LMAO


I wish my wife was a eco-nut so I could buy a bike again. I haven't had one of my own since I got married almost 30 yrs ago.

Believe it or not I think bikes pump out more then their fair share of noxious fumes in comparison to cars. I think lawn-mowers are even worse.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

I think the new models are much better on emissions than the old bikes. Mine has computer controlled ignition and all that stuff. But still, 50 MPG means a lot less of anything compared to a car that gets 20-25 MPG.

30 years is about right for me too. I told my Wife, "Look, Hon, this is MY mid-life crisis (about 15 years too late even) and I'm getting a damned bike!"
It also has room on the back for a 19 year-old female passenger. For some reason she didn't find that funny.

But her objections really have nothing to do with the environment. She just doesn't want me to get killed and, like a lot of people unfamiliar with riding she sees a lot more danger in it than there really is.

Out of respect for her concerns I put together a list of statistics that made it a lot easier for her to live with. Things like alcohol use (I don't drink), speeding and reckless driving (which I never do) and poor maintenance (It's a new bike! How can you NOT keep that baby in top shape?) contribute more to motorcycle deaths than anything else.

If you're serious about getting into the old saddle again, I'll send you the list. It worked for me.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I don't think I can justify buying a bike under any condition. She's hitting Menopause now so I have enough problems with dealing with the mood swings and hot flashes that accompany it. I would rather not interject anything else into the mix.

The closest thing to a bike I could get would be a quad-runner and even that could be a serious problem.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

You mean you wouldn't LOVE to hop on THIS?


But that's off-topic anyway, so I'll leave it there.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

Scientifically correct, not politically correct. We put CO2 into the air when we breathe. (So do all other animals.) We do it when we burn wood. We do it when we compost organic matter for gardening or farming. We do it when we fart. We do it when we die and decay. Putting CO2 into the air is part of the carbon cycle. Animals do that, and so does the burning or decay of plant matter; OTOH plants take CO2 out of the air as they grow: they breathe in CO2, take the carbon from it and use it to build their own tissues, and release free oxygen. These processes balance. It's called the carbon cycle. It's only when we put MORE CO2 into the air than the plants can pull back out that we run into difficulties, or else when we chop down and pave over the forests, reducing the biomass of plants capable of holding up their end of the cycle.

The fires in California, as you say, are brush fires. Someone commented that they're so big and out of control because smaller fires have not been allowed to burn over previous years to reduce the underbrush. That growth in underbrush has removed carbon from the atmosphere, and now the fires are returning it. So what's being added to the atmosphere is only what was recently taken out of it. This sort of thing is not the problem. Well, not the global warming problem. In other senses, those fires are a nasty problem indeed.

You're mistaken.

Here's the problem. Over the course of millions of years, long ago, plants would die and neither burn nor decay, but get buried deep underground. Heat and pressure turned those plants into fossil fuels. Since those plants didn't burn or decay, the carbon in them was removed from the carbon cycle and stored away in the earth's crust.

So we have millions of years worth of carbon buried underground. Kind of as if each person took a few dollars a year and stuffed it in a mattress. Over a million years or so, that small amount stuffed in the mattress each year would grow until it was an enormous amount of money. That's pretty much what happened with fossil fuels. It stored huge amounts of carbon away from the biosphere and that carbon just sat there for eons.

Then, over a couple of hundred years, humans have been digging up large amounts of that concentrated, stored carbon, and dumping it back into the atmosphere. It's like suddenly breaking open all those mattresses stuffed with cash and putting it into circulation instantly. That would give you massive inflation, and suddenly returning all that sequestered carbon to the atmosphere also causes problems.

The flaw in your argument is that we're doing it instantly.

We are not. We are doing it over a very long period of time.

The CA fires are releasing as much carbon into the air in a shorter period of time then drivers in California are doing over a longer period of time.

The release of carbon from fires is massive. The exact figures on this are not certain. But if somebody felt they could make political hay with it I'm sure somebody would commission a survey to show it.

But since the right doesn't feel the need to prove it I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this information to be released.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

I'm more into something like this.Harley-Davidson | Motorcycles | 2008 Motorcycles

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

That's a beautiful line of iron, that's for sure. But they're Harleys, so naturally they all look good. A little out of my price and size range though.
Seven grand for something I won't be riding all the time is about my limit.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I figure why waste the money on something you won't be happy with.

I know I won't be riding it much but still I'd rather get something rather then wish I had gotten it.

I think the same with cars.

Why buy a Chevy when you really want a Honda or a Merc.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

I understand, but this IS exactly what I want. Right price and the right size.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I was speaking for myself only.

I knew that was what you want.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

It doesn't matter how massive the fires are. If I plant a field with shrubs and then burn it all, the net C02 change in the atmosphere is zero. Each year, part of California burns, each year another area that burned in the past regrows. The net effect if left in isolation should be a steady state.

It took 10 yrs for the carbon that is in those trees and bushes to be gathered , regardless of whether you say the net exchange is zero, if it is all released in a week the effect is just as disasterous as driving thousands of cars over the same period. The polution is still massive in the case of a fire.

Your argument still has become what you consider to be acceptable. Fossil-fuels aren't acceptable to you but fires are. You say fires aren't preventable, which isn't true, so we have to accept them as a non-preventable fact and not count them as a contributor to air-polution.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

In geological terms, a couple of hundred years is the blink of an eye.

That may be true, but in real time the Earth is able to clean up a large amount of polution. It's not like all of the carbon is still up in the air. Rain is washing it out of the air and plants are absorbing it. The largest hit on the Earth's ability to clean itself comes from nature, volcanoes, forest-fires, etc.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno