You know it's big. The numbers say it's big. But it's only as you sail past and look up at it. A 399m long Neo Panamax container ship capable of carrying >24000 containers. Holy crap thats a big ship!!!
No wait. It's 33m longer than neo Panamax. It's huge!!!
@quixoticgeek What are all those containers actually for though?
@rooftopjaxx well in its current location, the containers being taken off the ship are going into the UK market. As for the containers going onto the ship, at a guess, heading for the Chinese market. IIRC the MSC China basically goes back and forth from China to Europe.
@quixoticgeek "back and forth" seems to be doing so much work in that, will no-one think of all the red diesel?
@rooftopjaxx in the grand scheme of things. It's a tiny amount. Container shipping on this scale is incredibly efficient. Shipping is 1.8% of global emissions. And half of that is moving fossil fuels about, so that's gonna half pretty soon anyway.
@quixoticgeek Hmmm, absolutely no expert here, but these two very quick searches suggest it's both higher and still growing (perhaps relative to other reducing sources), eg "global shipping is still reliant on heavily polluting fuels, with the sector contributing approximately two percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020. If it were a country, global shipping would be the world's sixth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide.2 Oct 2023"
Do take your point on moving fossil fuels about though.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=Shipping+is+1.8%25+of+global+emissions#ip=1
@rooftopjaxx 1.8%. or approximately 2. There's no disagreement.
@quixoticgeek other sources saying between 1.8% and 3%, but must stress again, very superficial searches.
@rooftopjaxx I'm using the data from "our world in data" as it's consistent.
@quixoticgeek Ta. Found this from 2016
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
@rooftopjaxx that says 1.7%. but yes that's the page I use. Note how it's less than aviation.
@quixoticgeek anyway, where was your big container ship, Felixstowe?
@rooftopjaxx it's not too bad. As long as things aren't too lumpy...
@quixoticgeek Used to do that ferry journey a lot when living in A*dam back in the '80s