[alephnil]

You can't turn off the body, and you need exercise to stay healthy. Thus it does not really make sense to compare cycling to driving like the article does. If you are driving to the gym, and then using the energy you would have used biking at the gym, you will cause the combined emissions of both cycling and driving. The only way to get away from that is to be more passive, so that you would require less food, and thus cause less emissions. That is hardly an attractive option.

It is better to start with the most avoidable emissions first. Driving is obviously more avoidable than respiration, and coal fired electricity generation is likely even more avoidable. After that the next step will be to reduce the CO2 footprint of food production as well as changing to a diet with lower CO2 footprint.

Comparisons like the one in the article only give the message that it is really nothing you can effectively do about climate change, so why not continue as usual.

[ysea]

Precisely, I either bike or bus to work every day. If I take the bus I do some other form of exercise instead. And I certainly don't eat less on the days I ride the bus. I would imagine most people that get around by bike maintain a steady level of exercise during times when they are biking less.

Whether or not the author's intent was to discourage biking and encourage driving they have done exactly that.

[sonthonax]

I run 8 miles to work a few times a week. I still shock my colleagues with how much I eat those days.

[andylei]

if you read the article as an argument about eating meat, its a lot more compelling than it is as an argument about biking.

[toomuchtodo]

TL;DR Adding a specific species of seaweed to bovine and sheep diets reduces their methane production by 99 percent and 70 percent, respectively. Easy win. Far easier than convincing the developed world to cut meat consumption. (EDIT: I have not explored the difficulty level of cultivating this species of seaweed in an aquaponics setup, but its on my TODO list.)

"An obvious solution to the problem, of course, is to simply give up raising cattle and eating beef. Gidon Eshel, professor of environmental physics at New York’s Bard College, in a recent research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calculated that each American who drops beef-eating saves us the annual emissions equivalent of burning 61 gallons of gas or 580 pounds of coal. Better yet, go vegan, since dairy cows not only produce more methane than beef cattle, but outnumber them by a ratio of 10 to 1 in the United States.

Or we could start adding a sprinkle of seaweed to livestock feed.

The crucial research, by Robert Kinley of CSIRO and Rocky De Nys, professor of aquaculture at Australia’s James Cook University, and colleagues, involved testing some 20 different species of seaweed in artificial cow stomachs—that is, a mix of rumen and microbes that mimics the behavior of a cow stomach in a bottle. When grass or feed is added to this in vitro tummy, fermentation takes place and the scientists are able to measure the resulting methane output. In the presence of Asparagopsis taxiformis—described by De Nys as “a real stand-out” among the tested seaweeds— methane production was cut by 99 percent. Experiments in sheep showed that if dried Asparagopsis taxiformis seaweed made up just 2 percent of total feed, methane emissions drop by 70 percent. It can be added as a sprinkle, De Nys says, just as you might add a smattering of herbs to roast chicken."

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/th...

Research paper: http://www.publish.csiro.au/an/AN15576