Sails are one of a number - many far more practical - measures to reduce energy consumption.
He's written widely on energy for decades, and that article is a meta-piece. I rate his work highly. What makes you say he's a fool/arts student?
Just slowing down a bit can yield huge savings.
It can reduce fuel use, though.
He writes for the guardian?
On ENERGY?
Maybe half a dozen articles, several years' back. Are you incapable of checking these things for yourself? Looks like he's at Yale now:
Yep. As I say, that was a summary piece (as you'd know).
Yep. Classic 'environmental' journalist. Reads green press releases and regurgitates them for money. Like Geoffrey Lean.
And that is the Yale school of the environment. Used to train foresters. Now trains 'environamtalists', which is a clear step down
He is a fully paid up career environmentalist. Not an unbiased bone in his body.
His living is *utterly dependent* on being paid to say stuff that supports EcoBollox™
Exactly, He doesn't think, he regurgitates.
RJH snipped-for-privacy@gmx.com wrote
But is the one we happen to be discussing.
So have the fools who claimed that the CIA executed JFK
Even google can make no sense of that
More fool you.
I used that in the sense the turnip uses it.
His first sentence proves that.
'watch out for the return of the sailing ship'
Taint gunna happen, even just sail assist either.
And even his slender ships is fool/arts student s*it. That would need MORE ship trips, fool.
The rest of the article is even sillier, in spades with the use LNG instead of fuel oil and covering the entire deck with solar cells.Not going to work with a container ship, stupid and wouldnt even produce anything like enough power for even a f****ng oil tanker.
Record's stuck.
Irrelevant to what is being discussed SAILING SHIPS.
Not with international shipping.
A large proportion of the maize grown in this country is used for animal feed, and the use the whole plant, not just the cobs. If you can persuade everyone to become vegetarian, then we could divert all that animal feed into fuel production
Sod that.
And you are even more clueless if you believe that the conditions that converted organic material millions of years ago (and no longer exist on planet earth today) can be replicated in a test tube on the stuff that grows today.
Clever people realised that 'sod the FTSE' back in 2009 and put all their money inthe US stock markets have done far better.
Anyone holding Shell and Rolls Royce shares in 2019 will have lost a great deal of their *capital* by April 2021.
Why would they need to be? Oil is very simple stuff. Its just long chain hydrocarbons for the most part. Methane can be made in a biodigester just as easily as pumped from the ground. Peat IS coal, in its early stages.
What the f*ck did you think e.g. Biodiesel is made from?
Bollocks. I made a bloody fortune on shell, but dumped rolls royce and am now buying back in
Shell has more than doubled since then
Ultimately ALL that matters with plastics is where the carbon atoms come from. Its just as easy to turn plant matter into plastics as oil.
I did a quick Google earlier today, to see if normal plastics could be produced from plants, and quoted polyurethane.
Also, polyethylene is the most common plastic and is produced from the C2H4 monomer, which can be derived from ethanol, although they normally use petrochemicals.
But... I think asking if they can make existing plastics from plants was the wrong question. I don't think they want to duplicate existing plastics. I think they are looking to produce new plastics with different characteristics. For instance, ones that decompose in a reasonable timespan. I think that is what the bioplastic industry will be about.
Sure, but that is an entirely separate issue to what we make plastics from once the oil and gas is no longer economic to make plastics from.
With bulk materials, like minerals, a continuous supply is needed. Whether or not that is done by means of a few fast carriers or rather more slow carriers won't matter to the customer.
Well yes. There are two things about current plastic usage
- its easy to make from crude oil distillates,
- it works.
Organo-plastics will follow the same pattern As long as they work, exactly *which* plastics are employed is moot. Most 3D printers use polylactic acid made from corn starch. It is supposed to degrade in a few years. Its not bad, The vast majority of disposable items *could* be made from it.
PVC is in principle synthesisable from methanol or ethanol starting points.
Rayon was originally synthesised from plant cellulose. Remeber that nylon only goes nack to 1938 or thereabouts, and it was the first thermplastic polymer.
Before that we had thermosetting plastics made of coal tar, and/or wood products. Bakelite is a classic example, IIRC a phenolic resin impregnating sawdust.
Phenol is hard to make directly from plant material though
But the price will.
Slow carriers will be more expensive as they cant get the tonne miles per year up to a sane value.
Unless they can bring the cost per mile down enough to compensate, for example by using wind assisted ships :-)
Exactly, and that is why there wont be any wind assisted ships. They cant bring the cost down enough to justify the expense and complexity.
If you look at a sailing ship that CAN actually generate useful power, the sails are *massive*
Do the calculations. There is no cost benefit advantage It would be better to erect solar panels all along the decks. Except that's where you stack containers...
>
Square rigged ships needed big sails, because they are, counter-intuitively, propelled by the drag those sails create. Aerofoil sails, including things like Bermuda rig and gaff rig, use lift to propel the ships, so don't need to be so large, although for an ocean going ship they will still be very big. Compare the size of the parachute in the ballistic recovery systems used in some light aircraft to the size of the wings they use in normal flight. Both need to carry the same weight, but the parachute needs to be larger and, apparently, still gives quite a hard landing.
Not on a bulk carrier.
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