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Oil bosses call phasing out fossil fuels a ‘fantasy’ – but an international agreement is plausible
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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There are still centuries worth of coal if I'm not mistaken. Fossil fuels would go nowhere if there wasn't a need to shut them down.
Large scale sails could solve some problems the shipping industry has, IIRC. They're experimenting with Methanol (Maersk?) and Ammonia, because batteries and hydrogen apparently do not have required qualities for large scale shipping.
Coal is still a finite resource, even if there's centuries worth of it.
But I totally agree about sailing ships. For certain cargos that don't need super-fast shipping - grain, ores, etc. - sails make a ton of sense. The last windjammer stopped service in freaking 1957.
Makes sense environmentally. But that's not the focus of our societies. Everything is about profit and costs.
The last sailing boats didn't stop because they were slower. I'm not even sure if they were, they could go almost 20 knots in ideal conditions.
The main point was labour cost. An engine ship needs just a few men to run it. A sailing ship with dozens of sails needs dozens of men. The work was incredibly hard and dangerous (like being wet and exposed to the weather for days and weeks working 14 hours or something a day and I think it was normal to consider one death per cape horn trip). If you wanted to do something like this today, you'd have to pay high salaries and probably high insurance costs.
Also sailing ships are more difficult to plan a schedule, because they can't go a constant speed. That brings higher costs for storing goods.
There are a lot of things we did by hand once upon a time that are now done by computers and motors. Why do you imagine a modern sailing ship would use manpower to raise and lower sails?
Smaller ships would require more manpower per ton, but not as much as was required on classic sailing ships.
Fair point!
I assumed this would be the case, but also did some quick research before I responded. There's a cargo sailing ship from over 100 years ago still in active service. It's called the Avontuur. And apparently, interest in commissioning new sailing cargo ships is on the rise.
That's cool, thank you for pointing out that ship. I only knew of the Tres Hombres which runs under Fairtransport. I've seen some videos on Youtube and got the impression they are financially struggling.
I love those sailing ships of the old times. I find them fascinating. If you love them like me, this is a real gem of video material commented by a sailing captain.