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Posted by surprisetalk 3 days ago

Shipmap.org(www.shipmap.org)
783 points | 117 commentspage 3
btbuildem 3 days ago|
Interesting that no ships were recorded going thru the Northwest Passage -- perhaps in 2012 it was still generally impassable? It's getting to a point where freighters / tankers pass thru unassisted by icebreakers during the warm months.

Re: the website itself -- the Mercator projection is an artifact of paper maps, and it greatly distorts features near the poles. Could we please use a true globe when rendering interactive maps?

stevage 2 days ago|
Flat maps have a lot of UX advantages over globes, and you can show the whole world at once.
tootie 3 days ago||
It's interesting to think that as we approach a post-hydrocarbon world, not only will we extract less fossil fuels, we'll ship less too. Ironic to think about how much fuel is used to ship fuel. I know there's been speculation about shipping batteries, but I'd imagine that shipping traffic will decrease at a similar pace to fossil fuel usage after we hit peak. And the IEA estimate for that peak is 2030.
boringg 2 days ago||
Great visualization.

IMO 2020 regulation unintentionally contributed to global warming while reducing air pollution. This rule drastically cut the amount of sulfur permitted in ship fuel, which improved public health but reduced the reflective effect of atmospheric aerosols that had been masking some global warming.

You'd think the people making the rules would try and look at all the impacts.

jabl 2 days ago|
The cooling effect of SO2 was certainly known when the IMO regulations were decided upon. It was decided that the public health advantages outweighed the climate warming. One can certainly quibble whether this decision was correct or not, but it wasn't done in ignorance.

(My take would have been be to allow high sulphur fuel out on the high seas, where there's very few humans around (or flora and fauna in general). )

omnicognate 3 days ago||
I could swear I just saw a ship travel at high speed in a straight line directly across Britain. Some sort of giant catapult?

Lovely site though. Mesmerising.

dhosek 3 days ago|
Exactly. It’s quite impressive to watch from the ground and even more from the coast on landing (but be sure to wear a mack since you will get splashed).
elliottkember 2 days ago||
I'm surprised more people don't know about the Northampton Canal
omnicognate 2 days ago||
Is that the one that runs in a straight line directly east to west somewhere around the England/Scotland border?
SilentM68 2 days ago||
This is very informative. How are the vessels tracked? Is this real-time tracking of specifically equipped vessels. Can any other vessels be tracked or only those with traditional maritime transponders? If real-time, it'd be cool to have vessel/point data be displayed upon hovering over with a mouse.
Thlom 2 days ago|
Ships over a certain size are obligated to report their position (and some other information) over AIS (similar to ADSB on airplanes. It's meant for other nearby ships and ports for navigational purposes. These are tracked from shore based scanners, scanners on ships and satellites. You can see partly real-time data on marinetraffic.com and vesselfinder.com
SilentM68 2 days ago||
Thank you :)
mgaunard 2 days ago||
Malaysia to South Africa is an interesting one, why is this route so prevalent?
callumprentice 2 days ago||
https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/flight_stream/index.ht...

Something similar but for flights and in 3D.

12 years old now - might be fun to see what new data is out there - real time perhaps - and have another go

abujazar 2 days ago||
Fascinating, but the dataset is obviously incomplete – there's barely any traffic in Europe until mid april. January-march looks as if there's been a zombie apocalypse.
barbazoo 3 days ago||
This is beautiful. I would love there to be a way to show this on a sphere instead of a flat map so I can find out how things might change in the next century with climate change. I haven't quite understood yet what the new shipping routes will enable us to do. I'm assuming this is partly what the whole Greenland thing is about?
jason_s 2 days ago|
TIL about the Welland Canal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welland_Canal
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