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Thanks for your comment. We all know that a shipping industry based on wood boats would be awful for the environment. We all know what would happen to the Amazo

by pqs 6y ago

Thanks for your comment. We all know that a shipping industry based on wood boats would be awful for the environment. We all know what would happen to the Amazon. So yes, you are right, it is silly to sell this as a solution to climate change.

ricardobeat 6y ago
Isn't wood one of the few renewable building resources we have? Besides building ships out of aluminum I don't see any other better choices. I don't totally agree with the conclusion; in the article itself they admit that this is more of a flagship project to show it's possible to achieve fossil-fuel-free shipping, not a solid commercial venture. Or maybe that was sarcasm? Better avoided in this forum.
- jabl 6y ago
  Steel is fine too; the crust of the earth is about 5% iron, so it's not like we're going to run out of it. Current steel production is terribly high in emissions though, but e.g. hydrogen reduction as is being done by the HYBRIT project in Sweden show the way how to fix that.
  - corty 6y ago
    Each of concrete, steel, traffic will double our energy consumption. So if you want to do those from renewables, we will need to quadruple production, yet we struggle with providing even the current level of electricity from renewables. Green steel, concrete or traffic from hydrogen is a far-out pipedream for quite some time.
- gmueckl 6y ago
  In the past, wood was an essential resource for building navies and it took a lot of wood to build the navies of old. The Romans deforested a huge chunk of their lands to retain their naval power in the Mediterranean.
- pqs 6y ago
  Yes, it is renewable, but it renews very slowly. Thus, to start a massive wood based shipping industry (it should be massive to have an impact) it would cause serious deforestation. Large wood based military navies caused large deforestation in the past.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  We can’t build ships of large size from wood. It’s just not technically possible, wood is not a suitable material for a structure that’s subject to stresses required. You’d need to add extensive steel skeleton structure to support it, and even then you’d be fighting constant leaks, and risking sinking at high seas. Wood works great for constructing large buildings, but ships are not like buildings: unlike them, they are subject to large dynamic stresses. That’s why before widespread structural steel in 19th century, wooden ships were tiny. Mayflower was less than 30 meters long. They didn’t build it larger because they lacked lumber, they did it because previous attempts at larger ships tended to break apart at sea.

by pqs 6y ago

ricardobeat 6y ago

Isn't wood one of the few renewable building resources we have? Besides building ships out of aluminum I don't see any other better choices. I don't totally agree with the conclusion; in the article itself they admit that this is more of a flagship project to show it's possible to achieve fossil-fuel-free shipping, not a solid commercial venture. Or maybe that was sarcasm? Better avoided in this forum.

jabl 6y ago
Steel is fine too; the crust of the earth is about 5% iron, so it's not like we're going to run out of it. Current steel production is terribly high in emissions though, but e.g. hydrogen reduction as is being done by the HYBRIT project in Sweden show the way how to fix that.
- corty 6y ago
  Each of concrete, steel, traffic will double our energy consumption. So if you want to do those from renewables, we will need to quadruple production, yet we struggle with providing even the current level of electricity from renewables. Green steel, concrete or traffic from hydrogen is a far-out pipedream for quite some time.
gmueckl 6y ago
In the past, wood was an essential resource for building navies and it took a lot of wood to build the navies of old. The Romans deforested a huge chunk of their lands to retain their naval power in the Mediterranean.
pqs 6y ago
Yes, it is renewable, but it renews very slowly. Thus, to start a massive wood based shipping industry (it should be massive to have an impact) it would cause serious deforestation. Large wood based military navies caused large deforestation in the past.
xyzzyz 6y ago
We can’t build ships of large size from wood. It’s just not technically possible, wood is not a suitable material for a structure that’s subject to stresses required. You’d need to add extensive steel skeleton structure to support it, and even then you’d be fighting constant leaks, and risking sinking at high seas. Wood works great for constructing large buildings, but ships are not like buildings: unlike them, they are subject to large dynamic stresses. That’s why before widespread structural steel in 19th century, wooden ships were tiny. Mayflower was less than 30 meters long. They didn’t build it larger because they lacked lumber, they did it because previous attempts at larger ships tended to break apart at sea.