Clearly the increasing price of oil and the ever reducing supply has to have an effect on shipping as long as its oil powered. Building bigger ships and waiting until they are absolutely full up before shipping of course helps in economies of scale, but still long term its a bad solution because eventually its not just Peak Oil but No Oil.

So my question is why not NOW start to build many smaller cargo vessels that use SAIL power? Sure they move slower, but if you have to wait anyhow to fill up a huge container ship, if you have many of them plying the oceans you could transport about the same amount of goods that one large container ship does in just about the same amount of time.

Sail power is ALWAYS going to work, and it costs NOTHING to the shipper. So how long before we see the Square Rigs come back?

ReverseEngineer

The shipping of goods problem is one we solved neatly in the era of cheap energy. Across oceans, big container ships. Across continents, railroads. Locally, big rig trucks, which I drove for 5 years throughout the lower 48 and Canada.

As we devolve downward toward a society where the gas or diesel powered engine is no more, its important to think about how the same tasks were accomplished before Big Oil came to rule the world. There was inter-continental trade in goods, and food grown in upstate New York did make it down to NYC down the Hudson River. Pulled into local neighborhoods by wagons pulled by horses driven by the Teamsters.

Now, clearly its about impossible to either grow as much or move as much in the absence of Big Oil, as we devolve downward here there has to be a population die off which represents accurately what we actually can grow and move about without Oil. In da olden days around say 1750, it was slightly under 1B people if the census estimates from that period are accurate. We certainly could live the same way we did back then, so the postulate that society comes to a complete END in the absence of oil isn't necessarily true. It would only be true if we have so polluted the environment as to not be able to grow what we did back then, and at least to this point in the absence of thermonuclear warfare I don't think we have screwed it up THAT bad. 20-30 years after factories stop generating waste and flushing it into rivers, Mother Nature will clean those rivers up enough for the Fish to move back in.

There is no substitute for oil in terms of packaged energy an individual vehicle can use to move around quickly and autonomously. Battery technology isn't there to really do that yet, and probably never will be because the batteries themselves take oil to produce. However, this is not to say that Transportation and Shipping comes to a complete HALT in the absence of oil, because all the old technologies still work, and we can actually make improvements on many of them based on what we know NOW how to do.

Larger Sailboats than ever existed in 1750 are quite possible utilizing the Hulls of ships already in existence, which themselves are probably good for another 100 years if they are well maintained. Railroad tracks are already layed, and railroads can be powered in any number of ways that do not require Oil or even Coal. Windmills all along the rail line being the most obvious solution there. You could of course even have teams of horses pulling rail cars.

At the stops along the rail line, Teamsters line up to take the goods off the railroad to their local communities. The whole operation still WORKS, it just works somewhat slower but not so much slower that it doesn't work in tandem with nature's cycle of the actual production of food. You will still need storage facilities, grain silos and the like, but you can keep a constant FLOW of goods moving.

Inside local communities, you can still travel to the Grocery store to stock up. You have your Horses of course. Bicycles exist now in enough numbers to certainly provide every person who survives with a bicycle 50 years from now, my aluminum model probably lasts 100 years. Still will need new rubber tires, but as long as their is trade on the ships from Brazil you still can produce rubber tires for quite some time to come. New enzymatic processes and energy harvested from the sun and from geothermal sources can keep enough factories running to produce this kind of goods even in the absence of oil. Never as much as we produced utilizing the millions of years of fossil fuels, but at some point a balance is struck here, and it will be above the balance struck in 1750 before we knew nothing at all about this stuff. My projection is for a 2B human soul population on Earth as maximum carrying capacity under such a paradigm. Smaller than we have now no doubt, but the end of civilization? Not necessarily. That IMHO only happens if the Wars we fight for the possession of the remaining oil thoroughly pollute the planet to the point it can no longer support human existence. This might happen, but its so counter productive that it might be avoided. We avoided it with the Soviets, though we both had the capability of destroying each other during the cold war, nobody pulled the trigger then. I think much more likely is we fight conventional wars until there simply is not enough oil left to run a mechanized war effectively. Then it gets local, and after some time enough are dead that its possible once again to rebuild the societies. At no time in the past did human beings ever kill off enough of each other to completely wipe out social rebuilding. It is possible it can happen, but it hasn't happenned in the past.

We have become so enamored of oil and the mobility it provided that it seems impossible to imagine society without it. But society DID exist before oil, and so it will after. Just it won't look quite the same as it does now, and that is a good thing.

ReverseEngineer

As soon as labor becomes cheaper than bulk fuel.

If we aren't already there, we are darn close. What are you going to do with the labor of the people who worked in the auto plants that are shutting down?

I think the problem here is its not realized in the shipping industry yet that you actually can get cheaper human labor than cheap oil. You have a lag time problem, the industry is still building as though oil is what makes the ships move, when really in just a few years it will be people who make the ships move. Since it takes years to build ships, you are working behind the curve. The SMART shipper would work ahead of the curve, build small ships and use starving folks to yank the sails up and down.

Reverse Engineer

Well, if you're so smart, and sure the economics are there already, then you should open up a shipyard. Good luck. Let us know how it turns out? Cheers.
Yatch World - new and used sailing vessels

Modern Sailing ships have square sails and no rigging. Very very small crew needed.

Rigging would get in the way of continer cranes.

Well, as mentioned already in this Forum fuel usage for container ships are parabolic, so ships can save a great deal of bunker fuel. The figure I was quoted by someone that works at the largest German shipping company here in Cyprus was a 5% reduction in speed saves up to 50% of fuel consumption. But they also indicated that this increases crew costs and that there is a worldwide shortage of qualified seamen at the moment.

Also, most ships that I have toured can run on many types of bunker fuel and therefore are very flexible depending on the economics of various fuels as in the least cost formulation. In general bunker fuel tends to come from the heavy end of the barrel. Ships do not compete per se with lighter transport fuels like gasoline and diesel. Although smaller boats may. Ships run on the heavy, nasty stuff.

Just like regular gasoline and diesel refining affects the supply of jet fuel or kerosene, so does demand for those transport fuels affect the supply of heavy oils as well. But as these ships are designed to run on basically anything that burns they can also run on bio-diesels or coal to liquids as well.

The newest wind assisted sail vessel was put into practice this year. It has a computer assisted sail that flies far above the deck of the vessel, and therefore does not get in the way of cargo containers. I cannot remember, but I believe its creators felt that it might cut fuel usage by another 25-30% over non-wind assisted vessels.

Also, per earlier posts in this Forum the cost advantages to intermodal container transport are such that their economics favor them overwhelmingly over 'loose' bulk transport that needs to be loaded and unloaded by hand or smaller cranes. Something like a 95% cost saving in favor of containers. Of course, you can still see those types of vessels in places like Dubai as well that ply between smaller ports in and around Asia. However, they are much more susceptible to the vagaries of piracy that is on the increase in that area of the world.

So although high fuel prices will affect the economics of long distant transport they do not, yet, favor labor over fuel. And water transport whether by ship, boat or barge is still the most fuel-efficient even compared to rail. So this will still favor large ports for very large vessels and then cross-loading unto smaller ships as well as barges for regional distribution. Wind and solar will play a secondary role as wind assisted sails cannot replace the ship's engines and/or as wind and solar are used to run onboard electric functions.

By the time we return to sailing ships for cargo transport we will no longer be living in a globalized world where manufactured goods are consumed somewhere else halfway around the globe. Those sailing ships would instead only transport low volume, high value cargos that do not spoil quickly like spices, coffee and tea, for example. I somehow doubt that the demand for iPods then will be terribly strong.

To: ReverseEngineer

Owning a sailboat is like standing in a cold shower tearing up $100 bills.

NO !!!
Sailboats are completely different. Sails cannot just simply be slapped onto any regular ship. Because a sailboat has to be pushed by the wind it's hull is totally different, structurally speaking.
The wind forces would totally rip a regular ship's body to shreds if sails were simply slapped onto it.

That's right. There is always a trade-off between cargo space and hydrodynamics in hull design. As water is 800% times heavier than air, and taking into account waves and currents that also slow the ship down, it is clear the size of sails a container ship would have to have. There would either be too much wind or not enough. Much easier to move production closer to consumption and reduce the length of the supply chain.



source: Climate change and supply chain management

However, I do see bulk transport of grain, fertilizer, phosphate, cement, steel, timber, etc. as being quite possible as these commodities are ideally suited for long-distance transport assuming there is still a market for them that covers the cost of more expensive fuel due to scarcity and the high price (lower EROEI) of substitutes.

We have a lot of coal to burn long before we need to turn to wind for ocean transport. Ofcourse though there is a labour issue with stoking boilers. Bunker oil gets fed in by flicking a switch. Coal needs a 'black gang' with shovels and back break labour.

I've got to think marine engineers could come up with a self-feed system for steam ships powered by coal? Heck, its been done for pellet stoves.

That is so true. New sails for even a small boat can cost 1000's. We bought sails for our boat last year and they cost €3500 and that was a bargain. The sails should last for 10 years or more though.

Liquifying or powderising the coal by some means may be possible but the one thing is that the balance of the mass of the ship is very important so the coal bunkers may not be able to be placed near the boiler. That and ships have a habit of rolling in the heavier seas.

Coal dust was a waste product and big problem for the coal mining industry until about 90 years ago. Coal dust is now MADE by crushing the coal and blowing it into a boiler with a stream of water (to increase production of CO). I doubt if anyone is going to return to shoveling coal for ships this century (unless civilization does fall completely apart, which is unlikely at best).

The end of the world is not coming, just the end of the world that you know.

OK, granted that you can't take a hull designed for prop driven power and just drop some sails on it. However at the same time you do indicate that Wind-Assisted ships are being built and that the potential fuel savings from this is in the 25-30% range. So it seems like some transition here toward sail is already happening, and one would figure it to further increase as the fuel oil decreases in supply and increases in price. This would then seem to keep shipping prices somewhat stable even in the face of rising oil prices, and at the same time is responsible for 25-30% of demand destruction on the shipping end, although clearly also to build the new ships takes a decent amount of energy in itself.

Also pretty clear is the demand destruction evident in the automotive market already. Reports today were outlining a 3.7% drop in miles driven in the month of May, the 7th such annualized decline, putting the Highway Trust Fund in jeopardy since less Gas Taxes are being collected. Less miles being driven means fewer trips to Walmart to buy Chinese Goods, which means fewer ships needed to haul those goods, further demand destruction there.

If indeed you want to try to slow down the demand destruction, you need to find some way to re-employ the people who are losing their jobs as the oil economy spins down. If you direct the movement away from oil and toward a more labor based economy, you save some oil, you maintain actual wealth production (though not as fast obviously), and you keep the money moving around through the population to some extent.

Now, the market will do this eventually by itself, but it will be quite haphazard and if you don't engineer the devolution toward human labor in some fashion, you end up with a bigger and quicker population crash then you otherwise might have had.

Most people here agree I think that it is far too late to engineer a transition off oil without pain. However, due to demand destruction, its not clear to me that the extant oil still left doesn't last about as long as as it took to use up the first half of the Earth Supply. However, figure its only half as long, maybe 50 years? Hard to say how fast and how much demand destruction continues onward here, but it seems the concept that demand for oil inexorably rises projecting out into the future is not correct. Because they can't afford the oil, people HAVE to start using less of it and they already are. More folks using bicycles, fewer cars produced, more folks using mass transit, more folks moving out of their suburban homes and Jingle Mailing the Keys to the Bank and doubling up with relatives in their houses, less folks buying stuff at Walmart shutting down more Chinese Factories putting more Chinese out of work there. How does the Chinese economy magically keep growing using internal demand? The oil is too expensive now for the Chinese to buy cars and drive them around willy nilly as we did when it came cheap. Besides, they are polluting up their environment so well they will have plenty of demand destruction from dead people. LOL.

I participate in another thread on the board here called "Planning for the Future". In that thread, people talk about their personal plans for survival when it really hits the fan. Some plans are more credible than others, but in principle I don't see why the Planning model can't work to stave off complete destruction on a larger social level. You have to make a transition back to human and animal labor with some assist from Wind Power and other sustainable energy resources at SOME point, the main question is how do you work your way back down the ladder? One way to get back down is just to let the ladder fail, everybody goes crashing downward and pretty quickly. However, demand destruction in the Market and Planning the descent could allow the population to experience a more gradual die off over a generation. Part of the process here would be finding ways to employ people to do what oil did, and building more ships which use Wind Assisted power or even are virtually entirely wind powered could do part of that job. Certainly the Container Ship is more efficient than the bulk transport ship, but again in principle its not impossible to build a large enough sailing vessel that handles containers either. I agree with the principle of having very large "hub" ports where intercontinental ships off load their goods, to be further shipped by smaller vessels plying the local trade. Water transport as noted is certainly the most efficient mover of large loads, and as much as possible you want to move the stuff around the country over the surrounding ocean first, then the navigable rivers second, the Mississippi being the main one here in North America. With the reduction in the Ice Pack, The Northwest Passage is opening up, you still have the St Lawrence seaway and the Great Lakes, the Hudson River and the Erie Canal.

Moving the goods around inside can still be accomplished with horses driven by Teamsters, by some steam locomotives powered by wood (or some coal in the downward transition). As big a load as one man can pull with a Big Rig? No way, the typical loads I pulled were in the neighborhood of 35 Tons, a horse drawn wagon system might pull 2 tons. However, having more Teamsters isn't a bad thing here, it provides more employment. Get rid of most of the oil used in the transport process and transition to human labor, you have a lot more left over to continue powering tractors an producing fertilizer for a while longer. You stretch out the end game this way.

Its hard to say how much the market forces will destroy demand, and how quickly. Its hard to say how fast the market responds to the ever decreasing supply and ever increasing price of oil. Personally, about 2 years ago when I came to the conclusion that I needed to get the heck OUT of society as best I could, I was pretty certain that by NOW the society would have ground to a complete halt. In March, when I watched Bear Stearns collapse, I was certain the Stock Market would crash completely within a month. When Fannie May and Freddie Mac went fundamentally Belly Up, it was inconceivable to me that the paper could be pushed around further to keep the House of Cards standing. Somehow though, the engine keeps churning onward, and its spinning down a lot slower than I thought it would. I go to the grocery every day, and there still is plenty of food I can afford to buy.

I'm still convinced there will be a major crash here, but I am no longer so sure of just how long it takes for it to happen. Nobody here really seems to be able to make a very good prediction either of how fast and in what manner it spins down, lot of OPINION on the subject of course though. LOL. Market forces of Demand Destruction and the Economic Shell Game Ben Bernanke is playing are slowing this whole thing down some, and I can see some ways that a catastrophic crash is delayed and a more gradual crash occurs. So in the rest of my lifetime which I project at no more than 20 years anyhow, I'm not sure these days whether I will have to go into my stock of food or hunt and fish for all my food in the future either. Doesn't hurt to be prepared though

Reverse Engineer