Ride a Motorcycle
- added October 12, 2007
- 14 responses
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- jeffh
- added this
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- related topics
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- Earth and Science (12441)
- Environment (5498)
- Climate Change (1650)
- Global Warming (1612)
- Acoustic Pollution (107)
- BV2 (47)
Mine gets 50 miles to the gallon--it's more efficient and wastes less fuel.
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Forget the stinky loud motorbike, ride a bicycle.
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Many Asian megacities have huge numbers of motorcycles, and those create their own problems. Even though less fuel is burnt than cars, the motorcycles are more polluting, and contribute significantly to respiratory illnesses (one of the top killers in China). There are also lots of issues with accidents and fatalities. I like the motorcycle option, and it will help in a lot of places, but it has limits on scaling.
Past motorcycles and buses and rails and car shares, there is good urban planning or "Smart Growth" that looks at where people are going, and tries to rearrange where things are located, so people don't have to travel so much to live their lives. -
I totally agree with BOTH of your solutions.
a) drive less.
I purchased a home less than 5 miles from work (in southern California) so that I could drive less. Purposefully.
b) ride a motorcycle.
I ride a 250 scooter that gets over 60 mpg. I am interested in learning more about its pollution factor -- I'm unaware of the facts right now. But it's not 'loud' and 'stinky' -- it's quiet and scentless.
However, I urge you to buy a car that gets way over 15mpg! My car is a Honda Civic Hybrid -- gets about 40mpg. I'm lovin' it! -
Surprise: Motorcycles pollute moreSome people wrote a paper on this called "Comparison of Real-World Emissions from Two-Wheelers and Passenger Cars". The punchline is, motorcycles and scooters have considerably more (2-200x) pollutants per mile driven than cars. Mostly, this is because pollution control devices (e.g. catalytic converters) are less developed for bikes than for cars. CO2 is the exception; motorcycles make less CO2 than cars, but the other high levels of greenhouse gases probably more than makes up for it. Their figure was copyrighted and wasn't open access, so I copied the numbers from their figure into this table for you: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~siah/MiniProjects/Motorcyc... These numbers are just the averages of 8 scooters & motorcycles. Some of the 2-wheelers they tested did a lot better than others. If companies that make these bikes got their act together, they could probably make a bike that was cleaner than a car. Hopefully some have already. Anyone know of a low-pollution bike? -
I agree that we need to not only gauge fuel efficiency but also emissions. However, statistics can be looked at in different ways.
According to EPA's website, one of the major culprits of global warming is CO2. Carbon Dioxide is produced when you burn fossil fuels. If you burn less fossil fuels you produce less CO2. The ratio is about 18 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gasoline. My Honda Reflex motorscooter gets about 65mpg, which means I am producing about 130 grams of CO2 per mile compared to the AVERAGE automobile getting 18mpg and producing 450g of CO2 per mile. Hence I am saving a metric ton of CO2 about every 3,000 miles I ride.
No matter how cleanly you burn a gallon of gasoline, the fact remains that you are burning it, and that produces 18 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Additionally, think of the 'bigger picture' -- We really need to look beyond emissions and fuel consumption. Think about the:
**Material, energy, and pollution used in the construction of the vehicle. (Carpooling with three passengers may justify the additional material in a car, all the petroleum that went into door panels, seats, and windows.)
**Metal that was mined for the engine and body of the car vs motorcycle
**Oil, transmission fluid, and brake fluid used in a car compared to a motorcycle over its life.
**Damage the much heavier car doing to roads, that will then require more roadwork, which means more asphalt or concrete and more trucks driving to lay that asphalt.
Without a doubt, driving any vehicle less is important. Also important is mindfully choosing which products to buy based on their overall footprint. There are many things we can each do to make a difference. The vital part is encouraging more individuals to take more positive actions. -
Global Warming Potential of Motorcycles & ScootersThe emissions besides CO2 (NOx, HC, CO) are more potent greenhouse gases than CO2 and tip the balance against motorcycles. Motorcycles are a little better than cars in urban driving, and worse in rural or highway. I updated that page with a spreadsheet of the calculations. A problem with the non-CO2 emissions is they are a lot worse for human health, so if everyone in a city drove an "average" motorcycle today, a lot more people would have respiratory infections and asthma.
You made some good points about looking at the impacts of building vehicles. I looked that up, and it's surprisingly bad. http://www.eiolca.net has figures for that kind of thing. A $15 grand car on average makes 9.41 metric tonnes of CO2-equivalent during construction. A $15 grand motorcycle makes 13.7. It's the same kind of thing when I looked at toxic releases; motorcycles were worse than cars.
These results are crazy. It must be possible for scooters & motorcycles to have less impact than cars. Maybe it's that car companies get more pressure to be greener than motorcycle companies. -
OK, I give up. But I'm bummed and bewildered -- the results, as you say, ARE crazy!
But you know what, I'm still going to ride my scooter to work and back and my car only on weekends (and not very much then, either). Driving the scooter is much cheaper, easier to find a parking spot on campus (I work at a university), I can actually smell the strawberries in the fields as I drive by, and will still be burning fewer fossil fuels. I'll definitely be keeping my scooter well tuned-up to minimize its impact, AND will start encouraging the cycle companies to work on reducing emissions.
Thanks, siah, for all the info -- I won't blame you for bumming me out ;) -
Jeff, you gotta get more radical. See: http://www.flytheroad.com (check out the vids).
P.S. and it's too darn cold for a bike where I am (well OK less cold than it should be in late October... and I want to have some chance against the Lincoln Crushinators). -
milowangwangzing, it will take a great many efforts, both large and small, to turn around the climate changes we're experiencing and expect to experience. It will take each individual human to take ownership of his/her actions and choices (from driving less to buying less). It will take governments around the globe to provide the atmosphere in which research and development of renewable resources can expand quickly to scale production. It will take corporations to embrace the concept of 'first do no harm' as they make choices about raw materials, production processes, and how to deal with their waste.
There are times when I am encouraged by what is happening in the world today as far as awareness goes, but it's also easy to be discouraged at how things just continue same-as, same-as, which is just not going to cut it. Can we turn climate change around? I certainly don't know.
But I hope every individual finds ways to help -- and it may take some sacrifices along the way. In fact, it demands some sacrifices. Are we ready? I hope so. -
Good to find some awareness about CO2 pollution and Motorcycle pollution here, but I have not read anything about the second biggest pollution factor on Motorcycles, Noise. Anyone knows how acoustically far your vehicle is polluting the environment as it pass through?
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Motorcycles are greater polluters than cars because they do not have catalytic converters. Maybe he should ride a bycicle instead.
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- chicklets2040
- 10 months ago
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"Global warming....Very, very simple solution...."
??????????????
What?!!!!
Climate Change is a very complex problem that requires change and reform on many levels, and not just for everyone who drives a 15mpg SUV and one person riding a motorcycle.
While cutting back on driving 15mpg gas guzzlers helps, I think this is an extremely poor solution, and I am shocked that 63% of people agreed with his stupidity.-
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- dizzydean3
- 8 months ago
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A large percentage of jobs in this country are about handling information instead of doing touch labor. With a little creativity from the computer people, all data/information handling jobs could be done at home. You could also have face to face meetings or visit exotic places via computer. The transportation and travel industries would not like it, but the Earth would.
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- misanthrope
- 8 months ago
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Yes ride a motorcycle, unfortunatly I live in a mountainous state so we have harsh winters here otherwise I would ride a motorcycle nearly everyday.
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- thejunkman
- 7 months ago
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