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One Giant Cargo Ship Pollutes As Much As 50M Cars
thecarchik writes "One giant container ship pollutes the air as much as 50 million cars. Which means that just 15 of the huge ships emit as much as today's entire global 'car park' of roughly 750 million vehicles. Among the bad stuff: sulfur, soot, and other particulate matter that embeds itself in human lungs to cause a variety of cardiopulmonary illnesses. Since the mid-1970s, developed countries have imposed increasingly stringent regulations on auto emissions. In three decades, precise electronic engine controls, new high-pressure injectors, and sophisticated catalytic converters have cut emissions of nitrous oxides, carbon dioxides, and hydrocarbons by more than 98 percent. New regulations will further reduce these already minute limits. But ships today are where cars were in 1965: utterly uncontrolled, free to emit whatever they like." According to Wikipedia, 57 giant container ships (rated from 9,200 to 15,200 twenty-foot equivalent units) are plying the world's oceans.
Screw the people that frown on those who drive Hummers.
I want to be rich enough to say "I'm taking the family on a cruise across the ocean on our personal cargo ship." The captain would floor it from the dock and leave a 30 km long black trail of smoke.
Trolling is a art,
We should get rid of these ships.
Let us DRIVE our containers across the ocean!
One big ship or lots of smaller ships? Is it time to lose "the fear" and go nuclear on cargo vessels?
crazy dynamite monkey
First off, this article appears ripped straight from the UK Guardian. Secondly, what's with all the promotion of HighGear Media sites recently? Slashdot is not your megaphone, guys, lay off.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship
Yeah right, Like Im gonna write a sig.
Most of those ships are not registered in the US or Europe or any 1st world country. They are registered in Panama, Aruba or wherever there are no taxes and no regulations. And you can't really stop them coming into your harbors without affecting the local or even global economy.
On the other hand, how much pollution would it generate to bring those products in on more smaller ships or on trucks through a series of tubes in the ocean.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
And here's the ironic part. If they could clean up these ship emissions, and then relax or completely remove all emission rules for cars, the overall pollution would go down, gas mileage would improve, oil consumption would drop, and the price of vehicles would go down (ever price a catalytic converter?). Just from cleaning up 15 ships!?!
Better known as 318230.
i don't doubt there's some pollution, but seriously, this is really too much...
The reason is because ships obey the law of the flag they fly, which pretty much means paying out to the lowest bidder.
With no motivation to clean up their emissions, it is little surprise that there is no great concern over pollution.
Just start shipping stuff in high-efficiency cars.
It's better to drive 50M Ford F150s than to import a single Toyota Prius. Sounds like a confirmation of something I have intuitively thought for a long time.
Devil's advocate here: where do these ships pollute?
The environment can 'support' a certain rate of air pollution, but the diffusion rate of air pollution means that certain regions build up localized pollution far higher than the average pollution level (e.g. LA, New York, etc..). Car emissions and factory emissions need to be fairly strict to ensure that levels remain low, despite the concentration of pollution caused by urbanization. By its very nature, container ship owners want their vessels at sea as much as possible, and while they're crossing oceans, there's not exactly any urban concentration effect going on. So it makes sense that this kind of shipping be held to the lower standard of emissions (i.e., basic environmental sustainability).
That may be true but the emissions may be dissolved in the ocean water and find their way via the fish into your body somehow.
According to TFA, these ships should be producing "500 times the total pollution of the world's vehicles". But yet, they are only "responsible for 3.5% to 4% of all climate change emissions". From those 2 numbers, either cars are not the problem everybody says they are or these numbers are WAY off.
Popular for aircraft carriers. Maybe for cargo ships too? How is the waste dealt with in an aircraft carrier. How do aircraft carriers and submarines avoid unplanned criticality excursions?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
And so long as governments continue to consider open waters untenable public property, the pollution will continue without proper (judicial) repercussions, and will be susceptible to the whims of politicians owned by special interest groups.
So, the 80/20 rule applies...
We need cleaner cars.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
If we get rid of these ships, it should help the U.S. trade imbalance.
According to Wikipedia, 57 giant container ships (rated from 9,200 to 15,200 twenty-foot equivalent units) are plying the world's oceans.
If you are referring to the list of ships at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships, I count 93 boats above the 9200 mark, and 238 above the 8000 mark. Also, the list only includes a handful of launches in 2010 so it is likely to be a lot longer at this point since larger ships are being produced as we speak (not to mention the list is in no way exhaustive as some sources of information can elude the maintainer of the list).
If you assume that the average vessel pollutes 1/10 as much as the largest, dirtiest container ship, ass TFA does, then you've made one hell of an assumption.
Not that it's not a problem, but - really - saying that 10 small coastal vessels equals one massive container ship undermines what sounded like a reasonable point and makes me question everything about their maths. And I'm generally in agreement with them!
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Yeah, it's not like the air in the middle of the ocean is connected in some way to the air you breathe on land.
Oh wait, it is.
You actually have that correct.
This really is a bunch of bad science.
No discussion of VOCs or CO2 just particulate and SOX emissions.
Well particulates at see are probably going to be pretty harmless. They will fall into the sea.
SOX may or may not be an issue but motor vehicles really don't emit hardly any sulfur. I wonder what percentage total world emissions of sulfur this is.
At least in the US ships shift to cleaner fuel when in coastal waters. Yes reducing the sulfur is also a good idea but this is really a worst case the sky is falling story.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That may be true but the emissions may be dissolved in the ocean water and find their way via the fish into your body somehow.
Yeah, just think: we could end up eating some carbon from the soot created by a cargo ship, which has then been eaten by a fish. Carbon, by God!
Just like back in the day sitting in the non-smoking section of the bar meant you never got any second hand smoke, ever.
Pressure is mounting on the UN's International Maritime Organization
China knows how to put the kibosh on that sort of thing.
following the decision by the US government last week to impose a strict 230-mile buffer zone along the entire US coast
Countdown to WTO injunction on the US government's new 'anti-competitive' shipping regulations:
5..4..3..
Western manufacturers and workers can't compete with unregulated totalitarian regimes and third-world workers that willingly tolerate "crazy bad" contamination. When you choose to indulge yet more environmental regulation please consider what might be done to prevent your noble intentions from simply evacuating more industry out of the West. International NIMBYism isn't morally admirable.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Well, here's my method of dealing with all environmental issues: here
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Honestly, how much of our current problems would go away if we just stopped buying the cheapest crap we can find? Trade imbalances? Global pollution? Landfill? We really have to get away from the whole "I want it right now, and I want it cheap, and I don't care how crappy it is if it just makes me happy for a few minutes." Here is an idea: Do some research. Buy a quality product that will last you the rest of your life instead of one you have to throw away next week. And if you can't afford it right now? Save up until you have the money for it. Trust me. You'll appreciate it more.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
It doesn't really tell the whole story. The way the story's worded, you'd think that car emissions are a drop in the ocean (ha ha ha) compared to cargo ship emissions, but that's only true for a certain range of pollutants, and it's certainly not remotely true for carbon emissions.
Yeah right, even TFS states that among the emissions is not just soot but also sulfur, nitrous oxides and stuff like that. Then again, I bet you wouldn't mind some sulfuric acid in your food either, would you?
Since I'm not in the middle of the ocean, I don't have to breathe whatever crap they're spewing out.
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
Its not just giant ships that are a problem. Planes, recreational boats, and even lawn mowers spew largely unfiltered exhaust into the air too. I never understood why the U.S. is so strict with car emissions, but so lax on other things that make significant contributions to air pollution.
There's quite a simple solution to that problem, really. The ship should self-destruct causing maximum collateral damage when captured by pirates :-) After the first couple of nuclear reactors spew their guts all over the pirates, they'll soon learn their lesson.
Stick Men
Like acid-rain forming sulfur dioxide.
This is fixable, you already are not allowed to burn bunker fuel in the "Diesel death zone" near LA and San Diego. And CARB has plans to extend the restrictions further.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Saying that one ship pollutes as much as 50million cars is misleading. To be completely accurate, you must say one ship produces as much sulfer-pollution as 50million cars.
Now I have no doubt that this is still quite bad, but this doesn't mean that it has 50million times as much carbon emissions as cars. A quick google search shows that this can cause breathing problems and acid rain (both very bad) it doesn't seem to be a global warming problem. When you blindly say it pollutes 50million times as much of something cars now pollute very little of, it makes good headlines but it's bad science.
If they completely relaxed emissions rules for cars then regardless of whether world-wide pollution decreased we would have smog in all the major cities, just like before emissions controls were put into place. Different types of pollution have different area ranges where their effects are felt, and our laws need to take this into consideration.
This article isn't about carbon emissions. It's actually about sulfur emissions (think acid rain)...misleading
"A car driven 9,000 miles a year emits 3.5 ounces of sulfur oxides--while the engine in a large cargo ship produces 5,500 tons."
But that car will haul maybe a tenth of a ton for that small number of miles, while the ship is expected to haul a hundred thousand tons "24hrs a day for about 280 days a year." You would think it might produce more pollutants.
The engine in the biggest ones is also far more fuel efficient than any gas or diesel car, exceeding 50% thermal efficiency. We like fuel efficiency, right? Yet they complain.
US Sulphur oxide emissions in 1999 were about 18,500,000 tons, mostly from coal power plants.
And gasoline and low-sulfur diesels mean comparing diesel-powered ships to cars is rather lopsided in the extreme.
Hell, if you only counted methane emissions, we'd all be up in arms about how badly a cow pollutes compared to a human.
There is more to it than just the amount of emissions. There might be massive effects on global warming. Or more like it, the opposite of it, the global cooling.
I can not pick the sources for these claims, but most of ship engines generate loads of pollution, especially plenty of very small particles. Also lots of sea gets evaporated into air. Now, to make clouds you need these small particles to gather moisture. The clouds are like a natural white shield, reflecting plenty of energy back to space. The clouds will not reduce amount of IR absorption by carbon dioxide, but they do lot to reduce the effects, like cool down the local environment when they rain down.
It might be beneficial to reduce the amount of pollution generated by the big boats, as these pollute most of their time on the oceans and cloud forming effects on oceans are not that clear like for the land. But plain order "reduce ship pollution" might easily reduce local cloud forming on "smaller seas" like Mediterranean or North sea.
The most important idea here is, that there are no very direct and easy decisions to be made without taking into account very complex set of effects.
Yes, maybe we can save 50M cars worth of pollution, but maybe we should not save that on sea or it will get hotter on the land. Or maybe we will reduce the pollution near big ships that usually will grows plenty of plankton, which in turn will consume surface water carbon, reducing toxicity of sea water before dropping to the depths effectively moving carbon from atmosphere to the bottom of the sea.
It's a question of economics. They're built to operate as cheaply as possible. That includes fuel efficiency. So, I'd expect the engines to operate fairly efficiently, in order to minimize the fuel cost; however, that does not mean they minimize pollution. In addition, these ships often use the cheaper heavy fuels, like No. 6 fuel oil, which tend to be higher in sulfur and other contaminants. Until it's cheaper to operate the ship on something else, this will not change.
For the obvious reason that it's the cheapest option. Unfortunately.
I'm actually speechless that people on this forum basically claim "I can't see it, it's out on the ocean anyway - so why care?".
Is it only a problem when you can see it?
Though, our planet is in safe hands, it seems.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Let's make undersea tunnels and/or cross-continent bridges.
Another solution is to use gravity: put China at the top of the hill and just let the finished products roll down our way.
Next question!
Military weapons' testing. Space shuttle launches. Explosions on Mythbusters. Pollution. Discuss.
Yeah right, even TFS states that among the emissions is not just soot but also sulfur, nitrous oxides and stuff like that. Then again, I bet you wouldn't mind some sulfuric acid in your food either, would you?
Gosh. I might eat a fish which has swallowed some sulfur. Will the horror never stop?
One big ship or lots of smaller ships? Is it time to lose "the fear" and go nuclear on cargo vessels?
Fear has nothing to do with it. Expense does. We've built nuclear merchant vessels before. They're just too expensive to operate. We built a fast, beautiful nuclear merchant ship (the NS Savannah) as a technology demonstrator, and when companies looked at the costs involved, they simply didn't see the point. Only a handful of nuke cargo ships were ever built, and only the Russians used them for any length of time.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
How about the CO2 emissions?
The shops should certainly be cleaned up. No question there. Please don't use this as an excuse to drive a gas guzzler.
Actually, fossil fuels have trace levels of mercury in them. Which, when burned as fuel, becomes methylmercury, also known as organic mercury.
Now, for those not knowledgeable about heavy metal poisoning, organic mercury is one of the nasties. Mercury poisoning is bad, organic mercury poisoning is much, much worse. Look up Minimata in Japan if you doubt me.
Methylmercury is bioaccumulative, meaning that animals higher up the food chain have more of it in their flesh than the ones lower down. If you've ever been cautioned not to eat shark or swordfish, this is the reason why. Moreover, just as it is an accumulative toxin in the food chain, so too is it a cumulative toxin in humans. You don't excrete it or break it down into harmless products. Even if you could break it down, you'd still be left with elemental mercury, which is no picnic.
Ergo, yes indeed, pollutants dissolved in sea water can wreck your health, even if the source of pollution happened nowhere near you.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
One of the places nuclear reactors are at their best, their most efficient, are in ships. You can directly drive the shaft assembly with the steam which is quite efficient, you don't have to go to electric first. Of course they can be built so that you only have to refuel once every 20 years or so.
While I realize there are issues with nuclear controls, I think it could be worked out. As noted there are all of 60 of these ships. Perhaps stricter oversight is a tradeoff for having a nuclear plant. While that oversight would cost more, still would save them money since fuel costs would effectively drop to zero.
It won't happen I'm quite sure, but it should. There's a reason the US drives aircraft carriers on nuclear and it isn't because it is cool.
We need to let market forces find the most efficient solution. Regulating those ships will only distort the market and introduce inefficiencies that ultimately harm consumers. It is the shipping companies themselves that will soon realize the benefits of making sure the ships are clean and safe to operate. Safety and environmental regulation will only delay the process.
And if you believe that, I've got this amazing investment opportunity for you...
It's also not true that ships are "utterly uncontrolled, free to emit whatever they like." See, for example, these regulations. Note the MARPOL, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships, treaty conventions.
One of these ships emit the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars should do themselves a service and read the article. They are only talking about sulfur pollution. Big damn deal. Gas powered cars emit hardly any sulfur emissions. Most diesel is ultra low sulfur now too. Preposterously bad editorializing.
You could always prohibit ships that don't obey your emission rules from using your harbors, like many countries do with single-hull oil tankers.
Not necessarily. Ships have to follow rules and regulations of the countries they disembark at. The US EPA is starting to clamp down on such pollution, so I am not sure the breathless rant in TFA is really warranted.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They also have to obey the laws of the ports they enter.
You constantly repeat the same handful of catchphrases. You do this because you are violently opposed to the very notion of putting even a small amount of thought into anything you say. No other reason is possible.
In other words, kristopeit = stagnated
You agree with that, even though you don't want to. You're screaming, right now, that I'm 100% right about you in every possible way. You'll do it again when you respond.
Start your shrieking now. You WILL obey.
"According to Wikipedia, 57 giant container ships (rated from 9,200 to 15,200 twenty-foot equivalent units) are plying the world's oceans."
One company and associated group has over 500 cargo ships.
"The Group contains six listed companies and has more than 300 subsidiaries locally and abroad, providing services in freight forwarding, ship building, ship repair, terminal operation, container manufacturing, trade, financing, real estate, and information technology. The Group owns and operates a fleet of around 550 vessels, with total carrying capacity of up to 30 million metric tons deadweight (DWT).[5]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSCO
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
You forgot one factor, the drag on that massive hull.
Moving a boat through water takes a lot more power than
moving thru air.
Once you go back and read your physics book come back
and post something intelligent for us.
M'kay ?
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
These ships are mostly out in the middle of nowhere...
I don't see half a million people hanging on the side of the boat sucking down exhaust.
I really don't understand why a lot of the attacks on emissions in the last 6 months or so, have been on diesel engines, which are usually the "greenest" form of ICE... extremely low greenhouse gas emissions for the energy produced (if you're the type that cares about that), and we can use so many fuel sources other than dinosaurs.
Let's try this...
Two identical cars, one diesel, one gasoline; both in a sealed garage for an hour.
I'll take the diesel.
I'll walk out with a bad cough for a week or so, and die at 89.5 instead of 90.
You won't walk out.
So again, other than some bureaucrat screaming, and counting on the "commoners" not having any sense of scale (let's face it, thousands, millions, billions... how is that different from "one, two, many"?) this is someone with a product to sell trying to guilt us into buying it.
Not that the ships have smokestacks like coal power plants, but it must be more efficient to clean 1 extra large ship than 10 large ships. I'm assuming you can leverage economies of scale for more efficient scrubbers in the extra large ships
However, It might be more efficient to propel 10 ships than one extra large one, which might lead to less fuel use and less emissions.
ships also use bunker fuel, which is pretty much like a petroleum butter. it's what's left over after they refine off all the good stuff from crude oil, and has to be heated to be kept fluid.
once again, it goes to show that Society doesn't have the fortitude to attack the problem from the right direction.
sigh.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hello,
The nuclear fuel is only a tiny portion of the cost, thorium or any other nuclear fuel wouldn't help a bit.
--PM
why do you cower? what are you afraid of?
you're completely pathetic.
you're responding to me, feeb. remember that.
ur mum's face WILL obey.
This has been developed and put into use by a German company: SkySails. They report fuel savings of up to 30% in some conditions.
And yes, cutting speeds by about 10% reduces fuel use for the same distance by about 20%. This happens all the time in economy dips. Since fuel is the largest cost in shipping and its share in total costs keeps rising, it's an easy way to save a lot of money by offering up a little time. Maersk, the big container line, has reduced the operating speed on its ships from 22 to 20 knots because of the global economic recession. This is a pretty hard thing to do for them, because their ships operate on a schedule and have to stick to it, so changing operating speed means changing the schedule worldwide.
In other types of shipping such as bulk carriers and tankers, this practice is much more common. When there is little demand, ships can go slower to save money so they make more profit per job. When the economy is doing well and demand is high, shipping prices can suddenly skyrocket. In this case, sailing a little faster is the best way to transport more cargo in the same time, and thus complete more jobs. In fact, increasing speed is the short-term version of building new ships: it virtually creates more carrying capacity instantly. Building a ship takes months or years, so it can't be used to respond to sudden changes in demand.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Not to mention the laws of any waterways they cross. Given that it's next to impossible to enter or leave most major oceans without coming within 12 miles of someone (the Bahamas, Windward, and Leeward Isles block off the Caribbean, Spain/Gibraltar/Tunisia block off the Med on one end and the Bosporus does so on the other, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Malaca in the Indian Ocean), it should be possible for just a few countries to clamp down on this kind of pollution and push the costs back onto the polluters themselves, where they belong.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Which just makes them switch to a less poluting docking engine. It is easy to obey regulation when you are only using 1% of the ship's full engine-capacity.
Anyway, the question is also, if these diesel polutants are doing any damage on the deep seas. It is no CO2 we are talking about.
If there's nobody to breathe a pollutant before it degrades, it's not hurting anyone.
A great many pollutants never degrade. Many pollutants don't have to be inhaled or ingested in any way to cause real damage. Not all damage is direct biological damage.
Now, there's going to be all sorts of soot and sulfur released from that fuel because the regulations are so lax -- but who's it going to hurt in the middle of the Pacific's vast nutrient-devoid dead zones?
How about everyone? Perhaps you've heard of global warming? Acid rain? You don't have to be anywhere near the smokestack for it to have a real effect on your life.
Yeah right, even TFS states that among the emissions is not just soot but also sulfur, nitrous oxides and stuff like that. Then again, I bet you wouldn't mind some sulfuric acid in your food either, would you?
Everybody knows that sulphur is toxic in any quantities and none of the living organisms needs it...
Oh, wait... what about Rieske protein, present in cytochrome complexes in plants, animals and bacteria?
Also, did you ever note the stench of a decomposing piece of meat? Turns out most of it is given by the H2S... by the smell of it, methinks there should be a non-trivial amount of sulphur in there.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I have *never*, and I mean *never*, seen a 50M car. Have You?
Fifty-fucking-meters-long!? A Car??? Granted this thing might
come with multiple toilets, a bowling alley, and an orchestra,
but come on... have to draw a line somewhere!
The end consumer is the one that's always kicked in the ass for polluting or doing something 'wrong', and forced or guilt tripped into being the one that has to do something about it. When those upstream (e.g. the companies that operate these ships for example) should also me made to play their part in being environmentally responsible!
Now, what I wonder is, would a cargo vessel be less polluting if it used a multi-hull design to reduce drag
Multihulls are very good at going fast - as long as they don't have to push a lot of water. Their advantage disappears rapidly when the weight goes up. I am in the process of getting into cruising (I have a 40 foot sailboat I'm refitting), so I've followed the progress of multihulls for a while. Small multihulls such as for cruising and other recreational applications work well because they provide a lot of interior space, and a certain type of stability (although there are costs involved), and they are fast - but many cruisers have found that once they pile on all the junk you need to live on a boat, the cats sink lower in the water and slow down.
Boats in displacement mode are _very_ efficient movers of mass, as long as you don't try to go to fast. Most of the energy that is expended at the front of the boat moving the water out of the way is recovered at the back of the boat, as the water moves back into place. The faster you go, the more water is pushed vertically out of the surface, and most of that energy is lost. And when you get close to 'hull speed' (where period of the bow wave becomes close to the length of the hull), you rapidly multiply the energy required - you're basically always driving 'uphill'. The purpose of the big bulb on the front of big ships is to length the effective hull and increase the hull speed. But drop the speed to just a bit below hull speed, and you are back into the efficient displacement mode again.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
From global warning point of few, sulfur emissions are good thing. They actually reduce the effect what CO2 and methane etc. cause.
One of my buddies co-developed an exhaust hood / scrubber unit, which would be lowered over top of smokestack on cruise liners while they are docked at domestic ports. The relatively simple screen would reduce the pollution released from the ship while it was docked / near most populated areas. Not sure what happened to that program, but something like this ought to be more mainstream, or part of the ships to begin with (?)
Ships (per ton of stuff moved a certain distance) are much much smaller emitters of greenhouse gases than
cars and trucks.
The article is talking about particulate pollution etc. It is really, really important to know that particulate
pollution is not really related to causing global warming.
It is a common tactic by the automobile industry to point out how little particulate pollution they emit nowadays.
The term they use is "tailpipe emissions".
This is a deliberate PR strategy (misdirection) to distract from the fact that today's automobiles emit more
greenhouse gases per passenger mile than ever before, because their fuel economy has gotten worse,
in terms of fleet averages.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This is out of proportion. The critical pollution today is CO2 and other Greenhouse gases. Other pollutants are localized - they are "safely" stored in the ground/seabed and/or break down. Of all places to release such pollutants, the least environmental impact is releasing them at sea (the ocean has a gigantic 3 dimensional ability to absorb and "safely" store pollutants).
This is not to say pollution is not a problem, but let's keep this in perspective. It has been far more important to reduce particulate pollutions on land (vehicles and industry) than at sea; and now the next problem is CO2.
Since I'm not in the middle of the ocean, I don't have to breathe whatever crap they're spewing out. So I don't really have a reason to care. Of course it might still make sense for the big port cities to put emissions limits on what ships they'll accept, and send the really nasty ones elsewhere...
You're not really aware of the properties of a gas, are you?
postmodernsideshow.com
Babies produce several ounces of poop every day. Cars produce none. Therefore, babies produce more pollution than TRILLIONS of cars.
(This article only talks about one specific pollutant, SO2, and is just as misleading as the title of this comment)
If you tax something it will die
Duh, OBVIOUSLY sending *all* cargo by transcontinental rocket is the only way to go!
I'm not an engineer and not familiar if this exists or not. I'm wondering if the ocean, given the (at times) height and power of the waves would be sufficient to come up with some sort of hydro-electric method to power the engines? At least when moving in the ocean. They did afterall have steam engines and such on some earlier boats.These container ships are monsters in comparison. And obviously, in a harbour area they might need to switch to an alternate source. Still would it be practical / feasible to generate electricity to power these ships?
According to the article, one very large cargo ship produces as much pollution as 50 million cars driving 9,000 miles per year. So let's do the maths.
CO2 emissions of 125 gram per kilometer are considered to be very good for a car - in the UK, that level of CO2 emission means your car tax is dramatically reduced. 125 gram per kilometer equals 200 grams per mile, or 1.8 tons per 9,000 miles. A very large cargo ship supposedly produces the same pollution per year as 50 million cars. That would be 50 million times 1.8 tons or 90 million tons. That would be 250,000 tons of CO2 emissions per day, assuming the vessel is in operation 360 days per year. Excuse me, but this number is nonsense.
On the other hand, a car typically transports maybe 100 kg on average (usually one, sometimes two passengers). One container = 24,000 kg, that is say the same as 240 cars. Large, but not extremely large, container ships carry 7,000 containers, that is the same freight transported as 1.7 million cars. A container ship can move at 20 knots, that would be 500 miles per day. Obviously it is not moving 360 days per year, 24 hours per day, but it should be more than 90,000 miles, ten times as much as the car in the calculation. So the freight transported is about the same as 17 million cars.
So if I do the math correctly, giant cargo ships are responsible for 2.85 billion cars worth of pollution? Well, I guess it's time to stop using giant cargo ships.
CO2 and SO2 are counterweights w.r.t. global warming. In the 70s SO2 was the enemy and the risk was global cooling (and acid rain sucked too.) Now that SO2 is being scrubbed from factory and car emissions, CO2 is winning out. Remove even more SO2 by scrubbing ship emissions, and our CO2 ceiling will be even lower.
But that's just fine for hardcore environmentalists, whose real goal is less industrialization and even deindustrialization, not less pollution. I hate to say it, but what started as a noble cause in conservation and in addressing the negative externalities imposed by industrialists on the little guy, has turned essentially into a spiritual crusade loaded with misanthropic overtones. The 'little guy' is now but a unit that's adding to the numbers of what they see as just yet another overpopulated species.
I'm sorry, I'm one of the most liberal people I know in just about every other area, but my vision of the world is fully anthropocentric. If anything, we should be pumping SO2 into the atmosphere (away from populated areas ofc.) so that Africa gets a shot at industrializing. Isn't it conventient to shut the door behind you, once you've had the privilege of living in the luxury brought to you by 200 years' worth of industrialization.
.. please tell me you were being sarcastic!
OK, you dumbass.
A ship with a 20,000 HP engine moving at 20 knots requires - get this - at most 20,000 HP to move that fast. That's how big those engines are, that's how fast those ships move. The Emma Maersk puts out 109,000 HP, but that's a much larger, newer, faster ship than most with much larger engines. The largest ships ever put out "only" 60,000 HP or so.
FWIW, the USS Enterprise can put out 280,000 HP, later Nimitz-class carriers can put out 260,000 HP - but they're a LOT faster than cargo ships.
Now, YOU try and tell me the "average" automobile engine is NOT around 100 HP give or take a few. Hell, the "average" internal combustion engine on the road (or rails...) is probably a helluva lot bigger than 100 HP.
So, yeah, there's only a 3-order-of-magnitude difference in the size of an "average" ship's engine and an "average" car's engine.
Go ahead, lecture me on physics again, you ignorant shit-for-brains MORON.
Seems to me that we'd be a lot better off if we produced more things locally (even if within the same country) which also creates jobs and helps the local economy.
Oh wait, then we couldn't have our modern day equivalence to "slaves" that are all over seas and out of sight (like the kids who work in sweat shops in China) that work for next to nothing so we can have stuff really cheap at Walmart.
A tax on all goods based on emissions from where the final and primary sub-component come from is needed. Ideally, it should include a tax on the distance shipped. As such, something made in America would have 0 distance. Something from Canada or Mexico would have a slight differential. However, something from Saudi Arabia, China, etc. would have a much higher tax on the distance. Likewise, I would love to see other nations drop their BS on cap/trade and instead put in a tax on emissions/distance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You need a tax on ALL GOODS. If you do just imports, then it will be considered a bias. OTH, if you treat all goods the same, then you are fine. So a tax on emissions from the location of the final product AND primary subcomponent along with distance would do the trick.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think the logic is that these heavy emissions actually sink into the ocean in international waters at diffuse levels not harmful enough to do damage (also that it would significantly increase the cost of all overseas goods).
I think the logic is that in international waters you don't answer to anyone, and you can burn the cheapest fuel your engine will tolerate.
Please help metamoderate.
"Planes, recreational boats, and even lawn mowers. . . make significant contributions to air pollution."
Citation, please? Since you are the one who made that assertion, I would like you to provide at least *some* sort of source to back that up, please? Because, I'd be *very* surprised if lawnmowers, recreational boats, and small airplanes (your statement, I grant, might also allow for the inclusion of large commercial aircraft, but that seems to be in such a completely different category than the other items - lawnmowers and boats - that I assume you weren't including commercial aviation in that, but were rather referring to small, general aviation planes) come anywhere close to polluting as much as cars and trucks would if they didn't have emissions controls.
Perhaps people are more worried about cars than lawnmowers and boats because people use their cars a lot more than lawnmowers and boats? Many people drive their cars every day, perhaps 1-5 hours a day, thousands of miles per year. Most people might operate their lawn mowers once every week or two, for maybe 1/2 hour or perhaps 2-3 hours if you have a really big lawn, and during the time it's operating, it's not burning fuel at anywhere near the scale that cars/trucks do. Boats might get taken out once or twice a week for a few months a year, then not used the rest of the year.
I really don't have a source of statistics to prove the following, but I'd be highly surprised if boat *or* lawnmower ownership is anywhere near as high on a per-capita basis, in the U.S. as car ownership. I presume that almost anyone who owns a house with a yard, probably has a lawnmower. I live in a multi-tennant apartment building, as do millions of Americans. I don't own a lawnmower. My landlord does, but he owns several different buildings, and I think only owns one lawnmower for keeping the grounds at the multiple buildings, each of which have fairly small 'yards'. I think a lot of apartment dwellers own cars, but probably none of them owns a lawnmower. As for boats, those tend to be a bit of a luxury item - sure, people with middle class incomes can afford a small boat, but in my experience, maybe 1 in 20 or 1 inn 50 households owns a boat? I'm not sure what the exact numbers are, but I'm pretty sure that most households in the U.S. own at least one car, but not everyone owns a boat. I believe plane ownership would be even much lower than boat ownership.
So, when trying to solve a problem, do you worry about sources which are (combined) a tiny fraction of the problem, or do you look at the sources that comprise the vast majority of the problem (commercial aviation, commercial boats, commercial trucks, and small cars and trucks)?
What zones? The ones in _Oceans_ and the other vade mecum which talk about what's circulating the nutrients in the ocean and what's seeding mineral preticipation.
Wait, was that just a troll for Filipinos?
Fermions, man; practically deserted, unproductive vacuum-10 everywhere, conjugating vacuum-3s where there's just trace mass. Never should have legislated on them; waste o' time and libertarians who turn out to be freetards.
Three Mile Island (where the safeties were well designed)
You're joking, of course.
...then there's the incident that happened north of Los Angeles which hasn't gotten the coverage it deserves due to gov't coverups.
Robert X. Cringely wrote a book on this (under his real name).
http://google.com/search?q=%22+Mark.Stephens%22+%22+Three.Mile.Island%22
The fact that HUNDREDS of error reports were clogging up in the queue on the TMI line printer
http://google.com/search?q=%22+Three.Mile.Island%22+printer
is evidence that they DID NOT have the situation in hand, that the design was a botch, and they simply lucked out.
http://google.com/search?q=%22+Simi.Valley%22+nuclear+Santa-Susana
gewg_
So, if it had a competitively giant cargo proportion and the pretty part had five malls, how many kinds of nuclear plant or oarworks would be necessary to sustainably interest maintainers? Could we just tell them they were managing an optical semiconductors foundry?
The story on the NS Savannah doesn't look fully cooked financially; ran 9 years from 1959, stopped by nadir oil prices, nuclear 'til 2005. How was that ship not some kind of honeypot? How did iD Software or Gawker News not take it?
But for pollution, this ship in a year of running may produce 50 million times as much pollutants as a car (if the article is to be believed). It's also hauling probably over a million times as much cargo over a dozen times the distance. "50 million" doesn't sound so bad now.
The latest big engine is designed for lower emissions, and they probably continue to better the design. The article makes it looks like they just don't care and are standing still, which is false.
It's just a hit piece to scare people with big numbers.
How provincial of you, devil. The Japanese per hectare of seawater (i.e. Ninjas who are also Pirates) barely measure up at the macrochemical disinterest forum you've called, and the Filipinos are almost all content in their sea-going SARS masks.
Copper (surprised me!) sulfur and carbon particulate emissions really kill around ports; maybe it's the cranes and service to intermodal instead of the container ships, but the satellite imagery have shown the ships killing less as they keep speed on the open ocean. Not so much on more active oceans (i.e. now it's gone on 20 more years) of course.
Smog and diffusion are better understood than jpmorgan drops; it does its own phenomena and cloud cycle s.t. pan-seaboard smog does have its corroborating imagery; and Phoenix skies can tell you at night whether it was a heavy day at the SFO docks.
Damn that's ironic.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
I've noticed that farms take up a lot of available land and the rent is too damn high.
Good points. I just wanted to add a comment from a friend working on the European Parliament on global warming. He mentioned that all reports he has read comparing the cost of nuclear power vs the rest, always fail to account for the cost of surveillance for the nuclear waste. Don't know how much that could be, but something to think about.
The big ships with enormous diesel engines exhale lots of nasty NOx and SOx (acid rains) but are very effective in terms of CO2, so in terms of pollution, I'm not sure this is such a huge problem.
Perhaps that has something to do with it. Perhaps local manufacturing produces less pollution and economies of scale don't factor energy and fuel consumption as a factor.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
But, what if 50 million cars hauled the same amount of weight across the world, would they have output more pollution than the ship?
So here is the real question: Can the 50 million cars one of these ships approximates carry as much as the ship can? I'm wanting to say no since not many "cars" are well-suited to carrying 24-foot cargo containers.