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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.
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.
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Sailing ships don't require that: WOODEN ships do. Though ships of old were typically wooden, there is no requirement at all that a sailing vessel be made of wood (and modern sailing vessels typically aren't).
Don't confuse the proposal that we use sails more as a proposal that we go back to using Spanish Galeon's. You can merge the concept with a more modern approach as needed.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
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!
As far as I know (and my knowledge is limited), particles do not stay in one spot.
Just like a volcano eruption in Iceland changes climate on the US west coast eventually.
Obviously with a different scale of magnitude.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
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!
As usual it's a very simple matter of economics - were it cheaper to use sailing ships (after balancing their dependence on weather conditions and need for trained sailors against the cost of fuel and need for trained engineers) the companies would be commissioning them so fast it'd make your head spin.
The real trick would be pinning the (rather hard to quantify) 'environmental clean-up costs' back onto the guys doing the polluting. If it's cheaper to pollute and clean up the mess, no harm done - if it's cheaper not to pollute in the first place then that's what they'll do. Unfortunately this would require immediate global consensus on the costs incurred in counteracting the pollution, not to mention on what actually constitutes 'pollution' and what constitutes a valid clean up.
And probably over those thousands of years, the number of pound / miles shipped equalled about one weeks worth of shipping in the modern world.
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.
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.
Point taken, but consider the following:
1. If the technology had continued to be developed, I'm sure we would have seen larger, faster, and more sophisticated sailing vessels used for shipping, likely resulting in far greater efficiencies today even with sailing compared to then.
2. When you consider the utter mess we're making of this planet, reduced shipping capacity isn't that bad of a thing to accept. It's akin to finally realizing that though racking up credit card debt can net you a lot of goodies, eventually you have to stop. That may mean a reduction in life style, but it's something you have to accept eventually. As it is now, there's no damn reason why the spoons and forks in your local stores should need to be shipped from halfway across the friggen planet. Manufacture some of the small trivialities closer to home. Make sure that the stuff we're shipping across the oceans have a legitimate NEED to travel that distance. Artwork? Family heirloom? Passengers? Sure, send those over. The knick-knacks at the dollar store though? I don't have much sympathy if that particular valve is shut off.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
Sure there is a reason, it is cheap as hell to ship them. Cheaper than making them close to home. You might not need those cheap forks, but who are you to deprive our working class of affordable tableware?
To really consider sails as an alternative, we'd need to be willing to accept much slower transit times and much lower reliability.
What about sails as a complementary means of propulsion? The wind is blowing -> release a kite, dead calm -> boost the engine. Anyway, I don't understand why is it so impossible for these ships to cut the speed by at least a few knots. Wouldn't it be cheaper?
Ezekiel 23:20
I'll quote some math I did about a year ago in this post.
While the amounts of HFO burned by, say, the Emma Maersk are enormous (about 300 metric tonnes per day at full operation), this is almost nothing when compared to trucks. Assuming 300mt/day at a cruise speed of 25 knots (over 45km/h), that equates to roughly 30 tonnes per 100 km. A semi-trailer truck pulling two TEU containers runs at around 30 liter per 100 km (that's around 8 mpg). This means the Emma Maersk, carrying 14000 TEU, uses 1000 times as much fuel as a truck carrying 2 TEU, which makes this ship about 7 times as fuel efficient as trucks.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Well, I agree with you that we need to take the nuclear option much more seriously, for power generation purposes. Something needs to replace all those coal fired power plants, and we're still a ways off from being able to build commercial fusion reactors.
However, I'm a realist. I can't imaging nuclear power ever winning points on cost. And the reason for this is not just that the current crop of 40 year old+ reactors is expensive to operate.
If you want to make any piece of technology virtually failure safe, you can do so. You can make a building that will survive every earthquake. Or a computer that cannot crash. Or (insert-imaginary-perfect-machine-here).
What you can't do is make such technology cheap. Systematic redundancy, backups upon backups, religious levels of maintenance, every piece of equipment built to specifications that vastly exceed the operational reality - all of these are possible, and they all cost a fortune.
There are only a couple of areas of human engineering where we build with such precise paranoia around failure. Nuclear power is one of them. And the reason for doing this with nuclear power is that we're properly paranoid about it, because failure carries with it such consequences. An excellent study in this is to contrast Three Mile Island (where the safeties were well designed) with Chernobyl (not so much).
Nuclear power done right is going to be expense. We can cut more corners with anything else. Now, this doesn't mean we shouldn't use nuclear power, but it does mean that the best use for it is in large commercial power plants.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Actually sailing ships required the destruction of vast forests (one of the reasons Britain wanted North American colonies was for the wood to build ships with). They generally didn't last that long and had to be replaced frequently. So their effect on the environment wasn't minimal.
carbon sequestration
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
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.
That may mean a reduction in life style, but it's something you have to accept eventually.
(hmmm... you seems so willing to sacrifice my lifestyle... what about yours?)
Then
The knick-knacks at the dollar store though? I don't have much sympathy if that particular valve is shut off.
Better still... download them over the Internet.
Of course I'm kidding ... actually going on a tangent (what would /. be good for, other than switching the thoughts from useful work, so why not continue?)... anyway, that's a major difference between IT and industries producing tangible goods: while for the later one can quantify the impact on environment of off-shoring/outsourcing practices, in IT the impact is too small to count.
Now that the context is set, here comes the question: would you be willing to sacrifice your life-style (not mine) in the conditions your everyday knick-knacks costs you 3-4 times over, while living under the constant risk of having your job outsourced?
(and, if you are not working in IT, why do you feel entitled to recommend solutions that "should be good for all"?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Agreed, especially on point #2.
We need to stop buying crap we don't need, period (which includes pretty much everything that has to be shipped). If that makes it so the global economy can't function (capitalism requiring constant growth, over-consumption, waste), then we need a new economic system - a pretty obvious statement anyway.
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.
Let us DRIVE our containers across the ocean!
That raises an interesting point. These ships travel a lot farther than any car ever would. If the ships could be replaced by cars driving the same route, how many cars would it take to produce the same amount of pollution? I wager it would be far fewer than 50 million.
That is why the top 50 cargo ships should be nuclear powered. Clean, efficient, fast, consistent.
I've got a MUCH more efficient solution- ship only natural resources, send the plans electronically over the Internet, and manufacture locally.
And those nutrient-devoid dead zones are dead *because* of the sulfur bearing soot.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Getting 30 feet or so off the ocean gets you reasonably fast winds. The "topsails", which were acutall the second sails from the bottom, provided the main thrust for square-rigged ships. We know today that by far the best way to get thrust from a sail is by using it as a wing - a spinnaker (or "baloon sail" or "kite sail") only works if you're going downwind, and doesn't work that well as your only sail. And if you meant an actual kite, with no mast, there are so many problems with that.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
we'd need to be willing to accept much slower transit times and much lower reliability
ever hear of a clipper ship?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper
I'm sure a modern equivalent could be built.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
And, in the end, those of us who've chosen to moderate our basest tendencies will, at least, know who to blame - those who felt no responsibility to the greater good whatsoever.
Morality: a simple concept for most.
If you're only thinking of you, then you're a dysfunctional part of "us." If we're a collective, as you imply, then each should be an agent of the whole, operating at least partially-motivated by the common interest. What's best for you, by your narrow measurement (material excess), is NOT good for "us." You are a cancer, and should feel free to shove the collected works of Ayn Rand up your...
shipping plastic trinkets from China
And this is the root of the problem right there, which everyone seems to be ignoring. What kind of an ass-backwards economy do we have when it's cheaper to make shit in China and send it (literally) halfway around the world, rather than make it locally?
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.
Small nitpick, wooden shipbuilding techniques before ~1800 required long pieces of wood for the strakes, and specifically curved pieces of wood for the scantlings. Shorter pieces worked too much at sea, making the ships hog and sag, and creating leaks. A typical third rate 72 gun ship of the line required over 5,000 old growth oak trees to build. Finally, thirty years was the service life discounting rebuilds, which could extend the life of a ship to double that, or more.
I have heard the theory that Britain wanted American wood for ships in other places before this. We have a type of oak, White Oak, that is particularly suited to shipbuilding due to its strength and resistance to splintering.
Right! Supplies of the sort of wood most desired for building large ships were scarce. Also don't forget timber for masts. Good mast timber for a very tall ship is rare. No ship building activity would cut down a forest - it just removes the choicest timber.
Forests were being denuded at this time - but it wasn't due to ship building. It was charcoal making to fuel the first blast furnaces of the industrial revolution. The furnaces didn't care what type of timber was used.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Since a few years ships are already required to switch to low-sulfor fuel when they come near the coast or enter ports..
Several types of marine fuel exist: MGO, MDO, HFO,..
HFO (heavy fuel oil) is getting banned in some parts of the world.
And yes this means vessels actually have 2 or 3 different types of fuel on board and switch over from one type to another.
The economic crash of 2 years ago was beneficiary for the environment btw.
The years before it, prices for renting a ship (baltic dry index) was so high that only the rent made up the largest part of the cost, fuel costs were low in comparison. So cargo vessels were instructed to go full speed (and consume/pollute more).
Now the BDI dropped, the rent is lower and it's again a matter of optimising days at sea / consumption (slower speed = less consumption, so renting a vessel 1 or 2 days longer can be better because fuel savings are more than the extra rent you pay for these days).
A lot of old (and more polluting) vessels also were laid in docks or are scrapped the past 2 years as there suddenly wasn't enough cargo to transport..
disclaimer: I work at the it department of a group of companies that operates cargo vessels.. have worked on a program to register their trips and optimize fuel costs/speed/...
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
I'm not sure ships do go in straight lines from source to destination, isn't that the point of 'shipping lanes'? Also I'm guessing ocean currents mean that the most efficient crossing isn't always the straightest. I don't really know anything about this so happy to be corrected!