Ah, so essentially what you’re saying is they use the filthiest left overs to fuel ships as it doesn’t have to comply with clean air regulations…

Is it true that ships often switch fuels before coming in to dock, so as to bring their emmissions down to an acceptable level?

There’s a big disparity here… even if fuel prices were to increase in the UK, it wouldn’t make that much difference in the bigger scheme of things; don’t forget the price of fuel in North America for example is around 1/2 what it is here… hence the bigger engines (and bigger per capita emissions)

By contrast, Aviation and Maritime fuel is Tax Free all over the world; speaking of all over the world, it’s basically subsidising transport of the majority of the consumer tat that chokes the oceans and ends up in landfill.

For the gammons out there, it also means industry is being outsourced… thanks to subsidised international transport, those dirty foreigners are taking our jobs overseas!!

But by contrast, you’re entirely happy with the fact that there is no tax on Aviation and Shipping Fuel?

As we saw from the climate strike yesterday, this is a global issue; I’ve addressed the petition appropriately to reflect that…

After attending the #ClimateStrike yesterday, I decided to start a petition

More and more people are becoming aware of the Climate Emergency, but currently, there is no tax on fuel used for Aviation or Shipping.

This is the same the world over.

Why Tax Aviation and Shipping Fuel?

Currently the fossil fuels industry is massively subsidized, often by indirect methods such as tax breaks, which help keep these subsidies off the balance sheets

The money raised could be used to fund renewable energy and transport, speeding the transition to a sustainable future.

While emissions of some pollutants from road transport have gone down in general (although not carbon dioxide), emissions from aviation and shipping continue to rise.

Aviation activities, including flights but also airports themselves put a number of negative pressures on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutants, noise pollution, water demand and waste generation.

Within the EU greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation have more than doubled since 1990.

Shipping activities also lead to significant emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants, noise and water pollution.

By 2050, global aviation and shipping are together expected to contribute almost 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions unless further mitigation actions are taken.

Why are Emissions from Aviation and Shipping increasing?

We have observed a globalisation of trade over recent decades and both aviation and shipping have seen tremendous growth. This has led to a steady increase in emissions.

The number of air passengers in Europe and globally, for example, has tripled since 1990.

Another example is increased trade with emerging economies, which results in longer travel distances.

When it comes to fuel tax, there’s already plenty at the pump for most of us…

The odd thing is, aviation and shipping fuel is tax free!

All this talk of Kaesae has got me wondering, whatever happened to jivehoneyjive?

How much subsidy is there on flying?

Isn’t it time to rename this thread ‘Rupert Murdoch’

most of the ‘debate’ on here seems to be recycled snippets of all the guff he puts out for the weak minded…

Phew, that’s OK then, was a bit worried there for a moment, but the newspapers seem to have it all under control…

NARRATOR:

Trump’s AG Bill Barr — whose father hired Jeffrey Epstein to teach young girls (despite the lack of a college degree) — neglected to mention that his Dept of Justice has control over the Bureau of Prisons facility where Trump’s friend Epstein died. https://t.co/4EI1nZmjkc

— Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) August 12, 2019

Now that billionaire child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news, it seems like a good time to take a closer look at allegations that Donald Trump raped a 13-year-old girl at Epstein's Manhattan home in 1994.

Trump is more than overdue for his #MeToo reckoning… pic.twitter.com/pumMTXcA3h

— Ian Madrigal – The Monopoly Man (@iansmadrig) November 30, 2018

This seems like a good solution:

Just 10% of fossil fuel subsidy cash ‘could pay for green transition’

But if got me to thinking… just how much taxpayers money are governments around the world investing in fossil fuels?

United States Spend Ten Times More On Fossil Fuel Subsidies Than Education

The report explains that fossil fuels account for 85% of all global subsidies and that they remain largely attached to domestic policy. Had nations reduced subsidies in a way to create efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015, the International Monetary Fund believes that it “would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP.”

But how much are we talking?

Well, in terms of direct subsidies, we’re into the hundreds of billions:

Appreciate that’s not UK figures… however, climate change is a global issue that unlike agenda driven politicians, gives no shits whatsoever about borders;

UK figures are less accessible, no doubt in part to transparency issues and creative accounting (we’ll leave the role of tax havens in all of this for another day), however, data suggests the UK subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of around $11,000,000,000 (£9,080,342,000) a year

But of course, there are many factors to consider beyond direct subsidies…

The study includes the negative externalities caused by fossil fuels that society has to pay for, not reflected in their actual costs. In addition to direct transfers of government money to fossil fuel companies, this includes the indirect costs of pollution, such as healthcare costs and climate change adaptation. By including these numbers, the true cost of fossil fuel use to society is reflected.

Something to remember in all of this given the UK’s special relationship regardless of who’s elected is that the US Military is the world’s largest single polluter…

A huge chunk of foreign policy and military strategy for many countries involves protecting shipping lines for fossil fuels. The US military spends at least $81 billion a year protecting oil supplies. Meanwhile, there are no carrier groups defending wind turbine supply chains or a strategic silicon reserve for solar panels.

Factoring in the indirect costs as mentioned above, just how much is the fossil fuel industry subsidized every year?

Blimey, that’s a lot of zeros

I’m not riding a rigid singlespeed
No one else is sharing my bikes
I wont stop buying shiny stuff
I wont stop driving to cool riding locations

Realistically speaking, this is the most likely outcome for the vast majority of riders…

Even if these schemes were to have a significant uptake, the unfortunate fact is that it’d have very little impact on global climate change.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom; Ethiopia have the right idea:

Ethiopia plants more than 350 million trees in 12 hours

Being as trees and plants breathe in nasty ‘boil your grandchildren alive’ carbon dioxide and breathe out ‘soothing tranquility that chills the sun the **** out’ oxygen, it can only be a good thing.

Couple that with the shade provided by trees and it’s clear that whomsoever designed the planet in the 1st place had a pretty good handle on the concepts of maintaining life and/or ecological balance.

Now, whether DEFRA are gonna read this post and immediately scurry out throwing out subsidies to reclaim all the land that’s been deforested over the centuries remains to be seen, but damn, it’s better than boiling your grandchildren, even if it did mean market forces caused the price of meat to rocket, making it less taken for granted by the all consuming masses.

That said, careful placement of said trees allowing light to pass through to the forest floor would still allow photosynthesis and thus grazing…

No worries, there’s plenty of time, dunno what all those hippies are fussing about…

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. 4 terrifying things happening in the Arctic right now.

There's no planet B, There's no time to waste. #ActOnClimate#Climate #energy #cdnpoli #abpoli #GreenNewDeal #go100re pic.twitter.com/0TNPlveWuT

— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) July 29, 2019

That’s a good shout and it would certainly help in raising consumer awareness, along with having a positive impact…

However, to really make a change towards sustainability, we have to confront the elephant in the room; the military industrial aviation complex…

The U.S. military’s greenhouse gas emissions are higher than most countries

Whilst I certainly condone sustainable practices, reduction in consumerism, responsible vehicle use and avoiding flying, even in the best case scenario the overall impact of the mtb industry casting it’s gaze inward and focusing only on it’s own activity would be relatively minimal; to really make a change, activism on the real sources of pollution (who are also responsible for much of the brainwashing of the planet crushing plunder led consumer dream) is essential.

Wanna know why airline owner Richard Branson funded a politically motivated benefit concert in Venezuela?

Oil…

Damn, seems there’s some elements in all this that might not immediately spring to mind…

Tour de France condemned over ‘avalanche’ of 15 million bits of plastic thrown to crowd

Appreciate there’s no MTB events on quite the same scale, but no doubt there’s plenty of long forgotten promotional tat floating around the world’s water ways with no intention of decomposing 🤔

Whilst there is doubtless room for improvement, given the constant bombardment of consumerism by magazines and websites whose main role is to employ folk (most of whom seek a cushy life receiving freebies and travelling the world for the launch of the next big thing) to peddle fresh produce (and staler produce at discounted prices) on behalf of manufacturers, at the same time we have to remember if we don’t buy stuff, then progress and innovation stagnate, companies go bust, jobs are lost, and it all kinda sucks.

At the end of the day, we should be encouraging cycling in all it’s forms, as not only is it a healthy and enjoyable sport, but a relatively low impact form of transport; the more cyclists there are, the more people to ensure adequate provision for cycling infrastructure, which cuts down on car use and improves the ratio of fitties to fatties.

Which reminds me… the reason pedicabs (rickshaws) are only confined to a few cities in the UK is down to archaic licensing laws and the power of the taxi lobby.

They’re a fun mode of transport, with minimal environmental impact which open up employment opportunities and benefit the local economy… surprised more councils haven’t been proactive in encouraging their use.

That doesn’t seem like the most constructive approach to a sport we all enjoy and which encourages healthy lifestyles and appreciation of the beauty of nature, which in turn is likely to lead to more people with an active interest in preserving the environment.

Despite my honest appraisal of the machinery used to build mountain bike trails, think for a moment how this compares to the construction and maintenance of the road network…

On a larger scale, how does 1 day of the global impact of MTBing compare to:

1 day of traffic on the M25

or

1 day of the combined impact of the City of London and Canary Wharf, from construction of the buildings, to transport and housing, feeding and clothing all those employed, to rubbish collection and disposal, lighting, running of office equipment, telecommunications and servers along with air conditioning/heating

it may be that there’s room for improvement all round…

It’s a tricky one for sure… I was recently involved in building a new blue trail at a well known trail centre and the amount of resources that go into it are quite an eye opener, with vast amounts of plant used to dig and surface the trail, not to mention the quarrying operation that delivers the surfacing.

By contrast, we did some improvement works on an existing trail and I chose to hand dig, partly due to access problems for the excavator; apparently my choice caused a degree of controversy, since allegedly hand digging is more costly per metre; whether that is in fact the case is debatable, given the maintenance and consumables required by excavators, from new tracks, to buckets written off by stumps, to about 40 litres of diesel a day each. That said, there’s no doubt you can achieve features with machine built trails that you’d struggle to manage by hand.

However, putting it in perspective, I’d be surprised if the multiple months it took to build the trail would consume anything like 1 day of resources of the combined armed forces of the UK;

As an example, even in peacetime, the US military is the world’s number 1 single consumer of fossil fuels (and #1 polluter); no big surprise I suppose, given those same resources are the main reason for much of the world’s conflict.

In a round about way, that brings us back to driving to go riding; something that could no doubt be improved upon; in many respects, that’s the beauty of electric cars; whilst by no means perfect, the potential exists to move away from fossil fuels, with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and tidal; though all have their detractors, one has to wonder how much of this is due to vested interests given the subsidies afforded to far less clean forms of energy.

Bringing it back to the bikes themselves, an interesting case study would be to quantify how much additional material has been used as a result of the shift in wheel sizes; though individually it’s pretty insignificant, on a mass production level, the difference between 26 and 27.5 is going to mean more material used; from tyres rims and spokes, to rear stays, forks, boost hubs and cranks etc etc.

All very odd…

Flippin softies!!

I could tell a few tales about how harsh Glencoe can get, but I’ve heard it’s improving all the time.

I’m just off for a manicure and a blow*** (dry)

First up loosen up by bouncing up and down on the bike.

Then, whilst covering the rear brake, forcefully lean back, as if to sit on the back wheel.

Keep your arms straight and look ahead.

Use your knees and hips to maintain balance, dropping your heels will also help force the front wheel up.

Speed is your friend and gives stability~ start out about jogging pace and as you get more confident, try it with more speed.

It takes a long time to perfect, so don’t be disheartened if you can’t achieve any distance within a week… reckon on a few months of practice to maintain the balance point.

I always fancied Na Gruagaichean, but the right day never came~ done Stob Coire a’ Chairn and the descents from Coire an Lochain and can recommend both~ the top of the descent from Stob Coire a’ Chairn is awesome and links up nicely with the Grey Mare’s tail path for nigh on 1000m’s technical descent with minimal climbing (during the action)… Coire an Lochain links into the Kennels path which is set to become a classic once a few more enduros have been through!!

Awesome work Sanny!! I can wholly recommend the Lairig Eildhe the other way and also the descent of the path to the climbers cottage.

Why not? Surely they are all things that are measurable. Isn’t it just a case that you are not being provided with the numbers that really matter (and are being bombarded with a mass of numbers that don’t)?

I honestly don’t think you could ever give a complete breakdown of a bikes ride qualities simply through numbers~ for example, even if you did give figures for lateral stiffness, it wouldn’t give the full picture… you could have 10 bikes with the same figure on paper, but all with flex originating from a different point.

Even if you were presented with a full animated simulation of various bikes characteristics, though you could perhaps predict some of the nuances of their ride characteristics, with so much varied terrain and conditions, you still don’t really know how they ride because you are not engaging the relevant stimulus (senses far beyond the 5 we were taught in school) to feel the reality (and FUN!!) of it.

Effective Top tube is a very handy guide, but you have to bear in mind the seat tube angle~ frames with slacker seat angles may have a seemingly long ETT, but the BB position means the reach may be far shorter than expected, leading to toe rub.

Going back to the OP, when choosing a frame, I generally have a comprehensive look at the geometry chart, though as already mentioned, there is no standardized system of how figures are measured.

It gives you a good idea of how the bike will ride, but ultimately the numbers only tell half the story; being as there are so many interacting parts in the dynamic structure of a frame, a bike with all the right numbers may fail to make the grade due to factors such as lateral flex in the back end, an overly harsh ride, or a ropey suspension curve, that you couldn’t diagnose from pure objective figures.

A scandal you say? http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/glencoe-an-inconvenient-truth 😉

Thanks, I appreciate the compliment 😆

Also many thanks to the volunteers who’ve repaired damage~ let’s hope this has been a wake up call and more care is taken in the future…

Met a few ~ there were some cool guys from Switzerland who did a roadtrip of the whole UK, bringing only full on DH bikes~ nonetheless, they were singing the praises of the British scene.

A family from Holland, who were firmly in the XC lycra camp, who were exploring Scotland.

I also have a Swedish friend who makes regular trips over to the UK to ride.

Even though we lack the sizable mountains and reliable weather of much of the rest of the world, there is a remarkable number and diversity of riding opportunities in a relatively small area.

Can’t remember the actual visitor numbers off the top of my head, but the relative percentage of overseas vs domestic visitors is tiny.

Blatantly just needs some carbon wrap enhanced with cutlery 😀

If anyone is buying an Alfine 8 (or you want to upgrade your existing set-up, I’d recommend the newer shifter

Fair bit sleeker than the original chunky beast and has dual release (2 way action) on the finger trigger. Still the reverse of a conventional shifter though.

Though there’s a bit of an optical illusion going on with the wheels, I like to think my steed is almost as pretty as the scenery.

If your knees are bowing out when you are pedalling, with the seatpost at full extension, then you either need a longer seatpost or a larger frame~

However if this is occurring when you are out of the saddle in the attack position, then you basically have it right, though perhaps slightly exaggerated~ your knees should be about shoulder width apart~ many people have the opposite problem, whereby their knees point in… like balancing on a plank vs balancing on a tightrope, the wider stance gives you more stability.

Imagine a world where if you had a worn stanchion, or a bent steerer, all you had to do was buy just the bit you needed, loosen a couple of allen bolts and bob’s yer careful cliche dodger.

Imagine then crashing as said part fell out because I forgot to write the bit where you tighten the allen bolts again.

Nice shot 🙂 There is a great deal of beauty and potential, so better to make use of that than consign it to a story of what could’ve been…

More pics from last year (pre digger) here

OK, moving on, this may be of help in the future 😉 … meetings where everyone is involved would doubtless help create a cohesive team and ensure unrealistic promises weren’t made:

what is a fakie – sounds impressive on a bike if its anything like the snowboarding equivalent!

A fakie is rolling backwards, still trying to work out if the one at 2:05 in this vid is real:

I’ve got the same one (though not a Lada 😉 ) and been very impressed with it… quick and easy to adjust, robust and well made.

😆 There is a passing resemblance, though the fella I dealt with had more of a “I’ve pure been tae hell and bought a wee slice back wuth me tae share” look about him.

Speaking of badgers, I think this may be relevant: