Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by samatman » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

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…

> Similar for heavy metals. These dissolve into salt water, and were already present in solution since the dawn of time. We won't change those numbers significantly. (again, assuming you're not dumping it just off of land like the Japanese did in the 50s)

This is not true. Due to biomagnification, there is already significant contamination of fish stocks with (methyl)mercury:

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

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

#102

Post by aeternum » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

kardos wrote: post #88

Gwypaas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest question in regards to windpowered vessels is always "how do you deliver on time?". With logistics turning more to just in time deliveries to reduce warehousing a ship turning up a day late is not acceptable, which creates knock off issues with slot times in harbours not aligning and you either pay higher prices for later scheduling or having to pay for an unused slot. This is not even taking into conside…

> "how do you deliver on time? With a big enough fleet you could statistically deal with delays. Eg, in the same sense that airlines slightly overbook flights. The variability/risk in the port costs would cut into the fuel savings; hard to imagine that would be a show stopper. There must be a portion of the industry that is less time sensitive and would entertain working out the details to facilitate the slower speed…

The issue is weather becomes a common-mode failure that affects your entire fleet regardless of size. A week or two of no/light wind, or winds that are too strong mean that everything is delayed.

Slower shipping may not be a problem, but unpredictability often is. Few businesses can handle completely unpredictable shipping timelines.

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

#103

Post by PhasmaFelis » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #90

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the fact that they're acting in rational self-interest make it "hard to find fault"? "Rational self-interest" isn't a defense for bad behavior.

They were given two options within the law and they picked the cheap one. Expecting participants in a commoditized industry to voluntarily increase their overhead is naive at best. The issue here is with the people writing the rules.

There's two points here. From a practical standpoint, clearly the way to fix this problem is to fix the rules, and educate the people who make them to minimize future occurrences. Expecting everyone to act for the good of society without zero material incentives or consequences is futile. I believe you're saying that, and I agree.

But (by a reasonable understanding of "hard to find fault") you also appear to be saying that the people exploiting the loopholes in the faulty law are morally blameless, and that's nonsense. Humans are responsible for the consequences of their actions. It's naive to expect them to do the right thing, but that doesn't make them immune to criticism or judgment.

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

#104

Post by kube-system » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

onemoresoop wrote: post #83

hapidjus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that would give them a reason to pollute even more.

What difference does it make if they collect it though? Yes, they'd claim a bit more but can't claim too much because the storage is limited to some extent. It'd still be better for the environment.

It is neither feasible nor practical to collect everything that comes out of a hydrocarbon-burning ship's exhaust. We have scrubbing for some of the worst stuff, but there's plenty of stuff that isn't collected.

When you burn fuel, you get a mix of those emissions. If burning fuel results in X amount of sulfur and Y amount of CO2, you still don't want to increase the amount of X, even if 100% of it is collected, because Y will also go up and it isn't being collected.

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

#105

Post by Gwypaas » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #59

gruez wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Open systems have a sufficiently large capacity to store the contaminated water so they essentially only open the loop in international waters where no one can do anything about it. What about enacting a law that says "if you use cheating devices at all, you can't dock in our ports"?

>What about enacting a law that says "if you use cheating devices at all, you can't dock in our ports"? When 99.9% of vessels are doing the cheating, the shipping companies would say you would really like your people to go on a diet don’t you?

You are making it harder than it is. You can't pump any oil overboard anywhere, well above about 1 ppm if I remember correctly. In the industry you hear all the time about magic pipes being found during port state control and other inspections leading to extremely high fines and prison time. For reference, a magic pipe bypasses the oil separator making you able to discharge anything.

Simply add another annex to MARPOL regarding discharge of sulfur and the industry will follow, penalties for breaking MARPOL are usually personal and not on the shipping company. Though, as always with the maritime industry the international manner makes any change slow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78

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

#106

Post by tathougies » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

There are a number of problems with this accusation.

(1) The requirement is that the sulphur is not released into the air. This is the rule adopted by a standards body. Why exactly is it cheating to dump it into the ocean instead?

(2) It is unclear that this is a bad thing. The article only cited the danger of dumping the chemicals in a port, where concentrations could reach dangerous levels due to concentration. It is unclear that dumping in the open ocean would be bad

(3) The final charge is that the scrubber increases CO2 output. It is unclear how one should get around this. Obviously, any process that requires more energy releases more CO2. There is no data given as to whether open loop or closed loop scrubbers generate more CO2. I'm guessing both generate some more CO2. The fact of the matter is that the regulation as stated requires more CO2 to be produced. The regulations mandate extra energy use, so the extra greenhouse gases produced are directly due to the regulations, not the companies behind this.

In other words, the article is written as if to accuse the companies of breaking the law, but in reality, the companies are simply complying with the standards in a way the author does not like. Instead of calling for standards to be changed, the author is acting as if companies should magically know what to do. Standards bodies exist in order to create standards that companies can follow. They should be the ones implementing the rule change.

Indeed, the article explicitly mentions that the IMF explicitly allows these kinds of scrubbers. Thus, using them is not even air quotes cheating. It's actually fully compliant.

To the article's credit, they did point out that the standards body is indeed reviewing their rules, and should be able to figure something out in the coming months.

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

#107

Post by kardos » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #102

kardos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "how do you deliver on time? With a big enough fleet you could statistically deal with delays. Eg, in the same sense that airlines slightly overbook flights. The variability/risk in the port costs would cut into the fuel savings; hard to imagine that would be a show stopper. There must be a portion of the industry that is less time sensitive and would entertain working out the details to facilitate the slower speed…

The issue is weather becomes a common-mode failure that affects your entire fleet regardless of size. A week or two of no/light wind, or winds that are too strong mean that everything is delayed. Slower shipping may not be a problem, but unpredictability often is. Few businesses can handle completely unpredictable shipping timelines.

It wouldn't be "completely unpredictable".... pulling some numbers from a hat, let's say powered-ship takes 6 days, wind-ship takes 8-11 days. Depending on the severity of being late you would plan for perhaps 10 days. Or 12 days if missing your port slot is severe. You would be able to track the wind ship, so your window of arrival will narrow as the journey progresses. There must be a portion of the industry that will navigate this complexity in exchange for the fuel-free benefits.

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

#108

Post by r00fus » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #9

seren wrote: post #7

I was wondering what it would take to replace a current container ship by a sail boat, like a clipper. Apparently, each container ship has more or less a 100 times the tonnage of a clipper. Independently of the speed of the ships, the cost of the crews would probably kill the idea, except for goods with a very high margin, but there must a fuel price (including carbon tax) where this should become economically viable…

There are lots of experiments and even production ships with sails these days. Google for "sails on container ships" for lots of nice pictures and articles. The sails don't look like historic sails - they are often rotors that look like cylinders. Maersk's Pelican, for example, is supposed to get 10% from its rotor sails. Tangent: why do wind turbines look so conventional, with their propellers? There is a lot online…

> Tangent: why do wind turbines look so conventional, with their propellers? There is a lot online about vertical axis wind turbines etc, but I've never seen one.

Not sure if they still exist but east of SF on 580 (Altamonte pass?) I think there are still some.

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

#109

Post by paulmd » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #100

seph-reed wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Such standards exist. For example, consider the laws around "structuring" financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements. You can get as creative as you want, it's all illegal, the crime is attempting to avoid the regulation and if you try it they will absolutely fuck your shit up. It is one of the most stringently enforced financial crimes and if you try it the feds will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Never, never attempt to structure financial transactions.

One of the problems with legal discussions on this site is that we tend to apply programmer logic to legal problems like this and come up with loopholes. But ultimately the law is interpreted by humans. Judges deal with criminals who think they've found a clever loophole all day, every day.

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

#110

Post by benj111 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #59

gruez wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Open systems have a sufficiently large capacity to store the contaminated water so they essentially only open the loop in international waters where no one can do anything about it. What about enacting a law that says "if you use cheating devices at all, you can't dock in our ports"?

>What about enacting a law that says "if you use cheating devices at all, you can't dock in our ports"? When 99.9% of vessels are doing the cheating, the shipping companies would say you would really like your people to go on a diet don’t you?

That's not going to happen. For example London is basically setting cycling safety regs for lorries [1], or in the US, California is basically setting the emissions limits for vehicles.

All it takes is for the US/Europe/China to take a stand. No shipping company is going to ignore those markets.

[1] https://road.cc/content/news/142312-london-ban-hgvs-without-...