No one tell them how many calories are in a tank of gas
That’s cute. No other personal vehicle beats the caloric efficiency of a bicycle, and it’s not even close. They’re very literally one of the most impressive feats of engineering that human kind has ever invented.
Electric bikes are more efficient one.
This actually would be an interesting study.
Alright, I’ll take the bait. Let’s do some recreational math
This web page contains average passenger car fuel efficiency broken down by year. The most recent year available is 2016, so we’ll use that: 9.4 km/L or 22.1 miles per gallon. A gallon of gas has about 120MJ of energy in it. So, an average car requires about 120,000,000 / (1/22.1) = 5.4MJ per mile
This web page has calories burned for different types of exercise. I separately searched and found that the average adult in the US weighs around 200LBS, so we’ll use the 205LBS data, and I’m going to assume that “cycling - 10-11.9 MPH” is representative of the average commuter who isn’t in too much of a hurry. That gives us 558 calories per hour, or 55.8 calories per mile (using the low end of the 10 to 11.9mph range). That’s equal to about 0.23MJ per mile (as an aside, it’s important to note that the calories commonly used when talking about diet and exercise, are actual kilocalories equal to 1000 of the SI calories you learned about in school.)
Moral of the story: an average bike ride consumes around 20x less energy than an average drive of the same distance.
We also gotta keep in mind that cycling makes people healthier, so it has that benefit, and that it can also potentially replace some exercise people would be doing otherwise, in which case you’re basically moving for free since you would have expanded those calories anyways.
Worth noting that cars can fit more people in them than bikes can.
So with that in mind, clearly the true moral of the story is that clown cars are the most efficient method of travel.
First thought is this is sublime shithousery.
Every type of anti-environmental person seems to just have no grasp of numbers as a concept. I worked in wind for a while and one coworker was a guy taking a break from the oilfield. He really thought he had something when he was like ‘golly is that an oil based lubricant? in a supposedly green energy? hyuk hyuk looks like oil isn’t going anywhere.’[this is barely an exaggeration he was a walking caricature of a hick] Just absolutely 0 ability to perceive a difference between burning 100 gallons a day of something vs using 10 gallons a year.
Haha lol, assuming people in cars count calories and or operate on minimal / in a deficit. Regardless of the car argument, people riding bikes are more likely to be counting calories and in a calorie deficit, as they’re more health conscious. People driving cars wouldn’t care as much, on average, and would consume more calories than necessary, probably triple the “cycling” extra calorie needs. Omfg. I could debate either side, if I had to, that’s the stupidest take I’ve ever heard. It holds absolutely no water. Where’s the data showing people in cars consume less food / calories.
Trains are very energy efficient. Is this person advocating for putting trains on every road?
Ohh noooo. I guess if it’s the only way.
I’m pretty sure overweight tommy incel the reddit mod eats more than twice what I eat and has never touched a bike in his life
We’re more energy effiecient than cars.
That used to be true. But modern cars with modern engines have better thermal efficiency than humans.
This is from a purely thermal efficiency standpoint. Not taking any environmental factors into play.
Right since as soon as you start looking into how that car was made and how the energy that ends up in those batteries is produced, the legs win again.
Yup, but cyclists not carrying a ton of metal and plastic is also a factor.
That when Cyclist tags in their match buddy, Train.
Yes, cars’ physics might be more efficient, but when a ton of car is being used to carry just a single person, it becomes inefficient for the job.
Couldn’t really find any sources, but honestly it sounds reasonable enough. Engines are way more specialized for their single mechanical task than our legs are.
Of course you also move around way, way more weight most of the time. The mass/payload ratio is way worse with cars than with bikes so the comparable thermal efficiency would need to be greater to make up for that.
Beyond being a curiosity it is a moot point anyways. Humans need exercise to be healthy, and as you said, there are other environmental factors like car construction, gas refinement, etc. That I imagine mostly favour bikes too.
So, e-bikes for efficiency, then?
While this is probably true (I have no idea, so I just gonna trust you on that one) its still pretty stupid if someone would bring that as an legitimate argument
This is…certainly a take.
And yet cyclists still consume less per day than that 400 lb dude in an F150.
You don’t get it, a healthy menu consumes much more volume of food that needs to be transported, per capita. Imagine if everyone ordered a head of lettuce instead of a sneakers bar. How many lettuce trucks we’d need??? It’s just not sustainable.
Now imagine what this guy would eat he was cyclist. Checkmate again. You libtards are so easy to burn.
Sounds like a boon for that fat guy’s local economy
You know you’re on the right side when you’re arguing against humans exercising more!
They’re always more concerned about being right, instead of correct. :p
This is why ebikes produce less CO2 per mile than regular bikes. Even if you’re getting your electricity from coal, battery and motor efficiency are so much higher than food digestion and muscle movement.
The ebike starts life from the factory with a higher CO2 cost, though, and it never quite catches up over its expected life.
Both are orders of magnitude lower CO2 than a car (both production cost and per mile cost). The lifetime CO2 cost of an ebike vs normal bike is so small, and the gulf between either of those and a car is so big, that anyone pointing to this in favor of cars is an idiot. If an ebike is what gets you to bike more, do it. Any movement from cars and onto bikes is a huge win, battery or not.
I seriously doubt that it would be better “even of you get your electricity from coal”.
I did a project on coal plants in college. Our research showed that a single coalplant in Germany (as of 2012). Produced more pollutants in 1 month. Than every single registered vehicle in Sweden combined, over a whole year.
I’m not trying to say driving a car is better If you could take a bike. Don’t get me wrong.
I just think you’re underestimating just how incredibly bad coal power is.
You would be better off charging your batteries from a diesel generator, than from electricity produced by coal.
I’m not sure a diesel generator is much better. In the US, petrol power generation is 2.46 pounds CO2/kwh and coal is 2.31 pounds/kwh. Maybe coal is less efficient in Germany, but I doubt it’s significantly worse than petrol.
And there are other negative emissions with oil, like forced methane production (burn, bottle, or release). Though coal has similar issues too (e.g. more radioactive release than nuclear power).
That said, there’s a disconnect in our debate. Coal plants are an energy source. Cars and ebikes are an energy load. You can’t really say “coal is worse than cars” because you cannot replace coal plant emissions by adding more cars. Similarly, you’ll have cars even if you replaced coal with zero-emission renewables.
The argument becomes interesting when you add bikes into the picture. You can replace a large portion of petrol-car kilometers with coal-ebike kilometers and gain far more kilometers traveled per kilo of CO2. This argument can also be extended for emissions related to calories in acoustic bike kilometers.
The “per mile” in “ebikes produce less CO2 per mile” is critically important to the argument.
You are conflating a pure CO2 calculation to a calculation of other, more harmful in the short term, pollutants. Also worth figuring that if all your electricity is coming from coal your farms probably aren’t burning clean stuff for power either.
Why would you burn stuff for power on a farm?
Just strap 10 cyclists to the flywheel of your combine and let them “exercise”.Instead of using trucks to carry your produce, use a cyclists’ relay, with each cycle fitted with a little container on the back (make sure it’s aero though :P).
Of course you would need to clean up the air near the roads though. I am not cycling in smoke filled areas.
Yup, it’s better. You’re underestimating how inefficient biological processes are and how carbon intensive food production is.
https://eponline.com/articles/2023/01/13/environmental-impact-of-bikes-and-e-bikes.aspx
There are a range of numbers that depend on how you get your power and how you get your food. The high end of CO2 per km traveled for ebikes is the same as the low end for regular bikes.
This doesn’t account for all the other terrible stuff coal puts out, of course.
Now, again, the numbers are close enough that it’s barely worth quibbling about, but it is a difference.
Just because I burn less calories on an e-bike doesn’t mean I consume less calories, just that I get fatter faster 🤣. All that fat will still turn into CO₂ once I start to decompose.
OTOH, if I get fatter, I’ll probably start decomposing earlier, so you might be right that in the long run I’ll save on CO₂.
We just need to calcify you for long-term storage to reduce your decomposing CO2 release
Well, the other part of it is the Exercise Paradox. See elsewhere in the thread for that discussion.
Do you have a source on the production CO2 of an ebike? I’d like to see how they calculated the cradle to grave emissions.
Dr Simon Clark put together a video in 2024 about CO2 and ebikes: How bad are electric bikes for the environment?
He lists 20 sources in the description, so go ham on reading up if you don’t want to watch his breakdown.
The blog below cobbles together a few different sources. One is the European Cycling Federation, and the other is Trek.
https://eponline.com/articles/2023/01/13/environmental-impact-of-bikes-and-e-bikes.aspx
Wait until he finds out how many calories gasoline has
That’s why I drink a can of gasoline before every run
I drank a bottle of gas years ago and I’m still running off it.
Yeah when you drink gas, it usually lasts for the rest of your life
Fake news by big libs. /s
he’s right, we all know that exploring, extracting, refining, distilling, and distributing petroleum and its derivatives doesn’t cost anything
