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If you want low carbon transport then https://www.maritime-executive.com/media/images/article/Photos/Vessels_Large/Original/CSCL_Globe_arriving_at_Felixstowe-_U

If you want low carbon transport then https://www.maritime-executive.com/media/images/article/Photos/Vessels_Large/Original/CSCL_Globe_arriving_at_Felixstowe-_United_Kingdom.f0ce49.jpg https://www.maritime-executive.com/media/images/article/Phot... is very hard to beat. Over a hundreds times better than air.... The problem the airlines face is they are effectively massively subsidize with tax cuts on fuels and duty free status at airports etc plus their free environmental dumping of huge amounts of C02. Air travel and freight is, by and large, is a luxury. Yet people are willing to let the world burn rather than give it up. I'm sure someone will tell me there is some scientific name for such illogical behavior.

jiofih 7y ago
That’s hardly low carbon, container ships alone emit almost 20% of the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere. And Cruise ships emit almost 4x as much as air travel per passenger.
- monk_e_boy 7y ago
  Per KG of stuff moved it's pretty good.
  - DrScientist 7y ago
    Exactly - you need to decouple efficiency of mode, from amount of transport done in that mode if you want to make sensible decisions about which mode is best. Or put it another way - if all that cargo going by sea went by air C02 emissions would be 100x more. Obviously saying sea travel is massively more efficient doesn't obviate the need to reduce that as well.
  - Already__Taken 7y ago
    but once you put people on it you f that number up.
- hwillis 7y ago
  You are off by an order of magnitude. Global oceanic shipping of all kinds is <3% of anthropogenic CO2[1]. Closer to 1.5-2% if you include land use changes. You are correct about cruise ships, although it's more like 2-3x. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-cargo-ships-emitting-boatloads-carbon.html https://phys.org/news/2018-12-cargo-ships-emitting-boatloads...
warrenmiller 7y ago
Hang on I thought Cargo ships are the world's worst polluters? https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping-carbon-pollution-515489 https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping...
- rsynnott 7y ago
  So for whatever reason, people are determined to confuse the issue here. > It has been estimated that just one of these container ships, the length of around six football pitches, can produce the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars "Pollution" here is defined to exclude CO2. > And if the shipping industry were a country, it would be ranked between Germany and Japan as the sixth-largest contributor to global CO2 emissions. And now a reference to CO2 to muddy the waters. Shipping is highly CO2-efficient per kilo relative to air travel (and cars and so on) but because we do a _lot_ of shipping, it's still a big CO2 emitter. Separately, due to extremely shoddy international regulation, many large ships put out large amounts of non-CO2 pollutants. This (the non-CO2 bit, not the CO2 bit) could be fixed, at relatively small cost to the industry, via changes to fuel and improved filtering, but until someone forces them to fix it it'll stay the same.
  - hwillis 7y ago
    There is one pollutant that oceanic shipping is worse at: SO2. SO2 happens to be a reverse-greenhouse gas, so it actually cancels out most of oceanic shipping's CO2. Because it creates smog and acid rain there is still a huge international push to reduce it, and the level of emissions have fallen by 80% in the past decade or so. Comparing it to cars is very unfair. Gasoline in the 80s had tons of sulfur, FAR more than oceanic shipping emits today. It was totally eliminated by regulation and so that the sulfur can be sold at a profit. The relative difference is not relevant, because there's virtually no sulfur in car exhaust. Comparing the two tells you nothing about the absolute emissions or the recent and upcoming changes. > And now a reference to CO2 to muddy the waters. That's an understatement if anything- Japan and Germany are 3.5% and 2% of global CO2 respectively. It's preying on ignorance to make "6th most polluting country" sound high. > This (the non-CO2 bit, not the CO2 bit) could be fixed, at relatively small cost to the industry, via changes to fuel and improved filtering, but until someone forces them to fix it it'll stay the same. They are being forced- by the international maritime organization. The sulfur content has fallen from ~7.5% to an oceanic limit of at most 3.5% in 2012 (actual emissions are lower), falling to .5% this year. In the EU it's has been limited to .1% since 2015. Not least this is happening because China is taking such a hard line on smog. This is an incredible regulatory success, up there with leaded gasoline, iodized salt, and CFC bans. It's very dangerous and detrimental to talk about oceanic shipping as a CO2 problem. It's essential to third world economies (both buying and selling), for one thing, but more importantly we know what the CO2 problems are: cars and coal. Fix those, then you can worry about natural gas and semi trucks. After that you've solved 80%-90% of the problem. Seriously, say oceanic shipping globally is 2.5% of CO2 emissions. Light duty road vehicles are 59% of US transportation CO2, which is 29% of US CO2 emissions, which are 14% of of global CO2. Those multiply out to 2.4%. Forget trying to coordinate literally the entire world, you can get the same reductions by going after a single category of emissions from 4% of the world's population.
reallydontask 7y ago
>Air travel and freight is, by and large, is a luxury. Flowers and f* ups get air freighted by plane, I've heard
bouncycastle 7y ago
Sending air mail is a luxury now? Global aviation produces something like 2% of global co2 emissions As for shipping, it uses 4.5% of global co2 emissions. Source https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatec... What's more, here is what @BurnGpuBurn [1] pointed out before: "Shipping also very often uses the dirtiest of fuels and is therefore much more polluting than airliners which burn quite high quality refined fuels. That's why, to get around recent laws limiting sulfur emissions, large container boats now first "scrub" their exhaust gasses with sea water, so all sulfur will now nicely pollute and acidify our oceans. [0] No emissions though, because emissions bad." [0] http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2020.aspx http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-20... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21979576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21979576
- DrScientist 7y ago
  So similar emissions, but only one of them transports 90% of the worlds goods, raw materials and waste. > Sending air mail is a luxury now? Yes - either wait a bit longer if you need to send a physical thing - or if it's just a message then do it electronically. Yes - perhaps an email isn't as 'nice' as a real letter, but isn't that the definition of luxury?
  - bouncycastle 7y ago
    > So similar emissions Did you read my 2nd point? The emissions are not similar. Please also follow up on the source I've provided.
    - DrScientist 7y ago
      Not saying boats are perfect or that every company that runs them are angels! But you have a lot of head-room if you start off 100x better kg per kg. Because boats are not perfect doesn't change the original point: A 20% saving on emissions for aircraft and talk of 'having more space for cargo' is missing the big picture - air travel is a massively subsidized luxury where the speed of travel comes at a massive energy cost.
CrackpotGonzo 7y ago
Tragedy of the commons?
manfredo 7y ago
This is a bit of an oversimplification though. The duration of moving people by ship means that people need to be given food and water. People also aren't going to be spending the entirety of a weeks long voyage in a seat - they'll need beds and recreation facilities to stay sane. You're also less likely to find large numbers of people who all want to depart and arrive at the same time, so filling a large ship to capacity is more difficult and the ship will be running partially empty much of the time. All these things lead to lower net efficiency. The reality is, people aren't going to give up air travel. The best bet to make air travel more sustainable is to develop hydrogen powered planes. The Soviets demonstrated this concept [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Yep - agree should pursue transformative solutions. > The reality is, people aren't going to give up air travel. I hear Fentanyl is pretty addictive as well - so might as well subsidized it and make it available to everyone cheaply, the downstream societal and health care costs are not the immediate problem - the problem is people want this stuff.....
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Does fentanyl enable rapid transcontinental travel? Does it provide innumerable economic opportunities by enabling global social mobility?

jiofih 7y ago

That’s hardly low carbon, container ships alone emit almost 20% of the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere. And Cruise ships emit almost 4x as much as air travel per passenger.

monk_e_boy 7y ago
Per KG of stuff moved it's pretty good.
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Exactly - you need to decouple efficiency of mode, from amount of transport done in that mode if you want to make sensible decisions about which mode is best. Or put it another way - if all that cargo going by sea went by air C02 emissions would be 100x more. Obviously saying sea travel is massively more efficient doesn't obviate the need to reduce that as well.
- Already__Taken 7y ago
  but once you put people on it you f that number up.
hwillis 7y ago
You are off by an order of magnitude. Global oceanic shipping of all kinds is <3% of anthropogenic CO2[1]. Closer to 1.5-2% if you include land use changes. You are correct about cruise ships, although it's more like 2-3x. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-cargo-ships-emitting-boatloads-carbon.html https://phys.org/news/2018-12-cargo-ships-emitting-boatloads...

warrenmiller 7y ago

Hang on I thought Cargo ships are the world's worst polluters? https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping-carbon-pollution-515489 https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping...

rsynnott 7y ago
So for whatever reason, people are determined to confuse the issue here. > It has been estimated that just one of these container ships, the length of around six football pitches, can produce the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars "Pollution" here is defined to exclude CO2. > And if the shipping industry were a country, it would be ranked between Germany and Japan as the sixth-largest contributor to global CO2 emissions. And now a reference to CO2 to muddy the waters. Shipping is highly CO2-efficient per kilo relative to air travel (and cars and so on) but because we do a _lot_ of shipping, it's still a big CO2 emitter. Separately, due to extremely shoddy international regulation, many large ships put out large amounts of non-CO2 pollutants. This (the non-CO2 bit, not the CO2 bit) could be fixed, at relatively small cost to the industry, via changes to fuel and improved filtering, but until someone forces them to fix it it'll stay the same.
- hwillis 7y ago
  There is one pollutant that oceanic shipping is worse at: SO2. SO2 happens to be a reverse-greenhouse gas, so it actually cancels out most of oceanic shipping's CO2. Because it creates smog and acid rain there is still a huge international push to reduce it, and the level of emissions have fallen by 80% in the past decade or so. Comparing it to cars is very unfair. Gasoline in the 80s had tons of sulfur, FAR more than oceanic shipping emits today. It was totally eliminated by regulation and so that the sulfur can be sold at a profit. The relative difference is not relevant, because there's virtually no sulfur in car exhaust. Comparing the two tells you nothing about the absolute emissions or the recent and upcoming changes. > And now a reference to CO2 to muddy the waters. That's an understatement if anything- Japan and Germany are 3.5% and 2% of global CO2 respectively. It's preying on ignorance to make "6th most polluting country" sound high. > This (the non-CO2 bit, not the CO2 bit) could be fixed, at relatively small cost to the industry, via changes to fuel and improved filtering, but until someone forces them to fix it it'll stay the same. They are being forced- by the international maritime organization. The sulfur content has fallen from ~7.5% to an oceanic limit of at most 3.5% in 2012 (actual emissions are lower), falling to .5% this year. In the EU it's has been limited to .1% since 2015. Not least this is happening because China is taking such a hard line on smog. This is an incredible regulatory success, up there with leaded gasoline, iodized salt, and CFC bans. It's very dangerous and detrimental to talk about oceanic shipping as a CO2 problem. It's essential to third world economies (both buying and selling), for one thing, but more importantly we know what the CO2 problems are: cars and coal. Fix those, then you can worry about natural gas and semi trucks. After that you've solved 80%-90% of the problem. Seriously, say oceanic shipping globally is 2.5% of CO2 emissions. Light duty road vehicles are 59% of US transportation CO2, which is 29% of US CO2 emissions, which are 14% of of global CO2. Those multiply out to 2.4%. Forget trying to coordinate literally the entire world, you can get the same reductions by going after a single category of emissions from 4% of the world's population.

reallydontask 7y ago

>Air travel and freight is, by and large, is a luxury. Flowers and f* ups get air freighted by plane, I've heard

bouncycastle 7y ago

Sending air mail is a luxury now? Global aviation produces something like 2% of global co2 emissions As for shipping, it uses 4.5% of global co2 emissions. Source https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatec... What's more, here is what @BurnGpuBurn [1] pointed out before: "Shipping also very often uses the dirtiest of fuels and is therefore much more polluting than airliners which burn quite high quality refined fuels. That's why, to get around recent laws limiting sulfur emissions, large container boats now first "scrub" their exhaust gasses with sea water, so all sulfur will now nicely pollute and acidify our oceans. [0] No emissions though, because emissions bad." [0] http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2020.aspx http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-20... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21979576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21979576

DrScientist 7y ago
So similar emissions, but only one of them transports 90% of the worlds goods, raw materials and waste. > Sending air mail is a luxury now? Yes - either wait a bit longer if you need to send a physical thing - or if it's just a message then do it electronically. Yes - perhaps an email isn't as 'nice' as a real letter, but isn't that the definition of luxury?
- bouncycastle 7y ago
  > So similar emissions Did you read my 2nd point? The emissions are not similar. Please also follow up on the source I've provided.
  - DrScientist 7y ago
    Not saying boats are perfect or that every company that runs them are angels! But you have a lot of head-room if you start off 100x better kg per kg. Because boats are not perfect doesn't change the original point: A 20% saving on emissions for aircraft and talk of 'having more space for cargo' is missing the big picture - air travel is a massively subsidized luxury where the speed of travel comes at a massive energy cost.

CrackpotGonzo 7y ago

Tragedy of the commons?

manfredo 7y ago

This is a bit of an oversimplification though. The duration of moving people by ship means that people need to be given food and water. People also aren't going to be spending the entirety of a weeks long voyage in a seat - they'll need beds and recreation facilities to stay sane. You're also less likely to find large numbers of people who all want to depart and arrive at the same time, so filling a large ship to capacity is more difficult and the ship will be running partially empty much of the time. All these things lead to lower net efficiency. The reality is, people aren't going to give up air travel. The best bet to make air travel more sustainable is to develop hydrogen powered planes. The Soviets demonstrated this concept [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155

DrScientist 7y ago
Yep - agree should pursue transformative solutions. > The reality is, people aren't going to give up air travel. I hear Fentanyl is pretty addictive as well - so might as well subsidized it and make it available to everyone cheaply, the downstream societal and health care costs are not the immediate problem - the problem is people want this stuff.....
- manfredo 7y ago
  Does fentanyl enable rapid transcontinental travel? Does it provide innumerable economic opportunities by enabling global social mobility?