Motorcycle Carbon footprint.

Originally Posted by Flamin_Squirrel

When the government want you to throw away a 5 year old vehicle so you can replace it with a new one that produces 0.01% less CO2

I always find that amusing when we don't consider the energy it takes to make a new car. You should be rewarded for running an old car; with cheaper tax not being penalised. Particularly when it comes to motocycles and their apparent CO2 emissions when they're tiny bloody things with a fraction of the oily plastics cars and electronic gadgetry a swamped in.

oh and btw I'm not one for thinking we're nailing the earth; but as we don't know exactly what our effects are we should take care. Such deeds as recycling, reducing waste and losing our 'disposable' attitude would be a good step forward.

It's selfish to look at the Chinese and use them as an excuse to remove responsibility from yourselves. After all, who's forcing the markets to opt for cheaper and cheaper methods of manufacture at expense of the environment? You can get a DVD player for £14 ffs! I bought a retractable tapemeasure from tescos for 43p yesterday?!

Originally Posted by muffles

Hate this whole carbon footprint thing too.

I haven't heard anything about what level of carbon emissions (I'm talking about co2 here, other types are another matter) they are trying to achieve, what the current level is, and and justification for any figures they might give.

See, we *need* carbon emissions. Trees need it. Trees produce oxygen from it. We lower our carbon emissions too much, and the trees will die. Then when all the trees are gone, the world is full of oxygen...for a time...then we convert it all to co2 again...and we all die.

I never hear that angle being played and it really annoys me (the carbon footprint bandwagon). Grr.

I think trees were doing just fine when co2 only came from "natural" sources, I doubt their dwindling numbers have become dependant on industrial emissions and the like.

As long as all the creatures of the planet remember to exhale (and there's a forest fire here, some volcanic activity there) then the trees will be ok I reckon. As long as we don't cut them all down and plant biofool farms.

Caring for the environment doesn't mean you're on any bandwagon, or that you believe the hype around our influence on climate change.

As for the original question, r.e the bike "polluting" more than a 2 bed flat, I don't know. I assume it's based on average bike mileage? 4k miles, 40 to the gallon, 100 gallons of petrol.....wouldn't surprise me if it's true.

What we need is not less CO2 output BUT we need more tree's to clean all the CO2 out of the air. We need to stop the tree's being cut down in the rain forrests!!!

Or replant all the spare land here with oak tree's like it was back in the day (talking thousands of years ago).

Originally Posted by sinbad

Caring for the environment doesn't mean you're on any bandwagon, or that you believe the hype around our influence on climate change.

As for the original question, r.e the bike "polluting" more than a 2 bed flat, I don't know. I assume it's based on average bike mileage? 4k miles, 40 to the gallon, 100 gallons of petrol.....wouldn't surprise me if it's true.

Amen to that. People will always look to blame other factors rather than the human element. While the government have a part to play in the blame game the truth doesn't sit well with the life we have become accustomed to. I'm all for recycling, using cleaner fuels/vehicles, provided they are as they are sold and don't use some natural resource heavy manufacturing process which negates any green effects during the life cycle of the vehicle.

My bike, according to that site, puts out 3.92 tonnes of Co2 per year. My 2 bed flat puts out 3.45 tonnes per year. Based on me doing 20k miles per year. Worrying really. I may even consider commuting on the train to work but would that work out any more Co2 friendly?

Originally Posted by ThEGr33k

What we need is not less CO2 output BUT we need more tree's to clean all the CO2 out of the air. We need to stop the tree's being cut down in the rain forrests!!!

I agree with most of that regardless of global warming etc etc.
Emissions are an important issue, though, you can't just plant trees and forget about what you're filling the sky with. If all of this focus of co2 and climate change makes us think about cleaning up emissions and polluting less in general then it's a good thing. Have you seen the state of the air in some of the cities of Asia?

Originally Posted by Ed

I posted 'do you really care' because I really don't. I'm so bored with it all - for all the reasons above. Selfish? no, just fed up with being lectured and lied to.

+1

and Ive too much going on my own life to have time/energy/emotion to worry about it...the day my own immediate problems are sorted (not going to happen ) is the day I will start to give it my precious attention!

Edit...I do care for my kids and grandkids future but as I said above - have more immediate problems

Oh dear trees aren't really the answer people, yes cutting them doesn't help

Algea in the ocean carries out CO2-O2 a much bigger level than any forest does, so it would really help if we didn't dump s*** in the ocean for a start, you it kills them...

Second of all the ocean goesd through a natual cycle, it actually stoes CO2 probally the easier way to explain it, when the temperature varies it release this CO2 into the atmosphere. Right at the moment the plantes temperature is rising thius CO2 is relasesd.

Second of all, we should be more careful with oil as it suppourts everything we do, u name it oil is inviolved more or less. So hence we should be more careful with it, bombing the crap out of samewhere really is a waste of oil.

The carbon footprint is balls, its just another tax the government invented, utter c**** is what they are and also self serveing, not for the people at all.

Well I have 2 bikes and van soon, so

[dizzyblonde]

All I can say is that after roaring round Wales all weekend I have made the following observation...........
My highest filling up of petrol was a whole ?9.23 which was after the longest stretch
My lowest was ?3.67 after a medium stretcc
After riding home from Bets-y-coed to Halifax (filled up in Bets-y-coed) I filled her up Monday with ?5.42

Now then I would say that after carefully monitoring my very good fuel consumption that my properly dyno'd race can'd motorcycle is very economical on fuel thus good for the environment, because it seems it runs on fresh air!!!!!!........and safe too.....loud cans save lives

Originally Posted by sinbad

Caring for the environment doesn't mean you're on any bandwagon, or that you believe the hype around our influence on climate change.

Second amen to that

Forget for a second about climate change; claiming it's not happening is probably just as wrong as claiming it definitely is happening. The reason I'll accept, if not totally believe, the hype is that regardless of what the effect will or won't be, our current use of resources is definitely 100% without a shadow of a doubt unsustainable. Whether this results in disasterous climate change or a world without oil, trees, topsoil and fresh water is largely irrelevant - we're screwed either way.

So we do definitely need to be more efficient in our use of resources either because we'll screw the climate or we'll simply run out.

Lets start with China - with simple maths on known figures we already know that if everyone in China were to consume oil at the same rate as everyone in the USA that the oil production needed would be 118% of current production. That's a bit worrying.

There are two solutions. One is to reduce the global market. That is restrict a western lifestyle to only a portion of the worlds population - say allow 750 million people to consume at current western levels, and have the other 5 1/4 billion people locked in rural agricultural squalor. That would almost balance out resource consumption with resource generation. Trouble is, the global market is current roughly 1.5 billion out of 6 billion. So not only are we going to have to stop the majority of rural Chinese whoe currently live in squalor from obtaining the western lifestyles their city dwelling neighbours enjoy, but we're going to have to reduce the number of people in the west who currently enjoy a consumption rich lifestyle to squalor too. Any volunteers?

Naturally, not a particularly pleasing option.

So the other option is to increase efficiency to the point where we can both increase the global market (again, note, this isn't an increase in the population but an increase in the percentage of the population who enjoy a consumption rich lifestyle) and achieve sustainability. In order to do this the "target" western lifestyle is going to have to massively reduce use of resources, whether that be through efficiency or through simple abstention. We, the 1.5 billion global market are already chewing through resources at an unsustainable rate, if we want to both make that rate sustainable and at the same time allow the other 4.5 billion people on the planet the same comfort we are going to need to seriously up our game.

So I'll go along with carbon footprint hype. Planting a tree will be unlikely to help but it certainly won't harm. And in the process of thinking about planting that tree we think in turn about efficiency - if I walked to the shops instead of taking the Range Rover I wouldn't have to have just planted that tree, if I chop the Range Rover in for an SV I won't need to plant nearly so many trees next year.

Efficient use of resources is the name of the game, if we don't get more efficient then we'll run out, and we're screwed. Global warming may or may not also happen. And we'd be screwed too. Either way, unless we start thinking a bit more about the environment, scratch that, a *lot* more, we're screwed. If not in our life time, but definitely our kids and grandkids lifetimes - I put that line in just to feed the next line which I've been wanting to blurt out in an over-emotive comedic fashion for ages - "won't somebody think of the ickle children?!"