15 Cargo Ships Pollute More Than All Cars in the World

I think there are policies in controlling this but the problem is the monitoring and implementation of policies vary every port/country. If ships are equipped with CEMS.

True, because they currently use high sulfur crude oil whereas autos and trucks used highly refined, low sulfur fuels. I'm not sure nuclear power would not introduce proliferation problems or not be cost prohibitive.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-15-biggest-ships-in-the-world-produce-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars

go electric in porthttp://articles.latimes.com/2004/jun/22/local/me-china22

Maybe with the new reactor designs this will become feasible...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion

"Large commercial vessels primarily burn what's called Heavy Fuel Oil when out at sea. This fuel is not heavily refined, has high sulfur content and produces a lot of sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide compounds when it is burned.

Cars burn a highly refined gasoline which produces almost no sulfur oxides or nitrogen oxides. Even trucks burn a highly refined highway diesel which must contain less than 15 parts per million of sulfur, so they too produce very few sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides. Cars and trucks do produce quite a bit of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. So yes, the 15 biggest ships produce more sulfur oxide pollutants than all the cars in the world, because they run on completely different fuels. A ship produces more carbon dioxide emission per mile and per gallon of fuel than a car. Ships in general, however, have the lowest emission levels of any other method of cargo transport , producing fewer emissions per ton of freight per mile than barges, trains or trucks."...
..."Some companies are part of the push, however, and the first two container ships powered exclusively by Liquefied Natural Gas were just launched. These ships will produce fewer emissions, of any compound, than any other vessel currently in service. The entire shipping industry is looking at conversions to natural gas or other fuels, and engine manufacturers are designing engines that can handle a variety of fuels."

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-15-biggest-ships-in-the-world-produce-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars

Line 2 I pressed the submit button rather than the edit button to eliminate the "didn't".

It is early morning here and I had a late night. No excuse really I am just a dozy idiot sometimes.

This could be the wave of the future:

TOTE Launches World's First LNG Powered Containership ...

Dont go there if you still love your imports and exports!

How about this one!

Because you (and the rest of us) are stuck, we haven't the ability or means to fight for each and every violation of our rights. Bureaurats have no authority to make rules and regulations.

Rules and laws only apply to the law-abiding

Can somebody run the maths on this and some theoretical values comparing how many average cars to a big ship. The ratio of 3 million to 1 does not sound correct. ( I've been unsuccesful when looking for bunker fuel values.)

Watching a documentary on the Emma Maersk they changed a piston without stopping the engine. How?

Well I think they are talking about SOX emissions chiefly here....they only run these engines while at sea, in port areas they are run on electric and tugboat guided...as such they contribute very little, if any, to urban pollution....

So it's OK then?

.

Your point is taken but the wind does blow and distribute pollution worldwide.

Well yes there are several studies that have led to further reductions of emissions and increased areas of ECA's(emission control area) along the coastlines around the world....most went into effect last year(2015)...

http://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/26999/
The+Prevailing+Weather+and+Traffic+Conditions+in+the+
Evaluation+of+a+Future+ECA+in+the+Mediterranean+Sea.
+A+view+into+the+Western+Mediterranean.pdf;jsessionid=
E7D0F48B444A0E560B4F0B341B219D8E?sequence=1

http://www.marpoltraining.com/MMSKOREAN/MARPOL/Annex_VI/app3.htm

Now we know what's causing global warming!

I read that article also. However, I found no evidence given and no reason to believe it.

Maybe because most ships are registered by Flag of Convenience, anywhere but where their owners are located. How do we regulate some vessel that legally is under some other jurisdiction? Some tiny nations, who probably don't care about pollution, but no doubt enjoy the income from the registry, would be the ones to impose restrictions on the emissions. If they even cared about it, the moment they tried, the registry would shift to some other country.

Maybe Trump could help you out here - he seems to be an "isolationist" and may not care about barring cargo from entering the USA if the ships were heavy polluters. Of course, cargo wouldn't leave either.

For starters, they get more money out of regulating cars.

Secondly, the majority of your major shipping lines are all homeported from countries that don't practice strict regulatory laws. They can have an American Captain but the ships are registered from another country, like Kuwait.

no heavy fuel in my lawnmower, but...

...so what gives!?

Numbers vary all over the place depending on what kind of pollution you're talking about (NOx or CO), who you talk to, and the size and age of your mower. Newer mowers have to meet stricter standards and as of 2012, I think it's 1 mower equals about 6 cars.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/40022/straight-dope-how-much-pollution-do-gasoline-powered-lawn-mowers/

An uninformed person (hence forth LoFo) gave my previous post an "off topic" I'm going to add something.

Back in the '60's it was found that boat crews were dumping raw sewage at sea, or "at river", or "at lake" as the case may be. It was true, so laws were passed and rules and regulations followed. Guess who was targeted first? A) Cargo ships, B)Tug Boats, C)Riverboat Cruise ships, D Recreational weekend boaters.

To this day guess what organization, who is charged with guarding our coasts, routinely dumps plastic trash bags after the evening meal? For the above LoFo, dumping plastic in any body of water anywhere is a big time offense.

Another example; when your local police department is tasked with refilling the town coffers, who do they go after? A)Bentleys B)Ferraris, C)'80's vintage Cavaliers with smoke pouring from every orifice or D) Clean, late model Fords, Chryslers, Toyotas etc.

Hint or clue to the LoFo: the answer to both is the same, and it ain't A),B) or C). The legal phrase is "Judgement Proof" as they have neither the time or money to fight.

http://gcaptain.com/emma-maersk-engine/

The loss of a ship is cheap in comparison to the loss of the engine on the ship.

Previously it was convenient to leave the ships and aircraft off the list of global warming, messing up the atmosphere items as cars are more abundant, drivers have plenty money and never complain and ships were not limited to one area of travel.

This is not new news, it has been known since the mention of global warming, just never publicised as focus was shifted to the easy catch....the car driver. And the solar powered cargo ship is limited to the equator region only and is still under test. Not much use for cargo carrying.

http://wonderfulengineering.com/the-worlds-largest-solar-powered-ship/

This ties in with something that has been bothering me.

The US and many other countries have very large trade imbalances with China and other countries due to two main reasons. The most dominant reason is the cost of labor and taxes/tariffs. We can't resolve anything here on the labor/taxes/tariffs issue and it would be very easy for postings to go out of scope with CR4 rules.

The less dominant reason for the trade imbalance is the cost of complying with environmental regulations. We can't do anything in the US without environmental compliance costs. There are even global warming (green house gas) people talking about adding a tax on cows because getting a pound of beef to market results in more cow farts than the chicken farts associated with a pound of chicken.

I don't know anything about Chinese environmental laws but from media articles it would seem that their environmental law is that pollution can not be produced while the Olympics are being hosted.

Thus, I wonder if data has been collected on how much global warming is made incrementally worse by most of the world's products being:
1) produced in factories with little or no environmental controls and
2) shipped in ships that (as detailed in this thread) generate huge amounts of pollution.

The fart tax does exist, New Zealand Govt makes NZ$8.4m a year since around 2004.

In countries with a large agricultural sector, the proportion is much higher. In New Zealand, farm animals produce 90% of methane emissions.

Sad but interesting.

The table seems to have some problems with the placement of the decimal point. I punched the cow numbers and was off by a factor of 10K.

As someone who has actually been around cows I have to call BS on the 63.85 million liter a year per cow number. That works out to a continuous gas output of just over 2 liters per second and I know for a fact cattle don't fart that much.

Just doing the rough numbers for that flow rate would put a single cows fart energy content at about 18 calories per second or roughly 1.55 million calories per day (energy wise that would be the equivalent of 3 average sized home central heating systems running full blast 24 hours a day) alone whereas the average number of calories a healthy average sized cow of ~1200 pound eats between 30,000 - 40,000 calories or roughly 15 - 20 times what use humans eat per day.

I also have strong suspicions that JE's push mower doesn't put out the same amount of pollution as 40 vehicles either.

Hold your cattle.

The 63 Mill liter is for 500 cows. A herd as they say. What bugs me is that by that price per liter the tax would be an incredible almost 3 Mill dollar. Expensive gas that is and numbers off by miles.

As for the Cargo ships the pollutant is nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide. Nothing to do with CO2 or Methan. Nothing to do with warming either.

JE's push mower maybe burns heavy oil. Who knows. With normal car fuel being pretty clean he might still have a chance to be worse than 40 cars.

Too much you say makes absolutely no sense.

• Mill (currency), a denomination used by some currencies, the equivalent of a tenth of a cent or penny, or a thousandth of the currency unit.

Mill is short for Million. Here Million of Liter. If you cannot read this out of the context then why bother?

Nothing makes sense in this thread or in most of the environmental calculations.

The currency in the pic is New Zealand Dollar if I am not mistaken!

Fart traps to reuse the gases for commercial uses.

SOX form shipping causes respiratory problems in people.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0214/Top-12-weirdest-tax-rules-around-the-world/Denmark-cow-flatulence-tax

So even BS is taxable these days. How come politicians are not taxed.

I'm glad to see that someone is doing something about this. However, it begs a question. If the farmer was to do something about the problem, such as giving the cows Pepto Bismol, would he get a tax break?

Don't forget, we are not just talking about farmed animals here. Any animal that eats grasses and greenery produce methane. So the USA has a problem with bison, deer etc, Africa has a problem with many animals that graze the savannas and vegetarians have a problem too. So realistically, where is the line drawn?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/10/05/3029973.htm