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75 comments on Alternative Wind Power Experiments - SkySails and Airborne Wind Turbines
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ransu -
Well that just about perfectly illustrates what globilization is all about circa 2008, doesn't it?
The Chinese make stuff and sell it to the West, whereas what the West sells to China consists mainly of bulk waste material and junk goods ... that are in turn made back into stuff to be sold to the West.
Goods flow from east to west; but money flows from west to east.
It doesn't take a genius to see where this is leading.
How about renaming the ship "Chinese Junk"?
Carrying the products of our crass consumer society. How much of that stuff do we actually need?
"How much of that stuff do we actually need?"
What, you want to cut me off from my supply of "singing and dancing gorilla toys"?
What are you, some kind of Luddite? :-)
RC
I couldnt live without my solar powered halogen rockery lights!
In one of Herman Daly's books he estimates that at least 40% of global trade is simply exchanging the same stuff--e.g., shortbread cookies crossing the mid-Atlantic.
I have seen other studies suggesting that France and Great Britain exchange roughly equal amounts of dairy products.
The kite ideas are nifty, but much more could be saved by simply sharing recipes.
And with food, we spend an enormous amount shipping water at high-speed from one place on the planet to another. Water is a high percentage of the weight of many shipped foods....
Um, the idea that people are swapping the same stuff back and forth is simply nonsense. It is true that some countries import and export oil, but that is simply that the oil they export is different from the oil they import. Australia used to export waxy oil and import asphaltic oil to get enough oil to make it's roads. Perhaps it still does.
This wasn't a comment about oil, but about the basket of goods on container ships. For example, go into a grocery store where you live and look at a section of cooking oils, wines, beers, cheese, baked goods, fruit vegetables, pasta products, etc. and count the countries of origin.
In my town much of the olive oil market is dominated by European imports, though olives grow great here. Wines are usually local, but we can get plenty of French, Italian, Australian and Chilean too. Beers from Europe and Mexico are abundant. Cheese from Europe is easy to get. Hard crackers and cookies from Europe, no problem. Vegetables and fruits come from all over the world! Italian pasta is on our shelves.
Somebody do the same in another country and compare notes.
I haven't read the primary literature on this, but I believe the book was Beyond Growth by Herman Daly were read it. Richard Douthwaite in the bood The Growth Illusion has similar discussion I think.
Much of the cheap Chinese made clothes Americans buy are made of cotton grown in the U.S. south. So the cotton is shipped from the US to China. China makes into clothes and ships it back. So by the time the average American buys the clothes in a Walmart, the item has essentially gone half-way round the world twice. Makes you realize how inconsequential the cost of shipping really is for many products.
And that in turn makes you realize how little actual oil it takes. It's perfectly possible that it saves energy shipping something to China, do stuff with it there, and shipping it back, because shipping containers on ships is so extremely energy-efficient.
That was exactly my point - shipping stuff around is already very efficient (vastly more so than trucking it from port to big box store) and likely to become more so.
This means that coastal areas will be under much less pressure to "relocalise" their economies, as their transport costs aren't the limiting factor - its the cost of the "stuff" itself.
Cities in the hinterland however (especially without good rail connections) are going to be the ones hardest hit by rising transport fuel costs.
Exactly. You can ship ore from Brazil to China for $100 a tonne, and most of that price is due to competition for bulk carriers. A few dollars a kilogram.
The "half-way across the world" argument is just emotional. Once you get it floating, distance isn't that important.
It makes sense to import dairy into London from Brittanny instead of from Scotland. States are not point entities. Though I agree that cheap fuels make all need for efficiency vanish.