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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.
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
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.
Bullshit. Ships didn't require THAT much wood, and Britain didn't want North America simply to build wooden ships. They wanted North America because things like you know, houses are still made of wood. But more importantly, they wanted America for its other resources, including sheer space for colonization.
As for the ships not lasting all that long... by what standard? A typical non-aircraft carrier, steel-constructed US Navy vessel has a service life of around 30 years. Wooden commerce and naval vessels from the 1600's onwards had service lives of about.... 30 years. Navies went to steel because they made better warships, not because of any scarcity of wood. Nelson's favorite warship, HMS Agamemnon, was in service 28 years and was still one of the prime warships of the Royal Navy when she was wrecked in bad weather in 1809. It wasn't uncommon for navies to put a ship in the yards after 15 years, cut her in half, and literally splice in a section to maker her bigger, then return her to service as a larger vessel for another 15 years or so.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
. Buy a quality product that will last you the rest of your life ...
Easier said than done. Aside from things that are designed not to last, things wear out - regardless of their quality.
Also, how can you really tell? Consumer Reports doesn't do studies on how long things last on most of their reviews and even then, it's only for the first few years, like with appliances. And the "you get what you pay for" line is not true.
I just consume less overall.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This whole thing is so distorted. The REASON that we don't mandate these ships use strong pollution controls or clean fuels is specifically because pollution is part quantity, part location. If there's nobody to breathe a pollutant before it degrades, it's not hurting anyone. Car exhaust is released at ground level in populated areas.
In terms of fuel consumed and CO2 released, ship pollution from transporting a car (and all of its component parts) is a small fraction of the fuel consumed and CO2 released in the vehicle's lifespan. Cargo ships are the most efficient way, from a fuel and CO2 perspective, to move a given mass of freight (even more than trains), at nearly 500 miles per gallon per ton. You can haul your average car from Tokyo to LA using under 20 gallons of fuel. 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? You're probably doing more to fertilize them than hurt them.
The actual pollution problems, BTW, are when the ships show up in port. The "last leg" of travel causes the vast majority of their health consequences, and there's a lot of work underway to clean it up.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
The majority of open ocean is a nutrient-poor environment even for algae and plankton.
It is a less productive desert than just about anywhere else on Earth.
What 'nutrient-rich zones that died off' am I missing?
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
I worked as a tree thinner a long time ago. Our job was to go into an area (in the national forest) and thin the little baby trees down to about one every 10 feet. Then the ones that were left would grow faster, straight and tall - and since we preferentially removed less valuable species, the ones that remained tended to be the more valuable ones. I figured out that I was killing about 12000 baby trees per day (over about 10 acres). The ones that were left would be about 430 per acre, so ten acres would provide about 4300 trees. So it's not a very big forest in pure acreage. The time it takes to GROW the trees is significant, of course. There's a long time between a four-foot sapling and a mighty Douglas Fir - especially for the big diameter trees where you get more of the 'clear' knot-free wood.
Old boat builders (and some present-day boat builders) look especially for certain parts of trees. For example, the curved sections where the tree spreads out its roots tend to be very good for 'knees', taking advantage of both the curved grain and the extra density and strength that the trees develop in that area.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
When my father was in the US Navy in the 1963 the aircraft carrier he was on, the USS Ranger, had a drag-race with the USS Kitty Hawk. It made the cover of hot rod magazine. The USS Ranger won. I'd call this flooring it.
Apparently the captain asked the admiral if it was OK. He said no so the captain told him to go back to sleep and did it anyway.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Chlorophyll map of the world's oceans.
Now pay close attention to the scale at the bottom. Even the stuff in green has 1/20th the photosynthetic activity as the stuff in red. Note how tiny of an area is in red.
Most of the world's oceans are *extremely* poor in life. The limiting factor for photosynthesis in most of the world's oceans is not light or CO2, but iron. Iron sinks in aggregate and is poorly soluble.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.