https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-conceptual-Flettner-sp...
You could maybe equate it to an equivalent amount of carbon capture and pay for it the same way. I'm not sure I'd agree with that, though, unless it was only paid at a lower rate than true carbon capture / reduction schemes.
sulfur is both a greenhouse gas and a condensate for cloud formation
nature is full of examples where you can add more and more of a single factor and suddenly the effect will flip and contribute to the other direction, before reaching a further threshold and flipping the other way
it is not possible to make blanket statements like "Adding water to the atmosphere increases average temperature"
As I understand it, CO2 is one of the few factors that we can all agree is just straighforward, more CO2 more problems. But chaos is tricky, we can only simulate so much.
Unlike CO2 which has been nicely stored away from the atmosphere for millions of years…
What is actually beyond my understanding here, is that an international organization implemented a very strict environmental standard, one that probably applies to notoriously uncooperative countries (hint: China), one that applies to a notoriously uncaring industry (cue the oil-spills and dirt ships transporting crap around the world), and, _somehow_ , the standard was respected, and the restriction had the "desired" effect (less SO2 in the air.) ?
That's my WTF: since when do environment standard work ?
What did the IMO do ?
Why didn't the cargo coorporation simply bribe and cheat and lie, as usual ? Didn't using "cleaner" fuels cost _more_ money ? How did they let this kind of communist nonsense of a regulation happen ? Where are the freedom fighters ? Why don't we have an "airpollutionskeptics.org" site that denies the link between cargo ships and SO2 level in the air, on the ground that SO2 levels have always changed in the past, and that the IMO is an evil governement body of elitists who want to take again our gunships ?
Or is it only that we're slaves to irony, that no good deed should go unpunished, and that the only way we can solve any environmental problem is by inadvertently making another one even worse ?
Your _really_ don't want your vessels to go uninsured so you better comply and the big insurers are in europe/usa (not that I don't think that there are some black sheep). That's also the mechanism by which sanctions work in regards to maritime traffic (like against russia last year [2])
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43546-022-00334-y
[2] https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2022/06/eu-sanctio...
Regulation works remarkably well in many spaces. Skepticism is warranted as usual but the cynics that claim it almost never works usually have a hidden agenda.
My understanding of the Montreal protocol is not that corporations decided to follow regulations from their good hearts, but that they managed to play the clock long enough to have better and cheaper alternatives anyway [1].)
That being said, of course I do believe regulation help - but, slowly, reluctantly, and with every interest fighting tooth and nails.
Therefore, I'm still shocked that a regulation would be _that_ successful (75% reduction of anything in two years is unbelievable.)
However, if insurers are more powerful than activist, that should give some ideas. How can you make premiums for fossil fuels plants get so high that no insurer would touch them ?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol?wprov=sfla1
However, the data seems to be real...