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
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
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.
I'm guessing most countries would try to recycle batteries locally. Or/and throw them onto solar systems straight away
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
That wouldn’t really need to be shipped around though, domestic supply can cover those needs almost everywhere.
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
it's also to do with prices. There is a certain amount of this that is true, but the primary reason is oil prices.
Anyone know how much of the oil transported is actually used for plastic, percentage wise?
≈15%
So what you’re saying is the companies that own those boats will lobby the government so that this never happens? Sweet.
actually, it's already happening, why do you think LNG is such a massive export from the US right now?
Now I’m waiting for the news report,
“Green Energy will cost jobs!”
yeah, free market economies baby, making everything more efficient!
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%
all freight traffic is a pretty significant dent, i think the net total for all of transport is something like 15-20% of total emissions, so.
Christ.
I think he just walks rather than being shipped.
No, no. He travels on war ships I am told.
to be perfectly clear, this probably wouldn't help much, since we would likely just move to shipping something like hydrogen across the ocean anyway...
Hydrogen is just worse natural gas. They crack natural gas to produce hydrogen, and its fucking terrible. Hydrogen creates about 4 times more CO2 than diesel, simply by how the vast majority of it is manufactured
Ships need gas inside to keep the dihydrogen monoxide at safe levels
