"We're doomed....." Topic

This is interesting

link

and it's hailed as a way to reduce Caron footprint.

Great!

But I recall reading about similar designs in New Scientist in the 1980s….

….if it's going to take 40-50 years to make changes that in reality will only have at best a 1% impact on global caron footprint then….we're doomed.

Carbon…..

(darn sticky B key….need a new keyboard1)

Back to the future… the first steamships had supplemental sails.

It should work. If people make environmentally cheap sails instead of super high tech sails they should give a decent return.

Still a drop in the bucket, though.

If people make environmentally cheap sails i

So the article laments the sails being made in China instead of the UK, and points out lack of help from the government to make steel cheaper.

So … why is Chinese steel/manufacturing cheaper than anywhere else? Because they have nothing that we would recognize as labor protection laws or environmental protection laws. The path to a better environment does not traverse the Belt and Road.

Don't forget the slave labor.

It should work. If people make environmentally cheap sails instead of super high tech sails they should give a decent return.

Still a drop in the bucket, though.

Agreed on both points – it seems unarguable that it'll work, and also that it will make only a small difference overall.

It's too little and too late – it could have been done 40 years ago, a few ships will do it now and maybe in 30 or 40 years most of the world's large cargo fleet will use them.

But that's only a small "woop".

It won't solve the issue of not producing most of the world's energy from renewables rather than carrying on burning carbon. That's what we need to solve now, but we just keep kicking it down the road for our grandchildren to sort out.