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Comment by AcerbicZero | Hacker News Reader

Hah, if we're only going to talk only about tiny US ships, run them on whale oil for all I care.

Seems to me the 80/20 here would be to attack the problem near the top of the stack, not the bottom. Those massive heavy fuel oil burning container ships that basically just smog the ocean 24/7 might be a good target for improvements; as well as just general code enforcement.

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For now it seems the improvements (sulphur regulations) only made the situation worse, in term of climate change.

I'm surprised I don't see that discussed more. Too easy to slide into denialism? I thought there was a strong case a lot of the immediate ocean temperature changes these past few years was this. Which is not to deny climate change, but we should pay attention to all changes. Instead, I've seen more denial that cloud seeding could do anything.

You'd need to compare the harm done: acid rain versus warming due to less sulphur.

Given that it's possible to offset the rise of CO2 elsewhere, it's hard not to argue that the sulphur emissions are strictly worse, and we are better off for having less of them.

Agreed. Also hard not to see that the extra sun on the Atlantic is almost certainly rising temperatures. It isn't an either or. All if this is happening.

It's included in the models all right.

But rarely discussed or acked by the press? Or have there been more stories that show how much of an impact it had? I remember one round of articles.

That's the wrong framing. The NOx and SOx emissions were going to have to go eventually. It's true that it might have been better to phase it out over a year or two so it was less of a shock as the hard deadline that ended up hapenning, but we couldn't keep constantly polluting forever (which is the only way to keep those aerosols in the air).

Sulphur regulations just unmasked some of the global warming that had already happened, but that masking was only ever going to be temporary in the long run.

This feels dishonest? The sulfur clouds were keeping temperatures down. Largely in ways that were not really related to green house gasses. Exposing the ocean to more sun increases temperatures of the ocean. Likely influences currents, as well. In ways independent of heat we are trapping in the atmosphere.

Should we have stopped the sulfur? Agreed that that answer is almost certainly still yes. Questions that this leads to are cleaner artificial clouds. Not to control weather, per se. Rather, to reduce ocean heating.

To be honest, the massive heavy fuel oil container ships are remarkably efficient. The amount of energy they use to move a given weight of cargo a given distance is minuscule compared to that of trucks, and still much better than even trains.

Scale has an advantage all its own when it comes to combustion engines.

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