Is this remotely true that it takes only 16 super tankers to cause as much air pollution as the worlds entire fleet of cars?
dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … world.html
Interesting article. The comments are also interesting. It’s not very scientific though. Sulfur emissions actually contribute to global cooling as the particles help to block the suns rays (the same effect occurs after major volcanic eruptions). Sulfur emissions from natural sources are a massive multiple to man-made sources. Of course the use of these dirty fuels should be banned as they cause acid rain and ill health. If they dump their waste at sea that is also terrible.
I wonder how much of Kaohsiung smog is contributed by ships and how much by the oil refinery?
Transporting goods by ship has the lowest CO2 emissions by far, so if they use cleaner fuel it will be the most environmental transport method worldwide.
Bunker fuel that powers these things has roughly the viscosity of asphalt. It’s pretty horrendous stuff, and it’s a 100% good thing they are cleaning this up.
It’s entirely believable that burning millions of tons of something like barely-refined oil might throw up a shit ton of various kinds of pollution.
Makes sense, i worked on a diving vessle from 06-07, i remember asking the captain of my ship about the emissions from one of these boats and he told me a story about his previous job.
Between the late 80s and until 2005 he was in charge of a large shipping vessel, this one boat was mostly used for toyota cars from japan to the US and E.U, that one trip around the globe on this boat put out more emmisions than all of the cars (including the prius’s) would ever give out in 50 years if they drove non stop… i forget the number of cars on board but it was a scary amount.
The conversation was actually about the prius since it was made in japan and had to be shipped around the world… completely destroying the point in its eco-friendlyness :roflmao:
So 16 super tankers… yeah thats probably right but it depends on how you compare, do you mean for 1 day or for the life of the cars? #
Its hard to put a number on something like that.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
Transporting goods by ship has the lowest CO2 emissions by far, so if they use cleaner fuel it will be the most environmental transport method worldwide.[/quote]
A offshore supply ship with 6000kw use about 23 tonn of fuel a day when running full speed. The larger car carriers and thankers use about 5% less for eatch kW, but when it’s running one of the larger desels at 98MW the amount is scaring, but this ships use heat recovery sysems so they could have a total of 50% reduction, but the dayly use would still be more than 100tonn a day.
This dirty fuels they use is only 1/3 the price off diesel and if anyone ever tryed to ship he’s goods by a ship running clean diesel or LNG the consumers would just buy from a competiror transporting he’s stuff with dirty fuel.
If the usage of this dirty fuels was stopped, what are we suposed to do with it? pump it back into the sea where it came from? How mutch energy will that cost?
There is a move to cleaner fuels. Soon, anyone using USA/Canadian ports will have to use a much cleaner fuel.
Sure, people don’t HAVE to switch, but being locked out of USA/Canada means that everyone will switch. It will help the environment a lot for not that much money/extra effort
[quote=“mahkie”]There is a move to cleaner fuels. Soon, anyone using USA/Canadian ports will have to use a much cleaner fuel.
Sure, people don’t HAVE to switch, but being locked out of USA/Canada means that everyone will switch. It will help the environment a lot for not that much money/extra effort[/quote]
Shipping cars from any place will make a huge difference when the cost for 1 day transport increase with 30 000USD.
And you still got millions of tonn’s with worthless oil that used to be combusted in diesel now becoming waste?
I’m curious what we are suposed to do with that.
That’s a good question Stian and one I guess many people would miss. I can only speculate that it can be used for tarring roads or incinerated in a manner that doesn’t pump out so many particles into the air. It was also a good point about shipping cars worldwide, that is a wasteful practice. The statements also show up the fallacy of driving a Prius as being somehow environmental, while it may have lower emissions it is not environmental to buy a new car than to use an old one to it’s limit and also to drive a car instead of using other modes of transportation.
It’s a deliberately provocative headline. The article text actually says that ‘just 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world’s cars’. Apart from being a nonsense statement it refers to sulphur only, not general pollution as implied by the headline.
[quote=“mahkie”]There is a move to cleaner fuels. Soon, anyone using USA/Canadian ports will have to use a much cleaner fuel.
Sure, people don’t HAVE to switch, but being locked out of USA/Canada means that everyone will switch. It will help the environment a lot for not that much money/extra effort[/quote]
But the effect will be people just importing to Mexico and then changing fuel or shipping overland from there
The idea of using a prius is that the shipping costs are net zero when compared to another car (unless locally produced) so there is a reduction, but yorue right that it is stupid to upgrade before it is required
I would go for cracking to form other fractions and bitumen for roofing (obviously the second use is stupid in taiwan with white roofing) but oil is very versatile