Some of these ships would carry green hydrogen and new lithium batteries and old lithium batteries (to be recycled) and whatnot. Also at least some oil would be still needed for fine chemicals like meds or (idk what’s proper english term for that) large scale organic synthesis like plastics, or even straight distillates like hexane (for edible oil extraction) or lubricants. Some of usual non-energy uses of oil can be easily substituted with enough energy like with nitrogen fertilizers but some can’t
Know thy enemy
Submitted 5 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
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Comments
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
UsernameHere@lemmy.world 5 months ago
We aren’t consuming batteries anywhere near the rate we consume oil and coal. Hydrogen even less than batteries.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
not now, but if hydrogen were to be used as an energy source/storage, then it’d be used plenty. same with batteries
ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net 5 months ago
the argument for renewable energy isnt that we should stop using oil, its that we shouldnt burn it. why turn our limited supply of oil into CO2 and water when we can turn it into plastics, medicine, solvents, etc? around 3/4 of crude oil is used as fuel, but if renewable energy was used, the number of oil tankers would decrease by more than 75% bc local supplies would generally be sufficient for industrial, non-fuel uses
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
ikr, but that tweet implies that all of oil/gas/coal ships would be unnecessary
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
bc local supplies would generally be sufficient for industrial, non-fuel uses
this is assuming that its not just cheaper to import that needed oil? This is always going to be a fundamental problem, though maybe we already happen to produce plastic with native oil idk.
IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 5 months ago
That is true, but part of improving our environmental impact will be decreasing that transport of raw materials, localizing chemical industries near the sources of their raw materials.
someguy3@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.
jonne@infosec.pub 5 months ago
There’s alternative processes, and if you avoid burning oil for fuel you can basically do all that with the amount of oil that’s in easy reach instead of using tar sands or drilling into even more difficult to reach places.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works
barsoap@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Everything that comes out of a petrochemical plant can be made without oil, in fact BASF had recipes in place for decades now and is switching sources as the price shifts. Push come to shove they can produce everything from starch. It’s also why they hardly blinked when Russia turned off the gas.
The carbon that actually ends up in steel is a quite negligible amount (usually under 1%, over 2% you get cast iron), you can get that out of the local forest, and to reduce the iron hydrogen works perfectly, the first furnances are already online.
auzy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m guessing most countries would try to recycle batteries locally
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
That wouldn’t really need to be shipped around though, domestic supply can cover those needs almost everywhere.
ntma@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Once you realize the byproducts of oil and how essential some are and the fact that rich countries aren’t going to change their way of life and the fact that developing countries will industrialize in the same way western countries have and will start to produce similar environmental emissions things look pretty bleak in terms of that average temperature rise.
bstix@feddit.dk 5 months ago
the fact that developing countries will industrialize in the same way western countries have and will start to produce similar environmental emissions
That’s not a fact. It makes more sense for developing countries to skip directly to renewable energy sources.
ntma@lemm.ee 5 months ago
You’re right it’s not a fact. But I would say large percentage of developing nations aren’t pursuing such options because it’s easier to use things like coal. If you take a look at the new coal plants under construction as the moment, the top 15 are from developing countries. carbonbrief.org/guest-post-just-15-countries-acco…
China and India account for 3 billion people alone and they’re still building new coal plants to account for their growing energy needs despite using renewable energy.
buzz86us@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sadly many developing countries are further along in EV uptake because they have access to $4k EVs without tariffs
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fun fact: through the 1800s coal-powered steamships mostly replaced sailing vessels for the transportation of people and time-sensitive cargo around the world. But steamships were highly inefficient and required frequent re-coaling, and locally available coal was dirtier and contained less thermal energy than the good stuff that Britain (who was doing by far most of the shipping) got from Wales and other places on their island. Because steamships could not efficiently and cheaply haul the coal that they needed around the world to restock the coaling stations, this was done instead by an enormous fleet of sailing colliers. So the “steam revolution” of the 1800s was actually a steam/wind-power hybrid. It wasn’t until the advent of triple- and quadruple-expansion steam engines, turbines, and greatly improved boilers in the early 1900s that steam-powered vessels could efficiently and economically haul their own fuel. And even with that, wind-powered cargo vessels remained economically viable and operating in significant numbers right up until the start of WWII (that’s II, not I).
roguetrick@lemmy.world 5 months ago
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Won’t someone think of the seamen?
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
I’m constantly thinking of seamen
WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Capt’n Pugwash and Seaman Stains will both be out of jobs.
tilefan@lemm.ee 5 months ago
correct me if I’m wrong, but the United States doesn’t even have oil refineries that are capable of making gasoline out of American oil? like we need the type of oil that the middle East has, so we’re constantly trading oil back and forth even though we have plenty of it
I think I’ve heard this is true. something about politicians wanting to look environmentalist and therefore preventing the building of any more refineries
fox@hexbear.net 5 months ago
No, there’s a significant amount of oil infrastructure locally. They’ve even got a colonialist extension with Canada: crude oil crosses over to be refined and sold back to Canada
radio_free_asgarthr@hexbear.net 5 months ago
No, it is true. It is not the quantity of oil infrastructure, but the grades and types they are. The US crude is mostly light sweet crude after the shift to oil shale. The refinery infrastructure was originally built for heavy crude with high sulfur content. Thus the US imports the type of oil our refineries were built to handle, and exports the portion of the oil that is domestically produced, but the wrong type.
radio_free_asgarthr@hexbear.net 5 months ago
The lack of investment in the types of oil refineries to refine US oil domestically isn’t as much for optics purposes. But that relative to the amount of investment required to build new refineries to compete with the current foreign ones isn’t a good return on investment relative to the up front cost and the existing profits of the current arrangement.
tilefan@lemm.ee 5 months ago
the government should at least subsidize a couple so in the event of an apocalypse we can make our own gasoline.
MonkeyBusiness@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Additionally, the push to stop depending on fossil fuels makes the investment an even riskier endeavor because the refinery might be outdated by the time it starts making a profitable return. It would be like if the entire world was highly dependent on lemons, and a farmer planting a lot of lemon trees that take 2 - 5 years to grow when half the world is insisting on switching over to limes. If the lemons were being produced right now and all that has to be paid for is the regular maintenance of the lemon trees, it would be profitable. However, the farmer has to purchase the land and seeds, prepared the land, install and acquire appropriate farming equipment, hire an entire staff that are experts in lemons, and grow the trees before even receiving a single penny in revenue, all while a good portion of the population is anti-lemon because lemons are harmful to the environment (hypothetically speaking) and wants to switch over to limes. which are less damaging. Business-wise, this would be a terrible investment. It’s not that it couldn’t possibly turn a profit, but when you’re an investor with considerable capital, you’re going to invest that in ventures that are more likely to produce a profit. It would make no sense to risk your capital on such a risky venture when there are hundreds of others that are less risky.
sonori@beehaw.org 5 months ago
Offhand I believe we have a few that can do light oil, but most of ours wouldn’t want to change over even if offered to do so for free. Rather the reason is the US has a lot of chemical engineers and capital and so is good at refining the more challenging to deal with and cheaper to get heavy oils while selling the easy to refine and therefore more valuable light oil we dig up down in Texas to places that have more primitive refineries.
While we could retrofit all of our our refining capacity to use our oil, it doesn’t make financial sense because your spending a lot of money to switch to an more expensive input, so companies arn’t going to want to do it unless the government forces them to, and the government would only force them to if it wanted to spite everyone else and raise domestic gas prices.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
it’s also to do with prices. There is a certain amount of this that is true, but the primary reason is oil prices.
tilefan@lemm.ee 5 months ago
yeah from what people are telling me, we have the capability of processing lower quality crude oil so it makes more sense to export our high quality stuff, then buy the cheap stuff since we can already refine it.
Zorg@lemmings.world 5 months ago
US gasoline production was around 1.4 million barrels/day last year. Large amounts are exported and imported though, so there was a grain of truth to your claim.
tilefan@lemm.ee 5 months ago
yes but how much of that gasoline was made from American crude oil? America has plenty of refineries, just none of them designed for American oil
tomatolung@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Anyone know how much of the oil transported is actually used for plastic, percentage wise?
iSeth@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
≈15%
seeyouatthepartyrichter@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So what you’re saying is the companies that own those boats will lobby the government so that this never happens? Sweet.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
actually, it’s already happening, why do you think LNG is such a massive export from the US right now?
M600@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Now I’m waiting for the news report,
“Green Energy will cost jobs!”
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
yeah, free market economies baby, making everything more efficient!
MelaniaTrump@hexbear.net 5 months ago
gotta burn fuel just to get more fuel. Zeno’s paradox but capitalistic economic collapse
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
to be perfectly clear, this probably wouldn’t help much, since we would likely just move to shipping something like hydrogen across the ocean anyway…
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Hydrogen is just worse natural gas. They crack natural gas to produce hydrogen, and its fucking terrible. Hydrogen creates about 4 times more CO2 than diesel, simply by how the vast majority of it is manufactured
scholar@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There is green hydrogen which is completely renewable, it’s just more expensive
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
you think i was saying they would manufacture hydrogen from natural gas?
ok.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 5 months ago
Hydrogen isn’t about energy production, it’s about storage
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Ships need gas inside to keep the dihydrogen monoxide at safe levels
Redex68@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah but if I’m not mistaken, emissions from shipping are quite low anyways. It’s something like 2-5℅ of all our emissions, so it’s pretty low priority.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Idk man 5% sure sounds a hell of a lot better than 0%
Redex68@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah but my point was moreso that there are more important things to focus on that are probably easier to do. I mean, reducing shipping by just the fact you don’t need to ship oil anymore is pretty nice, it’s free reduced emissions, I’m just saying that it’s not that big of a deal. It is a nice plus however.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
all freight traffic is a pretty significant dent, i think the net total for all of transport is something like 15-20% of total emissions, so.
PugJesus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Christ.
rtxn@lemmy.world 5 months ago
perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And destroyed the Baltimore bridge because their backup engines were split between legal fuel and international+waters fuel.
Hawke@lemmy.world 5 months ago
What’s with the math in the middle of your comment?
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
this is arguably fine, because this way ships make clouds of sulfate aerosols, which have slight cooling effect and no one is bothered by it when it’s released over sea
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s only fine until those sulfates react with water vapor in the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid. That stuff rains back down and contributes to ocean acidification which is causing serious harm to all sorts of marine ecosystems.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Good thing humans are the only life on earth.
Saleh@feddit.org 5 months ago
This is wrong in some many ways. To add to the already mentioned. Ocean water is the largest carbon dioxide buffer by absorbing CO2 to become carbonic acid. As the sulfur acidifies the Ocean, this “competes” with the carbonic acid, increasing the CO2 emissions from the Ocean.
In other words, all geoengineering tropes end up being horseshit.
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Also, the cooling effect sulphate aerosols can cause only really happens at high altitudes. At low altitudes the reflected light is less likely to escape to space, and the aerosols fall out of the air faster.
Even if they reached high altitudes, one of the effects of being in the atmosphere is moving with the wind, across entire hemispheres. And at tropospheric heights, sulphates, their products, and other byproducts of combustion may destroy ozone at significant levels.
There may come a day where aerosol-based geo-engineering becomes a part of climate management, but it’s definitely not with bunker fumes.