New fuel to get sea freight environmentally shipshape

Tens of thousands of cargo ships? Really? Just how many tens of thousands?

@seadog

The idea is to reduce the emission of highly toxic sulphur dioxide...by the nearly 80,000 cargo ships which ply the seas delivering raw materials and merchandise.

Third paragraph.

Transport by ship is an absolutely huge business. 90% of world trade.

https://business.un.org/en/entities/13

These ships are enormous monsters that travel for weeks around the planet. Making them pollute less should actually be as important as for cars or planes.

Two of the biggest container ships (though not the newest) are Maersk Lines E Class two of which run between China and US West Coast at a cruising speed of 30 knots. Cargo is only carried one way (guesswhich) and on the return voyage empty containers---not hard to see the imbalance of trade which is causing so much controversy.

seadog,

sounds just like what happened in the Vietnam war......in reverse.

The Americans sent tons of stuff to Saigon,unfortunately not to sell, and its ships would have all come home empty except that they stopped in Japan on the way home to pick up cheap Japanese goods that were being mass-produced much like in China today.