Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 155 posts

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#91

Post by Spooky23 »

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #77
dogma1138 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In shipping the cost is transferred easily down the line; capital investment in new vessels and new technologies is pretty slim because of that. Also the time spent in dry dock might as well cost you more than what you’ll gain through the service time of the vessel since many of these vessels change hands frequently sometimes even several times a year. Also because how risk is managed in the shipping industry none of…

How does this ownership structure still survive today?

It's a free market. International treaties evolve slowly, so regulation is non-existent, and shipping is a race to the bottom industry.

Ships are flagged and "regulated" in Liberia, Panama or wherever, crews are Filipino or Indonesian, and the officers are from another country (Greece, UK, US, etc). The ownership is always murky and unknown.

The only exceptions are some intra-national shipping. US carriers are required if you're shipping from Alaska to California, for example.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#92

Post by seph-reed »

spdegabrielle wrote: post #3

> the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only greatly increases the volume of pollutants being pumped into the sea, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions. This should be a crime

Can we just start adding a piece to laws that says something like: "if you do something shifty to avoid this law, and we find out, it will be up to the court to decide if you were still breaking it"

I really hate the notion that laws are far more about the word than the intent.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#93

Post by dredmorbius »

manfredo wrote: post #89
dredmorbius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are between 60,000 and 80,000 commercial cargo vessels worldwide. About 100-200 sink every decade. Nuclear power as a routine matter in commercial shipping is unlikely to be widespread.

Hundreds of nuclear powered military vessels have been built. Several have sunk. There has been no environmental disaster so far, and there doesn't seem to be much concern over putting nuclear reactors on vessels that are likely to shot at and bombed. Nuclear powered merchant ships have been built, but mostly as a tech demonstration [1]. There will never be a solar or battery powered transoceanic cargo ship. The ener…

I am well aware.

It's really not tractable.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shippin...

Wind is a proven solar-derived marine power system. Used commercially through the 1950s.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#94

Post by mperham »

delfinom wrote: post #49
newguy1234 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably hard to do in international waters but the bigger countries could always just say that any vessel doing this is blacklisted from docking in their ports. Every ship operator would just retrofit their vessels if that were to occur.

The US and China have already defined rules to prevent it.

According to the article, they've added rules that the ships can't discharge within their national waters. So the ships will discharge right outside that line. Nothing is prevented, only delayed.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#95

Post by manfredo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #93
manfredo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of nuclear powered military vessels have been built. Several have sunk. There has been no environmental disaster so far, and there doesn't seem to be much concern over putting nuclear reactors on vessels that are likely to shot at and bombed. Nuclear powered merchant ships have been built, but mostly as a tech demonstration [1]. There will never be a solar or battery powered transoceanic cargo ship. The ener…

I am well aware. It's really not tractable. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shippin... Wind is a proven solar-derived marine power system. Used commercially through the 1950s.

Wind doesn't move nearly as much cargo as compared to self-propelled craft. It's true that throughout the 18th and 19th century industrialized nations used wind power to move cargo, but I doubt people are going to be willing to revert to 18th and 19th century standards of living. Global commerce is built on cheap long distance transport, and any climate solution that involves eliminating or drastically reducing global commerce is a long winded way of saying "no solution".

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#96

Post by mperham »

thedogeye wrote: post #60

It’s not a “cheat” device. The law allows ship operators to use it and dump the sulfur into the ocean. Pure madness.

It's a cheat device in that it skirts the intent of a law: that sulfur not get into the environment at all but extracted and disposed of properly.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#97

Post by linuxftw »

erdgdsgbdfsg wrote: post #50
throw0101a wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shipping is a pretty dirty industry, because of fuel quality ... You're not wrong, but no one else is/was using bunker fuel, so might as well burn it, as what else can it be used for? Can it be processed into anything more useful? (The IMO 2020 mandate may help clean things up.) > Bear in mind that shipping is also the most energy efficient form of bulk transportation (vs land or air). I was under the impression th…

No, shipping is the most efficient. Not only are drag loses comparatively small, those two stroke diesels are crazy efficient from a thermodynamic point of view (massive, slow, and high compression ratio -> crazy efficiency).

It's efficient in the sense that if you compare kgs of goods per km, but it's not efficient when you consider the great distances ships travel versus producing goods domestically, just to put those same goods on rail and trucks anyway.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#98

Post by dredmorbius »

manfredo wrote: post #95
dredmorbius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am well aware. It's really not tractable. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shippin... Wind is a proven solar-derived marine power system. Used commercially through the 1950s.

Wind doesn't move nearly as much cargo as compared to self-propelled craft. It's true that throughout the 18th and 19th century industrialized nations used wind power to move cargo, but I doubt people are going to be willing to revert to 18th and 19th century standards of living. Global commerce is built on cheap long distance transport, and any climate solution that involves eliminating or drastically reducing globa…

I'm aware of that too.

Point remains: direct solar, or battery storage, won't work, at all. Power and energy to load are simply insufficient.

Wind can. Synfuels can. Wood pellets can. Scales and tech are manageable.

For canal traffic, electric mule traction can. Likewise electrified cable ferries, on limited routes.

Nuclear almost certainly won't. Yes, it's technically proven, but the risks, costs, social, and political hurdles are enormous.

The shifts will eventually not be willing.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#99

Post by jschwartzi »

erdgdsgbdfsg wrote: post #56
azinman2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue it should be zero. Ruining our oceans is something that cannot be undone, and there is far too much damage that has and is already occurring in acidifying our oceans and the amount of existing toxic materials. This industry is one of the dirtiest, and least responsible to the world.

"I’d argue it should be zero." So would I, but that's impossible in meat space for any industry or technology spawned in the last 200 years. I wouldn't mind technologically winding the clock back 200 years, using sail boats and letting my computer wither away (and livelihood, btw). Would you? "This industry is one of the dirtiest, and least responsible to the world." True. It's also, by weight and value of goods tran…

> Ships have the advantage of being able to dump waste in the middle of the ocean where there is little to no life (too deep, no light, no plants. There is some life). Compared to what other, land based, industries do this is comparatively benign. Here the waste gets diluted by an essentially infinite sink.

There is life everywhere that there is a temperature gradient to exploit. Just because we haven't named it doesn't mean it isn't there. There's life in ices, life at the top of mountains, life in the deep ocean, and life in the shallow places. So I would prefer to err on the side of caution.

By the way, the same arguments you're making for dumping sulfurous water were also made for the introduction of PEG into our toothpastes, shampoos, body wash, lotions, and various other cleaners. It was only after the same plastics were discovered at all levels of our food chain that someone realized it was actually a bad idea to do this. So I'm skeptical of any argument for dumping based on the small quantity of dumped materials. Humans are really good at scaling up small actions into huge consequences. And now there's plastic microbeads in our oceans, lakes, streams, fish, birds, game animals--basically anything that eats anything has measurable quantities.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#100

Post by aeternum »

seph-reed wrote: post #92
spdegabrielle wrote: post #3

> the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only greatly increases the volume of pollutants being pumped into the sea, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions. This should be a crime

Can we just start adding a piece to laws that says something like: "if you do something shifty to avoid this law, and we find out, it will be up to the court to decide if you were still breaking it" I really hate the notion that laws are far more about the word than the intent.

This shifts much of the power from the legislature to the court. 'Something shifty' can be very broad.
Post reply on HN