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Cruise ships are almost certainly cleaner than commercial air travel as a whole. It takes a lot less energy to move a big ship with 4000 people sideways on wate
by cm2012 7y ago
Cruise ships are almost certainly cleaner than commercial air travel as a whole. It takes a lot less energy to move a big ship with 4000 people sideways on water at 50 MPH than to lift people into the sky in 20 groups of 200 at 600 MPH. And these are close to replacement goods (less cruises = more airplanes).
The main stat on this article is dumb because cars don't really emit sulphur oxide, so obviously something that emits some will be a huge multiplier.
EDIT: This is almost certainly wrong, as other comments have pointed out to me. Not deleting it for posterity's sake.
- boomlinde 7y ago> It takes a lot less energy to move a big ship with 4000 people sideways on water at 50 MPH than to lift people into the sky in 20 groups of 200 at 600 MPH. In terms of CO2: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/739287/Flying-three-times-greener-than-cruising.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/739287/Flying-three-times...
- cm2012 7y agoThat is genuinely surprising and nasty. To be that much less efficient given the constraints, cruise ships must be using terrifyingly dirty fuel.
- MagnumOpus 7y agoAs a side-note, please be careful to distinguish between local pollution from dirty fuel (SOx emissions, particulates), and global pollution from _carbon emissions_. They are two wildly different things, and often there is a big trade-off where cutting one raises the other (c.f. the VW scandal). Cruise ships, as it happens, are horrible on both measures.
- boomlinde 7y agoThey are very large and heavy (much more weight per passenger), there’s additional drag and resistance, not to mention time, which I think accounts for some of the energy waste. In short, that spending a few hours on a thin metal aerodynamic cigar is more energy effective than a week spent on a bulky floating city doesn’t surprise me.
- noonespecial 7y agoThat's an understatement. If you saw this "fuel" you'd call it tar. They have to heat it with steam just to get it pumped to the engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Bunker_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Bunker_fuel
- opencl 7y agoVoyager-class cruise ship: 12.8-passenger-miles per gallon Boeing 747-400: 91 passenger-miles per gallon Of course passenger aircraft are tightly packed and cruise ships have large cabins, swimming pools, etc. Both numbers from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
- michaelt 7y agoCruise ships are almost certainly cleaner than commercial air travel as a whole. Not according to [1] and [2] - after all, the "Queen Mary 2" is 29 tonnes per passenger whereas the A380 is less than 1 tonne per passenger even with a full fuel load. [1] https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ask-mr-green/which-better-for-environment-flying-or-sailing https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ask-mr-green/which-better-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green
- glenneroo 7y agoOn the other hand, airplanes travel in the upper atmosphere, where pollution is supposedly able to do more damage[1]: > However, in the cases of high-altitude airliners which frequently fly near or in the stratosphere, non-CO2 altitude-sensitive effects may increase the total impact on anthropogenic (human-made) climate change significantly. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]