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).
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.
Sadly many developing countries are further along in EV uptake because they have access to $4k EVs without tariffs
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.
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. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-just-15-countries-account-for-98-of-new-coal-power-development/
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.
That's because those plans and policies were drafted 10 years ago when coal was cheaper. These days the plans being made are based on solar, because solar is the cheapest.
Won't someone think of the seamen?
I'm constantly thinking of seamen
Capt'n Pugwash and Seaman Stains will both be out of jobs.
Don't forget, Roger the cabin boy
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
I'm guessing most countries would try to recycle batteries locally. Or/and throw them onto solar systems straight away
We aren’t consuming batteries anywhere near the rate we consume oil and coal. Hydrogen even less than batteries.
So the amount of ships needed would still be a fraction of what we use now.
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
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.
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
it's also to do with prices. There is a certain amount of this that is true, but the primary reason is oil prices.
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.
yeah thats pretty much the TL;DR here. It's complicated since oil is complicated and there isn't really a "insert oil" oil to talk about, there are a lot of variations of it, and a lot of ways to refine it, and a lot of different resultant products from it as well.
The fact that the modern petro industry even works is kind of insane.
yeah it's wild to me that petroleum jelly and kerosene come from the same thing
that is quite simple actually.
Butter and skimmed milk also come from the same source. You have a complex mixture of stuff that is differently viscose, so in mixture it all ends up with a certain viscosity. Now you separate it and you get stuff that is almost solid and you get stuff, that is very liquid, or in the case of crude oil you get some gaseous fractions.
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
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.
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