I guess the nationalist and racist bull$h!+ is independent of the sport or circumstances

Winky,

ISTR that in the UK the motoring contribution to the excheqer is c.£40bn pa and the outgoings on highway operation, maintenance, renewal and enhancement (including new build) is c.£10bn pa.

Motoring is here to stay. Get over it.

Meanwhile, just keep hoping that Alberta shares the the wealth of the Athabasca sands with the other provinces.

Cheers

Don

Sad, isn't it?

You trying for sainthood?

Nah. Cars just shit me.

Okay scrub Froome then, he's only second anyway, i'll try again...

we have a jolly good decent British chapie actually leading the Tdf !!

[ Our man in yellow is Wiggy, and he's a Brit! ]

If he wins he'll be the first Brit to win the TdF since they invented the wheel

Debs

Wiggo was actually born in Belgium.

So he is as British as Herge!

They already are, here at least. I can only assume the survey to which you refer was either nothing to do with the UK or simply completely and utterly wrong.

Cars do not ruin everything you hold dear. Try a visit to Sark - where s**t still happens.

You might also want to have a think about what you'd be cycling on if motorists weren't paying for roads. Whilst you're at it, have a think about what else might be lost without roads. Food would be a good starting point.

Perhaps you could also have a think about what you would have happen to old, young and disabled people without cars. Or would they just have to put up with only being able to crawl/limp/wheel as far as they can?

Not everyone's likes and needs are the same. Why should the world be shaped around your extreme and extremely selfish views? There's nothing wrong with a bit of tolerance and balance.

And his Dad is Australian but for Christ's sake don't tell them that 

Debs,

I'm with you in calling 2 Brits in first and second place for the first time ever!!!!!

So what if Froome started else where, he's a Brit now. Paul Sherwin also comes from Kenya and he would always say he represented Britain in competition.

As for the road-side abuse it's just as well Alan Pieper isn't riding any more otherwise the culprits would have been treated to a proper kicking if he caught them!

Vive La Tour.

Jono

It was study, not a survey. (Surveys sample what people believe. This can be very different to reality. Some people don't realize that. - but that's a different issue). And it was British. It might have been wrong in detail, but the points that environmental costs and some sort of capital charge must be assesed when determining the true cost are correct.

I don't get the point about Sark. That there are nice places left doesn't diminish the destruction of the natural world brought about (in part) by cars. I counter-offer the ongoing destruction of the Amazonian and Indonesian rainforests for ethanol production so mummy can drive the rug-rats to violin practice.

The roads were there before cars. Walking, horses, bikes then cars is the order of appearance of road users.

With far fewer private cars, public transport would be incredibly good. Disabled, young people and pensioners etc would be well served. Those that can't drive would be better off in terms of mobility. Their family and friends might even live closer. As an analogy, consider that before cheap air travel, we didn't typically have friends and relatives on the other side of the world. Now, mobility pushes us further apart - it doesn't draw us together. Before cars and planes, family and friends lived in the same village. 

I have never said the world should be shaped around my views; Only how great it would be if more people got out of their cars and into the real world. Got a bit of exercise. Made friends closer to home. Reduced their environmental footprint a bit. Saw the world from a cyclist's view.

I am a little surprised that you would think I'm selfish for being a cycling advocate. My choice minimises the impact on others. Not so much the choices of the millions of people who choose to drive their single-occupant vehicles to and from work every day. I might be insufferably smug, but I don't think I'm selfish.

I'm not proposing any bans. Just trying to get people to think before they asume that the current transport system is the only viable one; And that their choice to own a car and drive everywhere is the only (or even best) option. Others can disagree.

Destruction of the Amazonian rainforest for ethanol production? Sorry, mate, that's just wrong info you got there.

Look on the map where sugarcane is produced in Brazil and you'll see the distance. Somehow people associated those two things, because of course it's good to rag on something, but it's just plain wrong.

Not to say that there isn't destruction of the Amazon going on (and even that is close to the lowest it's ever been), but it's just not related. 

This map shows sugarcane production in Brazil. It's in Portuguese, but the point it's trying to make is pretty obvious.

Unfortunately this came from the sugarcane producers trade association, so you can dismiss it as total fiction, even though its sources (listed at the bottom) are unrelated - however, if you look at the total production by state (which I couldn't easily find a source in English for) you'll see that it matches this.

1. Bicycles don't pay road tax but neither do cars with low emissions

2. It is not illegal to ride two or more abreast

My understanding is that it is palm-oil plantations that are being developed in the Amazonian forest for ethanol, rather than sugar cane. The sugar industry is right to correct misconceptions. I work in the mining industry and we wrestle with the same issues of public perception. But point well taken. I'll look into it a little more. 

But for interest, look at "Rondonia" on Google Earth.

I'm afraid I can't see how you can purport to minimise the impact on others whilst simultaneously arguing for a state of affairs that for most people would be a radical and unwelcome, indeed unsustainable alteration to the way in which they have to live their lives. The fact that people are now able to live, work and travel over greater distances is something that many people enjoy as one of the benefits of modern society.

No public transport system could possibly offer the sort of mobility a car offers, save in built-up urban areas. I live, as do many people in this country, many miles from the nearest town of any size. If I did not have my car, it would be absolutely impossible for my wife or I to purchase things of any size and get them home, including the weekly shopping. There is no way we could carry them on a bus or train. Equally, we could never go to the garden centre and buy some plants. Unless the bus system you seem to envisage would be running through a village of 200 people at 5 AM, I would be unable to leave for work on time on those days when I need to travel. My wife would be unable to reach the hospital when she is on-call as an anaesthetist. All of these are reasons why we, just as pretty well everyone, has and need a car. There is no way a public transport system could replace them.

I'm not suggesting that everything that cars are brought to our society has been good or welcome. Clearly, that is not the case. It is however frankly ridiculous to suggest that all the ills in society you identify as allegedly arising from cars in fact so do. They don't and the sort of example you appear to have to rely upon illustrates what a ridiculous and frankly extremist attitude you seem to have.

Lastly, I should probably say, as you may well not have guessed, I am a 100 miles per week plus cyclist myself-and a huge advocate of those that can cycling where they can. Part of the reason I get so frustrated by the sort of militant approach taken by anti-car types as yourself is that it makes it all the harder to be taken seriously when trying to advocate and support schemes which would see people getting on their bikes and - yes - enjoying some of the benefits you quite rightly identify.

That's a very small (I mean, tiny) proportion of ethanol production in Brazil at the moment and there seems to be a commitment to keeping it sustainable and to areas previously destructed for other issues.

There's a big push in the government's behalf to dissociate palm oil production in Brazil from what's happening in Asia re: environmental impact. Whether they succeed or not (both in enforcing it and in publicizing it) remains to be seen.

I'm not in the industry, BTW, I just find it an interesting topic.

Back to cycling, look at the sportsmanship and cooperation in the old days:

Words and actions are two different things. My words are part of a discussion/debate. Why to do have such issue with my expression of an opinion that you call it selfish?

I understand you have chosen a car-dependent lifestyle, remote from your place of employment. But it is just that, a choice. Is it a selfish one? Your lifestyle choice involving significant car-commuting, frequent purchase of big things and having a garden is one that perhaps has a higher environmental footprint than other lifestyles you could have chosen. But that is up to you.

Where have I alleged that "all the ills in society" stem from car use? My obviously rhetorical statement about "everything I hold dear" is a personal one. Not something I expect everyone to share. It is just me. I didn't say cars ruin everything for everybody (although I suspect that they do so more than people realise - I was completely taken aback by how much happier I was without a car after owning one for years).

Anyway, I'm enjoying the debate.

I appear to have mis-stepped with alleging significant ethanol production directly from cleared Amazon rainforest (Southest Asia is a different story, though). Nevertheless, Brazil is a world leader in the practice of "farming the sun" (using crops for energy). The practice is arguably green-wash. Crops-to-energy is an incredibly inefficient use of land, and achieves little, if any net greenhouse gas reduction. It uses significant water and replaces food crops which perhaps do get pushed into areas where rainforest is sacrificed for arable land.

I also find this an interesting topic.

Futher reading on the subject; interesting article.

http://www.economist.com/node/21542431

KR

Tony

Actually, ethanol from sugarcane is very energy-efficient and it does not seem to have had such a negative impact on food prices, at least in Brazil. Pretty significant greenhouse gas reduction throughout the chain compared to gas, unlike doing it from corn.

One reference: http://www.epa.gov/OMS/renewablefuels/420f10007.htm#7

From the EPA article I linked:

"Ethanol produced from sugarcane complies with the applicable 50% GHG reduction threshold for the advanced fuel category"

Sugarcane uses only about 2% of the arable land in Brazil. It could grow by quite a bit before it starts getting into area usable for other crops. A lot of the growth is coming from abandoned pastures, by the way, so hardly prime food-growing areas.

I looked at that link. Quite interesting. I think I understand what it is saying with repect to energy efficiency of sugar-cane ethanol and that is encouraging, but unfortunately currently only a tiny impact.

I can't quite figure their term "renewable fuels" that seems to account for nearly everything but is otherwise not really expanded upon. What is in the gap between the sum of the three specified types and the total?

Not sure what you mean by "tiny impact"?

As for the bit in the beginning, it's quite confusing, and I was looking more at the GHG section. My understanding is rather that it has to do with the classification of fuels into the GHG reduction thresholds (so renewable fuels offer 20% reduction, advanced biofuel 50%, etc.) and the output of the refiner has to have that minimum percentage from each of those sources. Renewable fuels is not a total of the three above, but rather it's own category defined by the minimum 20% reduction in GHG.

That's how I understand it at least.

"Tiny Impact" - For the US it is in a category that has only 0.61% of the fuel usage volume. Wikipedia places the sugar cane ethanol percentage at 18% of transport fuels in Brazil, where much of it is grown and processed. I guess that isn't "tiny" until you put it into a global context.

I concur with your understanding but it isn't 100% clear that the 20%/50% thresholds are improvement thresholds compared to previous performance, or absolute thresholds compared to fossil fuel alternatives. I'm pretty sure it is the latter, though.

I believe it's the latter as well as it's in line with other estimates I've seen (comparing to petrol).

Understood re: tiny impact, I thought you might have been referring to the drop as being tiny, not the absolute size of the thing. You shouldn't forget that until recently the US had very high tariffs on Brazilian ethanol and that gasoline is resisting changes in oil prices in Brazil, which reduces the relative attractiveness of ethanol. Still growing fast, though.

http://www.pnas.org/content/ea.../0907318107.abstract

Study on indirect land-use effects.