If we switched to renewable energy
If we switched to renewable energy
Inaccurate statement.
https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-cargo-consists-of-fossil-fuels
40% of traffic is for petrochemicals, which according to this article is coal, oil, gas, and things derived from them, which would include fertilizer and plastics and probably some other stuff too like industrial lubricants, asphalt etc. Not just fossil fuels, so not all that 40% would be affected by a switch to renewable energy. It's also worth noting that building out renewable energy generation involves shipping a lot of hardware around the globe as well.
That last sentence, yep. People don't tend to factor in the carbon footprint of building anything they deem environmentally friendly. There's a cost/benefit analysis to be made. A bad idea may actually be worse than what it's replacing, or not beneficial enough to pursue.
There may be carbon emitted in creating green energy but green energy is ultimately reducing demand for hydrocarbons, which is better than sequestration. Also you need to factor into the operational life of the green tech. If you do, it's pretty clear pretty fast that it's beneficial to go with green energy options. The argument you're making is a common strawman argument for not investing in green energy.
People have done those cost/benefit analysis for solar, wind, and EVs. They come out a pretty clear winner. We don't really need to keep hounding on this while pretending to be smart.
Now E15 gas, OTOH? Utter trash that should go away.
localizing and streamlining production is a bigger factor to climate change anyway imo
technology and production should absolutely not be as centralized and wasteful as it currently is.
That's China. Are you making a product in China and need a bunch of screws? The factory down the street makes those. Need a housing? Another factory down the street makes those. An LCD display? Believe it or not, down the street.
localizing and streamlining production
These are two distinct goals, sometimes that work against each other. Localization is often a tradeoff between saving energy on transport and logistics versus economies of scale in production, and the right balance might look different for different things.
The carbon footprint of a banana shipped across the globe is still far less than that of the typical backyard chicken, because the act of raising a chicken at home is so inefficient (including with commercially purchased feed driven home in a passenger car) that it can't compete on energy/carbon footprint.
There are products where going local saves energy, but that's not by any means a universal correlation.
Don't forget that if those other things which are derived from them are reduced too that would be a massive win for the health of the planet and everything living on it. Without primarily consuming the fuel component of petrochemicals I think it would drastically change the economics of producing the derivatives and make them scarcer. It looks like a win-win.
Industrial lubricants and asphalt fit my definition of petrochemicals
But then so do plastics
Right that's what I'm saying though- they wouldn't be affected by switching away from fossil fuels
Bro just ignoring all the ships we'll need to carry all that wind and sunlight
Another way to look at it: the shipping industry will take a beating while everyone transitions.
If anyone is left wondering why there's so much institutional resistance to changing our energy diet, its institutions like this that are lobbying and generating the propaganda behind it. Energy companies are just one faction.
Or they'd just ship something else? They'd lose some money and scrap a few ships, but the drop in costs would make it more economical to ship whatever else people want, like lumber and funko pops.
Hydrogen too. There's a massive solar farm in Australia's Northern Territory entirely dedicated to green hydrogen production for export to Asia
If we switched to renewable energy, the cost of coal and oil would crash, but it wouldn't drop to zero. Wealthier countries would stop producing oil locally and shipments would still circle the globe from countries desperate enough to keep producing at lower profits, to countries that cannot affort the more expensive renewable infrastructure.
That's not a reason not to switch. We just need to be prepared for the reality that no single solution will resolve all our problems. Conservatives and energy barons will fight tooth and nail, and will point to the new problems as evidence that we never should have switched. was
countries that cannot affort the more expensive renewable infrastructure
This presumes renewables are more expensive. But I would posit that a rapid adoption of renewables is going to occur as the cost of operating - say - a thorium powered container ship falls below that of its coal equivalents.
What I would be worried about, long term, is the possibility that advanced technologies further monopolize industries within a handful of early adopter countries. That's not an ecological concern so much as a socio-economic concern.
a thorium powered container ship
If the experience of the NS Savannah is anything to go by, the major hurdle that ship is going to face is Greenpeace etc. fomenting irrational anti-nuclear hysteria until it's banned from so many ports that it'll be too difficult to operate it profitably. I hope I'm wrong and I wish them luck.
countries that cannot affort the more expensive renewable infrastructure.
Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuel power.
Would the price crash or would it stabilize at a much higher price as a specialized commodity where the cost of refining no longer benefits from economies of scale and instead only benefits from buyers who are unable or unwilling to use alternatives?
Why don't we just have one or two very big ships, powered by nuclear reactors. Like, 40-50 kilometers long each, with hydrofoils, top speed just under mach one. Zip around and deliver everyone's shit with big deck-mounted gauss guns that fire packages right to your doorstep as the ship screams past the nearest coastline.
I see no setting where this could go horribly wrong.
Im gonna need some concept art first. for research puposes
Currently seeking angel investors for 500m buy-in, or I'll take a 200kg of plutonium, if you've got that.
Thats exactly how I want my buttplug delivered - shot via a rail gun directly at it's destination.
What if I live in the geographic center of a continent? How do I know which coastline cannon to order from?
Depends on prevailing winds.
They're the same company. Do you pick which courier dropkicks you Faberge eggs into the gutter in front of your house? It'll get delivered and you'll be none the wiser which cannon fired.
You have me thinking of like.... A ring around the equator with space elevators on it (with stations at the top), and "rail" tracks, with trains traveling between all the stations. Gaussian launchers sending packages to your nearest delivery depot.
Believe it or not, that's a feasible (ish) plan for a space elevator we could build right now. Instead of having a counterweight at GEO that's pulling on a carbon nanotube rope, you have a ring spinning inside another ring in LEO. The outer ring could be made of Kevlar, and IIRC, it would take something like a year or two of all current Kevlar production. You then need four stations approximately equidistant apart around the equator to act as counterweights.
The station for the Pacific would itself be quite the engineering challenge. Not a lot of land you can use at the place you need.
Project Atlantis would be an excellent start. Not much in that for Europe though
It's a ring around the Pacific rim, held aloft by centrifugal effects like a whirled billy
I haven't had billy tea in too long
Fun vaguely related fact: the 1800s are often hailed as the century of steamships, but in reality steamships had pretty short range and required frequent re-coaling in order to get anywhere and back. The coaling stations around the world were mostly stocked by sailing ships since there was no way to economically transport coal by using vessels that burned coal for their propulsion. So it's more accurate to say that the worldwide transportation revolution of the 1800s was a steam/wind power hybrid.
No, they wouldn't. Capitalism is driven by supply, not demand.
If by some magic we switched to renewables over night, the owner class would open or expand another market to keep those ships moving.Yeah, that worked totally well for the Guano and sodium nitrate businesses.
It's both. If demand goes down, price goes down; of supply goes up price goes down.
I expect the supply of shipping is pretty stable. It takes a while for ships to be built, it takes time for them to wear out, so in this case demand would be the driver of short term change, pushing the price of shipping in those ships reduced.
I wonder what could be carried in a former coal carrier.
Oil is used for more than just energy.
70% of crude oil ends up gasoline and diesel.
Idk why you're being downvoted. Petrochemicals are used for a bunch of stuff, including plastics manufacturing.
We should switch to renewables as quickly and completely as we can, but it wouldn't eliminate 100% of oil use
I mainly agree, but it could be substituted. Various biomolecules are being investigated as a replacement substrate for established (petro)chemical processes. Part of the issue is, that you need to defunctionalise the chemicals which is the opposite of what petrochemistry currently does (which is adding functional groups as needed, not removing them).
This research, however, is stifled by the cheap Price of oil. I know an anecdote of Nivea pulling their funding into a similar project because the price ber barrel recently fell. The project was supposed to last around 5 years.
Is this a meme?
Yo, you right
I'll allow it.
High schooler post
As nice as it would be, a not insignificant amount of coal being transported is destined to steel production. Steel is iron + carbon, and the easiest source of carbon is coal. Steel is pretty important, so that's not going away anytime soon. I wonder if carbon capture could make a product that could be used to replace coal here though, and fairly effectively sequester the carbon in an actually useful form?
What biomass grows the fastest without being waterlogged - I imagine bamboo or sugarcane or something
Grow that, and burn it to make carbon neutral steel; bonus points if you do it in a highrise/underground farm but frankly some medium term reversible environmental damage is preferable to killing off way more with climate change
There are efforts to develop green steel, it'll be more expensive than coal, but coal is only so cheap because of the huge amount mined for fuel
Bill McKibben is based.
Yoooo! Devils sign! Stop the baby eating atheists! Stop oil and gas production now and adrenaline-o-chrome something something. I dunno, I'm not good at making up woowoo but someone take over and spread this.
holy shit, a baby that eats atheists? that baby is based af fr
this is that Christian Baby they're always appealing to
Why wait for others?
Wind Turbine & Solar Panel Combinations: A Guide to Hybrid
Smaller and cheaper units are becoming available as individuals as well. I might try to put something like this up, one at each corner of the home and then have battery storage.
- Small Wind Generator is widely used for boats, terraces, cabins or mobile houses charging, etc; The humanized design of small wind generator is easy to install, maintain and repair
- The wind vertical turbine generator can easily adapt to various environments. Use wind energy resources to maintain a large amount of electricity. Portable vertical wind turbine generator set is suitable for emergency power generation for home, outdoor, factory and garden lighting.
Many of us have solar power. I could power all my electric usage (including driving an EV) with the solar I can fit on my roof and a modest battery
I'm impressed by recent vertical axis wind turbines, as when we have a week with little sunlight the wind is usually blowing
I live in Seattle, in the winter is why I would have to supplement.
Let’s fucking go!!!
