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mygif

And then there’s the carbon footprint. When car drivers cruise Yonge Street on Saturday night, their metabolisms are more or less flat-lined. They just sit there, burning up little energy personally but paying for the cost of their automobile’s carbon footprint via taxes and fees. Bike riders grinding up the same route burn up a lot more carbohydrates, which their bodies convert into carbon dioxide and exhale, adding to their carbon footprint. The volumes are small, but it all adds up, and bicyclists don’t pay

did. that. guy. really. wrote. that???????

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mygif

[re: the really really stupid dipshit part]

So…what you’re saying is…exercise causes global warming?

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mygif

I get the feeling the original writer doesn’t really buy into this “global warming” business, so he tries to make it look like a futile battle because nothing you can do will decrease carbon emissions.

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VersasoVantare said on September 30th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

What’s a “Fisking”? Is it, like, a fisting performed by Wilson Fisk?

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mygif

Wait, if exercise is causing global warming, do I have to pay an extra tax on my Ab-Lounger? Because I’ll just be fat, thanks, and then I’ll use up EXTRA oxygen just driving my fat whalish ass down to the Dairy Queen to get the Fat Bastard Blizzard.

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mygif

Not that the original column wasn’t pretty stupid, but … couldn’t you have done that with fewer strawmen and math errors, and more actual refutations?

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Lawnmower Boy said on September 30th, 2009 at 6:26 pm

And believe it or not, bicycles do have some effect on roads. They may be lighter than cars, but it comes down to weight/area of contact, as well as the suction seal of the tyre, not that that’s relevant to sealed pavements.
I’m not doing the numbers here, so I’m not going out on a limb and saying that it’s a significant effect, but it isn’t fair to dismiss it out of hand, either.

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mygif

I despair for our society that this man received column space. This is one of those moments where someone might come along and posit the question, “I wonder why is print media going the way of a notorious small delicious defenseless island bird?” And then you can show the questioner this article and retort, “Don’t.”

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mygif

I’m not doing the numbers here, so I’m not going out on a limb and saying that it’s a significant effect, but it isn’t fair to dismiss it out of hand, either.

Yes, it is. In much the same way that it’s fair to dismiss breathing as a contributing factor to global warming when stacked against a coal fired power plant.

You’re dealing with multiple orders of magnitude difference. And that’s assuming you don’t consider how roads are funded – primarily through income taxes. No one is building a $200 million highway on $50 / year licensing permits. So unless all bikers are unemployed, they are in fact paying for the roads and the police and the sanitation and the carbon emissions and anything else the greater federal or state government handles.

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mygif

I was hit by a cyclist walking once (because it was my fault for not having eyes in the back of my head and using the sidewalk), and I have never once seen those fuckers obey the rules of the road. I’ve seen them call cops “pigs” for giving them a warning about wearing helmets.

Cyclists aren’t some group of persecuted saints.

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mygif

(16.06 x 10^6) / (10.5 x 10^9) does in fact roughly equal 0.001. But that’s .1%, not .001%. Not that it’s super relevant to the point, but still- minor correction.

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mygif
Lawnmower Boy said on October 1st, 2009 at 12:16 am

Zifnab: it is entirely inappropriate to blame human metabolism for global warming.
It is entirely appropriate to blame bicycles for road maintenance costs, because:
i) A major driver of road maintenance is time. All users, whether pedestrians or heavy semis, are equally implicated in the road being there, hence the road aging, hence aging’s contribution to road maintenance costs.
ii) Even bicycles have some small effect on paved roads, and quite a large one on unpaved ones.
iii) bicyclists are apt to make additional demands on road surfaces, such as wider shoulders with smoother edges.
We may –should!–will!– exempt bicyclists from these costs, especially given that they they pay taxes, especially with regard to policy.
But it would be disingenuous to pretend that they do not exist.

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mygif

Should we tax nature, as well?

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Lawnmower Boy said on October 1st, 2009 at 12:11 pm

well, duh. What’s nature done for me, lately? Whereas if it paid its fair share, the government could afford to buy me a Hummer.

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mygif

Andrew W., unfortunately no one will ever be able to get a cockbite tax law passed.

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mygif

You know what’s sad? Reading the excerpts of his column from your analysis, I can’t even believe that Corcoran’s serious. It’s like what I’d write if I wanted to do a parody of someone supporting a bike licensing law.

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mygif

Andrew W.:

Cyclists aren’t some group of persecuted saints.

I once saw a cyclist eat a baby. Live. Feet first. Ever since, if I saw someone on a bike, I got out my gun.

Lawnmower Boy:

We may –should!–will!– exempt bicyclists from these costs, especially given that they they pay taxes, especially with regard to policy.

That’s my point, though. Cyclists do pay for the road. When you’re shelling out 20-30% of your income (or more, you Canadians are a crazy lot) in income taxes, and one of the largest domestic expenditures is on highway infrastructure, how on earth do you conclude that a cyclist with an income isn’t paying for the roads?

Vehicle licensing is trivial in comparison. It’s as absurd as suggesting I don’t fund the State Department if I’ve never paid a fee to buy a passport.

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mygif

I have never seen a bicyclist not eat a baby. Seriously, dudes do it all the time. Every single one of them. Every on that I notice eating babies, at least.

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mygif

Well, Dayv, babies are high in carbs, and when you are on the fortieth mile of a ride, you need some quick energy.

Canadian babies are too sweet, though – you’d have to import some American babies, which taste like jerky and are high in protein.

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Marionette said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 am

Given that the original column was so asinine and easy to demolish, I too was a little surprised to see all those straw men on display.

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mygif

And it’s important that you eat those high-carb babies, so that you can rapidly convert those carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and destroy the earth’s climate that much more efficiently.

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mygif

Andre, I’m pretty sure that American babies are actually high in fat, even compared to your average baby elsewhere.

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