EEEEEEKK 16-times more pollution!

[huck farley]

Here's me thinking by commuting on my bike and leaving the Cage at home. I was doing my bit as far as the emissions go. But after reading this article I dug out on the web. I'm gutted and I'm wasting my time I am releasing 16 times more soot than I would if I took the cage. Have a read and leave your comments, it's going to be interesting.

READ ON
Motorbikes are churning out more pollution than cars, even though they make up only a small fraction of vehicles on the roads, according to a report.

Tests on a selection of modern motorbikes and private cars revealed that rather than being more environmentally-friendly, motorbikes emit 16 times the amount of hydrocarbons, including greenhouse gases, three times the carbon monoxide and a "disproportionately high" amount of other pollutants, compared to cars. Ana-Marija Vasic at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, who led the research, said the need to legislate on emissions from motorbikes has been overlooked because there are so few on the roads. The oversight has lead to a paucity of research into ways of making their engines run more cleanly.

In Britain, there are 1,060,000 motorbikes on the road but more than 25m private cars.

Dr Vasic's tests showed that, especially in urban traffic, when motorcyclists frequently accelerated quickly, motorbike engines burned fuel inefficiently, giving a sharp peak in emissions. The yearly hydrocarbon emissions of the average two-wheeler in urban traffic measured up to 49 times higher than that of the average car, according to the study, due to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

"The importance of [motorbike] emissions has been underestimated in legislation, giving manufacturers little motivation to improve aftertreatment systems," said Dr Vasic. The tests were carried out on a variety of Yamaha, Piaggio and Honda 50cc scooters and Suzuki, Honda and BMW motorbikes with engine sizes ranging from 800cc to 1150cc.

[sAsLEX]

Lies, Damned Lies and statistics.


Numbers can say whatever you want them to.


Name me one car that is more fuel efficient than say a Royal Enfield, which gets 189MPG.

[McJim]

Bugger - my bike only puts out 53hp. Now some polititian is gonna look at the emissions from a high reving bastard or a 2 stroke 50cc Italian and make changes to my muffler so it only puts out 20hp.

[Ixion]

Only 16 times ? Psahww . He hasn't seen Petal on full song. I'll give him emissions. Noisy dirty smelly antisocial environmentally disastrous two smokers . We 's them

[Patar]

If these numbers are even remotely accurate (which i doubt as there are no actual numbers, just factors of numbers we don't know) the only way it could possibly make any sense would be in concentrations and if you look at a standard 250cc commuter bike compared to the standard 1.8L town car, the actual amount of pollutants generated from the car will still be greater (granted this is a generalisation).

Another major factor to take into consideration is maintenance; i know very few car drivers who regularly maintain their cars, only doing as a wof requires them to do... which has nothing to do with the engine performance, while many people who own motorbikes get their engines fairly regularly serviced (valve clearances, etc.)

I will admit that emission control on motorbikes is severaly lacking on bikes, especially catalytic convertors, which from memory are on very very few bikes. I wouldn't mind having two bikes, a small commutor and a larger weekend/ride bike.
Having a commutor bike that would be fairly small displacement and the addition of catalytic convertors would mean emissions compared to the average car are almost insignificant.

In short, while the numbers are a load of bs, the message behind it that pollutant emissions per unit volume of exhause could be a lot better than what it currently is, and for bikes used for commuting it should be improved upon.

[Skunk]

Sounds like bullshit to me. Unless you're comparing a 500cc two stoke in traffic to a 1000cc mini car. Then there might be some truth.
Sounds like some 'researcher' has an axe to grind.

[The Stranger:Me]

If these numbers are even remotely accurate (which i doubt as there are no actual numbers, just factors of numbers we don't know) the only way it could possibly make any sense would be in concentrations and if you look at a standard 250cc commuter bike compared to the standard 1.8L town car, the actual amount of pollutants generated from the car will still be greater (granted this is a generalisation).

Another major factor to take into consideration is maintenance; i know very few car drivers who regularly maintain their cars, only doing as a wof requires them to do... which has nothing to do with the engine performance, while many people who own motorbikes get their engines fairly regularly serviced (valve clearances, etc.)

I will admit that emission control on motorbikes is severaly lacking on bikes, especially catalytic convertors, which from memory are on very very few bikes. I wouldn't mind having two bikes, a small commutor and a larger weekend/ride bike.
Having a commutor bike that would be fairly small displacement and the addition of catalytic convertors would mean emissions compared to the average car are almost insignificant.

In short, while the numbers are a load of bs, the message behind it that pollutant emissions per unit volume of exhause could be a lot better than what it currently is, and for bikes used for commuting it should be improved upon.

There is a study around which looks at the environmental cost of moving passengers for various forms of transport.
In short it listed trains as the worst, followed by busses, then cars then bikes.
Essentially it came down to the pounds per passenger of the vehicle.

[Ocean1]

There is a study around which looks at the environmental cost of moving passengers for various forms of transport.
In short it listed trains as the worst, followed by busses, then cars then bikes.
Essentially it came down to the pounds per passenger of the vehicle.

Yes, I can believe bikes are less fuel efficient and their exhaust gasses less well controled. I can't believe they're 16 times worse. I might believe it under a very narrow range of conditions, but if it's a fair fight using mass moved per unit of evelnastyshit produced I'd be amazed.

Trains are bad simply because the engines are almosr universally of ancient design. As an industry, rail is stuck in a standards compliance induced time warp. Nuke the reg's and start ag'in and you'd find a well designed rail system could make good use of the fact that it takes less energy to move a ton by rail than any other transprot system. By shitloads.

[sAsLEX]

Trains are bad simply because the engines are almosr universally of ancient design. As an industry, rail is stuck in a standards compliance induced time warp. Nuke the reg's and start ag'in and you'd find a well designed rail system could make good use of the fact that it takes less energy to move a ton by rail than any other transprot system. By shitloads.

LIAR.


I raise your train with my ship!

[Ixion]

I raise your ship with my sailing ship. Zero energy, zero pollution. How come the greenies havent gotten on to this?

[The Stranger:Me]

I raise your ship with my sailing ship. Zero energy, zero pollution. How come the greenies havent gotten on to this?

They don't trust your sailing ability perhaps?

[Ixion]

They don't need to. Thaz wot computers is for. Seriously there is some interesting work going on using sailing ships with the rigging controlled by computers and winches (they could be powered by solar panels I guess). Eliminates the two big drawbacks of the sailing vessel, the need for lots of manpower and a great deal of skill. Still leaves the other drawback, variability. Modern commerce wants to know very precisely when a cargo will arrive. Often it's Ok if it takes a long time. But they need to know when. Mind you, with modern weather forecasting and radar and computers, that might be addressable too. Bear in mind, when petrol goes up , so does bunker oil.

[scracha]

I will admit that emission control on motorbikes is severaly lacking on bikes, especially catalytic convertors, which from memory are on very very few bikes.

FFS, a cursory glance at the interweb would show that this thread is a complete troll.

Euro 1 back in 2003 introduced emissions laws for motorcycles. Euro 2 and now Euro 3 are VERY strict. Prior to Euro 1, motorcycle emissions for ALL categories were well below that of the average car for carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen. ALL bikes over 150cc have to meet Euro 3, so a sportsbike is as clean as a commuter 250. Euro 3 is cleaner than the majority of cars and Euro 4 is well...you'll find out just how clean from NEXT MONTH when a fair percentage of the existing bikes on the markeT are phased out as they won't be able to meet it.

Amongst others, Japan and the US have emissions laws pertaining to motorcycles. Only 3rd world countries like New Zealand don't give a $hit about emissions.

In summary...the original poster is spouting shite

Now the real question...will any of this affect cheap motorcycle imports.
http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/pub...heet-2-08.html

[Ocean1]

LIAR.


I raise your train with my ship!

'Strue dude. Takes less energy to move a kg a mile on steel rails than any other system. There's just more to the story than that...

I raise your ship with my sailing ship. Zero energy, zero pollution. How come the greenies havent gotten on to this?

Aw dude, I'm coming over all nostalgic.

Compulsary 5 year merchant marine conscription with a fleet of coastal clippers? Aye.

[sAsLEX]

They don't need to. Thaz wot computers is for. Seriously there is some interesting work going on using sailing ships with the rigging controlled by computers and winches (they could be powered by solar panels I guess). Eliminates the two big drawbacks of the sailing vessel, the need for lots of manpower and a great deal of skill. Still leaves the other drawback, variability. Modern commerce wants to know very precisely when a cargo will arrive. Often it's Ok if it takes a long time. But they need to know when. Mind you, with modern weather forecasting and radar and computers, that might be addressable too. Bear in mind, when petrol goes up , so does bunker oil.

I raise that with a solar power capacitor bank feeding into a LASER based space delivery system that launches vehicles into space using the LASER that then glide back to similar stations anywhere in the world after completing an appropriate orbit.

Free energy and precisely timed.