Bike to Work Day
by Lewis DerkinsMay 12th, 2008, 4:09 pm
I’m so sick of these things. I’m not going to go on an anti-environmentalist rant because it’s pointless to try to engage people who have obviously been breathing straight from the tailpipe.
But I will say that if bicycling to work is such a “viable form of transportation” as the organizers of this event claim, then why don’t people do it?
Most people do the most convenient thing for their particular activity. Convenience is derived through measures of cost, time, expenditure of effort and difficulty to perform as well as other factors - like the weather when you ride a bicycle.
If this crap is so easy, everyone would do it, and apparently, thousands already do when it is convenient. We don’t need the nanny patrol telling us when we can and cannot drive our cars.
I am hereby going to personally make it my mission to destroy all of these foolish events. When a “bicycle ambassador” tries to get me to subscribe to some earthy do-gooderish nonsense, I am going to respond with overwhelming force. I declare myself an ambassador of the plush leather comfort, climate controlled, SUV idling brigade. Sit back and feel the efficiency.
Posted in Uncategorized Rage |
Ahh Lewis.
You sound like a 2-y.o. having a temper tantrum.
Well Paul, this is a Commuter Outrage site after all. We’re not in the business of Commuter Hugs and Kisses for idiotic government workers and their bungling ideas.
I don’t really have a problem with people who want to ride bikes to work. I just have a problem with people trying to get me to blindly buy in to something without asking any questions.
I also have problems when governments give money or time to support this junk instead of fixing infrastructure.
why does every healthy decision i make in life put in the context of saving the planet? why did that article have to spend an entire paragraph about me and my carbon footprint, and then only a few sentences on the most compelling argument for biking…exercise and personal health.
hell, i’d love to bike to work. but i live in new york city. the last thing i want at the beginning of the day is to be biking next to an outdated transit bus as it spews filth in my face.
how about the government takes some steps to make these alternative methods of transportation viable instead of expecting me to do the hard work for them.
Biking to work in NY … You’d die. Some Afghani would drive right over you in his taxi.
The dirty secret is that sometimes I actually do bike to work. But I do it for the exercise that gDubs points to…not the save the environment garbage.
In my opinion, the “every little bit helps” argument is ridiculous. If we truly needed to save the earth, which we don’t, then you shouldn’t do something to lessen your carbon footprint, you should do something to eliminate it.
Unfortunately, that would mean killing yourself. Oops, that actually also releases carbon when you decompose.
What I really want to know is why are we so obsessed with murdering plants? After all, they eat CO2.
I don’t know what to say, Lewis.
That post was so ignorant of facts, that’s it’s tough to decide what to draw a bead on first.
But let’s start with this:
Even your personal trainer, “gDubs” (hmmm….he’s far more qualified for that job!), acknowledges anthropogenic global warming.
I don’t know who gDubs is, but I don’t care if he acknowledges anything. Anthropogenic global warming is a hypothesis - not a proven scientific fact.
There is a very vivid debate on this issue, and in the past two years numerous studies have been done that have pointed to other sources for the warming - form the sun, to cloud cover, to thermohaline circulation, etc…
I’m not saying that AGW can’t be happening, or that humans can’t be contributing, I’m saying that so far the weight of science doesn’t support it.
2500 scientists are part of the IPCC, but less than three dozen actually author the report. Many prominent scientists on the IPCC have resigned because they believe the science is faulty.
In contrast, 17,000 - almost 7 times more scientists - petitioned the Canadian government last year not to introduce new regulation based on AGW and abandon the Kyoto Protocol because it is unsound.
The notion of a “consensus” for science is ridiculous. Science isn’t built on consensus - it is built on repeatable, measureable observations. Right now AGW doesn’t have that - in fact just recently, it was announced that there hasn’t been any warming for the past ten years.
Consensus used to hold that the earth was flat, or that you could turn lead to gold through alchemy, only evidence showed otherwise.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t debate climate, it has huge impacts on our lives. I’m saying that we should acknowledge that the science is far from settled - and until it is, we shouldn’t rush to do anything because we don’t fully understand the implications.
For example, what if warming would actually be a good thing for the earth? Who says it isn’t? How do we know it won’t be?
We do know that an ice age would be terrible for the earth, so why should we stop warming?
I’m just naturally skeptical of things and people who try to push me to do things. If a weather man can’t accurately predict the weather three days from now, how can you honestly belive that anyone can predict the climate - somethiing thousands of times more complex - hundreds of years from now?
I simply don’t belive that it is possible with the current understanding we have of the science. And I’m not signing on to anything to prevent global warming until I do.
Blindly following can be dangerous - that’s how you surrender your personal liberty to government.