Fun fact: through the 1800s coal-powered steamships mostly replaced sailing vessels for the transportation of people and time-sensitive cargo around the world. But steamships were highly inefficient and required frequent re-coaling, and locally available coal was dirtier and contained less thermal energy than the good stuff that Britain (who was doing by far most of the shipping) got from Wales and other places on their island. Because steamships could not efficiently and cheaply haul the coal that they needed around the world to restock the coaling stations, this was done instead by an enormous fleet of sailing colliers. So the “steam revolution” of the 1800s was actually a steam/wind-power hybrid. It wasn’t until the advent of triple- and quadruple-expansion steam engines, turbines, and greatly improved boilers in the early 1900s that steam-powered vessels could efficiently and economically haul their own fuel. And even with that, wind-powered cargo vessels remained economically viable and operating in significant numbers right up until the start of WWII (that’s II, not I).
A great read is The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, about his time as a sailor aboard Moshulu (a large steel sail-powered cargo ship) in 1938-1939. Moshulu went on to star in The Godfather Part II as the ship which brings young Vito Corleone to New York, and is now weirdly enough a floating restaurant in my city of Philadelphia (I’ve never eaten there but I want to).
These chairs they have inside it would make me not want to eat there.
Once you realize the byproducts of oil and how essential some are and the fact that rich countries aren’t going to change their way of life and the fact that developing countries will industrialize in the same way western countries have and will start to produce similar environmental emissions things look pretty bleak in terms of that average temperature rise.
the fact that developing countries will industrialize in the same way western countries have and will start to produce similar environmental emissions
That’s not a fact. It makes more sense for developing countries to skip directly to renewable energy sources.
You’re right it’s not a fact. But I would say large percentage of developing nations aren’t pursuing such options because it’s easier to use things like coal. If you take a look at the new coal plants under construction as the moment, the top 15 are from developing countries. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-just-15-countries-account-for-98-of-new-coal-power-development/
China and India account for 3 billion people alone and they’re still building new coal plants to account for their growing energy needs despite using renewable energy.
Sadly many developing countries are further along in EV uptake because they have access to $4k EVs without tariffs
Won’t someone think of the seamen?
I’m constantly thinking of seamen
Capt’n Pugwash and Seaman Stains will both be out of jobs.
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And destroyed the Baltimore bridge because their backup engines were split between legal fuel and “international waters” fuel.
What’s with the math in the middle of your comment?
hyphen became a plus? Dalí didn’t have a spare engine because their working spare engine wasn’t purged of fuel that wouldn’t be legal to burn in US coastal waters.
It was that in combination with the “engine-generators” yes. Made it unclear.
this is arguably fine, because this way ships make clouds of sulfate aerosols, which have slight cooling effect and no one is bothered by it when it’s released over sea
This is wrong in some many ways. To add to the already mentioned. Ocean water is the largest carbon dioxide buffer by absorbing CO2 to become carbonic acid. As the sulfur acidifies the Ocean, this “competes” with the carbonic acid, increasing the CO2 emissions from the Ocean.
In other words, all geoengineering tropes end up being horseshit.
It’s only fine until those sulfates react with water vapor in the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid. That stuff rains back down and contributes to ocean acidification which is causing serious harm to all sorts of marine ecosystems.
Some of these ships would carry green hydrogen and new lithium batteries and old lithium batteries (to be recycled) and whatnot. Also at least some oil would be still needed for fine chemicals like meds or (idk what’s proper english term for that) large scale organic synthesis like plastics, or even straight distillates like hexane (for edible oil extraction) or lubricants. Some of usual non-energy uses of oil can be easily substituted with enough energy like with nitrogen fertilizers but some can’t
I’m guessing most countries would try to recycle batteries locally. Or/and throw them onto solar systems straight away
We aren’t consuming batteries anywhere near the rate we consume oil and coal. Hydrogen even less than batteries.
So the amount of ships needed would still be a fraction of what we use now.
not now, but if hydrogen were to be used as an energy source/storage, then it’d be used plenty. same with batteries
We can make hydrogen everywhere, we can’t ‘make oil’.
That implies that we can make electricity everywhere, which is technically true but not really the case because there’s countries with more and with less free space, with more suitable places and less suitable places to put renewables.
Those ammonia tankers will happen. At that point btw we’re not just talking about electricity, but also chemical feedstock.
We absolutely can ‘make oil’. Been doing it since world war II. Synthetic oil is extremely common.
I mean, yeah, but also, that’s not really efficient or effective for burning.
Neither is hydrogen.
I’m not disagreeing, but if the energy is surplus, might as well make hydrogen, at least we don’t end up with pollution.
no we can’t make hydrogen everywhere, there will be regions with large excess of renewable energy compared to population. these places could export hydrogen. you also don’t need a lot of transport if crude is extracted near place where it’s used, like for example heavy crude from alberta
The problem with the comparison is hydrocarbons are the energy source, hydrogen is no it’s just the energy carrier. It is very inefficient to convert energy to hydrogen then convert it back again. Something like 60% round trip efficiency. Not to mention the cost and loss in loading into containers and shipping it around the world. It’s also not a very dense fuel per volume especially compared to oil. It’s just way easier and cheaper to have cables that run from one place to another. They are already building one from Australia to Singapore and if it’s successful that will probably open the floodgates. There aren’t many places that are more than 2000 miles away from large sources of renewable energy even if your thinking places like Alaska which could do hydro if there ever was dense enough populations anywhere that would consume it.
this is less of a problem when you don’t use it for energy, but instead as a feedstock like in synthesis of ammonia or steelmaking. you can make ammonia in many places, but it’s not the case for steel
And oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.
Everything that comes out of a petrochemical plant can be made without oil, in fact BASF had recipes in place for decades now and is switching sources as the price shifts. Push come to shove they can produce everything from starch. It’s also why they hardly blinked when Russia turned off the gas.
The carbon that actually ends up in steel is a quite negligible amount (usually under 1%, over 2% you get cast iron), you can get that out of the local forest, and to reduce the iron hydrogen works perfectly, the first furnances are already online.
coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works
file styrofoam under plastics
So what you’re saying is the companies that own those boats will lobby the government so that this never happens? Sweet.
Now I’m waiting for the news report,
“Green Energy will cost jobs!”
Anyone know how much of the oil transported is actually used for plastic, percentage wise?
correct me if I’m wrong, but the United States doesn’t even have oil refineries that are capable of making gasoline out of American oil? like we need the type of oil that the middle East has, so we’re constantly trading oil back and forth even though we have plenty of it
I think I’ve heard this is true. something about politicians wanting to look environmentalist and therefore preventing the building of any more refineries
Only butt-munchers will reply to this comment about something vague regarding US gasoline production
yes but how much of that gasoline was made from American crude oil? America has plenty of refineries, just none of them designed for American oil
Crude oil us primarily classified based on density and sulphur content. It’s all hydrocarbons and a portion of all of it can be turned into gasoline.
dude. we are not talking about the gasoline. we are talking about the oil being used to make the gasoline. what percentage of the crude oil being refined into American gasoline is American produced crude oil?
Christ.
Yeah but if I’m not mistaken, emissions from shipping are quite low anyways. It’s something like 2-5℅ of all our emissions, so it’s pretty low priority.
Idk man 5% sure sounds a hell of a lot better than 0%
