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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2009
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2009
Cycling provides ample opportunity (and oxygen) for the mind to roam. Over the miles, the autonomic nervous system’s autopilot function kicks in, tending to the mundane business of locomotion, and consciousness is free to surf the waves of endorphins and elevated blood flows to parts far and wide. Unfortunately, physics has an irritating habit of bursting the thought balloon. Nothing like a flat tire to reaffirm the supremacy of friction over intention, and roadside repair, repair in general, begs the question for the dedicated cyclist “Wouldn’t it be great if I could figure out a way to make this pay for itself?”.
On a physical and philosophical level, the personal payback far outweighs the cost, however unlikely this may seem. On the financial level though, the more you ride, the more you wear stuff out, the more your habit costs in ducats, dinar or dollars. But, setup back from the strictly personal and look at cycling, running or walking as practical means of daily transportation. Expand the cost/benefit analysis from the individual to the context of society at large. According to the World Wildlife Organization
“Bicycling instead of driving will eliminate 20 pounds of personal carbon emissions for every gallon of gasoline an individual avoids using.”
How this exact figure was arrived at is not clear, but taking it at face value then, an individual cyclist’s annual carbon offset value in dollars per year could be calculated. According to the US DOT,
“The average combined MPG for all US cars and light trucks on the road today is 19.8 MPG”.
My GPS says I currently ride about 3K mi/yr, so, if I were driving a fleet average vehicle, I’d be burning about 3k mi/yr/19.8MPG = 151 gal/yr * 20lb/gal = 3030 lb of carbon/ yr. An interesting study published by EcoBusinessLinks shows a very wide range of prices offered by an ever growing array of brokers. For example, one of the best prices currently available in the US (from the offset provider’s standpoint is 29/metric ton.
Carbon Offset Provider Price (US$/Metric ton CO2) Non-profit Projects Types Project Choice Offset Types Product Certification/
Verification*
(Links see below table)Bonneville Environmental Foundation
USA$29.00 Yes Renewables No Home, Air, Business, Event Green-e Climate Certified
Being an optimist then, my 3030 lbs (1.374 am tons) would be valued at $38.85/yr, or 1.3 cents/mile, enough to buy 1 good tire. There are any number of ways to quibble with the derivation above, but it’s the first time I’ve seen this figure calculated, so it a least provides a point of departure for discussion. I’ve been riding for almost 40 years with no subsidy, and will continue without one. But the object of this exercise is, as noted above, to look at cycling in a larger frame. There are considerations beyond just carbon offset value. In that 40 years of riding, I’ve been to the hospital twice (both times as the result of a cycling accident). I’ve never needed to visit a doctor for anything but routine checkups, my vital signs are consistent with a very healthy 30 year old and, at 55, I take no medications and can anticipate needing none for the foreseeable future, as long as I continue riding.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Reminds Drivers and Bicyclists to Share the Road During Bicycle Safety Month
As more people take to the roads on their bikes, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asks both drivers and cyclists to help reduce the number of cyclist fatalities. In 2007, 698 cyclists were killed in America. Everyone needs to pay attention when using America’s roads, whether they’re walking, biking or driving, LaHood said.
More and more Americans are taking up cycling, including a dramatic increase in bicycling by baby boomers. Whether they’re riding for fun, exercise, or to save on gas, more baby boomers are riding bicycles, according to the latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics. Unfortunately, this aging trend can also be found in NHTSA’s latest fatality statistics. For the tenth straight year, the average age of persons killed on bicycles has increased. Research shows that in 1997 the average age of a person killed in a bicycle crash was 31; in 2007 it increased to over 40.”
So, perhaps I can reasonably expect to end my cycling career in an abrupt fashion, thus saving the VA and Medicare significant expense. I am my own “Death Panel”, much to the relief of any number of folks, no doubt. It could then be argued that the (hopefully) immanent health care reform legislation should reasonably take the health care cost savings represented by an active lifestyle into account when allotting subsidies and calculating rates. A comprehensive program to evaluate the societal costs and benefits of lifestyle choices in general and recurrent vigorous physical activity specifically could go some way toward encouraging these behaviors, reducing medical costs and transportation infrastructure, ultimately benefiting the individual, society at large and the global environment as a whole.
Last night on the call-in show on our local public radio station, an irate caller asked “why should I be forced to pay increased insurance rates to cover people who smoke and engage in extreme sports?”. A good question I think, as long as the lifestyle can of worms is fully opened up. If I were of the same mind set, I could just as easily ask ‘why should I be forced to subsidize the health costs of people who never walk further than from the La-Z-Boy to the refrigerator, whose most highly developed muscle is their remote control/gameboy finger and whose diet consists largely of highly processed food-like substances?”. I’m totally willing to go there but let’s do it not on the basis of quantifiable outcomes like blood pressure, resting heart rate, actual medical expenditures (including psychiatric), stress indices and the like.
Just saying.
Popularity: 21% [?]
October 22nd, 2009
For people fed up with their mobile telephone or iPod batteries running out, Japan’s Toshiba Corp. announced Thursday the launch of a portable fuel-cell that can power up digital gadgets on the move.
With an injection of methanol, the fuel-cell generates electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen to recharge mobile digital electronic devices via a USB cable.
The high-tech giant, which sees a bright future for fuel cells, said battery exhaustion had become a “major concern” due to the rising power consumption of mobile electronic devices. Read the whole article here.
With the object of having uninterrupted access to communications, internet included, from remote locations over extended periods of time, some sort of rugged, portable, lightweight energy generation technology is a requirement for powering cellular/satellite modems, portable computers, telephones and GPS devices. Essentially we’re talking about liveblogging from the wilderness, virtual tourism, real time scientific field documentation and range management. Previous to the Toshiba device described here the only realistic technology portable solar panels which suffer from low power densities and high costs per watt. The present cost of $326 plus proprietary fuel cartridges leaves something to be desired, but as competition and economies of scale come into play prices should fall, and the relatively high power densities, low volume, mechanical simplicity and zero carbom operation make this a nearly ideal bike packing power source.
A few hopeful developments in transportation and generation are good news for those of us who believe that clean power is the most important issue of our time;
(AP) — Greg Bove steps into his pickup truck and drives down a sandy path to where the future of Florida’s renewable energy plans begin: Acres of open land filled with solar panels that will soon power thousands …
Move over hybrids — the biggest buzz at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show looks set to come from electric cars as the dream of affordable zero-emission vehicles moves closer to reality.
And finally, what I’ve been saying for years (so they MUST be right);
Most of the technology needed to shift the world from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy already exists. Implementing that technology requires overcoming obstacles in planning and politics, but doing so …
But, on the not so good news front;
So, algae could kill us, pollution is increasing, fewer people believe we have a problem, we’re choosing our leaders based on ancient unconcious perceptions, and to top it off;
There is no pharmaceutical cure for what ails us. Oy vey! Which does not stop folks from trying;
Nearly four percent of adults around the world use cannabis, even though the drug raises many major health concerns, according to a paper published in The Lancet on Friday.
That probably explains this;
But all is not lost, YOU could be one of the lucky few to seal themselves up in a government funded bubble for 520 days;
And that’s a wrap on Science and Energy for Saturday, October 22, 2009. Abandon hope all ye who enter here, or not.
Popularity: 12% [?]
A fuel cell is an electrochemical conversion device. It produces electricity from fuel (on the anode side) and an oxidant (on the cathode side), which react in the presence of an electrolyte. The reactants flow into the cell, and the reaction products flow out of it, while the electrolyte remains within it. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained.
Fuel cells are different from electrochemical cell batteries in that they consume reactant from an external source, which must be replenished[1] – a thermodynamically open system. By contrast, batteries store electrical energy chemically and hence represent a thermodynamically closed system.
Many combinations of fuels and oxidants are possible. A hydrogen fuel cell uses hydrogen as its fuel and oxygen (usually from air) as its oxidant. Other fuels include hydrocarbons and alcohols. Other oxidants include chlorine and chlorine dioxide.[2]
Another distinct advantage of fuel cells over conventional internal combustion engines is mechanical simplicity; virtually no moving parts. Add the near carbon neutral operation to this and the advantages over current motor tech is compelling, to say the least. Funny how the choices societies and individuals make may have profound unanticipated consequences. The first fuel cell was demonstrated a842. Again, from Wikipedia;
The principle of the fuel cell was discovered by German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838 and published in one of the scientific magazines of the time.[16] Based on this work, the first fuel cell was demonstrated by Welsh scientist and barrister Sir William Robert Grove in the February 1839 edition of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science[17] and later sketched, in 1842, in the same journal.[18] The fuel cell he made used similar materials to today’s phosphoric-acid fuel cell.
The ready sources of petroleum extracted for transportation fuel first in the US probably doomed both the fuel cell and electric transportation, too bad for us and our grandchildren, but now as always necessity is the proverbial mother of invention (no, Frank Zappa stole the term). And so below We present a short summary of current developments from fuel cell world. More »
Popularity: 14% [?]
Batteries are particularly relevant to green energy as a replacement for more carbon-intensive power storage technologies like hydrocarbon fuels. Whether you believe the sky is blue or green, it is what it is, whether you believe global warming is real or not, it is what it is, and it is having and will continue to have increasingly profound impacts on every person on the planet until we finally kick our collective smoking habit; fossil fuels. This small summary of research and development clearly shows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it may not be all that far away.
Where your gas tank is now, in five or ten years there will be something like this.
Panasonic Corp. has developed a 1.5 kWh battery module from 18650-type (18 mm in diameter x 65 mm in length) lithium-ion battery cells, which are widely used in laptop computers, to provide energy storage …
Follow the money.
(AP) — Panasonic Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. must sell off a European plant that makes batteries to win EU antitrust approval for the $9 billion deal creating one of the world’s biggest electronics makers, the EU said …
Watch out for explosions, as above, tech can come back to bite you in the ass.
The European Union’s consumer czar warned on Monday that iPhones would be taken off the market if national authorities find manufacturing faults lie behind mystery screen explosions.
Here’s an “emergent application”, one that is the consequence of unanticipated synergies between seemingly unrelated parts. More »
Popularity: 16% [?]
the end f the article. The author is NOT a physician and is not attempting to prescribe or recommend medical treatment, but merely to inform fellow endurance athletes of a significant risk to their health resulting from the otherwise beneficial consequences of regular vigorous physical activity, and to summarize the literature on treatment and prevention.
DVT or Deep Vein Thrombosis, also referred to as “Economy class syndrome” results from the pooling and coagulation (thrombosis) of blood in the deep veins of the calf, thigh and occasionally the abdomen due to lack of motion and/or constriction of the blood flow to these areas. The immediate symptoms include some or all of the following; pain, swelling, discoloration of the painful area and, when in the leg, distended veins in the foot or leg. The longer term pathologies include possible permanent damage to the smaller veins from lack of circulation resulting in phlebitis and/or cellulitis. Worst of all is the possibility that the thrombosis or clot can become mobile and lodge in the lungs causing pulmonary embolism (PE), chest pain, coughing up blood and potentially, death. If a clot gets lodged in the brain, this can cause stroke or cerebral embolism and a clot in the heart can cause heart failure.
Various studies show that endurance athletes, with their low resting heart rates, large leg muscles and tenancy to dehydration are especially vulnerable to DVT, up to 85% more likely to suffer DVT than non-athletes under certain circumstances. Since endurance athletes tend to become dehydrated more often and more severely than the sedentary population, and dehydration causes the blood to thicken and coagulate more readily, attention to hydration is even more important than just for the obvious and better known reasons of managing electrolyte imbalance and exhaustion. More »
Popularity: 61% [?]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — U.S. seismologists have found evidence that the massive 2004 earthquake that triggered killer tsunamis throughout theIndian Ocean weakened at least a portion of California’s famed San Andreas Fault. The results, which appear this week in the journal Nature, suggest that the Earth’s largest earthquakes can weaken fault zones worldwide and may trigger periods of increased global seismic activity.
Reuters – A resident does a handstand during a morning exercise session at the Temple of Sun Park in Beijing September … CHICAGO – Even in the “oldest old,” a little physical activity goes a long way, extending life by at least a few years for people in their mid- to late 80s, Israeli researchers found.
The three-year survival rate was about three times higher for active 85-year-olds compared with those who were inactive. Getting less than four hours of exercise weekly was considered inactive; more than that was active.
The results “clearly support the continued encouragement of physical activity, even among the oldest old. Indeed, it seems that it is never too late to start,” the researchers wrote in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine, which published the study.
They noted that exercise reaped benefits even for previously sedentary 85-year-olds; their three-year survival rate was double that of inactive 85-year-olds.
Oldsters didn’t have to be super-athletes to live longer; walking at least four hours weekly counted, even if it was just in 15-minute strolls a few times daily.
“As little as four hours a week was as beneficial as more vigorous or prolonged activity,” said study author Dr. Jeremy Jacobs, a geriatric specialist at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem.
Though I’ve been accused of having a birth certificate written in cuneiform on clay tablets, I’m not yet among the “oldest old”. But I’m pretty damn springy at 55, and my although I’ve paid mucho dinero for health insurance over the years, my sole demand on those services has been for routine checkups and a single traumatic impact (bike wreck) many years ago. Until now. Courtesy of “socialized medicine” (i.e. the VA) I’m having the consequences of a long history in the sun, mostly cycling but also skiing in the Alps for Uncle Sam, removed from my skin in the form of a couple benign basal cell carcinomas (the best kind) and a couple actinic keratoses scraped from the balding crown of my head. But, by virtue of regular vigorous exercise over those years, I’ve saved my various insurers potentially MILLIONS, not having made claims on their resources for any or all of teh various disease of inactivity like high blood pressure, diabetes, back pain etc., etc… More »
Popularity: 16% [?]
1. There is a common misconception that the trade-off between manned and robotic “missions” is a zero sum game, money spent on one is money take form the other. The real problem is timing. I propose that the eventual colonization of the entire solar system is a manifest good, but a very long term goal. We send people after the robots have built habitation and industry from local materials. The key to this “robots first” strategy is to create so-called bootstrapping facilities, or a minimal manufacturing and materials processing suite capable of acquiring, transporting and processing local raw materials into a variety of products including, most importantly, copies of itself. A few machines could build a few more, then many more, then whatever you wanted them to build, like habitats, solar collectors and even vessels. This is referred to as the Von Neuman Machine, a self replicating, programmable construct, and there is extensive literature regarding such (to date) hypothetical systems.
NASA should focus its mission on not simply going places to come back, but on going places to stay. Current technology is fully capable of realizing working Von Neuman machine complexes, given the leadership and funding, and a clear inspiring reason to do so.
2. Even more basic to the mission of building a sustainable, efficient bridge to space, is to leave the rockets to the Russians, Chinese and Indians, and focus research on advanced propulsion and launch systems with the goal being to reduce the cost of getting a pound in orbit by a factor of 100-1000. Rail-guns are a pretty mature technology and suitable for dense, inert payloads and the most tantalizing possibility is, without a doubt, the Space Elevator
More »
Popularity: 14% [?]
A dear friend of mine who has been a strict vegetarian for almost 20 years is currently suffering from the whole list of symptoms that the author describes. I have long suspected that there might be a dietary connection to these symptoms but had never heard such a succinct, well researched and eloquently stated argument regarding the relationship of vegetarianism to ill health. I have no axe to grind here, and have for years refrained from expressing my admittedly vague misgivings, in part because I’m an unrepentant carnivore, in part because my default position is to respect others personal choices, and also due to a lack of good research. Ms. Keith has the bona fides of a 20 year vegan and highly qualified researcher so she knows whereof she speaks and has partaken personally of her own conclusions.
In the abstract, if someone wants to be a vegetarian, fine. But when the practical consequences seem to threaten health, well being and happiness, not just for the person making that choice, but also for the friends and family, making at least a brief two week trial of Ms. Keith’s hypothesis seems a reasonable compromise of principle. Below I post some excerpts and links for http://www.lierrekeith.com/
Popularity: 10% [?]
For me, every turn of my bicycle wheels is a manifestation of my own personal commitment to healing the world. A small thing, to be sure, but inasmuch as the wheel is a sacred form to many peoples, and great change is the cumulative effect of many small actions, I will continue to ride, believing that my wheels are prayer wheels for the healing of the world too.
The following is quoted from the AP article;
Popularity: 5% [?]
“There are lots of proven low-cost options that communities can use to encourage people to get out of their cars and walk or ride instead,” he says. “Use of these options helps people remain healthy (by promoting physical activity and reducing obesity) and helps reduce heat-trapping pollutants that cause global warming.”
In a recent article in the journal Preventative Medicine, Maibach suggests that policy makers and government officials at all levels should look at communication, marketing and policy enhancements that can be implemented with relative ease to promote active transport.
Maibach cites the Web site Active Living by Design (http://www.activelivingbydesign.org/) as showcasing many examples of successful programs such as city-bike sharing, customized walking or cycling maps and grassroots campaigns.
“One of my favorite examples is ‘walking school buses’ in which children and a few parents walk together to the local school,” says Maibach. He also suggests policy changes such as reducing speed limits, giving cyclists priority at intersections and closing some roads to cars, can also encourage people to consider alternative ways of commuting.
“There is no one magic bullet. All of these examples can be effective here in the U.S., and all should be implemented in as many communities as possible. The more that are implemented, the more we will wean people away from sole reliance on their cars when they could be walking and/or riding, and improving their health as a result.”
Source: George Mason University
Popularity: 6% [?]
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