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Water-based shipping is extremely efficient. (However, they should be forced to install pollution controls on their internal combustion engines instead of just

by hedora 3y ago

Water-based shipping is extremely efficient. (However, they should be forced to install pollution controls on their internal combustion engines instead of just injecting raw exhaust into the ocean.) Of course, reducing their carbon footprint would also be good, but it's currently only 3% of global emissions: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/08/maritime-shipping-causes-more-greenhouse-gases-than-airlines/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/08/maritime-shipping... The carbon impact of the stuff on the ships is likely much higher. For instance, this BBC article breaks it down for food, and, for ocean-shipped stuff, the carbon emissions of transporting the food is rounding error: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-benefits-of-veganism-and-vegetarianism https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene... The only real exceptions to the rule involve highly-perishable food that has to be flown in next day, but that doesn't have anything to do with ocean transport. As far as I can tell, carbon offsets are a complete scam (vs. putting the money directly into stuff that reduces carbon production). If anyone knows how to pay an existing company to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and store it in a biologically inactive form for > 1000 years, then I'd love to hear about it.

andrewdubinsky 3y ago
>>If anyone knows how to pay an existing company to extract carbon from the >>atmosphere, and store it in a biologically inactive form for > 1000 years, >>then I'd love to hear about it. They're called trees. If global warming were about reducing carbon dioxide, we would be planting them in every available square inch of open ground.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  We could but global warming makes even that pretty difficult. Trees don't fare so well in droughts or extreme heat. Though I suppose there's still plenty of areas that are viable and some that were previously too cold becoming moderate. But trees are also not super great for carbon capture. At night they exhale CO2 as we do and they don't absorb a lot. Even if we did cover every practical inch with them it would still take so long to capture it all that the worst of climate change would have long happened.

by hedora 3y ago

andrewdubinsky 3y ago

>>If anyone knows how to pay an existing company to extract carbon from the >>atmosphere, and store it in a biologically inactive form for > 1000 years, >>then I'd love to hear about it. They're called trees. If global warming were about reducing carbon dioxide, we would be planting them in every available square inch of open ground.

wkat4242 3y ago
We could but global warming makes even that pretty difficult. Trees don't fare so well in droughts or extreme heat. Though I suppose there's still plenty of areas that are viable and some that were previously too cold becoming moderate. But trees are also not super great for carbon capture. At night they exhale CO2 as we do and they don't absorb a lot. Even if we did cover every practical inch with them it would still take so long to capture it all that the worst of climate change would have long happened.