A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

Post by rtpg » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 12:29 PM UTC

oneshtein wrote: post #45

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An 'average' panamax container ship carries 4,200 lorries/train carriages of goods. The infrastructure to move 100K of those a day 1000s of miles on land would be enourmous and make global trade prohibitively expensive - far cheaper to sail for longer around the capes.

Yep, but those two routes around capes can be disrupted too, which may cause advantage for those, who are not using them. Then it will be easy to plant the message into brains of those 50% who have less than average IQ: "Blame your government for this sudden spike in prices! Vote for those, who want to protect us, not foreigners!"

Post by nuc1e0n » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 1:14 PM UTC

lstodd wrote: post #47

nuc1e0n wrote: post #9

Can't the canal authorities reduce the water used somehow? If you paired up ships so that one going up the lock system is matched with one going down you could just pump the water back and forth from one lock to the other and back. Then way less water would be lost from the system. The Falkirk wheel in Scotland can move boats with minimal electricity usage. Could a bigger one be built?

The pump is the rain. The water flows down into both oceans, evaporates there and falls down on the lake's tributary areas, then flows down into it. That's the beauty of the whole design.

Post by elif » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 1:31 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #18

bluejekyll wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I’m no civil engineer, but couldn’t you design a siphon system that would only require opening and closing valves to capture the water without any pumping?

No; at some point you're going to lift the water up. That requires pumping.

Post by oneshtein » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 1:47 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #51

oneshtein wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but those two routes around capes can be disrupted too, which may cause advantage for those, who are not using them. Then it will be easy to plant the message into brains of those 50% who have less than average IQ: "Blame your government for this sudden spike in prices! Vote for those, who want to protect us, not foreigners!"

aside because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average!

Post by maroonblazer » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

avidphantasm wrote: post #52

Panama Canal at reduced capacity. Suez Canal at reduced capacity (for very different reasons). Therefore shipping costs and delays are rising. Could this be a trigger for the recession everyone seems to be predicting?