airborne?
I guess by winch mostly…
You should have said ‘solar powered winch’ to prevent falling for Peter’s trick question 
Perhaps by 6 strong guys hauling on a large piece of elastic?
DH launch?
alioth wrote:
Perhaps by 6 strong guys hauling on a large piece of elastic?
Depending on the diet of these 6 strong guys that easily can cause more carbon emissions than a start on a winch.
Many people wrongly think that physical activity has no carbon footprint – not true as you somehow have to compensate for the calories you burn during that activities. If you recover the calories by eating filet mignon as an extreme case going somewhere by bike has actually a worse carbon footprint than using a Ferrari.
If you are on a more balanced diet, it’s obviously not as extreme. You need, however, pick your food very carefully to beat an efficient diesel car with the bike…
Have you ever tried one of those bikes with a calorie counter attached? It takes forever to burn up the calories in a Mars bar:)
Malibuflyer wrote:
If you recover the calories by eating filet mignon as an extreme case going somewhere by bike has actually a worse carbon footprint than using a Ferrari.
That’s actually not true: the worst that has been shown with reasonable numbers that one guy, riding like a TdF rider and who has a paleo high meat diet might have a worse carbon footprint per passenger mile than 5 vegans in a Prius, and the “proof” of this had ignored the carbon footprint of drilling, refining, transporting the oil and the construction of the car while including all the transport and production costs of the meat. It also hugely overestimated the calorie usage of the bike rider.
A 90kg biker riding at 20km/h burns about 700kcal per hr – that is 3500kcal per 100km.
Filet Mignon has about 35kg CO2 emission per 1000kcal. that is 122,5kg CO2 per 100km of cycling.
A Ferrari SF90 stradale emits 205g/km in WLTP that is 20,5kg per 100km – even if real emission is three times of that this is clearly below the beef eating cyclist.
Even if you feed yourself only by tomatoes, you can still drive your Ferrari at double the WLTP consumption and emit less than cycling.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Even if you feed yourself only by tomatoes, you can still drive your Ferrari at double the WLTP consumption and emit less than cycling.
I find that dubious in the real world, and using a 90kg (obese) rider also a dubious way to try to prove the point.
Total CO2 emissions per litre burned (once you include extraction and refining) of petrol is 3140g per litre. My Honda Civic does 6.28L/100km in real world driving conditions. So about 19.7kg per 100km, in the real world for a Honda Civic, not a Ferrari. (The cited Ferrari SF90 is average of 20.4L/100km – or 14mpg, which sounds reasonable for such a car, or in reality 64kg/100km CO2e). For the kinds of journeys that a 90kg bike rider will be doing (short range utility riding) the Ferrari will be even worse (start stop driving).
You also have to subtract from the cyclists calories per hour the calories that are required to simply be alive. If the Ferrari driver wants to have a good quality of life, they must exercise. Exercising in a gym burns those calories for no good reason, but if they leave the Ferrari at home and cycle to work they get required exercise as a side effect of transport instead of pointlessly burning those calories in the gym. And if they are getting plenty of exercise they probably aren’t going to be 90kg!
I’m also highly skeptical of the figures for calories for cycling cited. I cycle commute 40km a day, but there’s no way I eat 1200 cal extra per day when I’m riding compared to the days I’m not, that would be a huge amount of extra food – essentially almost two entire extra meal’s worth compared to a sedentary day! (This is where the phrase “you can’t outrun your fork” comes from – exercise burns surprisingly little additional energy over what is required to just be alive, and people often wonder why they struggle to lose weight despite starting exercise). A basal metabolic rate calculator estimates only 500kcal extra per day compared to being sedentary, and even that seems like an overestimate based on real world experience. The kicker is if I chose to drive to work instead of cycle commute, I’d still have to burn those 500 extra kcal per day just to remain healthy (e.g. by running or going to a gym), but instead they’d be being burned without producing the side effect of transportation.
