My nitpicking brain immediately stumbled over these two consecutive sentences:
> something very close to forty percent of all the shipping on earth is just devoted to getting oil and coal and gas (and now some wood pellets) back and forth across the ocean.
Wood pellets are not fossil fuels though...
> That’s a remarkable snapshot: almost half of what we move around the seas is not finished products (cars) nor even the raw materials to make them (steel), but simply the stuff that we burn to power those transformations, and to keep ourselves warmed, cooled, and lit.
Oil is also a raw material, e.g. to make plastic. Not sure about what percentage is used as raw material vs. how much is used for fuel...
> something very close to forty percent of all the shipping on earth is just devoted to getting oil and coal and gas (and now some wood pellets) back and forth across the ocean.
Wood pellets are not fossil fuels though...
> That’s a remarkable snapshot: almost half of what we move around the seas is not finished products (cars) nor even the raw materials to make them (steel), but simply the stuff that we burn to power those transformations, and to keep ourselves warmed, cooled, and lit.
Oil is also a raw material, e.g. to make plastic. Not sure about what percentage is used as raw material vs. how much is used for fuel...