Ranting to /dev/null

what about a rickshaw? those guys dont poop in the street, do they? and they probably eat less oats than a horse.

how many joules are in MY poop, that's what I wanna know. What's the going market value of my crap?

I had joules in my poop once, but I was smuggling them.

That would take less energy, because it's not moving as much mass, but that's basically walking. And in economic terms, it's the least efficient way to get around, because it requires one person devoted full-time to transportation for every person that wants to get somewhere.

In chemical terms, you've got to feed the guy somehow, don't you? Back of the napkin calculations suggest that it would take about 460 kJ to get there. This is a lot less than 4.5 megajoules, but it's still a decent amount of energy. It'd take about 40 grams of beef if that's all he ate for lunch. Multiply by 200 miles per week and you've got 8 kilos of beef. Which is 416 kilos/year or the better part of a whole cow. If the cow is slaughtered at 18 months, which is about average, it will have produce something like 270,000 liters of methane., which works out to about 4320 liters of methane for a week's transportation. At the minimum.

I don't buy everything thats going on in your post, but I think you might be interested in an article I read a while back. It was by a guy named Richard Manning, and the title was something like "The Oil We Eat." It appeared in Harpers (no relation) sometime within the last year or so. He's got issues with modern agriculture and a longing for the good ole hunter gatherer days, but he still makes some interesting observations about energy. You should check it out.

Ben: I'd be curious to know if you've noticed something I did wrong here. I freely admit that these are pretty fuzzy estimates, but I'm pretty sure that the math is right. Did I miss something?

I don't have any problems with your math, but other difficulties with what you've done. Don't have any intention (or time) to get into an extended discussion, but here are some poorly organized, hastily transcribed thoughts:

I suppose my reservations are about the parameters you've put on you're thought experiment. If you throw out a lot of other options (walking, biking, transit, and changing land use patterns so that the aforementioned options are more feasible) at the start of your argument, then it’s not difficult to say that all cars are the "environmentally friendly" option. If we were serious about stewardship of the environment then we might not pass over non-automotive transportation options simply because most folks wouldn’t do it right now. Being realistic is important, but while we’re talking about being “environmentally friendly” perhaps its ok to push the envelope a bit.

I understand that the argument that you're making is intentionally relative (i.e., cars are friendly relative to some other options), but why not include among the options, the more efficient engines available out there that use less gas? When we do that then "all" cars aren't so environmentally friendly. Also, what about alternative fuels, like bio-diesel? It can be made from new or used vegetable oils and/or animal fats—like the kind that they put in the grease containers outside of burger joints like Armando’s. Admittedly the law currently requires more refinement than you can do in your own backyard, but I’ve spoken to some folks that are doing it.
Human propelled transport might be more energy efficient than you’ve let on. Don't we already eat a lot of those calories that it would take to get us around? Isn't our lack of physical exertion (and thus lack of energy use) a major source of health problems? There may be more than just environmental and energy concerns that prompts us to get out of the cars.

In sum, I think I can agree with what you’ve said within the limited parameters that you’ve given (and there’s nothing wrong with doing that if that’s what you want to do), but if I were going to think about a big-picture kind of environmental stewardship then I would want to consider more options than you’ve included here.

I'll give you those things without much objection. Part of what I was trying to do was point out that we've constructed a society that needs an obscene amount of energy to operate. To the point that if we want to keep going the way we are, without effecting major changes to the way we live and work, that we're pretty much stuck with burning some form of hydrocarbon, simply because it's so danged efficient. There really isn't any way of getting around the distances we travel every day without that. Granted, there are more efficient engines to be had, but if even my 10 mile/gallon engine beats the tar out of walking and animal transport, that's some wicked energy consumption.

I'm all for pursuing more fuel efficient transport. But walking really isn't an option anymore. There simply isn't enough space for all of us to live within a mile of where we work, especially (though perhaps a little counter-intuitively) in major metro areas. The average New Yorker commutes just under 40 minutes each way, and most people take the subway, a bus, or a car. This represents distances that are simply not possible to walk if you want to work more than a few hours a day (at a painfully slow speed of 15 mph, 40 minutes is still 10 miles, which would take a good two hours to walk, so an 8-5 job means leaving at 6AM and getting home at 7PM). On top of that, it gets cold up here. A 10 mile hike during June sounds pretty nice, but lots of people would probably die if they had to do the same thing in January. The South this ain't.

As far as "all" cars being environmentally friendly, there is certainly a wide range of "greenness" when you compare cars to each other, but I think it's worth pointing out that when you compare them to many other forms of transportation, even the most wasteful car is orders of magnitude more efficient. Given the sheer quantities of energy involved, the difference between a 15 mpg car and a 50 mpg car isn't as big as it sounds. You'd need to start hitting rates of 100-500 mpg before options besides cars can compete. This, as it turns out, isn't possible for normal gasoline burning vehicles. Moving a half-ton car one mile requires 800,000 joules at the minimum, which is about 56 mpg with 87 octane gas. It isn't physically possible to get more efficient than that without reducing the weight of our cars (there's a physical minimum there too) or burning things other than gasoline (which, by their very nature, aren't as energy-efficient).

As far as burning grease goes, most of that is actually being recycled. It gets dumped in a vat behind the restaurant, and a truck periodically comes around to empty it out and take it to a processing plant to be reused (remember that the next time you order fries). Burning grease would reduce our consumption of petroleum, but increase our consumption of vegetable oils so much that the trade-off might not be positive. Agriculture - especially industrial agriculture on the scale needed to produce fuel on national scales - does pollute, and quite a bit, as it turns out. Additionally, arable land is even more scarce than petroleum.

Same goes for electric powered cars. Sure, our cars now don't directly release greenhouse gasses. Okay. Where do you think the electricity comes from? From burning coal and oil, mostly. Only nuclear power is capable of cleanly providing the kind of energy needed to power a nation of electric cars, and most environmental activists are opposed to nuclear power (for mostly irrational reasons, I might add).

All I was trying to do here is point out that there's a lot more than economics that goes in to conservation efforts. There's also a lot of chemistry and physics, because given the sheer amount of energy in gasoline, many options that appear at first glance to be greener than cars are, in the final analysis, significantly less so. We might want to talk about adjusting the way we live and work, but you start running into physicial limitations pretty quickly there too: agitators for greener lifestyles would probably object to the requirements for the 20,000 people/square mile population densities required to make walking to work a remote possibility for most people. Environmental conservation efforts are important, and I'm in favor, but the problem is a lot thornier than most people seem to be aware.

My question is, won't cows shit 120,000 liters of methane whether we travel by horse or by car?

All of my arguments only take into account the energy and fuel needed to do something we otherwise wouldn't be doing. So yes, you normally consume far more beef than 40g a day, but if we were to make human-powered transport an intergal part of our infrastructure, we'd need more food. If we were riding horses, we'd need more oats, which means - because we're already using most of the manure out there - we need more manure than is currently available. Which means we need more cows. Which means these cows, which wouldn't have otherwise been necessary, are producing more methane than would have been otherwise produced.

The Problem is not just with the given mode of transit, yet with the way in which people choose to live their lives. The problem is the ever-increasing suburbanization of the American landscape. Post-War suburbs create the need for cars. Assuming you can walk to the store (or bar, dentist, doctor,etc…) or use public transit or bike when going longer distances, (even here I’m talking about one or two miles, not like the suburban effort in which one has to get in their car and drive twenty minutes out of the architectural abortion they call a subdivision just to get to a fucking store for a condom or a jar of soda or whatever the hell else) Then environmental problems become a non issue, because the need is gone.

I mispoke, environmental problems will not vanish, yet the problem of vehicle emissions will be diminished.

I commute to work by bicycle and am comforted by the words of Ivan Illich:

"The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy...."

Well, comforted at the idea of alternative transportation, that is.

Good discussion. I'm sorry I missed it.

I commute to work by bicycle. I barely break a sweat, but even if I did I would feel no shame. I pass about 2000 cars, all stopped in line waiting for the lights to change, all with their engines running. Each car has on average 1.1 occupants. [I'm guessing, but don't we all?]

* We all burn energy, every day.
* Using your brain burns as much energy as a brisk walk.
* People who drive to work have to burn that energy off in a gym anyway. Unless they're from Texas.

Ryan, you also neglected some important points:

* America uses a 'Shocking & Aweful' amount of energy to secure cheap oil. Not to mention the pollution...
* How much energy is used to extract of oil from the earth, refine it, or transport it to millions of filling stations all over the world?
* You can grow the oats in the field beside the one the horse lives in.

Never mind the damage done each time some rusty 40 year old tanker dumps its load into the sea.

We, as a species, take up too much space, pollute too much, make too many species extinct and are now affecting the climate of the planet. As Agent Smith pointed out, we are a virus. We WILL continue unchecked, because money always comes first. It WILL be too late to go back. You cannot artifically recreate the biodiversity that took millions of years to evolve. In the last hundred years we've killed more species than a million natural disasters. Humanity is facing its last 10 generations. Enjoy your SUV.

Really wanna help? Then don't bullshit yourself about how your car doesn't add to the problem.
1. Don't eat meat. [Feeding animals so you can eat them is a much less efficient use of land.]
2. Let your exercise be your transport.
3. Move closer to your job.
4. Don't fly much.
5. Don't buy imported goods.
6. Recycle. Only buy recycled products when possible (what's the point of recycling the shit if nobody's making a market for it?).
7. Buy organic (ever look at a bee, going about from one flower to the next, with amazing precision? Ever wonder what we'd replace him with after we kill his species off with pesticides?). 8. Don't eat fish (90% of the 'big fish' like shark & tuna have disappeared since the 1960s through overfishing)

Despite being from Texas (where I do ride a bike to work when it's not too hot, thank you very much), I don't understand why the horse's own manure cannot be used for fertilization. Or, if it has something to do with the pathogens being transferred from horse manure->grains->horse, than why not use another animals manure, besides cows? Can't we use any herbivore's manure?

Raff -90% of sharks and tuna have disappeared? that number seems astronomical. Where did it come from?