It depends which number you're using.
"BMR" assumes you're sedentary. I've heard it explained as the number of calories you'd burn laying in bed all day. So if you were to lay in bed all day except for a ride that consumes 1000 calories, you can add 1000 to your BMR.
This is pretty much the approach I take when I calculate these things for myself. I'm a student, so apart from riding a short distance to and from school, I really am pretty sedentary. I take my BMR, add workout calories and arrive at my food budget. Subtract from that the number of calories I actually eat and I can predict weight gain/loss, or these days I'm more concerned with getting enough to keep me fueled.

It's curious, though, how much the numbers can vary on these sort of things. Yesterday's ride was 97 minutes - 30 miles at what I call a moderate pace. Very slightly rolling and fairly low wind. My GPS calculated 1750 calories (ha!). My Power Meter calculated 1100. Your calculator would result in a number between 562 (mod) to 840 (hard). I'm pretty much considering the power meter the most accurate, but perhaps even it is a bit optimistic? Or maybe I'm working harder than I thought. If it were a discrepancy of 100 calories I would probably not care at all, but the range here is over 1000 calories from lowest to highest! And who knows what my actual basal rate is.

Ugh. Science. Why you gotta be so hard?

-Grant-

Both of these calculators do not take MANY things into consideration. For example, I burn WAY more than what either of these suggest. I know this because of the amount of calories I consume without weight gain. It also does not take into account large muscle mass or obesity.

The person who described BMR above is correct. It's basically saying, if you did nothing, you would burn this many calories (bmr). The next few columns give a generic number for a generic amount of exercise.

The second calculator, again using generic forumals (METs * weigh in kg (which is converted by my calculator)) to determine what calories would be burned during a one hour period given a specific weight and activity. "Generic" is the key. You can scour the Internet and find 10 different tables that will give you a different MET value for the same exercise. For example, cycling, I can't tell you how many different values there were. What I did to account for these variations was to download ALL of the MET charts I could find and then find similar numbers for the same exercise.

I hope this helps clarify things.

I didn't take it that way, I just wanted to clarify how those numbers are generated.

Like you, I did a two hour ride and I had two different devices measuring, one states 400 calories burned, the other 1000 calories burned. I didn't even think to check my calculator... just did, it comes back with 616.89. I think closer to 1000 is correct.

Another thing to consider is Easy, Moderate & Hard are relative terms. To us, hard might be a lot harder than the person who came up with the MET value.

Somehow I think when I'm done with my weight lifting workout, I've burned more than 107 calories. I can't prove it but when I stumble into the showers and my hands are shaking it kinda lends to my suspicion.