4 ms·

Is this meant ironically? From all I've heard, cruise ships are much worse for the environment than flying...

yostrovs 7y ago
That's because cruise ships are luxurious, not utilitarian, in nature. If you strip out the pools and bars, concert venues, and all that jazz, it gets to be a very lean operation.
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  Its also due to the regulations, maritime emissions regulations are basically a free for all.
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  I don't understand the point of these luxury cruises - if you are going to sit in a fancy bar on a ship drinking beer, can't you just do the same thing in a fancy bar on land? Unless one's goal is to see ocean life (interact with dolphins or whatever), what is the point of going traveling on sea? This is even before we think about the worker abuse, environment abuse etc these cruise companies do
  - yostrovs 7y ago
    You drink on the way to Barbados, where you're let off so you can drink on land.
  - ajdlinux 7y ago
    It's also the isolation from regular life, the particular atmosphere of only being around other holidaymakers, stopping at various islands along the way for day trips. Not my idea of an ideal holiday, and the workers' rights + environmental situation is absolutely appalling, but I do have fond memories of the one time I went on a cruise when I was a child.
  - bostonpete 7y ago
    The appeal is that the cruise ship itself is a destination (with music, comedy, dining, spas, physical activity, etc.) and that makes a number of stops at other destinations, each with their own character and activities. When you add in the included "kids club" on most cruises and the fact that there are always some included food available at all hours, it makes for an easy family vacation with (potentially) lots of variety. Certainly, there are downsides, I'm just addressing your question about what "the point" is...
  - pintxo 7y ago
    Think of it as a moving hotel. During the night it moves you from location A to location B. During the day you will have opportunity to do various activities at the locations. It's a very convenient variant of a road trip.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >If you strip out the pools and bars, concert venues, and all that jazz, it gets to be a very lean operation But they will still put out a lot of pollution, it's the nature of shipping right now. And then you look at what would happen in aggregate, and you realize that there would still be a pollution problem. Will they put out as much pollution as the airline industry? Open question. I know there are about 39 to 40 million flights a year, carrying roughly 4 billion passengers. Assuming all of that would switch to, let's say, rail and shipping, what does that do to your pollution profile? My own suspicion is that it could be made much better with rail over time. (After taking an initial hit, that would be admittedly enormous, in building out the necessary infrastructure.) For shipping, hard to say. We don't have anywhere close to the number of ships necessary for that kind of passenger scale, so we'd take an even larger hit in the build out phase. Secondarily ships, even the new ones, would still be enormously dirty for the environment. Much moreso than trains. At passenger scale in the billions? I'd bet that the pollution profile would be somewhat lower than planes, but still a significant contributor. We'd have to go back to sail ships to make it pollution free. (Even then you would have a little pollution here and there.) Can't think of many other modes of transport that aren't scifi or in research phases right now. I mean there are airships for instance, but that build out would take a long time because I'm not convinced we've even settled on a utilitarian design there. Tough problems all around really. Just stopping trans-oceanic travel, or drawing it down in a draconian fashion, really does seem one of the best solutions. But it's completely unworkable in today's world. No one would cooperate with that.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    > But they will still put out a lot of pollution, it's the nature of shipping right now. Which is going to be seriously restricted in 2 months time: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/imo-2020-the-winners-and-losers-of-a-global-shipping-revolution.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/imo-2020-the-winners-and-los... > Will they put out as much pollution as the airline industry? This question is so broad it's meaningless. What kind of pollution matters, and where it's emitted also matters. More Sulfur, less CO2, etc.. > For shipping, hard to say. We don't have anywhere close to the number of ships necessary for that kind of passenger scale As of July 2016, the world had a capacity of 20 million standard shipping containers. > We'd have to go back to sail ships to make it pollution free. That's not the only option: battery weight is not an issue in ships; their consumption per tonne-kilometer is so low that solar can contribute a lot, et cetera. It's still probably most efficient to just burn a clean fuel and then sequester the CO2. > Just stopping trans-oceanic travel, or drawing it down in a draconian fashion, really does seem one of the best solutions. Letting perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the big reasons holding the world back from making progress on environmental issues.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Nobody is going to spend a week on a utilitarian ship to get from the US to Europe instead of flying.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    Actually, some people do. It's really cheap and you can move your own cargo that way. My cousin did that when she moved from Europe to Canada. edit: Of course only a handful of people do that. As a woman, she told me she wouldn't do it again alone. edit 2: had to ask her again but I believe her trip was two or three weeks long.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      Some people = nobody in the grand scheme of things. This wont move the needle.
      - johnchristopher 7y ago
        Actually, it turns out there are more people than I previously thought: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/news/french-freighter-company-passenger-fares-new-york/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/news/french-freig... and https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/ https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/ and https://www.wired.com/story/the-ultimate-carbon-saving-tip-travel-by-cargo-ship/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-ultimate-carbon-saving-tip-t... edit: wait a minute > Some people = nobody in the grand scheme of things. This wont move the needle. So big what ? This is HN, here, you can expand your horizons and learned about stuff that very few people do. That's one of the fucking point of the site.
        imgabe 7y ago
        The discussion at hand is whether this would have any significant impact on carbon emissions. Yes, it's interesting that few people choose to travel by ship, but that's not what we're talking about.
  - steelframe 7y ago

That's because cruise ships are luxurious, not utilitarian, in nature. If you strip out the pools and bars, concert venues, and all that jazz, it gets to be a very lean operation.

0xB31B1B 7y ago
Its also due to the regulations, maritime emissions regulations are basically a free for all.
justaguyhere 7y ago
I don't understand the point of these luxury cruises - if you are going to sit in a fancy bar on a ship drinking beer, can't you just do the same thing in a fancy bar on land? Unless one's goal is to see ocean life (interact with dolphins or whatever), what is the point of going traveling on sea? This is even before we think about the worker abuse, environment abuse etc these cruise companies do
- yostrovs 7y ago
  You drink on the way to Barbados, where you're let off so you can drink on land.
- ajdlinux 7y ago
  It's also the isolation from regular life, the particular atmosphere of only being around other holidaymakers, stopping at various islands along the way for day trips. Not my idea of an ideal holiday, and the workers' rights + environmental situation is absolutely appalling, but I do have fond memories of the one time I went on a cruise when I was a child.
- bostonpete 7y ago
  The appeal is that the cruise ship itself is a destination (with music, comedy, dining, spas, physical activity, etc.) and that makes a number of stops at other destinations, each with their own character and activities. When you add in the included "kids club" on most cruises and the fact that there are always some included food available at all hours, it makes for an easy family vacation with (potentially) lots of variety. Certainly, there are downsides, I'm just addressing your question about what "the point" is...
- pintxo 7y ago
  Think of it as a moving hotel. During the night it moves you from location A to location B. During the day you will have opportunity to do various activities at the locations. It's a very convenient variant of a road trip.
bilbo0s 7y ago
>If you strip out the pools and bars, concert venues, and all that jazz, it gets to be a very lean operation But they will still put out a lot of pollution, it's the nature of shipping right now. And then you look at what would happen in aggregate, and you realize that there would still be a pollution problem. Will they put out as much pollution as the airline industry? Open question. I know there are about 39 to 40 million flights a year, carrying roughly 4 billion passengers. Assuming all of that would switch to, let's say, rail and shipping, what does that do to your pollution profile? My own suspicion is that it could be made much better with rail over time. (After taking an initial hit, that would be admittedly enormous, in building out the necessary infrastructure.) For shipping, hard to say. We don't have anywhere close to the number of ships necessary for that kind of passenger scale, so we'd take an even larger hit in the build out phase. Secondarily ships, even the new ones, would still be enormously dirty for the environment. Much moreso than trains. At passenger scale in the billions? I'd bet that the pollution profile would be somewhat lower than planes, but still a significant contributor. We'd have to go back to sail ships to make it pollution free. (Even then you would have a little pollution here and there.) Can't think of many other modes of transport that aren't scifi or in research phases right now. I mean there are airships for instance, but that build out would take a long time because I'm not convinced we've even settled on a utilitarian design there. Tough problems all around really. Just stopping trans-oceanic travel, or drawing it down in a draconian fashion, really does seem one of the best solutions. But it's completely unworkable in today's world. No one would cooperate with that.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  > But they will still put out a lot of pollution, it's the nature of shipping right now. Which is going to be seriously restricted in 2 months time: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/imo-2020-the-winners-and-losers-of-a-global-shipping-revolution.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/imo-2020-the-winners-and-los... > Will they put out as much pollution as the airline industry? This question is so broad it's meaningless. What kind of pollution matters, and where it's emitted also matters. More Sulfur, less CO2, etc.. > For shipping, hard to say. We don't have anywhere close to the number of ships necessary for that kind of passenger scale As of July 2016, the world had a capacity of 20 million standard shipping containers. > We'd have to go back to sail ships to make it pollution free. That's not the only option: battery weight is not an issue in ships; their consumption per tonne-kilometer is so low that solar can contribute a lot, et cetera. It's still probably most efficient to just burn a clean fuel and then sequester the CO2. > Just stopping trans-oceanic travel, or drawing it down in a draconian fashion, really does seem one of the best solutions. Letting perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the big reasons holding the world back from making progress on environmental issues.
imgabe 7y ago
Nobody is going to spend a week on a utilitarian ship to get from the US to Europe instead of flying.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Actually, some people do. It's really cheap and you can move your own cargo that way. My cousin did that when she moved from Europe to Canada. edit: Of course only a handful of people do that. As a woman, she told me she wouldn't do it again alone. edit 2: had to ask her again but I believe her trip was two or three weeks long.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Some people = nobody in the grand scheme of things. This wont move the needle.
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      Actually, it turns out there are more people than I previously thought: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/news/french-freighter-company-passenger-fares-new-york/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/news/french-freig... and https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/ https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/ and https://www.wired.com/story/the-ultimate-carbon-saving-tip-travel-by-cargo-ship/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-ultimate-carbon-saving-tip-t... edit: wait a minute > Some people = nobody in the grand scheme of things. This wont move the needle. So big what ? This is HN, here, you can expand your horizons and learned about stuff that very few people do. That's one of the fucking point of the site.
      - imgabe 7y ago
        The discussion at hand is whether this would have any significant impact on carbon emissions. Yes, it's interesting that few people choose to travel by ship, but that's not what we're talking about.
- steelframe 7y ago