• Some of these ships would carry green hydrogen and new lithium batteries and old lithium batteries (to be recycled) and whatnot. Also at least some oil would be still needed for fine chemicals like meds or (idk what’s proper english term for that) large scale organic synthesis like plastics, or even straight distillates like hexane (for edible oil extraction) or lubricants. Some of usual non-energy uses of oil can be easily substituted with enough energy like with nitrogen fertilizers but some can’t

  •  ntma   ( @ntma@lemm.ee ) 
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    3221 days ago

    Once you realize the byproducts of oil and how essential some are and the fact that rich countries aren’t going to change their way of life and the fact that developing countries will industrialize in the same way western countries have and will start to produce similar environmental emissions things look pretty bleak in terms of that average temperature rise.

    •  bstix   ( @bstix@feddit.dk ) 
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      3721 days ago

      the fact that developing countries will industrialize in the same way western countries have and will start to produce similar environmental emissions

      That’s not a fact. It makes more sense for developing countries to skip directly to renewable energy sources.

      •  ntma   ( @ntma@lemm.ee ) 
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        1221 days ago

        You’re right it’s not a fact. But I would say large percentage of developing nations aren’t pursuing such options because it’s easier to use things like coal. If you take a look at the new coal plants under construction as the moment, the top 15 are from developing countries. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-just-15-countries-account-for-98-of-new-coal-power-development/

        China and India account for 3 billion people alone and they’re still building new coal plants to account for their growing energy needs despite using renewable energy.

        •  frezik   ( @frezik@midwest.social ) 
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          20 days ago

          Water/wind/solar is cheaper now, and it’s not even close. It’s electrifying communities that never had any sort of electrification before since they can buy a few panels and bypass the (often corrupt) power utility in the country. The intermittency is a problem, but it’s still better than not having it at all.

          So yes, it looks like they’ll skip carbon-based energy entirely. This is similar to what’s happened with landlines in these regions; they skipped straight to cell phones.

          That said, you know where 95% of new coal power plants are being built? China.

  • correct me if I’m wrong, but the United States doesn’t even have oil refineries that are capable of making gasoline out of American oil? like we need the type of oil that the middle East has, so we’re constantly trading oil back and forth even though we have plenty of it

    I think I’ve heard this is true. something about politicians wanting to look environmentalist and therefore preventing the building of any more refineries

    •  Sonori   ( @sonori@beehaw.org ) 
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      621 days ago

      Offhand I believe we have a few that can do light oil, but most of ours wouldn’t want to change over even if offered to do so for free. Rather the reason is the US has a lot of chemical engineers and capital and so is good at refining the more challenging to deal with and cheaper to get heavy oils while selling the easy to refine and therefore more valuable light oil we dig up down in Texas to places that have more primitive refineries.

      While we could retrofit all of our our refining capacity to use our oil, it doesn’t make financial sense because your spending a lot of money to switch to an more expensive input, so companies arn’t going to want to do it unless the government forces them to, and the government would only force them to if it wanted to spite everyone else and raise domestic gas prices.

      • yeah from what people are telling me, we have the capability of processing lower quality crude oil so it makes more sense to export our high quality stuff, then buy the cheap stuff since we can already refine it.

        • yeah thats pretty much the TL;DR here. It’s complicated since oil is complicated and there isn’t really a “insert oil” oil to talk about, there are a lot of variations of it, and a lot of ways to refine it, and a lot of different resultant products from it as well.

          The fact that the modern petro industry even works is kind of insane.

            •  Saleh   ( @Saleh@feddit.org ) 
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              221 days ago

              that is quite simple actually.

              Butter and skimmed milk also come from the same source. You have a complex mixture of stuff that is differently viscose, so in mixture it all ends up with a certain viscosity. Now you separate it and you get stuff that is almost solid and you get stuff, that is very liquid, or in the case of crude oil you get some gaseous fractions.