this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
301 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
76388 readers
1888 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Shipping via sea is the cheapest and least greenhouse gas producing way to ship things. With the only exception being pipes, which are significantly better than ships on both fronts. However, we shouldn't be shipping peaches via pipe. ;p
Transoceanic pipe cargo lines could be nice. Vacuuming cargo out, pushing in. Like trains, except with no life support concerns.
Someone is dropping pennies in the vacuum tubes again! Now the whole thing is jammed and we've got cargo backed up all the way to Guam!!
And yes Bob, we all know it was you!
We absolutely should so I can put the end of that pipe in my mouth
You have died of dysentery.
Fucking rad
Also reminds me of this lmao
Ah yeah, I failed to consider that, but it's at least an even longer route by sea. 😅
Longer than what? By plane?
Not not but much...
Than by anything.
By sea is an extremely direct route, and by land isn't an option, so yeah, the only comparison left is by air. And shipping by air is less efficient in all respects except time.
So saying this route is especially inefficient by sea is just a confusing statement.
Maybe if you ship it from the very South of Argentina (maybe they do?), otherwise it's a significant detour to go around South America whichever way you go.
I just looked it up, it's a huge distance between Thailand and Argentina, about 17,000 km if you were flying. Going around the tip of South America adds an extra 1000 km, making the trip 6% longer. Meh.
What are you saying? It's longer. That's my only point. Are you saying it's not longer... "enough"? What's the deal here, what are we doing?
I mean, yes. It isn't longer enough to make sea travel anything but the most efficient method to ship something.
That's not the point, the point is how long it is to ship fucking pears halfway around the globe, twice. Imagine the stuff you'd need to smear on those pears to keep them fresh, or how unripe they'd need to be when harvesting.
I'm not talking about how efficient sea shipping is vs flying or driving.
Well I guess that was what made the original statement confusing, because that's definitely what it sounded like you were saying . I imagine this feels like a frustrating conversation (and I am sorry for that), but it's probably because of that lack of clarity.
I mean you said traveling by sea was especially inefficient, mentioning the huge waste of resources. I think it's reasonable to interpret that the way I did.
Alright, my bad. 👌
AFAIK all ships still run on fuel. Esecially the huge ones.
While a lot of emmissions are "hidden" in the infrastructure, ships still have infrastructure: the ports and terminals weren't always there like the sea. Less infrastructures than other modes to be sure, but certainly not "free".
Well there's a clear thing you need to do now: go figure out the proportion of greenhouse gasses for a given shipped item caused by shipping. Someone has done the research, seems like you ought to find it.