Willamette Week Harshing On Our Two-Stroke Buzzzz

Not cool, Willamette Week. Not cool. This week one of Portland's alt-weeklies published a story about what an environmental nightmare scooters are. We know two-strokes are bad, WW. We don't need to be clobbered over the head with this kind of article.

There was some kind of scooter gathering in Seattle this weekend. We saw it twice - Once when we were recreating along Eastlake Saturday afternoon and once later in the evening in Ballard where we witnessed a gathering of a dozen or so. On Eastlake there were easily a few hundred of them wheeeeening up the street. Fantastic! Ride on, you hipsters! If we saw a parade of a few hundred SUVs chugging down Eastlake we don't know what we would have done. Thrown ourselves under their wheels, maybe, to sacrifice ourselves to the gods of progress. The Willamette Week tells us that SUVs put less hydrocarbons and CO2 into the air than a scooter, though. At least the ones they tested came out that way:

As for the SUV, we borrowed WW publisher Richard Meeker's 2006 Subaru Tribeca. The six-cylinder engine in Meeker's SUV pumped out less than 10 ppm of hydrocarbons and 1 percent CO2. In other words, the two-stroke scooter WW tested produced about 490 times the hydrocarbons and more than eight times the Co2 of the SUV.

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By Dan in News on August 11, 2006 9:37 AM

Comments [rss]

Julie - Portland OR

http://greenspeed.us/electric_bicycle_manufacture.htm

Here's a great site regarding cars and the resources it takes into manufacturing them.

Scooters, new or vintage, have nothin' on cars.

An average of 27 tons of waste is produced during the manufacturing of one car.

Cars are becoming a thing of the past everywhere but the US. It's okay to admit that you can have fun and do something right for the environment at the same time. As the population keeps growing world wide, these types of vehicles will be have to be taken more seriously. The need for land for food will inevitably take precedence over the need for more roads. The world is already in a drinking water crisis; don't you think the more we do to preserve our clean natural resources the better?

MvB

I love it! Where but the internets can someone begin with:

>>You people are all idiots.

...and end with:

>>Your blanket statements serve no purpose. Think before you comment.

Indeed.

Dave

You people are all idiots.

"Scooters are slow, noisy, dirty and unsafe?"

"...sacrifice ourselves to the gods of progress?"

"WW is right... ?"

Jeezus, get over yourselves. One of the comments above is correct in that the proper measurement of pollutants is by volume of exhaust gasses. A passenger car and SUV put out more volume of exhaust than a scooter. Even the little Honda Insight will put out more than a scooter.

Compare a MODERN scooter to a MODERN automobile and it will be quite obvious that the scooter pollutes considerably less. Compare a classic or vintage scooter to a classic or vintage car and you will find the same thing: the scooter pollutes less.

Apples to apples, folks. Scooters are fun to ride. Most vintage scooters are smelly and dirty while most modern scooters are not. Some scooters are noisy, but that is usually the choice of the scooter owner. Whether or not they are unsafe depends on the rider and the drivers around the rider (many drivers involved in wrecks with scooters weren't paying close enought attention to what they are doing and the scooter riders were frequently hot-dogging).

Your blanket statements serve no purpose. Think before you comment.

Graham

Scooters are slow, noisy, dirty, and unsafe. I suspect my Honda Insight does better in each of these areas, and probably even mileage as well.

Todd

If you had read through the comments on that story, you'd realize the article was poorly researched. Here's one of many comments that point this out:

"Many posters have also pointed out different aspects of the problem...

The real unit of measurement should be total volume of pollutants per unit of distance.

Consider: A 125cc displacement engine travelling 100 miles at 100 mpg (burning 1 gallon) vs a 5000-7000cc displacement engine travelling the same 100 miles at a mpg of at best 20 mpg (burning 4 gallons of fuel)

You're absolutely correct that per unit volume of exhaust the 2-stroke is worse than a 4-stroke, however, you have to consider that the SUV is more than 40 times the displacement and gets less than one fifth of the fuel milage of the scooter.

Considering that - the scooter is way better for the environment, without considering all of the other positive consequences of all operating smaller vehicles (ex: easier parking and less traffic congestion)"

Seth

Lots of things are bad for the environment. Living, for example, is bad for the environment, but I'm not going to kill myself.

Charles

So what? Because you like scooters, you don't want to know that they're terrible for the environment? You just want to ignore that fact because they're cool to you? What about the people who think Hummers are cool? Is it okay for them to ignore their terribleness because they think their vehicle is cool?

Sorry, but this isn't cute or funny. WW is right and scooters, no matter how cool, are bad for the environment as are gas powered lawn mowers and wal-mart.