If you read all the cites in the OP the scrubber thing is mentioned. If that’s what you want a cite for.
Ultimately a cruise ship is duplication of a small town. All the people on it already have a place that they live with all the infrastructure and energy requirements. But then a hotel is in most ways similar to that too. You could cancel out almost everything but the fact that the cruise ship/hotel is moving.
So if you have a fuel source that is somehow neutral. Bio fuel or such? Then a cruise ship may be not much more wasteful or polluting than a hotel.
A lot of shipping waited until the last possible moment to switch to more expensive fuels. I understand that the last possible moment was around Jan 1 2020, give or take a couple of months.
It was deliberate. I think that boats with kites have demonstrated sailing 45 degrees to the wind, which goes to the question of the theory of kites, but not directly to the economics of shipping.
But essentially none of them are - or are claimed to be - transportation.
The article linked by the OP had a comparator. Long distance flight. That was a very kind comparator, as flying is horrifyingly carbon intensive.
A long distance flight is a more than 10% addition to the average US person’s CO2 contribution, and unless they would have spent their local vacation just burning drums of jet fuel (or bunker oil), about 0.6 tons of it, that is unlikely to be nulled out by them filling their gas tank a few time. And a cruise of the same distance is worse.
Your assumptions are obviously wrong, but as long as you’re not willing to do a minimum of number crunching to defend them you will never realize that.
One of the easiest things we could do, which you never hear about, is to eliminate first class airplane seating. A first class seat uses something like 50% more CO2 per passenger mile.
Guess why we don’t hear about it? Because politicians fly first class. You don’t expect them to ride economy like a normal shnook, do you? Instead, we’ll force that construction worker to give up his pickup truck.
Not to defend first class airplane seating, but we have to do both, because there are so many more pickup trucks.
If you eliminate first class flights, then you eliminate commercial air travel entirely. The business isn’t sustainable without those super-expensive tickets.
Nor are cruise ships.
Altho both will take you to a vacation destination.
Most;y, they aint construction workers. They are guys with tiny dicks who need a big gas hog truck, driven too fast and rather recklessly.
I think you should have to have a special permit to buy most PU trucks.
Moderating
This is way out of line for GQ. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to have a pickup truck, especially in rural areas. And I have no doubt that many of your fellow posters own pickups. Dial it way back.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Moderating
And let’s keep politics out of GQ.
Colibri
GQ Moderator
You are right, I was over the line.
Returning to our regularly scheduled thread …
Remember the old mantra “Reduce reuse recycle”?
As applied to carbon emissions that can be recast as “Reduce, replace, resume”.
In the short term, the big gains to emission MUST come from simply reducing consumption. Quit flying, quit driving as much, get an efficient car, insulate your windows, reduce HVAC use. Wear that hair shirt. Everyone every day all day.
At the same time we need “replace”. Figuring out how to do the same tasks, or similar tasks, with far less, and eventually zero, emitted carbon. Then installing that infrastructure, whatever it may be. That task takes time, money, and is much more easily accomplished if we’re already reduced.
Finally, once we have zero-carbon equivalents we can resume the comfortably heedless lifestyle we (at least the wealthier we) have all enjoyed. Because it won’t be cooking the planet anymore.
As some memes put just under a year ago: “COVID is the quiz; AGW is the final exam.” We don’t see much evidence that “Wear that hair shirt. Everyone every day all day.” will make even a small dent in bulk behavior and therefore humanity’s total emissions.
This is going to be very difficult.
Turning back to the OP’s ships for long haul transportation, not as floating destination resorts …
They could certainly be a part of “replace”. But only in the interim. And whether there’d be enough demand to pay for the roll-out investment given the slow speed = long journey times is a tough ask. And especially if “reduce” had already been successful in persuading the masses that vacation travel is simply an unaffordable luxury. Whether that’s unaffordable in money or in carbon.
There’s definitely a way for an ocean liner to be environmentally-friendly - sink it for use as an artificial reef.
Most of the vessels you hear about that were deliberately sunk to attract marine life or extend existing reefs have been obsolete merchant or naval ships, but here’s one example of a liner becoming an artificial reef:
Might be tough to sell space on a Carnival Cruise underwater adventure though.
Carnival owned the Costa Concordia. They had many underwater cruisers on that run. Including 32 who took their final voyage underwater.
So there is some market for it.
I assume a disadvantage compared to large motor vessels is less ability to damp rough seas? Did you feel a lot of movement from the sea while under way?
Actually, the top dozen speed records for clipper ships would give an Atlantic crossing of about 1 week - but such ships couldn’t carry a lot of cargo/people and would have, indeed, required favorable sailing weather. Which may or may not have agreed with the passengers, as “good for speed sailing” and “good for a level floor and not having the dinner dishes head to one bulkhead or the other” do not overlap much.
Not sure how much modern materials/methods could improve that. Oh, sure, there are racers these days that go faster but they’re designed solely for speed and have no amenities on board, every bit of weight that can be stripped off is left on shore.
A big difference is that a hotel doesn’t go anywhere. Moving a ship requires an input of energy that a hotel (or other structure) does not. That energy has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere dictates the waste products generated by moving something (heat, ash, sulpher, whatever).
If you’re looking for absolutely minimal emissions from a moving hotel on the water then you’re looking at sail - which has drawbacks, but isn’t generating noxious gas or contributing to carbon footprint every time it goes somewhere. Such a “moving hotel” would, presumably, generate the same amount of sewage/biological waste as the same number of people based in a land-based hotel.
Any fuel-based movement of that hotel is going to generate some form of waste over and above the “base hotel” rate because that’s how physics works.
Some fuels are better than others, depending on what criteria matter to you.