And they burn the worst kind of residual bunker oil because it’s the cheapest option and regulations don’t exist.
Know thy enemy
Submitted 6 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/61a326f8-b31f-4875-9e32-039f2298fd47.jpeg
Comments
rtxn@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
And destroyed the Baltimore bridge because their backup engines were split between legal fuel and international+waters fuel.
Hawke@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
What’s with the math in the middle of your comment?
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours 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 6 hours 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 hours ago
Good thing humans are the only life on earth.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
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
UsernameHere@lemmy.world 5 hours 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 hours 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 6 hours 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
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 minutes 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.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
ikr, but that tweet implies that all of oil/gas/coal ships would be unnecessary
IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 5 hours 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 hours ago
And oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.
jonne@infosec.pub 5 hours 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 hours ago
coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
That wouldn’t really need to be shipped around though, domestic supply can cover those needs almost everywhere.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Won’t someone think of the seamen?
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 3 hours ago
I’m constantly thinking of seamen
WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Capt’n Pugwash and Seaman Stains will both be out of jobs.
tilefan@lemm.ee 4 hours 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
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 minutes 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.
fox@hexbear.net 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 2 hours ago
the government should at least subsidize a couple so in the event of an apocalypse we can make our own gasoline.
sonori@beehaw.org 3 hours 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.
Zorg@lemmings.world 3 hours 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 2 hours 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 hours ago
Anyone know how much of the oil transported is actually used for plastic, percentage wise?
iSeth@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
≈15%
seeyouatthepartyrichter@lemmy.world 4 hours 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 3 minutes ago
actually, it’s already happening, why do you think LNG is such a massive export from the US right now?
M600@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Now I’m waiting for the news report,
“Green Energy will cost jobs!”
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 minutes ago
yeah, free market economies baby, making everything more efficient!
MelaniaTrump@hexbear.net 5 hours ago
gotta burn fuel just to get more fuel. Zeno’s paradox but capitalistic economic collapse
PugJesus@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Christ.
Redex68@lemmy.world 4 hours 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.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 minutes 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.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 20 minutes ago
Idk man 5% sure sounds a hell of a lot better than 0%
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Ships need gas inside to keep the dihydrogen monoxide at safe levels
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 minutes 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…