Environment

3925 readers

12 users here now

Environmental and ecological discussion, particularly of things like weather and other natural phenomena (especially if they're not breaking news).

See also our Nature and Gardening community for discussion centered around things like hiking, animals in their natural habitat, and gardening (urban or rural).

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Giant kites could pull cargo ships across the ocean – and slash their carbon emissions (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk man. The largest container ships carry ~40k shipping containers. Do you really think we could make 40k-ish solar boats and unload them efficiently? I think a better solution would be to transition the ships away from fossil fuels.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The current issue with large container ships is that they're extremely expensive. They're assets meant to be financially depreciated over 50+ years, so they'll be in use until written off. A lot of currently operating ships are even older than that.

And yes, I do think that the entire business could be disrupted by a swarm of robots if the robots are cheaper. The only problem is that customers are expecting delivery shorter times. Yeah well and that someone has to believe my crazy idea enough to actually do it. It is a thought experiment.