In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
The biggest CO2 polluters are […] cargo ships.
No, this is a misunderstanding. Cargo ships are a major source of sulphur pollution, not carbon. Cargo ships use the cheapest fuel they can. Cheap fuel is rich in sulphur. They can do this because there are no emission regulations on the open sea. A commonly cited figure is that a single cargo ship releases more sulphur than all the cars in North America.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true; cargo ships are one of the most efficient ways to move stuff over large distances. Only electric trains are better, and only if the source of the electricity is not fossil.
Perhaps I too failed basic chemistry, but I do believe you are grossly incorrect – maritime shipping is a massive contributor to CO2 emissions:
Ships release about 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the IMO, roughly equal to Texas and California’s combined annual carbon output.
Marine transportation is one of the contributors to world climate change. The shipping industry contributes 3.9% of the world’s carbon dioxide output equivalent to 1260 million tons of CO2 and this is one of the large sources of anthropogenic carbon emitters.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484722020261
I do believe you are grossly incorrect
What makes you think that? None of the sources you provide disagree with what I wrote.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true;
Perhaps it’s just poor word choice or phrasing, but it reads like you mean that “the opposite is true” in that they are NOT a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, when in fact they are a huge contributor, more than California and Texas combined.
