Green tech

[Walsingham]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8263651.stm

 

This is quite an interesting short piece on a cargo ship, and a less interesting example of how deranged green technology and the entire debate is. In particular I would draw your attention to the - and if only I were making this up - _kite_ they are flying from the deck of the ship to generate extra power and save fuel. This isn't just a big cargo ship, it's the biggest in the world! A kite? I understand that you might get lift from it, but the total effect on a vessel of that size?

 

And it's not just this one example. We've seen wave platforms which sink inevitably because they're too fragile for the sea. We've seen windfarms which no-one wants near them because they mess up the skyline. We've seen incandescent bulbs replaced with energy efficient bulbs which are grossly toxic to dispose of.

 

Combining this with recent comments about eating less meat, not being allowed household pets etc etc, and I'm losing any sympathy or patience with the green movement. I am prepared to accept that we need to cut back on emissions, but the mechanisms they are putting forward are either too weak, too intrusive, or unworkable due to human nature. In the main we are encouraged to abstain (less sex/babies, less food less travel, less TV), and if there's one thing you can't get humans to do en masse it's abstain. We want stuff, and by and large if we want a bit of it we want a lot of it, and only harsh measures will force us to refrain. Which further compounds my reserve as it seems many greenies are delighted at the notion of world bureaucracies monitoring everything we do and use.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Oh, just relax and have another beef smoothie

[Wrath of Dagon]

not being allowed household pets

You can have household pets, but they have to be edible.

 

Edit: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/natio...lanet-eat-a-dog

Edited October 30, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[Enoch]

I don't find this particular focus to be all that objectionable-- making one big new efficient ship is probably a gain over running several smaller older ships, so long as there is sufficient demand to keep it running full. The kite is pretty silly, yes-- far more symbolic than it is effective. But that doesn't change the fact that people are interested in increasing the efficiency (the big gain to the operators) and the enviro-friendliness (a useful thing to highlight for political reasons) of container ships.

 

I also wouldn't say that greenies are delighted by bureaucracy. (Hippies generally don't mix with regulators all that well.) More that they are surrounded by the glowing conviction that they are of the enlighted few who see the correct way of things, and that the world outside of them is mostly ignorant and a little bit corrupt. Government is seen as a tool to punish the corrupt and educate the ignorant, the latter of which will inevitably result in the world acclaiming the clear correctness of their cause. (Which is not to say that there are not large elements of their cause that are quite likely correct.)

 

But, yes, people do take things too far. There are lots of examples of poor design, over emphasis on minor symbolic changes, poor decisions from a cost-benefit point of view, etc. The ones that bug me most are the changes driven primarily by people marketing toward the environmental sensibilities of consumers ("Buy our product if you care about the environment-- look, it's got leaves on the labels and everything!"), particularly when the actual impact of the products is no different from their competitors, and when their marketing efforts yeild policy changes based on poor data.

[Slowtrain]

Combining this with recent comments about eating less meat, not being allowed household pets etc etc, and I'm losing any sympathy or patience with the green movement. I am prepared to accept that we need to cut back on emissions, but the mechanisms they are putting forward are either too weak, too intrusive, or unworkable due to human nature. In the main we are encouraged to abstain (less sex/babies, less food less travel, less TV), and if there's one thing you can't get humans to do en masse it's abstain. We want stuff, and by and large if we want a bit of it we want a lot of it, and only harsh measures will force us to refrain. Which further compounds my reserve as it seems many greenies are delighted at the notion of world bureaucracies monitoring everything we do and use.

 

 

Better to give it a shot and see what happens. At current rate sof consumption there won't be much left of the planet in a few years. Not such a big deal for people who are adults now, but for babaies just being born and stuff, its a pretty bleak ecological future.

[Walsingham]

I can see on review that I wasn't clear. I'm obviously in favour of big bulk container ships. I mean, they're an example of what I'm talking about. Very Large bulk carriers are simply more efficient than many smaller ones (loading, maintenance, and crises aside). Most of that ship's operations are common sense, and not so different to the trend of the pre-green era.

 

But the concept design they showed later in the report is frighteningly pie-eyed. they want to put a sensitive receptive moving wave harness underneath the main hull? What happens if it breaks? More than likely it will require a trip to a refitting yard, or a specilaist engineering team flying out to fix it in place. Never mind the risk of it disturbing the sea handling of the vessel. Ships aren't smooth just because ship engineers are boring! The large sails I can almost see working... until you consider the fact that existing dock facilities are designed to topload. ... It's so much heartwarming fantasy, and if we really are in line for a serious crisis then we can't afford to **** about.

[Enoch]

Well, besides the possibility of running less-than-full, another way that very-large ships may be less efficient: Sometimes, they have to take the long way around. By the dimensions announced in the video (56M wide, 397M long), that ship is by far post-Panamax, although it appears to be sub-Malaccamax.

 

International shipping in general has been hit quite hard by the recession. I recall some coverage a number of months ago about the backlog of empty container ships just sitting at anchor in Singapore, waiting for the West's appetite for Chinese exports to perk back up. By sitting still in a warm-weather port, the hulls of the ships were growing beards of kelp that really hurt the efficiency of their operations, but the owners preferred to keep close to China so that they were ready when the export rates jumped back up again. Based on the Baltic Dry Index, there has been some bounce-back in international shipping, but nowhere near its '07 to early '08 levels. A lot of the ships coming onto the market now-- having been ordered back when things were booming-- aren't finding much cargo to keep them running.

 

I know it's way off topic, but I have always found international shipping interesting.

 

 

Edit: a 9/28/09 update: The fleet is still there. Picture:

Edited October 30, 2009 by Enoch

[Rosbjerg]

But the concept design they showed later in the report is frighteningly pie-eyed. they want to put a sensitive receptive moving wave harness underneath the main hull? What happens if it breaks? More than likely it will require a trip to a refitting yard, or a specilaist engineering team flying out to fix it in place. Never mind the risk of it disturbing the sea handling of the vessel. Ships aren't smooth just because ship engineers are boring! The large sails I can almost see working... until you consider the fact that existing dock facilities are designed to topload. ... It's so much heartwarming fantasy, and if we really are in line for a serious crisis then we can't afford to **** about.

 

Maersk, the company from the video is actually taken this quite serious, since they are the biggest shipping company in the world (and their HQ is in Denmark, which hosting the climate debate), they can't afford to not take it serious. As Denmark is working hard to be a central figure in the enviromental issue, Maersk is also being forced by the public to develop and research more green technologies (for ships). But they are so focused on not wasting money that I'm absolutely sure they would rather take the PR hit than make something that doesn't work in the long run.

[Walsingham]

Enoch's right, of course. Running strange routes is bad, and you have to make sure the damn thing is full.