Shipping beyond the Event Horizon

In Physics Event Horizon is a zone around a black hole, beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. The whole world around us is changing so fast and so violently, like being trapped by the gravitational forces of a black hole. 

Shipping being the backbone of the world economy is also affected by the same gravitational forces. In order to realise the origin of the black hole, we have to drag ourselves to Event Horizon Zone and become external observers. Initially we have to identify the signs:

First Sign The Environmental Issue 

 You don’t have to be a scientist to realise that something is happening to Earth’s Climate. Over the course of the past 2000 years, atmospheric CO2 concentration has stayed roughly around the 280 ppm until the Industrial Revolution kickstarted a carbon emission bonanza driving levels higher and higher

Although the Green House is a quite controversial issue with strong advocates on both sides, it seems that there is a strong correlation between the increase in the concentration of CO2 and the increase in the average Earth’s global temperature.

According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. 

A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. In the past, a one- to two-degree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-degree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20,000 years ago [1].

Second Sign The Word Wide Economy and the New Energy Regime 

In July 2008 the global economy shut down.That was the great economic earthquake that signalled the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. In July 2008 we reached the pinnacle of the global economic growth within the specific economic model which is deeply depended on petroleum and other fossil fuels. Is this caused by the fact that the petroleum wells are depleting according to the time frame initially introduced by King Hubbert back in 1956 when he released the famous paper with the Gauss Curve?

The world is turning to green technologies, not necessarily because the fossil fuels are running out. 

Globally, we currently consume the equivalent of over 11 billion tonnes of oil in fossil fuels every year. Crude oil reserves are vanishing at the rate of 4 billion tonnes a year (1) – if we carry on at this rate without any increase for our growing population or aspirations, our known oil deposits will last until 2052.

As expected this is also a quite controversial issue, because it seems that more oil reserves are being left to be explored and drilled.

Whichever the truth, the reality is that the world is investing in new innovative Green technologies. 

The share of renewables in meeting global energy demand is expected to grow by one-fifth in the next five years to reach 12.4% in 2023.

Renewables will have the fastest growth in the electricity sector, providing almost 30% of power demand in 2023, up from 24% in 2017. During this period, renewables are forecast to meet more than 70% of global electricity generation growth, led by solar PV and followed by wind, hydropower, and bioenergy. Hydropower remains the largest renewable source, meeting 16% of global electricity demand by 2023, followed by wind (6%), solar PV (4%), and bioenergy (3%). 

Third Sign Digital Era 

The past three decades have seen an astounding evolution of computers and communications technology. This so-called digital age has been built on a steady stream of new and more powerful devices and gadgets. The worldwide web opened up new highways for communication for accessing easily knowledge, for exchanging information. Information technology benefits the business word by allowing organisations to work more efficiently and to maximize productivity

Moreover WWW brought democratisation of information and communication and dramatically changed the nature of commerce ad social relations as significantly as the “Print Evolution” in the early modern era.

The following example helps us to better visualise the digital evolution during the last 4 decades How much more computing power does an iPhone 6 have than Apollo 11?

# of transistors - iPhone has 130,000 times more than Apollo

clock frequency - iPhone is 32,600 times faster than Apollo

instructions per second - iPhone is 80,800,000 times faster than Apollo

overall performance - iPhone is 120,000,000 times faster than Apollo

To cut a long story short an iPhone 6 could theoretically guide 120 million Apollo rockets at the same time.

The Third Industrial Revolution 

The first decade of the twentieth century, the convergence of the electrical production and distribution systems with the internal combustion, engine gave rise to the 2nd Industrial Revolution.  Today ,we are on the cusp of another convergence of communication technology and the renewable energies imposed by the environmental issue. This will eventually lead to the Third Industrial Revolution “TIR”.

Shipping will have to adapt. New environmentally friendly technologies will have to be implemented and applied. The Artificial Intelligence will play a dominant role for the analysis and assesment of the Big Data.

Seafarers will also have to adapt, because it is inevitable the new technologies to reshape the ship of the future and create needs that will deviate from the traditional.

1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/DecadalTemp