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The largest 15 cargo ships emit more sulphuric dioxide than all the cars on the road combined. That is not a greenhouse gas, and actually has a cooling effect,
by mikeash 8y ago
The largest 15 cargo ships emit more sulphuric dioxide than all the cars on the road combined. That is not a greenhouse gas, and actually has a cooling effect, although it’s not healthy locally.
- revel 8y agoSo I looked into this more and you're right that it's sulphuric dioxide that I was thinking of. CO2 emissions from shipping are 800m tons per year and, if taken alone, would constitute the 6th heaviest source of carbon emissions in the world.
- mikeash 8y agoHow are you dividing up other sources such that shipping would be the 6th heaviest source? At roughly 2% of total global emissions, it seems like you'd have to lump other sources together in a strange way to come up with that ranking. For example, looking at: https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/ https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/ Taking shipping as a separate thing, it would rank 7th in the chart of total emissions and 6th in the chart of energy-related emissions, but only because those charts only contain 6 and 5 entries respectively.