the answer

[Pasabeograd]

Here is the answer to unemployment, the economy, global warming and obesity - Cycling

Link all the exercise bikes up to the national grid and insist that all unemployed people do at least an hour a day on them.  Make them free for anyone overweight and encourage all children to do at least 20 mins three times a week.  You could even run competitions to find out who can create the most electricity in a given month.

Any other questions out these that can be answered with "cycling"?

[stutho]

Interesting but I am not sure if you are going to save the planet!  The maths doesn't quit hold up

Say there are currently 3,000,000 currently unemployed in the UK
if they are doing 1 hour a day then that is 125,000 cyclist per an hour
if each cyclist can output 100watts then that is 12.5MWatts

Drax (the UKs largest power station) put out 3870MWatts

More than 300 times more!

So what if every man woman and child in the UK was press ganged into action for 8 hours a day

Total output would be about 240MWatts still less than 10% of Drax

But at least the population (which some may call slaves)  would be fit!

[Pasabeograd]

Damn your clever maths.  Nevertheless, if your figures are correct (and you do sound like you know what you are talking about) then it just goes to show how efficient bikes are if you can travel 12 plus miles with the equivalent of just 100 watts of power.

[stutho]

Yes the bicycle is super efficient!

If the population would switch their cars for bicycles then maybe we would save the planet

NB
Watts is a measure of power,

if instead we look at the energy used:
for a hour of cycling at 100watts output - which is a leisurely cycling pace about 10 miles an hour
in an hour  you will use 360kJoules
or about 85 calories (about the same as a slice  bread)