BIKE SCUM

Photo

biciliberation — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:29:00 -0700

May Day is International Workers Day!

biciliberation — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:23:18 -0700

A day to Value the Workers of the World. The power that keeps the beast of Capitalism’s gears in motion, for the elite bourgeoisie to assume the labor is not much.

As Capitalist keep getting rich and the working class keeps becoming unemployed more we as Anarchists who despise the economic/political system of appropriation we ask our brothers and sisters of the world to BOYCOTT the market.

titsandtires: Silver Wraith Track Bike (by Felipe...

biciliberation — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:03:19 -0700

titsandtires:

Silver Wraith Track Bike (by Felipe Hefler)

Sexy

Reversing Climate Change is a Myth

biciliberation — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:29:57 -0700

The CMO (Chief Misinformation Officer) of the climate ignorati, Joe Nocera, has a new piece, “A Real Carbon Solution.” The biggest of its many errors comes in this line:
A reduction of carbon emissions from Chinese power plants would do far more to help reverse climate change than — dare I say it? — blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Memo to Nocera: As a NOAA-led paper explained 4 years ago, climate change is “largely irreversible for 1000 years.”
This notion that we can reverse climate change by cutting emissions is one of the most commonly held myths — and one of the most dangerous, as explained in this 2007 MIT study, “Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter.”
The fact is that, as RealClimate has explained, we would need “an immediate cut of around 60 to 70% globally and continued further cuts over time” merely to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2 – and that would still leave us with a radiative imbalance that would lead to “an additional 0.3 to 0.8ºC warming over the 21st Century.” And that assumes no major carbon cycle feedbacks kick in, which seems highly unlikely.
We’d have to drop total global emissions to zero now and for the rest of the century just to lower concentrations enough to stop temperatures from rising. Again, even in this implausible scenario, we still aren’t talking about reversing climate change, just stopping it — or, more technically, stopping the temperature rise. The great ice sheets might well continue to disintegrate, albeit slowly.
This doesn’t mean climate change is unstoppable — only that we are stuck with whatever climate change we cause before we get desperate and go all WWII on emissions. That’s why delay is so dangerous and immoral. For instance, if we don’t act quickly, we are likely to be stuck with permanent Dust Bowls in the Southwest and around the globe. I’ll discuss the irreversibility myth further below the jump.
First, though, Nocera’s piece has many other pieces of misinformation. He leaves people with the impression that coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a practical, affordable means of reducing emissions from existing power plants that will be available soon. In fact, most demonstration projects around the world have been shut down, the technology Nocera focuses on would not work on the vast majority of existing coal plants, and CCS is going to be incredibly expensive compared to other low-carbon technologies — see Harvard stunner: “Realistic” first-generation CCS costs a whopping $150 per ton of CO2 (20 cents per kWh)! And that’s in the unlikely event it proves to be practical, permanent, and verifiable (see “Feasibility, Permanence and Safety Issues Remain Unresolved”).
Heck, the guy who debated me on The Economist‘s website conceded things are going so slowly, writing “The idea is that CCS then becomes a commercial reality and begins to make deep cuts in emissions during the 2030s.” And he’s a CCS advocate!!
Of course, we simply don’t have until the 2030s to wait for deep cuts in emissions. No wonder people who misunderstand the irreversible nature of climate change, like Nocera, tend to be far more complacent about emissions reductions than those who understand climate science.
The point of Nocera’s piece seems to be to mock Bill McKibben for opposing the idea of using captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery (EOR): “his answer suggests that his crusade has blinded him to the real problem.”
It is Nocera who has been blinded. He explains in the piece:
Using carbon emissions to recover previously ungettable oil has the potential to unlock vast untapped American reserves. Last year, ExxonMobil reportedthat enhanced oil recovery would allow it to extend the life of a single oil field in West Texas by 20 years.
McKibben’s effort to stop the Keystone XL pipeline is based on the fact that we have to leave the vast majority of carbon in the ground. Sure, it wouldn’t matter if you built one coal CCS plant and used that for EOR. But we need a staggering amount of CCS, as Vaclav Smil explained in “Energy at the Crossroads“:
“Sequestering a mere 1/10 of today’s global CO2 emissions (less than 3 Gt CO2) would thus call for putting in place an industry that would have to force underground every year the volume of compressed gas larger than or (with higher compression) equal to the volume of crude oil extracted globally by [the] petroleum industry whose infrastructures and capacities have been put in place over a century of development. Needless to say, such a technical feat could not be accomplished within a single generation.”
D’oh! What precisely would be the point of “sequestering” all that CO2 to extract previously “ungettable oil” whose emissions, when burned, would just about equal the CO2 that you supposedly sequestered?
Remember, we have to get total global emissions of CO2 to near zero just to stop temperatures from continuing their inexorable march toward humanity’s self-destruction. And yes, this ain’t easy. But it is impossible if we don’t start slashing emissions soon and stop opening up vast new sources of carbon.
For those who are confused on this point, I recommend reading the entire MIT study, whose lead author is John Sterman. Here is the abstract:
Public attitudes about climate change reveal a contradiction. Surveys show most Americans believe climate change poses serious risks but also that reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sufficient to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations or net radiative forcing can be deferred until there is greater evidence that climate change is harmful. US policymakers likewise argue it is prudent to wait and see whether climate change will cause substantial economic harm before undertaking policies to reduce emissions. Such wait-and-see policies erroneously presume climate change can be reversed quickly should harm become evident, underestimating substantial delays in the climate’s response to anthropogenic forcing. We report experiments with highly educated adults–graduate students at MIT–showing widespread misunderstanding of the fundamental stock and flow relationships, including mass balance principles, that lead to long response delays. GHG emissions are now about twice the rate of GHG removal from the atmosphere.
GHG concentrations will therefore continue to rise even if emissions fall, stabilizing only when emissions equal removal. In contrast, results show most subjects believe atmospheric GHG concentrations can be stabilized while emissions into the atmosphere continuously exceed the removal of GHGs from it. These beliefs-analogous to arguing a bathtub filled faster than it drains will never overflow-support wait-and-see policies but violate conservation of matter. Low public support for mitigation policies may be based more on misconceptions of climate dynamics than high discount rates or uncertainty about the risks of harmful climate change.
It’s also worth reading RealClimate’s piece “Climate change commitments,” based on a Nature Geoscience letter by Mathews and Weaver (sub. reqd.), which has this figure:

Again, zero emissions merely stops climate change, and obviously, thanks to fossil-fuel funded Tea Party politicians along with the deniers and the ignorati, we won’t be going to zero anytime soon.
Finally, I recommend RealClimate’s 2009 post, “Irreversible Does Not Mean Unstoppable“:
But you have to remember that the climate changes so far, both observed and committed to, are minor compared with the business-as-usual forecast for the end of the century. It’s further emissions we need to worry about. Climate change is like a ratchet, which we wind up by releasing CO2. Once we turn the crank, there’s no easy turning back to the natural climate. But we can still decide to stop turning the crank, and the sooner the better.
Indeed, we are only committed to about 2°C total warming so far, which is a probably manageable — and even more probably, if we did keep CO2 concentrations from peaking below 450 ppm, the small amount of CO2 we are likely to be able to remove from the atmosphere this century could well take us below the danger zone.
But if we don’t reverse emissions trends soon, we will at least double and probably triple that temperature rise, most likely negating any practical strategy to undo the impacts for hundreds of years.

The Bicycle Song by Nothin’ Special

biciliberation — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 02:00:24 -0800

The Bicycle Song by Nothin’ Special

"The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the..."

itwontbethewitchesburning — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:05:40 -0700

“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.”

- Emma Goldman (via itwontbethewitchesburning)

mariamachetes: Ain’t no one gonna take your pride if you don’t got any.

mariamachetes — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:01:30 -0700

mariamachetes:

Ain’t no one gonna take your pride if you don’t got any.

Photo

mariamachetes — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:40:14 -0700

What has Occupy LA been up to?

mariamachetes — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:57:25 -0700

What has Occupy LA been up to?:

Sieging the Central City Associtaion to STOP GENTRIFICATION!

To read more about the CCA:

http://ccala.org/downloads/DT2020legislativeprioritiesJan2012.pdf

May 1st General Strike

mariamachetes — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:04:54 -0700

May 1st

General Strike

A1 - A Day for Foolish Revelry On April first we occupied...

mariamachetes — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:51:25 -0700

A1 - A Day for Foolish Revelry

On April first we occupied Hollywood and Highland with a very fun and unique community outreach event. Dressed up in our foolish ways, we talked to people on the streets about the general strike and had a very positive interaction with the police. NO ARRESTS and that’s a good thing. We thank members of the Love Tribe, Keeping It Real Party and Bike Scum for putting on a great action.

biking @ night

mariamachetes — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:59:24 -0700

there’s no better time

La Culebra life

mariamachetes — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:00:31 -0700

Before

After

La Culebra life

Mixtape the cat runs things around here.

mariamachetes — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:50:00 -0700

Mixtape the cat runs things around here.

Take the streets sidewalk rider!!

mariamachetes — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:14:00 -0700

Take the streets sidewalk rider!!

BIKE SCUM

itwontbethewitchesburning — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:04:17 -0700

BIKE SCUM

Saturday and this blog is slacking.

biciliberation — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:59:02 -0800

waaaaaa

Tool Kit Needed

biciliberation — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:58:28 -0800

Tool Kit Needed:

This is the Park Tools EK-1 Travel and Event Tool kit.
we are in Need of a tool kit to get our bike fixing on!

this is what we need to get our bike co-op started and to get a mobile bike clinic running.

Donations welcome, even any kind of tool donation would be greatful

Bike Scum

occupyyourbed — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:11:49 -0800

Lets go get safe ^_^

OCCUPY LA

biciliberation — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:42:40 -0800

this is Bike Scum chapter of OLA.