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350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

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Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#111

Post by fragmede »

crote wrote: post #92
hagbard_c wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be emitting nitrous oxides when burning that methane. Use wind to produce hydrogen, use that in fuel cells. Electric propulsion units are already in use, what remains to be solved is the megawatt-sized fuel cells needed for this application at a price which makes the whole scheme feasible.

How are you going to store all that hydrogen? You need extremely large and heavy high-pressure tanks, capable of holding 350–700 bar. Methane can be liquefied and stored at only 10 bar. Hydrogen just doesn't have the density required here. Even if you want to use hydrogen-powered fuel cells, it might make more sense to convert it to ammonia for transport and storage.

how much hydrogen do you need to store though? it doesn't make sense in cars to me, but water-based vehicles seem like they wouldn't need to store problematic amounts given that they have access to h2o

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#112

Post by jdietrich »

agentultra wrote: post #45

Everyone is always concerned about scale. But I sometimes wonder if we need to scale down. Are cargo ships full of essential goods or disposable items that will more likely than not enter a landfill without seeing any use at all? We’re really good at over producing items and goods that we don’t need or use. It’s interesting to see businesses try things like this. It might not be efficient or affordable now. But someo…

>Are cargo ships full of essential goods

Yes, for any reasonable definition of "essential".

https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/countries/43/export-basket

https://comtradeplus.un.org/Publication/ITSY

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#113

Post by fragmede »

happyopossum wrote: post #61
stefan_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose there is no reason to make an autonomous cargo ship accessible to humans.

Given time and sufficient motivation (starvation is a common one for pirates), anything is accessible to humans.

with sufficient motivation, we were even able to get to the moon! getting to the sun is still elusive though (current plans are to go at night)

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#114

Post by fragmede »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

This is not a method by which carbon emissions can be significantly reduced. It is essentially a marketing ploy to provide an option for virtue signaling consumers to show that they get their luxury chocolates and wine by sailboat. I was going to start out this comment by saying "I don't mean to dump on well-intentioned entrepreneurs", but in all honesty I think I might. That is, at this point, anything that doesn't…

perfect is the enemy if the good

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#115

Post by andrepd »

thrance wrote: post #72
basisword wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t this just drive up the cost for the people who are already struggling to afford these goods?

It does, but it is also supposed to bring up the hidden costs of buying things in their prices, so that greener products that would do less harm would be cheaper than more destructive goods. For example, a plane ticket might be cheaper than a train one for the same trip but it costs more to the community in the long term because of global warming.

And pollution. People forget that pollution is not just the fuzzy and far-off consequences of global warming, but also very real and immediate deaths and illnesses.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#116

Post by evomassiny »

reliablereason wrote: post #99
evomassiny wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is 360$ of fuel more eco-friendly than 0$ ? I don't get your argument

Just cause it is a sailing vessel does not mean it does not have an engine. It probably uses a couple of 100 liters of disel to get in and out of port, driving generators and heating the boat. On top of that the sails will degrade with time and the ship will need to be repaired and there is allot more crew and manpower needed per unit of cargo. Everything has environmental cost in CO2 emissions, and the amount of use…

According to [0], a typical container ship generate 12.5 g of CO2 per ton per km, which means that one trip from France to NY with 350T of cargo would release about 35T of CO2 in the atmosphere.

I'm convinced that this sail boat generates an order of magnitude less of that (I can't find any estimate of it)

Whatever the initial CO2 cost of the construction of this boat is, I'm sure that it's a net benefits if it's used long enough

[0]: https://www.ecsa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/2020%20...

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#117

Post by bmicraft »

f154hfds wrote: post #110
zer00eyz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think luxury goods are the problem? Theres 8 billion of us... Most of the population eats based on imports. China, a billion people, only produces 60 percent of its own food. Africa, large portions of the Middle East survive on imported grain. Hell what started out as aid to Nigeria is now a delicacy and part of the culture: stock fish. An African nation identifies part of its culture with a Norwegian export. Thi…

I was tracking with you till the last sentence - why is this bad? I tend to think it's a good thing that 40% of Chinese people (580 million people) aren't starving. Britain hasn't been able to feed itself from domestic agriculture for 200+ years, would you have their population halved so that they don't need food imports anymore? I don't understand.

Hasn't been able or hasn't been trying? I reeeaally doubt that the UK couldn't produce enough if they tried, they just don't because it is more expensive.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#118

Post by jdlshore »

wiml wrote: post #85
jdlshore wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A carbon dividend pairs effectively with a carbon tax. You give people (not businesses) an equal proportion of the tax collected. People who consume less than the average end up earning more than they spent.

How is "carbon dividend plus carbon tax" different from "cap and trade"? C&T seems to have gone very out of fashion, but it also seems to me to be the most equitable approach — I don't follow this closely enough, maybe I'm missing something.

It’s similar in some ways, but very different in practice. I don’t study these things, but my understanding is that cap & trade puts a hard limit on emissions, then allows businesses to trade carbon allowance as a new sort of currency.

Carbon tax + dividend doesn’t put a hard limit, and it doesn’t establish a new currency/market. Instead, emissions are taxed at the business level and that revenue is paid out at the individual level. I like the way it plays to the strengths of our existing capitalistic system. It’s easy to ratchet up the taxes without affecting the little guy—even benefitting them. It seems easier to administer too.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#119

Post by boudin »

rmah wrote: post #78
agentultra wrote: post #45

Everyone is always concerned about scale. But I sometimes wonder if we need to scale down. Are cargo ships full of essential goods or disposable items that will more likely than not enter a landfill without seeing any use at all? We’re really good at over producing items and goods that we don’t need or use. It’s interesting to see businesses try things like this. It might not be efficient or affordable now. But someo…

At end of life, cargo ships are cut up into scrap steel. That scrap is then melted down and re-used to make new steel. I strongly suspect that, if you take into account the energy used to manufacture the ship, sailboats will turn out to have a far higher carbon footprint per ton-mile of shipping than normal cargo ships. Cargo ships, as dirty as they seem on a per-ship basis, are crazy efficient on a per ton-mile basi…

Do you have any number that can back up your claims? And any real info about the owners having yachts? If not, you should really delete your conspiracy shitty comment

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#120

Post by dghlsakjg »

basisword wrote: post #66
cloverich wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where carbon tax helps. Having to pay the true cost of goods helps everyone make better decisions. Maybe, hopefully, it also pushes the needle towards higher quality, more essential items and hence less waste. Yet, "make everything more expensive" is a challenging position to make progress on.

Doesn’t this just drive up the cost for the people who are already struggling to afford these goods?

It imposes the real cost of the goods including externalities. The costs will be borne by somebody, why not the consumer of the good?

It also encourages people to find ways to get goods to consumers that are more efficient.

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