I will assume this is, roughly speaking, the cheapest source of calories available.

That's a hell of an assumption. I have a kilogram of sugar (4000 calories) that I just bought for $1.50 at the expensive supermarket down the street. So, with a quick look at this morning's grocery bill and a Google for "calories per kilogram sugar" that non-researched piece of data is dead.

The calories burned number is subject to all sorts of variables like weight and conditioning of the person pedaling, speed of pedaling, resistance in the pedals, etc. For the sake of argument, let's say the quoted comment above was correct and the pay works out to 1 penny per 24 calories burned. From what I could find sugar in Haiti costs about $1.10/Kg or 36 calories/penny. Rice is $1.13/Kg or 31 calories/penny.

A couple of other fun Haiti stats for perspective: the average income for the lowest paid 80% of the population is $100/year. Manual labor pays $3-4/day. So, from a Haitian perspective the wages are not out of line for the work and the calories burned are more than covered by the wages paid.

All of that being said, of course the moonbatty guy is beyond stupid and my guess at what's happening in the photo is a lot of "smile and do whatever the stupid, rich guy says so he keeps spending money here." If he's spending $40/day to stay someplace and $20/day on food and misc., then that's the real reason to pedal the bike.

This is a perfect example of why the world actually NEEDS Obama to win.

This kind of story appeals to the core tenets of liberal thought, making everyone feel warm & fuzzy. But here in the U.S., we never have to 'live the reality' and understand how painful our world would be if we actually implemented Al Gore's vision for saving the world (which cannot be, and does not need to be saved).

The consequences of an Obama administration would be a shocking, and much needed education for most Americans.

Woops - Eco-Missionaries "peddle" their bikes, Haitians "pedal" them.

Some college students (or, rather, their parents) actually PAY for their kids to get prestigious internships now. I can't remember where I read this--Detroit Free Press? New York Times? It was astounding! Back when I was in college, my journalism/PR professor had Valuable Business Contacts (tm) and arranged for me an internship at premier PR agency--the problem? It was unpaid and I couldn't take it. I was paying for most of my college and living expenses and could not move back in with the parents. I HAD to take a paying job, even though the internship would have set me up much better for my future career. I think unpaid or very low-paid internships suck--but there are many people who fight for those spots, because for them, money isn't important; the experience is. Sigh.

Yeah, but you get to work for Eric Alterman. The intern should be paying him!

Yeuuuuuchh.

We should all be careful what we read on the nets, especially from sources whose mission seems to be to attack moonbattery.

I ain't saying these pedal units are a good thing or a bad thing, just that any six hour pedaling is NOT about charging a single light for a night, or charging a single light for a month.

If you google and follow the various links to disigno, they discuss that: the rechargeable lamps require 1.5watts power, and the person doing the pedaling is expected to provide 50 to 70 watts power.

If I read correctly, the pedal person is charging a car battery that will be used to charge a village worth of these lamps. Also getting charged are cell phones.

It's still not clear to me exactly how many lamps and cell phones the 6 hours of pedaling will provide, nor is it clear to me that this is better or worse than photovoltaics, or that a windmill or waterwheel can't be set up to provide the energy source.

A tip off that you can't rely on a source is when they specifically exist to attack "moonbattery" in general (or pretty much any source of thing some group sees as offensive to them), as opposed to just discussing the world as it appears.

Dissigno's blogs specifically seems to include the various sources of power available, the impacts on environment and other impacts, and the food requirements required by their pedaling solution.

Here is a windup flashlight that requires 2 1/2 hours of winding to provide the 90 hours of illumination that dissigno's 1.5 watt led lamps provide each month:

http://www.sportsimportsltd.com/7ledulwiupfl.html

I just picked that flashlight randomly after googling for handcrank powered radios lights

I give dissigno enough credit that they aren't making these guys pedal for six hours what a $40 flashlight can provide for them with two hours of winding.

What the exact numbers are and whether it is worth it for a variety of reasons are all debatable. What's not debatable is the moonbat attack website is filled with, well, moonbats.

The Moonbattery blog entry states right at the beginning that a month's worth of kerosene for refilling a village's lamps costs $ 3.50. Please keep in mind that it only takes a few minutes of easy labor to pour kerosene from a jug into some lamps. It takes 6 hours of brutally hard labor, strenuously pedalling a bike in steaming tropical heat & humidity, to charge up the LEDs that the villagers rent for $ 2 a month.

How on earth can anyone think this is a practical way for a village to generate energy for lighting? Is there nothing better that the poor pedalling negro could be doing with his time? Planting rice, beans, or peanuts to feed his family & sell in the market? Doing manual labor at the going rate of $ 4 a day?

The 600 calories burned per hr quoted in the comments is a reasonable average for moderately strenous pedalling of a stationary bike in a cool, comfortable gym. The poor villager has to do his pedalling in hot & steamy Haiti, where air conditioning is a luxury he can only dream of. It takes 540 calories of energy to evaporate 1 gram of water from a sweaty human body. Under actual tropical field conditions there is indeed likely to be a negative net energy balance.

If you read the Dissigno blogs, you'll find out that that the Haitian project initially planned to offer pedal-power cell phone recharging for 40 cents a phone, in addition to the LED recharging, but the villagers gave up because it was too much work for too little gain. That's not surprising.

Not sure where you buy your kerosene Martin, but the way I read that is:

It's $3.50 per month per lamp for kerosene, which seems reasonable because we're talking 90 hours of light per lamp. I would be surprised if they can light 50 lamps 90 hours on $3.50 of kerosene. (If they can I'll certainly make the latkes in their honor.)

It's 6 hours of pedaling per month for an entire village's set of lamps.
It's $2.00 per month per lamp.

So total cost to a villager is $2 plus whatever they give the guy who does the pedaling.

Again, I have no opinion as to whether this is worth it or not, whether it is green or not, whether it is abusive or foolish or not, or why they don't build a cheap windmill to turn the crank.

I know enough to read websites with a clear agenda and a penchant not for discussion but for delegitimizing their opponents with a very skeptical eye.

Jerry, you mention 1.5 W light bulbs in your first post. Do you know how much light that is? They are Christmas Tree bulbs without the coloring then, or less! Maybe LED's will give you a little more light for the power, but it still ain't much. Ship em a little bit of kerosene, and they will thank you.

Think about if they really wanted to run a household, as in the modern world - not wasteful, mind you, but just a little bit of electric cooking, a few decent lights (40 W a piece), a small radio, etc., forget about A/C for now. You could really use a steady 100- 200 W over the day per house. Solar may very well be the way to go, if someone could pay for a couple of thousand per house per the equipment, but otherwise I can see that the whole Tour de France team may be required.

I guess, the Tour de France riders could move from village to village charging up batteries, haha, I can see it now! They could also race between villages, and Americans and other rich people like Al Gore could bet money on the races, with a small take for the Haitians to buy, you know, like kerosene and shit.

;-)

Hey, just curious as to if you have any more details so I can find a little more about it?