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The World's Largest Cruise Ship and Its Supersized Pollution Problem (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader cites a report on the Guardian: When the gargantuan Harmony of the Seas slips out of Southampton docks on Sunday afternoon on its first commercial voyage, the 16-deck-high floating city will switch off its auxiliary engines, fire up its three giant diesels and head to the open sea. But while the 6,780 passengers and 2,100 crew on the largest cruise ship in the world wave goodbye to England, many people left behind in Southampton say they will be glad to see it go. They complain that air pollution from such nautical behemoths is getting worse every year as cruising becomes the fastest growing sector of the mass tourism industry and as ships get bigger and bigger. According to its owners, Royal Caribbean, each of the Harmony's three four-storey high 16-cylinder Wartsila engines will, at full power, burn 1,377 US gallons of fuel an hour, or about 96,000 gallons a day of some of the most polluting diesel fuel in the world.
I hate bad journalism like this...
"It burn 96,000 gallons a day"!! Well no shit, it's the biggest ship of the world. If you want to impress me, tell how how much fuel per passager it burn and compare it to others cruise ship. And unless it's the most efficient ship in the world, I won't see a problem.
Elok
A 747 burns through 3,600 Gallons of fuel per hour for just over 416 Passengers. This ship burns 1/3 of that for nearly 9000 people.
That's not mentioning the fact that the entire staff is likely undocumented/imported, paid low wages (absurdly so), often addicted to drugs etc.
Last cruise we went on, the provided a breakdown of staffing. They knew where everyone on board came from. And at least the ones we met with (my wife enjoys interaction with the staff) a lot of students who wre saving for college. The pay isn't very high, but it is clean, and the expenses are very low. So no complaints there.
There aren't many Americans. I did have some retired colleagues who were escorts for ladies on board. They were paid similar wages, but enjoyed the hell out of the cruises. Good meals, pleasant company, and it was like Saturday evening out with a date every day of thte week.
Your version of Cruise lines is completely bizzare and I haven't seen any of that stuff you say is likely.
Although full disclosure - I haven't - nor will I - be on a Carnival Cruise.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If they had named it Boaty McBoatface, they could have made enough on souvenirs to clean it up.
Table-ized A.I.
This is a first world problem, and it has a first world solution. There's a reason commercial mega-ships are so much worse than even larger military mega-ships: nuclear power. There's no reason at all a ship of this size shouldn't have a reactor for its fuel. There are no safety precautions that aren't acceptable for the loss of a reactor that are acceptable for the loss of 8000 souls, so safety shouldn't be an issue.
We can run reactors in the confines of a submarine, in aircraft carriers, and on large combat ships, and it's arguable that a military ship is more at risk than a commercial ship, since it will be actively engaged in combat! When anti-nuclear pundits win, the environment loses. And so does the company, since it would be cheaper in the long run, certainly in a period time for which this ship will operate.
Those ships burn the bottom products of the oil stack after refining. The fuel is closer to tar or asphalt that diesel. On a cold day you can actually walk on that fuel as if it is a road. And yes, using such fuels needs to be made very illegal. Anyone can do the math. Those ships could never exist if they had to use real diesel fuel as the price of passenger tickets would not equal the fuel burned on a cruise.
The real cost of a petrochemical navy is absurdly higher than a nuclear one. Just check out:
1. The cost of ensuring its supply (through wars)
2. The fluctuation in real cost of fuel prices over the lifespan of the engine
3. The environmental cost and irrecoverable damage to the planet
4. The increase in respiratory illnesses incident rate vs the relatively nonexistent incident rate related to nuclear energy. More on this:
Nuclear power, when compared with just about every other fuel on earth, has a vastly lower injury, death, and sickness rating, even with Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3-Mile. The safety is what makes the cost astronomical, not the science. Nuclear power is the fuel of the sun, the earth, and the source of all of life's energy. Even solar power has a higher deaths per gigawatt than nuclear. This an educational problem, not a practical, economical, or scientific one.
Its too bad the first experience humans had with nuclear power was via WMD, and not civilian applications. We would be living in a very different world today if we first commercialized the technology before we blew up Japan with it.
There's no reason at all a ship of this size shouldn't have a reactor for its fuel.
Liability.
The insurance cost(if they could get it) would be prohibitive.
Many of the ports that cruise ships visit would ban them.
Generally, ships use a generator to provide power and heating while the ship is docked. For a large cruise ship this generator needs to be substantial. It also runs on the same fuel as the main engines, and there are no emissions regulations for these ships.
So everyone downwind of the docks (i.e. most of Southampton, in this case) gets to sit in a column of smoke for the entire time the ship's docked.
The obvious solution would be to connect the ship to the shore electric grid. This is being worked on (example) but conversion takes time.