Actually yes: container ships are extremely efficient modes of transportation. As are trains. The most carbon-intensive parts of logistics are often the first and last segment when goods are transported via roads.

Container ships produce a lot of emissions, but they also move a lot of cargo. On a CO2 per kilogram per mile basis, containers ships vastly beat out automobiles.

Actually, gigantic container ships beat everything else, by a large margin, including trains. It's cheaper to ship stuff to California from China by ship than by train from the east coast states.

Automobiles are the worst and least efficient mode of transportation, and should be severely curtailed.

Many train networks are electrified outside of north America. That's a different story especially in countries with lower carbon intensity of electricity.

But yes, on the whole it's correct that common assumption that the distance freight travels equates to the overall carbon intensity of transit is incorrect.

I'm not sure what is meant by "beat" but if you're just talking about costs, then this is an irrelevant point. Rather, the effect of trade agreements is so substantial that cost per tonne shipped by no means reflects an equilibrium under free market conditions.

Why would the alternative to container ships be…automobiles? If you’re manufacturing locally, you’d want to move large volumes of goods by rail or where available, river transport, both of which produce a lot less CO2 than container ships.

The point is the local transportation accounts for the significant majority of carbon emissions from freight transportation. Moving goods 3000 miles by ship and another 100 miles by road is not much more emissions than moving goods only 100 miles by road.

A more effective change would be to make transportation emit less greenhouse gases. Get hydrogen powered container ships and electric vehicles. This would reduce greenhouse gases significantly more, and wouldn't involve destroying the global economy.

I like this comment. I do believe the global logistics industry will adapt to a low carbon future, rather than dismantle itself (and the world economy). In short, it is a death sentence for their business. And no business wants to go bankrupt, so they will adapt -- at least: try to.

Do you think ammonia or hydrogen is more likely to be used for ships? At this time, I am leaning towards ammonia because storage and infrastructure is simpler.

Funny side note: While writing this post, I was doing a bunch of Google searches about ammonia, hydrogen, and blue vs green. Every single search returned a single ad from Saudi Aramco touting their blue ammonia and hydrogen capabilities. Incredibly depressing. The non-petro states need to hurry up and cover the center 80% of Australia with solar panels (Chilean Andes and North Africa too) to produce whatever green industrial inputs we need from "thin air". Maybe we can run a bunch of carbon sequestration machines too. In parallel, we can drive up carbon taxes.

My perspective is that Ammonia is a storage mechanism for hydrogen. The question is more like cryogenic vs compressed air vs chemical (such as ammonia, or hydrogen peroxide). A bigger question is production: solar, hydro, and wind are probably cheapest for electrolysis. Thermochemical production may make sense for nuclear or geothermal based power. Maybe Iceland becomes a big gas station for transatlantic shipping, based on geothermal energy?

I like your idea about Iceland. They are already a major aluminium smelting hub due to extremely cheap thermal energy.

Forget container ships: if you want to reduce greenhouse gases, you need to target trucks, trains, and cars first, then probably aviation after that. Container ships are ridiculously low-emission in terms of CO2/tonne.

No, they don't. Container ships produce less CO2 per tonne than trains, by a large margin.

Which type(s) of automobiles do they beat?

Road transportation emits about a hundred times more for the same mass and distance. I'm sure they're referring to ICE vehicles not electric, but the former still accounts for the vast majority of automobile freight transport.

https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation

According to this link, rail is more efficient per tonne-kilometer than ships are, which contradicts many others in these comments claiming the opposite without supporting citations.

Per the source above, rail is most efficient at 128k, then ships at 97.3k, then road at 10.8k, where units are in tonne-kilometers shipped per tonne of CO2 emitted.

Everything? It's not close, trucks are very inefficient compared to trains and boats.

Moving raw materials across the ocean could also be better overall for the environment.

If Country A can produce 100Mt of raw material by digging up 10000ha of already-destroyed farmland, and Country B would need to clear 100000ha of pristine untouched forest for the same amount of raw material extraction, wouldn't it be better to source from Country A? At least up to some point where the environmental impact of oil used to ship 100Mt of material from Country A is worse than clearing 100000ha of pristine untouched forest.

container ships are cheap and efficient

kilotons of mass = economies of scale = a lot more than a few bucks