[flagged]
350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
131–140 of 146 posts
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#132Everyone 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…
Keeping climate change mitigation separate and off-topic, no, that's absurd. Hand-wringing about too much success or too much efficiency is contrary to the nature of business. If scaling down were essential, it would need to be imposed by consistent regulation so all legitimate participants are held to the same standard. Instead, greater efficiencies, less pollution, faster transit times, and less costs are positive values to optimize for.
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#133350 tons equals about 20 40ft containers at 18 tons cargo per container (usable capacity of ~67 m³) or 14 at 25 tons per container (maximum freight weight for a standard 40ft container) or 12 at 30 ton per container (maximum freight weight for 40ft reefer (cooling) containers). The average capacity for container ships traversing the oceans is around 5000 20ft containers (TEU) or 2500 40ft containers. That equates any…
[flagged]
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"Cargo ships, as dirty as they seem on a per-ship basis, are crazy efficient on a per ton-mile basis." As I understand it, this reinforces the parent's comment about scaling down. Efficiency facilitates scaling up, increased demand, supply and consumption, and inevitably, increased carbon footprint and other environmental issues. The comment is not only directed at the footprint of "normal" cargo ships, it's directed…
it'll still grow to the limits of the system: impact on the environment is not unique to post-industrial civilisation. It'll saturate either way, with the same effects, just less people.
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Containerisation improved throughput considerably, but added to latency. I doubt the “added latency” part. How long do you think it takes to unload 11,000 twenty-foot container from a ship? Do you think anyone would move the contained stuff faster if it were just in a loose pile?
That used crates, but yes I think it way quicker per ship, because ocean liners in particular wanted fast turnaround times. A lot more labour was involved, obviously.
> yes I think it way quicker per ship, because ocean liners in particular wanted fast turnaround times
But container ships also want fast turnaround times. This is not a convincing argument.
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"Cargo ships, as dirty as they seem on a per-ship basis, are crazy efficient on a per ton-mile basis." As I understand it, this reinforces the parent's comment about scaling down. Efficiency facilitates scaling up, increased demand, supply and consumption, and inevitably, increased carbon footprint and other environmental issues. The comment is not only directed at the footprint of "normal" cargo ships, it's directed…
If scale down, the limits of the system might be less, lowering total environmental impact when compared with the total impact from a system with higher limits.
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Up until WWII, Finnish shippers were competitive using sailing ships for long range bulk transport of grain, Eric Newby details one such voyage as a sailor in The Last Grain Race ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Grain_Race ). I see no particular reason why sailing ships with a little optimization couldn't be competitive these days if they were back then, especially since the fuel prices comparatively is highe…
The real kicker is labor cost per ton. Bigger ships don’t have a proportionately bigger crew. And sailboats were quite labor intensive.
Sounds like you just “created some jobs”
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
That would imply the ship has the requisite power generation on board to produce hydrogen from water, in which case it would be more efficient to use that power to propel the ship. So, yes, the ship would have to take all the hydrogen it needs with it.
oh. I thought we were talking about sails to make electricity to run electrolysis to make hydrogen to run engines. storing enough hydrogen for an entire voyage seems prohibitive to me, but I've not done the math
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
The chocolate has to be shipped cool, requiring more energy. That said: more and more producing countries are doing initial processing (roasting and grinding into liquor), and derivatives (powder and butter). Processing cacao in North America means I have to pay to get rid of shell which could be brought back to farms. Hopefully one day I can buy good liquor.
Still less energy than shipping left and right 3 times
Less energy turns out to be a relatively minor consideration in the world; for example cost of labor is vastly more important.
Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat
#140This 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…
The rich are responsible for a disproportionate amount of emissions. They fly more (often ridiculously more with their private jets), buy more, live in houses that take more energy than whole suburbs. If it becomes taboo for them to spend their fortunes on things that have high emissions and they're pressured to use this sort of innovative solution because of that, it may actually make a big difference. Also, what's…
It's a question of what has the most bang for the buck. Using wind to generate electricity via big wind turbines has a vastly lower cost per ton of avoided carbon pumped into the atmosphere than using wind to move very small capacity sailboats across the ocean.