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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

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Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#261

Post by yrral »

JosephRedfern wrote: post #62

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

But isn't "worth of goods delayed" a reasonable figure?

For example, if there is a total of X shipping capacity a year, and no reasonably priced alternatives (or extra capacity available via rail/air/etc), then disrupting $Y worth of goods for D days reduces the total amount of goods that can be traded that year by $Y*D.

Or is there something I'm missing here?

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#262

Post by maxerickson »

EricE wrote: post #245
maxerickson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took them a few days to dredge away meters of sand. Why would it take more than a few additional days to dredge away another couple meters of sand? Of course each meter of depth is a little harder, but not that much harder.

>Of course each meter of depth is a little harder, but not that much harder. lol - cut and fill on a slope is not trivial. It’s more of an exponential function than a linear one for the amount of material removed the deeper you have to go down. They dodged a HUGE bullet with the highest tides happening this weekend. If they had gone beyond a Tuesday with the drop in tides each day as the moon got further away it woul…

The seasonal variation in the tides is like 20 centimeters. The draft of the ship is more than 10 meters at the bow.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#263

Post by EricE »

arwineap wrote: post #219
Clewza313 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was built with corvee labor, which is not quite the same thing: unpaid, yes, but done by farmers etc as a form of taxation in kind.

Taxation imposed by the state, but I haven't been able to find any citation of a tax code so to speak. It seems like state sponsored slavery, without a trade. That is no persons are being sold because they are simply using citizens Brutal.

Oh come now, governments can’t impose slavery - it was just taxation after all /s

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#264

Post by airstrike »

dustingetz wrote: post #211
stcredzero wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me Is it just me, but hasn't the mainstream financial news over the years taken on the feel of reality television? The talking heads are usually pushing some sort of narrative . Occasionally, reality overwhelms their ability to spin things, and they have to readjust and do damage control, as sometimes happens t…

principle agent problem and always has been ... what’s stunning is that civilization manages to create some amount of value despite this ... imagine what the world would be like if humans learned how to actually cooperate at scale and maximize long term in an antifragile way

In my bedroom as a young teenager I used to think a worldwide event which affected every person equally, like finding life in another planet, would surely usher in a new era of common interest and a shared view that we're all but the same thing: human.

I've since turned more cynical and believe that greed is as essential to humanness as empathy, if not more, and without a strong moral code (and fear of being ostracized for breaking it), selfishness wins.

The pandemic has violently dispelled any remaining expectation I had for a future cosmopolitan society.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#265

Post by arethuza »

justinator wrote: post #205
hanche wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that many (but not all) of the “crazy” suggestions were a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Which I think is fine? Isn't it fun to imagine how you would unstick a huge boat, even if your idea is totally off the mark due to a bad application of lateral thinking? Be it helium balloons or falcon heavy lifting rockets.

Or repeatedly exploding nukes behind it to convert it into the first space going Orion container vessel....

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#266

Post by Reason077 »

mrb wrote: post #252
JosephRedfern wrote: post #62

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

If we count only missed revenues for Egypt, this incident cost them about US$100 million. Canal revenues were US$27.2 billion in the last 5 years ( https://www.reuters.com/article/egypt-economy-suezcanal/egyp... ) which is US$15 million in revenues per day, and the canal was closed for 7 days.

It’s probably less than that because many transits would have just been delayed, not entirely cancelled.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#267

Post by EricE »

ceejayoz wrote: post #173
puddingnomeat wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is wrong. Someone says "it COULD be stuck for weeks" It gets unstuck earlier, fine. Doesn't invalidate the possibility. The criticism is moot. If anyone had made bets, then I'd take both more seriously.

We see this all the time with political polling. "Oh, Nate Silver said Trump only had a 30% chance of winning the election, but he did, so Nate Silver is an idiot!"

Nate Silver wasn’t just a little off - he was massively off outside of accepted norms for polling.

Multiple times no less.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#268

Post by krisoft »

cwhiz wrote: post #128
Robotbeat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, this was actually a fun disaster compared to almost anything else! If only we could live in a world where the worst international news story is a big boat being temporarily stuck with people making silly memes about it.

It's not that it wasn't fun. It's that the media goes into absurd hyperbole on every subject. This boat was going to be stuck for weeks, and maybe forever! ...and now they'll shift to absurd hyperbole on some other topic that is potentially more damaging.

The company tasked to salvage the ship said that they will use dredgers and tugs and will try to pull the ship free. They also said that if that doesn't work they will have to lighten the ship, which can take weeks.

After that it was entirely fair and true to report that "it might take weeks to get the ship unstuck." Just because we got lucky and the simpler, faster, plan worked doesn't make such reporting hyperbolic.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#269

Post by _ea1k »

hanche wrote: post #177
kibwen wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the classic "expertise is universal" fallacy. When we see someone who is an expert in their field, we assume that expertise carries over to totally unrelated fields, when this is emphatically not the case. Being a genius does not prevent someone from being ignorant; the finite nature of time means every genius is almost completely uninformed on almost every topic, and without information what you get is GIGO.

I suspect that many (but not all) of the “crazy” suggestions were a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Yeah, the part that is missing are the experts who can take those "crazy" suggestions and explain, in accurate detail, all of the reasons why there are better ideas.

Along with detailed explanations of the better ideas.

As it was, we kind of just got stuck on the jokes and random thoughts.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#270

Post by iab »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #249
tgv wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprised. It's directly available, and there's a lot of experience. And the consequences and costs are known. But probably other companies were already working on alternatives. I wouldn't be surprised if Elon would send a small, custom built sub next week.

Is that before or after he tells the guy in charge of the salvage operation to shove the sub up his backside and go back to fiddling children?

Precedent is after i believe
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