Thousands of Ships Fitted With 'Cheat Devices' To Divert Poisonous Pollution Into Sea (independent.co.uk) 150
Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler aren't the only companies using "cheat devices" to get around environmental legislation. According to The Independent, "global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with 'cheat devices' that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air." From the report: More than $12 billion has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil. This means the vessels meet standards demanded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that kick in on January 1st. However, 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.
A total of 3,756 ships, both in operation and under order, have already had scrubbers installed according to DNV GL, the world's largest ship classification company. Only 23 of these vessels have had closed-loop scrubbers installed, a version of the device that does not discharge into the sea and stores the extracted sulphur in tanks before discharging it at a safe disposal facility in a port. The Exhaust Gas Cleaning System Association has estimated that 4,000 ships will be operating with scrubbers by the time the legislation is enforced, up from fewer than a hundred in 2013. For every ton of fuel burned, ships using open-loop scrubbers emit approximately 45 tons of warm, acidic, contaminated washwater containing carcinogens including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit organization that provides scientific analysis to environmental regulators.
A total of 3,756 ships, both in operation and under order, have already had scrubbers installed according to DNV GL, the world's largest ship classification company. Only 23 of these vessels have had closed-loop scrubbers installed, a version of the device that does not discharge into the sea and stores the extracted sulphur in tanks before discharging it at a safe disposal facility in a port. The Exhaust Gas Cleaning System Association has estimated that 4,000 ships will be operating with scrubbers by the time the legislation is enforced, up from fewer than a hundred in 2013. For every ton of fuel burned, ships using open-loop scrubbers emit approximately 45 tons of warm, acidic, contaminated washwater containing carcinogens including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit organization that provides scientific analysis to environmental regulators.
Inspect them (Score:5, Interesting)
and confiscate the ships that do this.
Re:Inspect them (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that what they are doing is perfectly legal, good luck with that.
Re:Inspect them (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that what they are doing is perfectly legal, good luck with that.
Back in the early 2000s the EU and US (IIRC) simply forbade any single hulled tankers in their waters. If the same happens with these devices, this practice will end and it will end quickly. It's pretty easy to force these assholes to behave if people have the will to kick these shipping companies in the nuts a few times.
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Thank you for highlighting a simple and legal manner by which this can be discouraged.
Of course, people must also be willing to pay more for their foreign produced goods. But that's the cost of environmentalism.
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Countries can inspect ships at their ports. If they are found to be in violation, they can be confiscated.
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Some ports have banned all but low sulfur fuel, and some are even going pure electric. Anyone without the battery and thruster capacity to come into port under electric power is going to have to be towed in and out. The IMO is mandating low-sulfur fuel [joc.com] (below 3.5 percent) by 2020, but that's still quite a bit of sulfur. California ports already require even lower sulfur content (below 0.1 percent) within 40 miles of the coast, since 2012. California also already bans the use of open-loop scrubbers, probably
Re:Inspect them (Score:5, Informative)
I was curious. "Are they actually breaking any regulations here?" I was a bit suspicious, as it seemed odd for companies to spend billions on non-compliant refits. And hey, as it turns out:
Under IMO regulations, ships are permitted to use open-loop scrubbers as what they call “equivalents”. These are defined as: “Any fitting, material, appliance or apparatus to be fitted in a ship or other procedures, alternative fuel oils, or compliance methods used as an alternative to that required.”
Yay for yet another click-bait title. By "cheat devices", the author means "a 100% legal device to comply with current environmental regulations, but in a way you personally don't approve of." So, really, nothing like the BMW emissions scandal.
The argument of whether or not this should be allowed is another matter entirely, but let's at least be clear on the actual facts.
What about, er, 'eating local' for instance? (Score:2)
... for a change...
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Exactly; I came here to write that. What they're doing is perfectly legal.
Now, it's also risky. With the new sulphur standards on fuels (which basically require that either bunker fuel be basically the same stuff as diesel, or that ships capture the sulphur from traditional bunker fuel), owners have to make a choice between three options:
* Pay more for fuel
* Install expensive closed-loop scrubbers
* Install cheap open-loop scrubbers
The problem is they're considering banning the third
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you may end up having to retrofit to a closed-loop scrubber, which is more expensive than just having installed a closed-loop scrubber to begin with. It's not an easy choice for owners.
It takes money to make money and if you buy cheap you buy twice.
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(...) but in a way you personally don't approve of (...)
Dumping toxic thrash is much more than that. It is not an opinion, it is objectively morally wrong. It may be legal because the law is crap but a slightly ethical company would never do this.
What we need are names. I don't like to buy things from people that shit in my backyard or from people that hire people that shit in my backyard.
Re: Inspect them (Score:2)
Then the easy button, to start with, is not buying a single chinese made item. They arent the only offenders, but you can bet that nearly none of their product is environmentally friendly during production and/or shipping. Being morally conscious costs money. Aside from stealing patented IP and ripping off everyone else, they do not comply with environmental concerns. There is a reason their shit is 10x cheaper. Quality of production ans materials, cost of research and IP, and cost of production. You dont
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Okay, I'll bite. Explain the morality in question, and the "objective" part, if you please?
I mean, this sounds too much like, well, religion. And we all know that religion is both evil and irrelevant....
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Dumping toxic thrash is much more than that. It is not an opinion, it is objectively morally wrong.
No such thing. It's either objective or it's moral, since all morality is subjective.
It's perfectly rational to believe that it doesn't matter in the long run what we do to this planet, because the universe doesn't care, and because it's also rational to believe that free will is illusory.
My morality agrees with yours in this case, but I'm not going to pretend that it's anything other than subjective, because I've had enough self-delusion for several lifetimes already.
Ultimately, might makes right, but ther
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Of course, if you think "sulfurous acid" is ok for life then allow me to mix up a batch for you.
Dilute it a quadrillion-fold, as these ships are doing, and I will be happy to drink it.
Sulfuric acid is not only "ok" for life, it is essential. You have plenty of sulfate ions in your blood right now.
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Sounds reasonable.
Given that oceans have hundreds of time the mass of the atmosphere, it is plausible that diverting the sulphur there is a huge improvement, well worth the billions spent. Toxicity is always in the dose.
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They ARE, actually. For instance, in Alaska, it's against clean water regulations to do this sort of dumping in port. I'm pretty sure it's also illegal in British Columbia. https://www.cruiselawnews.com/... [cruiselawnews.com]
So no, it's not illegal on an international level, but it is also recognized that this is not harmless waste water. This needs to be reined in.
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Hilarious that BC has laws like that, when for decades they've been dumping their raw sewage straight into Puget Sound. I guess it's easier to pass regulations that others have to comply with. But I digress (sorry, grumpy WA resident here).
I think, as with many things, it's context that matters. When ships are near or in port, the waste is concentrated, and those are more environmentally sensitive areas to begin with. Out in the middle of the ocean, there's a lot more room for the waste sulfur to disper
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"cheating" in games is something that nothing in the game actually prevents you from doing, but it breaks the spirit of the game.
Likewise, "cheating" in a marriage is not physically assaulting your partner or ripping the marriage contract to shreds. But it violates the spirit of the union.
So yes, "cheat device" is absolutely the proper term when you install something that satisfies the letters of the regulation while blatantly violating its intention.
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and confiscate the ships that do this.
Wouldn't his be easy enough for CBP to check for in US ports? They are on each ship anyway.
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No. But we do. And they need some target practice.
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Gotta fight pollution with pollution!
Re:Sulfur is fertilizer (Score:5, Insightful)
Look up "red tide" and "algae blooms" and get back to us.
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I don't see what the big deal is here. Sulfur is fertilizer. In the air, it can cause acidic rain, which may be undesirable for your buildings and cars, but in the soil or in the ocean it seems like sulfur should be just another fertilizer making plants grow faster/better. And as we all know, plants growing absorb CO2, so the complaint that dumping sulfur in the ocean causes the ocean to release CO2 seems temporary at best.
Sometimes environmentalists don't think things through very well and go too far with their temper tantrums.
Maybe you should learn some basic chemistry. Sulfur dioxide plus water (ie. Sea Water) results in sulfurous acid [quora.com]. Of course, sulfurous acid is not a bad a sulphuric acid (see "Car batteries") but it does leed to the acidification of the world's oceans and seas which is pretty bad.
Re: Sulfur is fertilizer (Score:2)
Marine life does not fair well when you fuck with its pH. Hopefully this isnt enough concentration to create a ton of hydronium ions. If it is, then yea, environmental disaster. A mild acidity of 5.5 - 6.5 is favorable to plant life and nutrient absorption. Vary much more acidic and the plants cannot uptake nutrients, stop oxygenating water, and fish start shedding scales.
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Yeah. If they don't pull over. Same thing cops do to people for speeding. They chase them.
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So your solution to ships that pollute the sea is to SINK THEM?!?!
Typical American think. You can also just disable the vessel. I'm not sure why here in the US we always have to go whole hog with things. A quick tap-tap to the prop is enough to bring a ship to a complete halt.
Re: Inspect them (Score:2)
Typical American think
Typical American speak??
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We'll just tow them outside the environment.
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Re: Inspect them (Score:2)
As someone who has done a crack-pac tour (on loan to the coastguard between deployments, patrolling near panama and equador, in equatorial waters), I can tell you that getting permission to board or search vessels requires permission from the country whose flag they are flying. Needless to say you get denied more than you get permitted.
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In My Opinion... has a navy?
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Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
The tragedy of the commons is seemingly, timeless, observational genius.
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In this case, it kind of doesn't matter.
My college roommate was an environmental engineer. A cliche of the field is "the solution to pollution is dilution". Pollution is mostly stuff that exists around us anyway, that is only bad because it's concentrated by some industrial process. Spread it back out, and it's fine.
It's been the case as long as ships have had engines that they've polluted quite badly. Except ... it doesn't matter at at sea (near a port is a different issue, and a real concern in some c
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Coastlines which BTW happen to have vastly higher rates of primary oceanic productivity than the vast open areas of deepwater far from land. It's at coastlines that you get the upwellings and richer discharges that bring minerals to the surface that phototrophic organisms need.
The mass of the oceans as a whole is incredibly large. The
How does adding sulfur to sea water increase CO2? (Score:3)
One thing the article (and summary( states as fact without support, is that adding sulfur to sea water increases CO2 emissions.
Huh? How would that be true?
Yes it makes the ocean more polluted but isn't the air what we are more freaked out about now, so in there we should be willing to burn the oceans to save the whole planet?
On a side note, this is exactly why I am so against the CO2 panic - in order to avoid a perfectly harmless gas going into the atmosphere, we literally have built systems so that thousands of ships can pollute the oceans instead. :-(
Some actual info (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure why this was not linked to, but here is what seems to be a pretty good paper [ingentaconnect.com] on how sulfur is converted to CO2 - basically what is really happening is the sulfur is converted to sufur dioxide, which means the seawater gives up some carbon dioxide to maintain balance...
One interesting thing the paper says though, is that it's still a better idea to dump sulfur into the ocean in the end:
The oceans, as the atmosphere, are very dynamic, so there are similarities with the release of sulfur into either of these two systems. The oceans, however, are powerful buffers, and by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, they are more able to accommodate the SO2 addition. The dominant biota in the oceans, the plankton, are much more dynamic than their terrestrial counterparts, higher plants (the former having generation times measured in days to weeks, as opposed to years), so the oceans capability for repair of short-term, localised effects is consid- erably greater than their terrestrial counterparts.
Re: Some actual info (Score:2)
Not sure why this was not linked to, but here is what seems to be a pretty good paper on how sulfur is converted to CO2...
So... not much of a chem whiz, huh.
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Most of us only know one whiz, and he only makes cheez [wikipedia.org].
Well it's all relative (Score:2)
So... not much of a chem whiz, huh.
That depends on what area of chemistry you are talking about...
I've never really dealt with sulfur and water, more on the fire end of things. So I wasn't too familiar with the whole SO2/CO2 relationship in the ocean, no... were you really? Could you honestly have answered my question before I posted that paper? Color me dubious, snarky poster.
I at least know enough to understand the paper I posted, since all you posted was snark and nothing related to it, I guess we'll
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Do you pee in your own pool? It's just a drop...
But I get the point. That big oil spill off of Louisiana was also nothing compared to the natural seepage every year all year. But at that location it fucked up all the eats and a lot of the beach. The dispersants were more harmful than the oil.
Re: Some actual info (Score:5, Interesting)
"The solution to pollution is dilution."
Why do people still believe this?
https://marinebio.org/the-solu... [marinebio.org]
We literally studied this back in the seventies and found out that dilution DOES NOT WORK. It doesn't work on land, in air, or in water. It doesn't work with chemicals and it doesn't work with radioactive isotopes. It doesn't. Fucking. Work. And every time someone suggests that it does, even though science has proven conclusively that it doesn't, we all get a little dumber.
The ships are all taking the same few routes, specifically because currents and winds make them convenient. Those same currents and winds are the reason why dilution doesn't work. Seawater doesn't mix as much as you think. If you dump a bunch of something in the ocean, it tends to stay together. But even air masses resist mixing. Zones of differing pressure tend to slip right past one another. During the fires in northern California, the smoke can skip right past one county (at least in the main) and the NEXT county can be much more heavily inundated with smoke.
Dilution is not the pollution solution, and anyone who thinks otherwise is literally half a century behind scientific discovery. Believing that dilution solves pollution problems is exactly the same kind of stupidity as AGW denialism.
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In this case, the ships are producing sulfate, the second-most abundant anion in the ocean
Quantity is irrelevant if it's over the limits of the system to handle it.
It produces some acidity in the oceans too, but nowhere near enough to change overall acidity except in the immediate effluent.
Thanks to atmospheric CO2 the oceans are already more acidic than can be solved by reaction with subaquatic limestone, which is normally what happens to it. That's why the ocean is already overacid.
anyone who exclaims dilution is never a solution for a substance already naturally found in prolific quantities, is simply redefining something which isn't a pollutant as a pollutant
That's not the definition of pollutant, you just failed your English comprehension test. If there's too much of something, it's a pollutant, even if it's ubiquitous.
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Out of interest, let's say humans release 2.5 Tmol/yr of sulphur in the ocean. This compares to 4*10^19 mol already in the ocean (if one believe the 1.3 * 10^21g of sulphur in the ocean provided by Google), i.e. 40.6million Tmol.
Sometimes large numbers, without context, are meaningless.
YOU are driving this polution (Score:2)
We can't let these people dump their sulfur anywhere. Clean up or shut down
The only reason these ships are operating is because you are buying stuff from China. Stop doing that and they won't need the ships and there won't be as much pollution.
YOU are driving this pollution through your purchasing habits.
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Fine. Then give them an offer they can't refuse. Put a gun to their heads and tell them, Clean up, or else.
Who is going to pull the gun? The same people pulling out their wallet and offering money for the goods that need transoceanic transportation?
The problem will persist UNTIL YOU change your behavior. You are driving the current system. They are just fulfilling your demand for cheap stuff. Don't try to pretend you do not share the blame. You want change, start with yourself.
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If your bowl of cereal is the size of an ocean, you can handle quite a large amount mixed in without any danger.
We had a solution ... (Score:3)
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To those that say a nuclear powered cargo vessel would cost too much I will point out a part of the linked Wikipedia article.
The Maritime Administration placed her out of service in 1971 to save costs, a decision that made sense when fuel oil cost US$20 per ton. In 1974, however, when fuel oil cost $80 per ton, Savannah's operating costs would have been no greater than a conventional cargo ship.
The Savannah would have been economical to run even though it was a small ship built as a compromise between a cargo ship and cruise ship. I guess the draw was supposed to be that people could ride along in luxury on cargo runs to have bragging rights to have sailed on a nuclear powered ship. I also guess this didn't materialize and the novelty would have worn off quickly even if it
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So the efficiency was due to a slender hull that comp
THE SOLUTION (Score:3, Funny)
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The solution to this is simple. More capitalism. Probably we should let some rich people buy the oceans and charge tolls to use them, then pray that they use those profits to keep the oceans clean out of selfishness.
BREAKING NEWS :
This has already happened.
Re: THE SOLUTION (Score:2, Insightful)
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When Eastern Europe finally got rid of the Soviet Union, they were left with massive environmental damage created by the communist regime.
Capitalism has many faults. Communism is far worse.
Re: THE SOLUTION (Score:2)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
State Capitalism is not actual socialism.
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Capitalism isn't solving America's healthcare crisis, higher education crisis, or housing crisis.
It's quite hard for a free market to function when there are all manner of laws and regulations that strictly forbid it.
We're in this whole fucking mess because we can't stop over production, we can't check greed.
Thinking that eliminating capitalism removes greed is utterly naive. Find me some flavor of Marxist system that didn't end up enriching the people who seized power at the expense of the common person.
When profits are on the line, how do you stop greedy individuals from out pacing the ability of corrupted politicians from regulate their bad behavior?
The only way is to convince people to vote differently with their wallets, or if you feel really passionate about it to come up with a better, less damaging way of doing business. Once again,
Re: THE SOLUTION (Score:2)
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let capitalism do what it does best- finding the fastest, cheapest, and most effective solutions
Unfortunately the fastest, cheapest and most effective solution is often to lobby to change the rues of the game. Or game the system such that you 'comply' with the rues but not the reason for the actual rules in the first place. Loopholes.
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The fastest, cheapest, possibly most effective (depending on how you define effective) solution is to buy some politicians and change the law.
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Or perhaps we can just write some basic, reasonable regulation AND enforce it; this sets the rules of the game, and then let capitalism do what it does best- finding the fastest, cheapest, and most effective solutions to the rest of the problems.
That regulation is socialist. If it were capitalist, capital (which is currently in control) would have regulated itself and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Greta, Go Girl! (Score:2, Troll)
We're all waiting for that girl to show up in the harbor, growling at them container vessels!
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We're all waiting for that girl to show up in the harbor, growling at them container vessels!
Yes, and anyone else who cares.
Globalization is a scam (Score:4, Interesting)
I was right all along - told you so (Score:3)
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Has my belief that the human race is shit been validated?
You still needed validation for that? People that are not shit are the exception, not the rule. Usually the shit people do not get an opportunity to act with this much effect on their mind-set, but look, for example, at all the non-experts that attack climate science with no other real justification than that they do not like the results. And that one may end up killing the human race. (Not that the madmen that have created and are maintaining the capability for nuclear sterilization of this planet are any
Thank the "no transitional fuel" extremists (Score:2)
Extremists in my area are trying to stop the provision of natural gas to replace bunker fuel for cargo ships. Never mind the local native americans, who most certainly would be amenable to the facilities if they were running them, or at least had a big enough "piece of the action".
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Environmental extremist want a "perfect solution" and they want it right now. An major improvement is simply not good enough. Because of their interference, there is no improvement. Environmental extremists are the environment's worse enemy.
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Environmental extremist want a "perfect solution" and they want it right now.
It's interesting that extremists on an issue often converge to wanting exactly the same thing. Look for example at the comments you get here about how a soltution for something is pointless because it doesn't fix EVERYTHING.
International regulations (Score:2)
The problem is with international regulation. Just like aircraft fuel is almost entirely untaxed (despite high taxes on auto fuel), no country wants to be the first to impose really strict regulations on transport ships, or to tax the fuel equivalently.
Ships should be subject to regulations equivalent to diesel trucks. Trucks also have scrubbers, and they don't just dump the contents on the ground. Their fuel should also be taxed equivalently - call it a CO2 fee, or whatever your like, but it ought to be th
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Sure, trucks have DPF. It traps soot and then burns it off. If you pootle around town and never hit the freeway, it never gets hot enough to burn itself off, so fuel is injected into it in order to cause a regen burn. For vehicles which only operate in town, this can cost as much as 5% of your mileage. Diesel soot is big and chunky, so cilia can remove it from your lungs. Gassers produce just as much soot as diesels, but nearly all of it is very fine (PM2.5) which is smaller than the diameter of cilia, maki
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Shipping will get more expensive, and that's fine.
Says you. In any nation where there is the opportunity for people to vote I believe the chances of a CO2 tax to survive an election is near zero.
Here's an idea, how about instead of forcing our economy into the shitter with crushing taxes we solve the problem?
How about we find a means to produce sulfur free fuels that are cheaper than the high sulfur fuels we use now? How about we investigate again the possibility of nuclear powered cargo ships? How about we do something that won't just get voted out two
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Says you. In any nation where there is the opportunity for people to vote I believe the chances of a CO2 tax to survive an election is near zero.
Check back in with Canada in a couple of weeks. That is precisely the election issue being decided right now, with 3 of the 4 major parties committed to maintaining and increasing the existing CO2 tax, and only one planning to scrap it. Current polls show that it could still go either way.
The solution to pollution (Score:2)
Is Dilution
Me: Sir the discharge storage tank is measuring 38 curies. Our limit prohibits discharging more than 20 curies into the ocean.
Officer: then we discharge half the tank, top it back off with fresh feed water, and discharge again next week when we are miles away.
Time to give prison time to these people (Score:2)
If there is a fine they will just continue. Things will change only if everybody involved goes to prison.
What did you expect to happen? (Score:2)
When some faceless, unaccountable government bureaucracy creates a standard that can't possibly be met because the goal was actually to destroy the industry rather than protect the environment, don't be surprised that human resourcefulness will find a way around it.
The EPA studied this and put out a report (Score:3)
In fact, the biggest sulfate-related environmental concern is actually a decease in dissolved oxygen in the water due to the reaction. You're basically taking a substance which is problematic in the air (SO2 in the air turns into acid rain, which kills trees and screws up the pH in ecosystems with limited amounts of water), and converting it into a material that's already found in the oceans in abundance (sulfate). This actually sounds like a pretty clever solution to bypass the disruptive stage (SO2 in the air) entirely and send the sulfur straight to where it's going to eventually end up anyway.
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Because the criminal liability could fall on the purchaser or the seller, depending.
Most laws solve that by making the purchaser liable and holding to the old "ignorance is no defence" stance. e.g.: It's not illegal for mud flap shops to sell you a RADAR detector but it's illegal for you to use one in a vehicle.
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"It's not illegal for mud flap shops to sell you a RADAR detector but it's illegal for you to use one in a vehicle."
That depends entirely on the jurisdiction. It is also not illegal if one is properly licensed to "receive" the radar radio signal and transmit a more powerful "reflection" signal that has been doppler shifted so that the radar device reads whatever you have decided you want it to read.
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"As long as you don'y break and other laws when doing so."
and what other laws were being broken?
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Nuclear powered ships would solve this problem.
And create new ones every time one of them hits a reef and sinks.
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And create new ones every time one of them hits a reef and sinks.
Just how often does any kind of ship hit a reef and sink? We can have all the ships dump sulfur into the sea, and when they hit a reef and sink they make an oil slick, or.....
We can have nuclear powered ships that emit nothing and when they hit a reef they still make a mess. It's not like these reactors would be all that large. In the unlikely event the core is opened up to spill out all its guts the radioactive material would be far smaller than that of Fukushima. The radioactive iodine would decay awa
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And create new ones every time one of them hits a reef and sinks.
Just how often does any kind of ship hit a reef and sink? We can have all the ships dump sulfur into the sea, and when they hit a reef and sink they make an oil slick, or.....
We can have nuclear powered ships that emit nothing and when they hit a reef they still make a mess. It's not like these reactors would be all that large. In the unlikely event the core is opened up to spill out all its guts the radioactive material would be far smaller than that of Fukushima. The radioactive iodine would decay away in a month, and the rest just dissipates into the sea to hurt nobody. The sea is full of radioactive uranium and tritium already, adding whatever little amount is in a naval reactor is nothing.
Again, this is assuming a worst case. The chances of a sunken environmental problem are minimal compared to the many more floating environmental disasters we have now.
What alternatives do we have? Return to the use of "windjammers"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
While I believe that seeing a fleet of near impossibly large sailing ships would be an awesome sight, there's a big problem of them being not particularly economic so long as we have access to petroleum and uranium.
I won't say that we have to choose one solution above all else, only that we can't rule out nuclear power just because you don't understand the relative scales of the problems for each choice.
According to Allianz 66 vessels over 100GT were lost in 2018. So we waived a magic wand and converted the entire merchant fleet to nuclear today that's 66 nuclear reactors lost at sea annually, 660 nuclear reactors lost at sea extrapolated over a decade and ~2000 of them until 2050.
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According to Allianz 66 vessels over 100GT were lost in 2018. So we waived a magic wand and converted the entire merchant fleet to nuclear today that's 66 nuclear reactors lost at sea annually, 660 nuclear reactors lost at sea extrapolated over a decade and ~2000 of them until 2050.
I'm still not sure I should care. Ships get lost at sea. It happens. We've lost a number of nuclear powered ships before. Here's a list of the submarines lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even if the core is opened the level of radiation that can leak will be minimal compared to the existing radioactive elements in the sea. The sea contains uranium salts already. There is heavy water already in the sea. Here's something I found explaining just how much radioactive material is in the sea right n
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According to Allianz 66 vessels over 100GT were lost in 2018. So we waived a magic wand and converted the entire merchant fleet to nuclear today that's 66 nuclear reactors lost at sea annually, 660 nuclear reactors lost at sea extrapolated over a decade and ~2000 of them until 2050.
I'm still not sure I should care. Ships get lost at sea. It happens. We've lost a number of nuclear powered ships before. Here's a list of the submarines lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even if the core is opened the level of radiation that can leak will be minimal compared to the existing radioactive elements in the sea. The sea contains uranium salts already. There is heavy water already in the sea. Here's something I found explaining just how much radioactive material is in the sea right now. http://www.waterencyclopedia.c... [waterencyclopedia.com]
There's plans to "mine" the sea for uranium. If we do that to fuel the ships then the net uranium added to the sea with any sinking would be zero. Any fission products we care about as a biological hazard are those that decay quickly. The ones that hang on for a big longer will be diluted in the vastness of the sea. That assumes the core is opened, a worst case scenario. More likely it's left largely intact and would sink slowly into the seabed and entombed better than any man-made structure.
Also, remember why we put spent fuel rods in cooling pools, this dissipates the heat well and limits the spread of the radiation. Again, the sea is already radioactive, anything we add will be next to nothing. This should not excuse intentional dumping, only that if a nuclear powered ship is lost in the deep ocean that it's probably best left on the bottom than trying to bring it back up for disposal somewhere else.
Well, if I took one of these reactors, broke it open dumped it in your back yard, or took the radioactive waste leeching out of it and put it in your food, would you care then? It's easy to be an dick who doesn't care what the consequences of his actions are as long as they don't affect himself/herself directly. However, if you plan to not give a shit while sinking ships take thousands of nuclear reactors in the ocean you better make sure none of them sink in my territorial waters and that you don't do your
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Your preference for continuing to burn massive quantities of bunker fuel because of a misinformed fear of the occasional accident, demonstrates that you are not serious about the problem. Your attitude is the reason that coal is still the dominant energy source today; do us all a favor and educate yourself.
US energy consumption is 37% petroleum, 31,0% natural gas, 13% coal, 11% renewables and 8% coal, so if anybody needs and education it's you. Furthermore I don't see how retiring bunker fuel for vastly increased quantities of radioactive waste is a good trade, anymore than I understand why it is preferable to trade a straight diet of arsenic laced food for a diet seasoned with generous doses of Polonium 210.
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Stuff made from corn is actually made from topsoil.
Virtually all corn not grown for food is grown continuously, meaning without crop rotation or even letting fields lie fallow. Especially when coupled with machine cultivation methods which create hardpan (which in turn creates anaerobic soil conditions) this results in the death of beneficial organisms in the soil like nematodes. You wind up growing crops hydroponically in a dirt medium. That's why corn ethanol is barely energy-positive. And of all the stat
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Preface this by making an assumption. My experience is from the power plant industry, I assume the tech is similar.
What you describe is a system designed to collect "large" particulate matter, mainly fly-ash and some other gaseous reduction (SCR, SNCR, Activated Carbon Capture) byproducts. Electrostatic Precipitators generally accomplish the same thing. What I ASSUME this article it talking about are wet scrubbers. After the particulates are removed (or not, idk now ships work) they pass the exhaust thr
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I miss my time out at these plants, way more exciting than driving a desk. I don't miss sweating my balls off next to the top of a 500MW boiler in July though, so there's that.
As far as the bags, definitely tough to say. Coal fly-ash (what comes out of the bag house/precip) is the consistency of talc, but more of a light tan color. A lot of it is just landfilled, but it can also be used as a replacement for Portland Cement among other things. I'd be surprised if fuel oil produced the same "stuff" though
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I'm not sure what people think waste goes to. Of course it goes to a landfill or wherever. It isn't going to Mars.