I found this very interesting, we hear lots about planes being big polluters and not a lot about ships. It seems from this article that overall, the sheer number of ships means that they are bigger polluters than planes because of the high speeds they have to set to keep up with demand.

Ships are more efficient than planes mile-per-mile, but the shipping industry should look out for governments starting to clamp down on the emount of shipping going on.

I found it quite surprising that ships carry 90 of the worlds goods around, I would have thought that planes would have carried a higher percentage.

The article is at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/19/co2_ships/ if anyone wants to read it.

An interesting look at the economics of modern large sailing cargo ships:

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...524881.600

They could be making a comeback soon...

Kingfisher

Very interesting, sail would be great for the environment, although I remain doubtful that sail could be as fast as modern ships which would make it difficult to get sailers to switch when they are on such tight schedules unless they were forced.

Yes and I doubt many people would feel safe nowadays relying on the wind to get them places [/u]

Yes and I doubt many people would feel safe nowadays relying on the wind to get them places

True, the Doldrums still remain a place to be becalmed.

Yes, tight schedules are a problem. It's entirely possibly to back up the sail with an auxiliary engine, but I think a larger problem would be the dangers presented by de-masting and losing canvas in storms. However, weather predicting having gotten considerably better in the last one hundred years, that may not be quite so much a factor as it used to be.

Kingfisher

A good start to addressing this problem would be for consumers to stop demanding the transportation of cheap food from the other side of the world. Rather than looking at alternative ways of transporting the cargo, maybe we should ask why we need to transport it at all. Buy seasonal and local and the suppliers will soon get the message.

Indeed.

I am a member of the local bicycle club, and someone asked on that forum--what happens to all those (free) blackberries we see along virtually every road?

The fruit could be made into jams or jelly, or otherwise preserved. But right now, it goes to waste. Instead, we press for imported berries, because we want 'fresh' fruit at a time of year when there should be no 'fresh' fruit.

Likewise, tying in with culling badgers. The apparent reason for not inoculating cattle against TB is that this renders the meat unfit for EXPORTATION.* Errr, why would we want the meat to be exported, when we are importing cheap meat from other places?

Makes my head hurt, it does.

Kingfisher

*Please correct me if I am mistaken in this impression.

It's very true, I always like to try and buy local whenever I can. There are a couple of small farmers shops around usually run by the farmers wife, the food they serve there is delicious and much nicer than anything imported. The sad fact is that the imported food on the whole ends up much cheaper, even though it has come from a different country!

That is actually very surprising. Ships have largely slipped under the global warming radar and its been all about planes, I wonder if that is going to change now. Something tells me that planes are more "fashionable" to criticise though. I haven't seen much media coverage of ships polluting at all.

Very true, the media definitely has a thing for planes and flying at the moment but we know how quickly things like that can change.

I read an interview with a scientist who agrees that there is a big global warming problem, but thinks the way we are going about it at the moment is all wrong. He believes we are trying to cut back emissions through a panic-like state, by telling people not to fly for example. But panic isn't sustainable and this will be a long term battle, so we should be investing in renewable energy sources which don't pollute and hence will solve the problem in the long run. I have to say he made a lot of sense.

I think I may be putting the cat amongst the proverbial pigeons but what will happen to all that food left in thoughts countries? won't it be devastating for there economies. It is a well known fact that we cant feed all the people from our own land and if we could wouldn't it be disastrous for our countryside. I'm very interested in your replies to these questions as I haven't got the answers, have you!

One day humans will have lost the knowledge on how to actually survive - i.e. to produce our own food. Now the whorld wholely depends on oil and farms are forced to 'specialise' in one area, the land is used unwisely and is being drained of natural nutrients. Its a cyce of disaster as crop rotation has been forgotten about and all the seeds are hybreds whose offspring seeds will produce variable crops, which the seed companies are so willing to point out. And with all this new home buyers are being given a small choice of tiny flats without gardens so they really will not have a chance to grow their own veg or be in touch with the soil. People have sadly forgotten what they really are.

I grow my own veg and was amazed that one friend though that potatoes grew on trees and another did not know that you should grow marrows in manure thinking the manure would make them taste disgusting! Sad sad world!

That's a very thought-provoking question, and I wish that I did have the answers. However, a few of things strike me as being in need of addressing.

Firstly, importing cheap food means that the suppliers are being forced to barely exist on the meagre payments that the supermarkets are prepared to pay (I wonder what would happen if they were forced to pay the suppliers a fair price).

Secondly, the populations of many of the third-world producing countries are starving whilst their farmers produce crops for export.

Thirdly, many of these farmers rely upon seed crops supplied by the big overseas seed producers (hence the spread of GM crops in these countries). This inevitably gives these companies a huge influnce in those countries - not always to the country's benefit. Maybe if they were self-sufficient in crop production their economies would be better served.

Fourthly, a country that loses the ability to feed itself is effectively holding a gun to its head.

I'm not saying that we should stop all imports (after all there are certain crops that we cannot grow), but I'm not sure that the current situation benefits anyone other than the massive corporations whose only interest is to make ever-larger profits.