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A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

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Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#31

Post by knowaveragejoe »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #26

"Burning massive quantities of bunker fuel. The result is a huge amount of CO2...commercial ships produce more than a million tons of CO2 every day." Narrator is unnecessarily alarmist here, and sounds like we should be concerned about the contribution of cargo ships to the greenhouse. I would say we should celebrate the shipping industry for being so much more beneficial to humanity per unit of CO2.

I don't see how it's alarmist to note the fact that they are by far and away one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gasses as a group. I think they could do better, and we wouldn't pay that much more as consumers for a lot of the goods, unless the biggest overhead really _is_ with shipping.

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#32

Post by knowaveragejoe »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #26

"Burning massive quantities of bunker fuel. The result is a huge amount of CO2...commercial ships produce more than a million tons of CO2 every day." Narrator is unnecessarily alarmist here, and sounds like we should be concerned about the contribution of cargo ships to the greenhouse. I would say we should celebrate the shipping industry for being so much more beneficial to humanity per unit of CO2.

I don't see how it's alarmist to note the fact that they are by far and away one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gasses as a group. I think they could do better, and we wouldn't pay that much more as consumers for a lot of the goods, unless the biggest overhead really _is_ with shipping.

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#34

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #31
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #26

"Burning massive quantities of bunker fuel. The result is a huge amount of CO2...commercial ships produce more than a million tons of CO2 every day." Narrator is unnecessarily alarmist here, and sounds like we should be concerned about the contribution of cargo ships to the greenhouse. I would say we should celebrate the shipping industry for being so much more beneficial to humanity per unit of CO2.

I don't see how it's alarmist to note the fact that they are by far and away one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gasses as a group. I think they could do better, and we wouldn't pay that much more as consumers for a lot of the goods, unless the biggest overhead really _is_ with shipping.

"they are by far and away one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gasses as a group."

Wrong. Shipping is the most efficient transportation of mass-distance per unit of CO2. Shipping's CO2 contribution is only %3-%4 of total CO2 produced by humans.

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#35

Post by roshanj »

kirrent wrote: post #7
namenotrequired wrote: post #2

I expected this to be http://marinetraffic.com/ which shows current/recent locations. But I'm not sure if it shows every single cargo ship in the world.

Every ship within range of an AIS receiving station. There are deadspots far out and see and behind obstructions.

Yep, terrestrial AIS receivers can only receive messages from ships that are less than ~50 nautical miles off the coast. Further out than that and you need satellite-based AIS data.

(I'm an engineer at Spire, we've launched a constellation of nanosatellites that does exactly that: https://spire.com/products/sense/ )

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#36

Post by hirsin »

namenotrequired wrote: post #2

I expected this to be http://marinetraffic.com/ which shows current/recent locations. But I'm not sure if it shows every single cargo ship in the world.

This is endlessly fascinating, thank you. I'm sure there's fun work being done by commodities traders using this type of data - sure enough there's a pricing section for API calls to their service. I would be curious to see how well it can predict performance for manufactured goods though - for large-scale consumers like Wal-Mart it might be possible to say that rising imports to the US (more container ships incoming) point to increased demand by consumers, therefore invest in Wal-Mart.

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#37

Post by techdragon »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #26

"Burning massive quantities of bunker fuel. The result is a huge amount of CO2...commercial ships produce more than a million tons of CO2 every day." Narrator is unnecessarily alarmist here, and sounds like we should be concerned about the contribution of cargo ships to the greenhouse. I would say we should celebrate the shipping industry for being so much more beneficial to humanity per unit of CO2.

Um yeah bunker fuel is disgusting stuff. It's so bad, sometimes ships can't burn it in territorial waters due to local environmental regulations. It's not the CO2 in bunker fuel exhaust that makes it so terrible, it's everything else.

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#38

Post by tajen »

cjslep wrote: post #8

A couple of observations I thought were interesting: Very few ships travel around the southern tip of South America A corrupted data point sends it flying across Russia and into Southern Europe. A lone ship travelling to Svalbard. Multiple ships travelling in rivers deep into Russia. Control of the nine-dash-line area would yield huge economic influence to the controller.

Note that I'd expect to see the influence of ice floe in the Bering Sea (=from Alaska to Russia, the most used channel should change latitude depending on the ice coverage in winter), but I don't see where the ice limit could be. Do they have icebreakers to keep the channel open?

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#39

Post by throwaway1974 »

grendelt wrote: post #33
canjobear wrote: post #3

I'm amazed to see ships navigating into Siberia up the Lena. I thought the deltas of the Siberian rivers were impassable.

I'm just amazed someone still gets content from Digg!

I thought they were dead myself, they really missed the boat in creating the original reddit type site

Re: A Map Showing Every Cargo Ship

#40

Post by draggnar »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #34
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's alarmist to note the fact that they are by far and away one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gasses as a group. I think they could do better, and we wouldn't pay that much more as consumers for a lot of the goods, unless the biggest overhead really _is_ with shipping.

"they are by far and away one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gasses as a group." Wrong. Shipping is the most efficient transportation of mass-distance per unit of CO2. Shipping's CO2 contribution is only %3-%4 of total CO2 produced by humans.

But in terms of particulate emissions it is very significant. Upwards of 60% of total sulphur emissions and accounts for over 60,000 deaths per year. At room temperature you can walk across the surface of the fuel. It is nasty stuff and the scale is quite large.
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