The Fuel Cost of Obesity 285
thecarchik writes "America loves to complain about gas mileage and the cost of gasoline. As it turns out, part of the problem is us. How much does it really matter? A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 1.1 percent increase in self-reported obesity, which translates into extra weight that your vehicle has to haul around. The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed to compensate for passenger weight gained between 1960 and 2002."
Less than one percent... (Score:5, Insightful)
One key finding was that almost 1 billion gallons of gasoline per year can be attributed to passenger weight gain in non-commercial vehicles between 1960 and 2002--this translates to .7 percent of the total fuel used by passenger vehicles annually.
So they found it had nearly nothing to do with it. Spiffy.
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Nearly nothing, lets make that next to nothing, or completely negligable seeing how more fuel is used annually to run to the store for a newspaper or a soda or single under $10 items that aren't even close to being a necessity then the total passenger weight gain in non-commercial vehicles over the course of 42 years.
There was a study a while back which said that if people could purchase junk food when they purchased their groceries or gas or whatever other reason they needed to be at a store, we could cut
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There was a study a while back which said that if people could purchase junk food when they purchased their groceries or gas or whatever other reason they needed to be at a store, we could cut something like 15% of our annual fuel usage. Of course I can't find a link to the article on it, but it was about consolidating trips to the store to save on fuel expenses.
What luck! This is what I'm always doing on grocery day. And I thought I was being lazy. Now I know I'm being GREEN! :D
Re:Less than one percent... (Score:5, Insightful)
methinks the fuel that went into the growing, processing and shipping of all the extra food obese americans stuff down their pieholes is gonna account for a more substantive share than this.
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e.g. Instead of dying at 80 they die at 60.
I believe by the time most people hit 70 they start to consume more resources and wealth than they produce.
For similar reasons that's why smoking isn't so bad (assuming you collect hefty tobacco taxes)
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I didn't see any mention of the increase in the amount of diesel to haul the food around to fatten our asses up either.
Re:Less than one percent... (Score:4, Insightful)
before SUV's and mini vans we had station wagons and muscle cars. generally cars are a lot more efficient today. my 4 cylinder 2009 Accord has as much horse power as my old 1992 V8 firebird. and it has a lot more electric gizmos for pollution control as well as comfort
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My 2007 mustang GT got 31mpg on the highway and has 300hp. Back in 1970 a 300hp mustang required 458 cubic inches and got 12mpg.
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Your 2007 mustang is made from tinfoil and packing tape. the 1970 mustang was made from 3/4" plate steel, concrete, and lead. PLUS the engine was intentionally detuned. Those engines can be easily woke up to do 1HP per CuInch, your 2007 mustang is at the top of it's horsepower capabilities without adding a supercharger or turbo. a 1970 458 big block can easily reach 1000HP with a supercharger.
big difference.
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The 2007 Mustang engine CAN NOT EVER be suped up to 1000hp.
That's the point. today's engines are at the top of their HP potential, they cant go much farther without blowing up. older engines could be brough to insane points without much changes... the 458 mentioned had forged pistons from the factory, so that was not needed to get to HP levels that arenuts.
The other thing is... 300hp in a 4100lb car is way WAY faster than 300hp in a 6800lb block of lead from the past. It's how a honda Civic Si with a tu
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I want one of these [arielatom.com] _badly_. I wonder if Virginia will let me register it? I had no issues registering my dune buggy.
Note that the 300hp version is 4.6 lbs/bhp.
Re:Less than one percent... (Score:4, Insightful)
The old Mustang might be made from 3/4" (whatever that is in real unites) steel, but it's a fucking deathtrap compared to any relatively modern car, including the 2007 mustang. Also, the old, especially pre-'72, HP measurements were pretty much bullshit.
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??!? Huh?
Let's see.. 1975 :
VW bug 40mpg :23 mpg
Pinto : 34mpg
Plymouth Duster
3 of the MOST POPULAR cars in 1975. I.E. there was a crapload of them on the road, more than the SuperBee and Charger musclecars by a 60 to 1 ratio.
Sorry but fuel economy has went NOWHERE over the past 35 years. we had cars getting 20-s to 40mpg forever here in the usa and the bulk of people did not drive Musclecars and the Land-Yacht station wagons with giant big block V8's with 6 pack carbeurators.
Todays cars are more complex.
Go crash your Pinto and Beetle (Score:4, Informative)
Fuel economy has done well, not as good as it might have, but gasoline engine improvements are measured in percents.
When you start with an inefficient process your not going to get remarkable numbers without some major innovation.
Direct injection, turbo charging, start/stop, and other technologies are helping. Yet cars are heavier now because of all the creature comforts we desire and all the government regulations demanding the vehicles transmit the minimal amount of energy to the occupants in a crash.
Crashes that would have killed everyone in your example vehicles and left a vehicle barely recognizable now leave occupants nearly untouched and with some vehicles actually repairable.
Crashes that could not be avoided in your cars these days can be. Situations that were dangerous to drive in are very much less so.
No cars have come far, the race between efficiency and safety is erring to the side of safety.
While people throw out the bogeymen of SUVs and the like they ignore the fact that the majority of sedans get crap mileage as well.
Old beetles usually did 28 to 32 on the highway, took almost twenty seconds to reach 60. You could probably crash an infinite number of them into a new beetle before the new one was not drivable. You of course would have a lot of scrap old beetles laying around afterward.
Taking the mileage out of context does not make your argument better except at a cursory glance.
Frankly I would not dare drive most older cars everyday. Their brakes were horrid and their suspensions not much better.
As for the carb versus fuel injection comparison, get real. What you can do with direct injection shames a carb in both efficiency and pollution.
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and it has a lot more electric gizmos for pollution control as well as comfort
More gizmos to cause problems and break, you mean.
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A lot of us still do that here in Canada. Even with a FWD vehicle (my car lacks anti-lock brakes, nevermind traction control), you can still wind up with an unpleasant oversteer on icy roads.
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Personally theres always at least an extra 400 lbs of something in the back of my truck. I didn't buy a big gas guzzler but I did buy it to do work, however the rear end is as light as a feather even though its rear wheel drive and it slides out all the damned time, so I leave a few buckets of sand in the back right over the axle all the time. Its just as bad on dirt roads as on snow and over half the roads I use regularly are dirt roads so tis needed.
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How do they know it's passenger weight gain? Cars got heavier between 1960 and 1974
The car itself doesn't matter. If you're committed to taking car X then the increase in car X's load between a fat passenger and a thin passenger increases the load and thus the fuel use. That a heavier car uses more fuel than a lighter car is not the comparison. A heavier passenger in a heavy car still uses more fuel than a light passenger in a heavy car.
Re:Less than one percent... (Score:4, Informative)
We probably don't. Any round number like that is suspicious to start with.
However, your observation does lead to a good point. Extra vehicle weight, and other factors, do affect fuel mileage.
Every pound you add to your vehicle (whether it be lard or steel) reduces your fuel mileage by some small percentage (especially in city driving). Every item you add to your vehicle that interferes with the smooth flow of air around your vehicle also has the same effect, including roof racks, etc (especially in highway driving). Fast starts and heavy acceleration also have a significant effect, as does driving very fast (these two often add to maintenance costs, as well, and apply to both city AND highway).
These "little things" have a way of adding up to a measurable amount of money at the end of the year.
To keep the math easy, take a 20MPG pickup with $2/gallon fuel. That's ten cents a mile for fuel. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, fuel for that vehicle will cost you $1,000.
For every 10% (2MPG) increase or decrease, you are looking at an approximate additional expense or savings of $100 per year. So adding those cargo racks to the back of the truck just cost you the cost of the racks, plus $50-100 a year as an ongoing expense in lost fuel. If you don't need them, take them off. Or spend a few bucks on the ones that fold down out of the way.
Carrying around 200 pounds of bricks in your trunk for a month when it never snowed at all just cost you $5, which you could have saved by removing them until snow was forecast. Putting your studded snow tires on two months before it started snowing cost you $10 and made you put a couple thousand miles of wear on a set of studded snows that are a lot more expensive per mile than regular tires.
Racing off the line to beat the other guy in the shinier car to the merge cost you a between a dime and a half a dollar.
You saved $100 on a set of tires, but are annoyed because they are a tad noisier than you had hoped for. Guess what? That noise probably means the tires have higher rolling resistance, and over the 30,000 mile lifetime of those tires you'll end up spending $200 more in fuel to run them. Run them underinflated for a while and they'll wear out faster and cost you even more fuel.
Each of these things cost you money. Money you could use to buy other things if you wanted to.
Whether you choose to spend it on them is, of course, your decision. But it's a good idea to think about them.
Think about that the next time you are first in line at a red light, the lane merges ahead, and you've got some dude in a fancy car who wants to play. Do you want to be first? Glue a quarter on the dashboard near the redline indicator to remind you that it costs money. Spend it if you want, but be aware you are spending it.
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...and what TFA very quickly mentioned about the study is - also trying to determine how much of this car size increase is due to drivers not fitting comfortably into smaller ones (with the only photo in TFA touching on just that)
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All I see in the picture is some grotesquely obese guy with a poor fashion choice. And he looks pretty cramped in that Ford Excursion. ;)
The article actually specifically mentions that issue, at the end of the first paragraph, "Obesity has caused more people to buy larger vehicles..." I'm sure most of the increase in (non-commercial) car size is due to enormously fat people not fitting into normal cars (and bottoming out suspension, etc). That's pretty much common sense, and we've already had the "bigger
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An early 1980s full size car weighs more than many SUVs. That S is for Sport, meaning it is a weaksauce version of an actual utility vehicle designed to be cheap and disposable because you'll never use it for any kind of sport or utility.
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One key finding was that almost 1 billion gallons of gasoline per year can be attributed to passenger weight gain in non-commercial vehicles between 1960 and 2002
So, what about the increased fuel usage in commercial vehicles. More fatties means more food being transported around the country.
Ah, but that's the rub!
You're absolutely correct, of course. Cargo trucks use a LOT more 'gas' than cars, and our eventual independence on foreign oil relies entirely on refitting/replacing the trucking industry with something non-oil.
The thing is, there seems to be a growing wave of 'fat is bad' in America today. My pet suspicion is that it is part of the back room deals made to sell Obamacare to the healthcare sector. Just a hunch. Anyway, these are the psychological journeys, side by side:
A) You are
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Just a hunch. Anyway, these are the psychological journeys, side by side:
A) You are too fat, and you're costing yourself more in gas, so lose weight, fatty.
B) You are too fat, and you're making the trucks that haul food to your fat, waiting face use more gas.
In 'A' you might lose weight to gain better fuel economy. In 'B', less so.
Somehow I doubt if "c) You're too fat, loose weight or your'e going to die 10-20 years earlier" doesn't do the convincing then no fuel related argument is going to be successful.
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Well, you'd be wrong. For humans and monkeys [scientopia.org] both, it seems.
(See 'Loss Aversion')
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Increased demand for fuel =>; Increased cost at the pump for everyone.
That part's not necessarily true. It depends on a lot of factors, and there are certainly situations where lower demand leads to higher cost, e.g. racing fuel.
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First, I specifically said, 'nearly nothing'. Second, do the math:
1,000,000,000 = .7%
100% = 142,857,142,857.14
Big numbers are fun.
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It's all relative. The Earth's mass is 5.9736 × 10^24 kg. That's an enormously large number. The Sun however, is over 330,000 times as massive. In that perspective, despite the Earth's mass being large at a glance, for the purposes of that comparison it's virtually non-existent.
The same applies to the 1 billion gallons you quoted. Alone, it's a lot. In this context? Barely a blip.
How about (Score:5, Insightful)
offsetting this by the fuel savings coming from reduced family size. People simply have fewer children on average than they used to.
Wow you really can make numbers say anything you want. Remember that thanks to all the SUV's, the weight of the average car has increased since the 60's, not decreased as you would expect from losing the chassis and moving to a monocoque design.
But hey, let's bash fat people. How about that fat tax?
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They do need larger (wider, most importantly) car to feel comfortable...so yeah, it's not only weight increses of passangers, also cars; perhaps partly because the average comfortable size lies somewhat higher.
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So suck my fat dick....
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Yeah, and I typically walk, use a bike or public transport...you were saying?
(that said, not that many motorcycles can beat my car, if I do have to / choose to use it, Fabia with an SDI engine)
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I ride a 600 pound motorcycle, so I use less gas than almost EVERY skinny person that drives their car to work alone. And I get to use the HOV lane, which means I'm not in stop-and-go traffic as often.
You don't drive between cars? In CA, that's specifically legal (though still seems kind of dangerous.)
Slightly off topic, but funny and relating to verifying the above, apparently CA highway patrol gets the frequently asked question "If I'm pregnant, can I use the HOV lane?" [ca.gov]
Only in California...
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I ride a 600 pound motorcycle, so I use less gas than almost EVERY skinny person that drives their car to work alone. And I get to use the HOV lane, which means I'm not in stop-and-go traffic as often.
I'm not aware of any 600 pound motorcycles that get fuel economy worth a fuck. What is your actual economy like? And I don't mean theoretical or best-case, I mean what you get on average.
Further, you're probably polluting four times as much as an SUV or more per mile, due to the lack of meaningful emissions controls on motorcycles. So fuck you anyway with your allegedly fat dick. (If you really had one, you wouldn't need to tell us about it, or your motorcycle.)
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You want a citation to the self evident fact that "they do need larger (wider, most importantly) car to feel comfortable"?... (notice how I didn't say they actually have such cars; just wondered if it might be the reason for the trend, "perhaps partly because..")
And based on my personal observations it might work like that...so there (but then, I don't really see any " particularly heavy" people around)
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PS. And generally, TFA is your citattion (...for something I didn't exactly said) - apparently they specifically tried to determine how much the rising obesity levels influence uptake of larger cars.
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offsetting this by the fuel savings coming from reduced family size. People simply have fewer children on average than they used to.
Wow you really can make numbers say anything you want.
Indeed, you can! Gas mileage is asymptotic, right? This is why people carpool. If you calculate cost per person per mile, isn't it better to have a big family? Everyone travels cheaper!
In other news, advertisers love to say things like, "The more you buy, the more you save!"
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But hey, let's bash fat people
Well, it's sure easier than bashing skinny people, what with their better cardio, faster running speeds, and smaller target area.
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
I was on a flight recently, sitting in my window seat and getting settled while the plane was still loading, when a guy came trundling down the aisle who was around 6' tall and at least 300lbs+. Turns out he was my seatmate. It was only a short flight, so as he shoved his gear into the overhead I did my best to adopt a buddhist mindset and accept the fact there would be a little encroachment into my space for the next hour or so.
Turns out this guy wasn't happy with a little encroachment and he wanted to raise the armrest between our seats - said he can't fit comfortably between the armrests and needs to raise the middle one whenever he flies. I politely told him I'd be more comfortable with the armrest down and that I'm sure we'd be able to figure it out. He decided he needed to "stand his ground" and said there's no way he can sit - even for a short flight - with the armrest down. As more and more passengers lined up behind him (I was in seat 8A IIRC, on a plane with 24 or 25 rows), the flight attendant eventually got involved and asked what was going on. I stayed polite, but told her that I bought the same coach class seat as the other guy, and that I need to keep the armrest down for my own comfort and safety.
The FA told the guy he'd either have to sit in his assigned seat with the armrest between us down, or he could move to the last row of the plane and have 2 seats all to himself (she said the flight was "almost full but not quite"). You should have seen the glare this guy gave me as he took his bag back out of the overhead and trekked off down to the last row of the plane. Screw him - I paid for 1.0 seats. I'm willing to accept 0.9 but I'm not going to cheerfully smile and accept 0.6 for the next couple hours.
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You said the magic word, and made it a "safety" issue. Bravo.
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I know SUV sales have decreased... but my next-door neighbor just bought two matching Suburbans.
My neighbor across the street just bought an Escalade.
Plenty of people are still buying SUVs... and when the economy recovers, I think we'll see SUVs make a bigger comeback.
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Plenty of people are still buying SUVs... and when the economy recovers, I think we'll see SUVs make a bigger comeback.
Probably not. The *only* reason oil prices are low now ($70-$80/barrel) is because of the global recession. As soon as thinks pick back up, expect to see oil at $100/barrel *at least*.
So? (Score:3, Interesting)
Although 1B gals sounds like a lot, consider that Wiki says the US alone used 138B of gas in 2006. So saving 1B gals over the course of 20 years globally is a relative drop in the bucket.
What someone needs to do is track the relative fuel cost based on the weight and number of vehicles over the years, and it should be come apparent that we should be driving motorcycles and lightweight double passenger cars rather than trying to wrap our minds about how human weight affects oil consumption.
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Bad summary. 1B gals/year is quotes in the article.
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From the TFA:
One key finding was that almost 1 billion gallons of gasoline per year can be attributed to passenger weight gain in non-commercial vehicles between 1960 and 2002--this translates to .7 percent of the total fuel used by passenger vehicles annually.
So it was actually 1 billion gallons per year, not total. Seems like the blog words it poorly and that they're really saying that if we were all the same weight as we were in 1960, we would have used 1 billion gallons less fuel last year than we actually did. But that is still only a 0.7% increase in yearly consumption.
More fun is this observation:
One other result of the obesity problem is the increase risk of crashes as noted in a recent study and that is also due to the fact that obese drivers are less likely to buckle up because seat belts may not fit properly.
So basically, fat people are looking for Darwin Awards. Now just make sure they are all distracted on their giant phones, and problem solved.
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Of course, you can only make that argument because somebody bothered to compute how much human weight affects fuel consumption. It is wrong to claim that a study was unjustified because it shows that further concern over some issue is unnecessary.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Although 1B gals sounds like a lot, consider that Wiki says the US alone used 138B of gas in 2006. So saving 1B gals over the course of 20 years globally is a relative drop in the bucket.
Yeah I probably could cycle to work every day for the rest of my life, but I won't since it's just a relative drop in the bucket.
I could replaceall the halogens in my house with energy saving bulbs, but I only use 4kWh which in terms of the entire suburb is just a relative drop in the bucket.
Australia could build a new Nuclear power stations instead of Brown Coal power stations, but with China on the rise it's just a relative drop in the bucket.
Every time I read a comment like yours I realise that people don't get it. There's a finite number of drops in the bucket. Removing one alone does nothing appreciable. But if you start removing many of these tiny drops pretty soon you'll find the bucket is starting to empty. This isn't a 1B saving over 20 years. This is an ADDITIONAL 1B saving over 20 years.
Though admittedly fat people die younger, and may have difficulty breeding so that's probably good for the environment.
Remember... (Score:3, Informative)
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They see me (Score:4, Funny)
Lets do a little math ... (Score:3, Informative)
The equation [wikimedia.org]
Ok, I don't have the time or inclination to figure this out. But I bet
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So, you're talking about wind resistance, which is independent of the mass of the object -- only dependent on speed, shape, and air characteristics. When cruising, your fuel consumption is dominated by this (unless you're hauling a heavy load up an incline).
The mass-dependent fuel consumption is going to be primarily in acceleration (and hills), so the dependence of fuel economy on weight depends on driving habits.
Of course, fuel economy depends much more strongly on driving habits than it does on weight. F
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If wind resistance was an issue, maybe the increased fuel use is from...shall we say, less streamlined...people using on motorcyles instead of staying properly sheltered inside an SUV?
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The first section of TFA clarifies that they looked also at the size increase of cars / tried to determine the influence of obesity on the trend of buying larger ones. After all, what size of a car / seat is comfortable to you (and as far as I can tell, there's not really any gain in going above "yup, it's comfortable" level) is quite tightly related to your shape - the photo in TFA is quite telling.
They also touched on the increased risk of crashes - apparently not only because of car sizes, also because o
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Obese... Let's talk obese. Obesity is a bit more than 30#; more like 150# extra. Add to that that many people have families and if they're obese, the rest of their family has a higher likelihood of being obese. So the difference, for a 2 person vehicle may be 300# in a 3,000# vehicle; about 10%. That will impact your gas mileage.
I live across the street from one such family; the smaller of the two daughters is probably well over 250#; the larger one is, at a guess, close to 400#. Their little car can b
So now we know. (Score:2)
The energy crisis is all the fault of McDonalds.
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Actually, (and I know it's getting to be a tired excuse) I think that the sheer amount of corn products we consume has a lot to do with obesity rather than a specific company/brand/exercise regiment.
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Re:So now we know. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the government subsidizes corn, so it's cheaper to use than cane/beat sugar... I'm sure there's more than enough politics behind it (and now a national dependence) that it's not going to go away anytime soon.
We've all been forced(?) into consuming HFCS in just about everything from soft drinks to breads. Recently McDs has been selling sweet tea with sugar in it and I've found that if I drink one without eating I tend to get what I can only describe as light headed and I have to eat something to calm it down. I'm sure I have diabetes creeping up on me though. Of course, that's a lot of sugar for one drink so I don't have them often. ;)
Enjoy what you have!
Reality Check (Score:4, Insightful)
Less than what the US could save by making sure their tires are properly inflated (1.25 billion [popularmechanics.com]). let alone what we could save by cleaning out our trunks, removing our winter bags of sand, or other weight just sitting around in the car. Both are much easier than getting people to lose weight, but I doubt if they are getting done. Good luck on getting people to stop being obese to save an non-detectable part of their gas bill. For that matter, it would probably be easier just to appeal to get them to keep from diving as much (which if they walk or bike would also cut into the obese issue).
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All of which are laughable compared to consolidating trips (or anything else that results in driving less), carpooling, and preferring to buy a more fuel-efficient car.
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But all of which, when combined have more of an effect then when you do only one of them.
I know something (Score:3, Insightful)
I know something that America loves to complain about more than fuel prices. Fat Americans. Get over yourself.
You are doing it wrong... (Score:2)
I'm sequestering carbon (Score:5, Insightful)
10^9/10^11 = less than 1% reduction in fuel usage (Score:2, Interesting)
american fuel prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:american fuel prices (Score:4, Insightful)
That'd be because you tax the hell out of it.
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Better to shape your transportation policy when you can afford to vs screaming bloody murder when demand naturally increases the cost of fuel out of your comfort zone.
Remember when oil was $140/barrel? And people in the US (I myself also live in the US) were demanding someone do *something* about the price of oil? Yeah. Figure out how to use less, even if that means taxing it heavily to promote people to drive more fuel efficient vehicles.
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If you choose to have that sort of transportation policy, then don't complain about the high cost of fuel.
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If we (Americans) were to internalize all the negative externalities into the price of gasoline, how much would it cost? Add $20 per ton of CO2 [forbes.com], which comes to 19 cents per gallon, for global warming. Add in the cost of air pollution, up to $1600 per person annually [foxnews.com]. Because gas taxes and user fees only make up 65% of the cost of the roads [subsidyscope.com], add the other 35% into the cost of gasoline. And so on.
With all the externalities added to the price of gasoline, I think we
The Cost of Cheap Gasoline (Score:5, Insightful)
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The cost of (relatively) cheap gasoline? War, war, and more war. That cheap gasoline is only cheap because we're willing to bankrupt ourselves to get it.
The price of gasoline in America is all about refinery capacity and not the price of oil. So why don't they just build more refineries? That's right.. because the price of gasoline in America is artificially controlled.
The wars are about the control of natural resources (including oil) and the control of money.
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America has one of the cheapest fuel prices in the world.
That's bull and you know it. Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela all pay less than $1 per gallon. [cnn.com]*
*Based on some really old CNN Money article. Prices may have changed, but I doubt very much.
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America has one of the cheapest fuel prices in the world. Stop complaining. it's about 6-7$ a gallon here.
Cheapest? Hardly. Venezuela sells gas for 12 cents a gallon, it's cheaper than water. Each country imposes different taxes on fuel, some countries (like Venezuela) will even subsidize it. Just because our fuel is cheaper than yours doesn't mean it's some of the "cheapest in the world", far from it.
Stop! (Score:3, Funny)
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Dude, you gotta stock your mini-fridge before you sit down to read.
Regenerative Braking (Score:2, Funny)
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I'm not sure why, but I just imagined a future where fat people are hired to sit on "merry go rounds" as human flywheels.
Plastics anyone? (Score:2)
In 1960, even 1980, most everything on a vehicle was metal. Now days, so much of the vehicle is plastic. Plastic saves weight, while having some rigidity and performance. My glove box interior was actually cardboard, something that would be plastic today, due to the water-imperiousness, rigidity and what not (I am guessing weight is the same).
Meanwhile engineering advances have lead us to extract more HP from fuel. A 350cuin engine in 1980got 180HP and 300 ftlb of tq. Now they are about 300/300. With mult
Extra Extra, read all about it! (Score:2, Insightful)
hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
In the grand scope of things, 1B gallons over that time span is piss in the ocean.
1B gallons / 31 gallons per barrel = 32,258,064.5 barrels. Thats less than the US consumes in 2 days [doe.gov].
Here is a modest proposal! (Score:4, Insightful)
We can melt down all the fatties and use them as bio-diesel.
I don't agree (Score:2)
If America truly loves to complain about gas mileage then why the fuck are there still so many SUVs and big ass trucks on the road everywhere? I think America just loves to complain about obesity.
Let's see (Score:2, Interesting)
Fat People burn less fuel (Score:3, Funny)
Did they compare the Fat guy in his 40's who doesn;t go out much to the skinny d-bag jock type that is always driving out to bars three or more times a week to pick up women?
The Study is flawed because it doesn't take to effect that the fat people don't go out driving as much as thin socially active people.
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Bicycle (Score:3, Informative)
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Mod parent, grandparent up. Over the entire US, sure, 1% amounts to a lot of gas, but 1% is nothing compared with what you can save on a bike. I put 2500 miles/year on mine, displacing about 25-30% of what would ordinarily be driving (and crappy, city-ish driving, too). 1/3 of us live in communities at least as dense as Dutch towns (with 40% ride share), WTF is wrong with us?
Helps with flaky joints, helps with flexibility, too.
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I actually wish more of the world didn't think that someone being fat means that they're a complete and total failure in life either. The way some of you word your comments it's like you'd want to nuke fat people off the face of the earth.
God help you if you ever get to the point where you're overweight. I will come and laugh in your face.
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Let's have Fair Flying (Score:4, Interesting)
Airlines could do a lot to reduce carbon emissions, and also encourage better public health, by requiring passengers at checkin to stand on a large weighing platform along with their bags, and pay for the total weight. I strenuously object to subsidising the fares of obese people.
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Airlines could do a lot to reduce carbon emissions...
How is weighing me going to limit carbon emissions? I'll still be flying regardless of how badly they ridicule me.
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