zerakith

More of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere has been put there since it was a known issue.

Depressing but a bad situation is better than a terrible one, so we must push on.

I looked at the agreed changes for 41 but couldn't see any accessibility. Do you know what changes are coming?

Being available in a niche market isn't the same as being affordable because its a mass product. There's more use-cases then you outline: they are particularly good for those with certain types of disabilities. You are right that mixing with traffic is another key reason why they arent as popular. There's a reason you see them most commonly in areas with decent segregated infrastructure. Personally I have a DF for some of the reasons you outline. My point wasn't all about the frame though that was just an example, its also true of the focus at component level where R&D has not prioritised low-cost low-maintance options because the high-cost high-performance market was more lucrative and that stems from in part from the direction performance cycling took.

I didn't mean that all bikes sold were UCI compliant as directly as that. The market has focused on pursuing a fairly narrow definition of performance for a bike in part because of the narrow definitions of racing cycling. That's had knock on effects for the type of components that have been focussed on and developed. The near ubiquity of diamond frames over recumbents which prioritise comfortably for example.

I think we have seen that effect lesson over the last decade or so (e.g. belt drives for example). Ebikes help as they have very different markets, need different properties and have by definition no need to overlap with UCI compliance at all.

Of course its quite hard to unpick the other factors that have led the market to be cater so strongly to leisure market over the utility market but the UCI I think is up there in setting a cultural standard for what a bike is at the cost to alternatives.

I wonder how much damage to utility cycling the UCI has done. Maybe its not worth unpicking since the harm is so much less than the motor lobby.

Its just such a shame that UCI compliance dominates cycle manufacturing.

I have vaguest memory of reading somewhere the eyes was something Ron was forced to put in and didn't want. Seems to track with reveals in Return To Monkey Island.

Either way I remember the end of MI2 feeling jarring and feeling a little cheated out of a real ending. I'm not sure if I still feel that way with everything we now know about the intent (keeping it spoiler free for anyone who's not played RtMI).

I love CMI so much though I agree with the article about how perfectly the puzzles and humour land. I have played it at a number of different ages and it always works for me.

This is harrowing

Hi sorry for delay I wanted to read and absorb it before replying and my energy levels have been unpredictable.

There's some cool and great stuff in here.

I got overwhelmed about airships trying to work out if they were viable. You can (as I'm sure you've found) find a lot of aeronautical industry talking about how they fundamentally are unlikely to be able to fill any niche for some of the reasons you mention and some technical details which I really struggle to understand. Obviously industry spokespeople who are heavily invested in jet engines are unlikely to give a balanced picture...

I'm skeptical about wood burning vehicles to be honest. I think its more likely we will see (electric) micro mobility plus public transport. There could still be a niche for it but I suspect we would struggle to dedicate much land for wood production for this purpose given all the other demands we have.

I particularly like your focus on industry which often gets shuffled into a difficult-to-handle category and sort of forgotten. I wonder how much concrete demand we can avoid altogether.

Have you heard of solar.lowtechmagazine.com or its companion notechmagazine.com. They are full of this sort of thinking. Also there's http://www.oldandinteresting.com/default.aspx lots of examples that might inspire!

Lots of discussion on the technology and the pros and cons and likely implications which is super interesting but also think it should be noted how cool taking a concept like this and making some art out of it.

Really nice way of showing other worlds are possible using a technology thread that got closed by the take off of fossil fuels. I think a lot of the future solutions will look like this.

Kudos!

I agree and I didn't think you did mean at the global level but I think its important to be clear because a lot of comms is (deliberately?) vague on which scale and who is being talked about. I think a lot of people do get confused about it and I think its used a lot to bamboozle and greenwash.

I'm not sure of the solution but I do think more needs to be done at the GHG protocol level to stop accepting fixes (like buying up some land that's a net negative) that don't actually shift the global picture. Sadly, I've seen some well meaning people and organisations do just that and its hard to blame them. If someone is offering you an option that minimises the disruption and you don't know the detail of why its problematic you will take it. We need a way of going back down from to global level pathways to more local organisations so we can see clearly they aren't just buying up more than their fair share of mitigating options.

Just to be clear this might work at organisational and individual levels but not at a global system level where net zero or net negative human emissions is the only viable way to limit the damage and begin to repair.

I do agree with you rule of thumb at lower scales though as there's too much accounting mitigation which can directly oppose system wide net zero (i.e. by buying up small bits of negative emissions that need to happen anyway whilst not mitigating your own emissions).

I agree there may be quite a large range but just to say that can still be useful.

I think its crucial to start denormalising all the costs and externalities of car focussed transport policy. Motornormativity means policy makers and general public internalise costs of progressive infrastructure and are blind to the huge costs of the status quo.

So even being able to pin a wide range on it can be helpful. Not for financial costs but for emissions I was able to show even for the lower end of a wide range of additional hard-to-quantify emissions for scenarios that didn't drastically reduce private car usage as well as electricify would blow past thier carbon budgets.