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How Cruise Ships Bring 1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes To Brooklyn a Year (nytimes.com) 71

Posted by BeauHD from the environmentally-unfriendly dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to introduce [a $21 million plug-in station] in Red Hook several years ago in an effort to eliminate 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide, 25 tons of nitrous oxide and tons of hazardous particulate matter spewed out each year by cruise ships idling off Brooklyn's coast. [A recent survey found that asthma rates in Red Hook were almost twice as high as the citywide average. Also, Vanadium, a toxic metal in marine fuel that can cause lung damage, was found near cruise terminals in Brooklyn and Manhattan.] When not using shore power, a single cruise ship docked for one day can emit as much diesel exhaust as 34,400 idling tractor-trailers, according to an independent analysis verified by the Environmental Protection Agency. When a ship is plugged in, the agency said, its exhaust is nearly eliminated. But the system has hardly been used after going into operation in 2016. And New York City is expected to announce design plans next year that would expand and modernize terminals in Brooklyn and Manhattan to accommodate the world's largest cruise ships, and more of them. Yet there is no plan to further expand the shore power system.

Neighborhood residents, led by Mr. Armstrong, are sounding the alarm. They want the pollution controls that were promised by the Bloomberg administration. They fault the city and state for failing to force the matter, and the cruise line companies for failing to use the system. Carnival Cruise, which owns the three big ships that dock regularly in Brooklyn, including the Queen Mary 2, agrees that the issue is important. [...] Figuring out why Brooklyn's shore-power system hasn't eliminated cruise ship pollution has become a guessing game involving various government agencies, activists and the cruise lines themselves. One thing is certain: Cruise ships in New York don't have to plug in if they don't want to. The reason why many ships don't plug in is because they aren't required to. "California, unlike New York, has made plugging in mandatory," the report says. "Under a strict 2007 diesel-emissions law, the state requires that 70 percent of visiting ships -- including container and refrigerated cargo vessels -- connect to shore power."

"In Brooklyn, while other cruise ships are welcome to use the plug-in system, the Queen Mary is the only one that can easily access shore power because the electrical sockets on other ships do not line up with the shore-power crane, according to a development corporation spokesman."
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How Cruise Ships Bring 1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes To Brooklyn a Year More

How Cruise Ships Bring 1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes To Brooklyn a Year

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  • The ships don't line up with the crane? (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Thursday December 26, 2019 @11:55PM (#59560710)
    Who built the crane, and why didn't they make it compatible with the ships who stop there?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:The ships don't line up with the crane? (Score:5, Informative)

      by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@@@earthlink...net> on Friday December 27, 2019 @12:57AM (#59560822)

      Who built the crane, and why didn't they make it compatible with the ships who stop there?

      Carnival Cruises/Cunard Line built it. It's not compatible with other ships because then other ships might want to use it. It was built to give a PR advantage to Cunard Line, and if there is a requirement for ships to plug in to shore power in the future then Cunard Line will have a jump on the competition.

      If other ships want shore power then they should invest in the facilities for it. If Brooklyn wants more ships to plug in then maybe they should pay for the facilities to be built. And build the facilities to fit the ships that stop there.

      What would make more ships want to plug in is to have it cheaper to plug in than to not plug in. This can be imposed on the ships a couple ways. One is to fine them for not plugging in. Another is to offer the electricity for cheaper than they'd spend on fuel.

      One problem that Carnival/Cunard is running into is the shore power not being reliable. They cannot have the ship lose power. They need power to maintain communications, lights, and other safety critical systems, even while in port. Brooklyn is having problems maintaining power to the ships while in port. If they can't fix this then even passing a law to require that ships plug in, like California has done, then they will still need to run their engines. My guess is this is why Brooklyn doesn't require ships to plug in, because if they did then it falls on Brooklyn for not keeping their systems in good repair. So long as the emissions problem is seen as being caused by the ships then the government sees no incentive to resolve the issue. Doing nothing is most often cheaper than doing something. I'm guessing that they will let the cruise lines spend their money and PR on this. Only when or if it looks bad for them will they do anything about it.

      • is seen as being caused by the ships

        "Is seen"...as opposed to, you know, measured?

        • "Is seen"...as opposed to, you know, measured?

          I worded that poorly. So long as the problem is viewed by the public as the presence of the ships and not a lack of government action then the government sees little real incentive to do anything.

          Measure it all you want, this is still a public relations issue on who gets the ultimate blame. Where this blame lies is where the money will have to come from to fix it.

          If people blame the government then the government just places the blame on the shipping companies. If people blame the shipping companies then

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bobby ( 109046 )

      Because, like too many failures and even disasters, non-technical people make the decisions.

      (in all fairness, yes, I'm an engineer, and we're not perfect, but most of us would see this coming...)

  • 1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes To New York City. The fumes don't stay in Brooklyn.

    • 1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes To New York City. The fumes don't stay in Brooklyn.

      True.

      Of course, 1200 tons of fumes spread over NYC amounts to .0000134% of the air over NYC. That's barely enough to be dangerous if the 1200 tons were nerve gas instead of diesel fumes...

  • Asthma rates? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shompol ( 1690084 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @01:40AM (#59560876)

    A recent survey found that asthma rates in Red Hook were almost twice as high as the citywide average.

    Also might have something to do with the fact that Red Hook is located directly under a highway that connects Brooklyn and half of Long Island to the continent, as well as Staten Island and south Jersey to the city. This is one of the busiest highways in the US. I would not be surprised if there are actually 34000 tractor trailers idling there at all times because they are stuck in traffic. TFS fails to mention this minor detail.

    • Doesn't explain the vanadium.

    • Re:Asthma rates? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @05:41AM (#59561134) Journal
      A few years ago, Rotterdam instituted an environmental zone inside its ring road, banning old diesel cars and even old petrol cars, to improve air quality. A judge has since struck down the ban on petrol cars because "it did not make any significant impact". But the ban on old diesel cars is still under fire as well, as people argue that a single cruiseship entering the harbour negates almost a century's worth of the effect of the environmental zone. Though the numbers add up, it's not an entirely fair comparison: diesel cars emit their crap right in town, but not all of the soot from cruiseships make it into the city. But with the right winds, plenty still makes it into the neighborhoods, the effects far outstripping that of diesel cars.

      • Gasoline cars emit just as much soot as diesels. And it's finer soot. We discussed it here. I've linked it here a ton of times.

        https://slashdot.org/story/165... [slashdot.org]

        Diesels make more visible soot, which is good, because visible soot is less dangerous.

        Ultimately all ICEVs need to go, but don't pick on diesels. With DEF and DPF they are basically the same as gassers, except with slightly less CO2 emissions due to higher efficiency. Without DPF they produce far less PM2.5 and significantly less CO2, but they make g

  • a single cruise ship docked for one day can emit as much diesel exhaust as 34,400 idling tractor-trailers,

    Just publicise to the passengers (and crew) on those ships how much toxicity they are exposed to. They will soon stop using cruise liners and then the whole cruise business will die through lack of trade.

    • Just publicise to the passengers (and crew) on those ships how much toxicity they are exposed to. They will soon stop using cruise liners and then the whole cruise business will die through lack of trade.

      Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

      Seriously? You really think the ignorant, selfish masses give a fuck about that?

      Climate change is someone else's problem, not mine.

      "They" should do something about it but I'm not going to sacrifice my cold air machine, or pull on a coat in Winter or suffer the dreaded inconvenience of mass transit, or stop buying cheap Chinese-made shit that I don't need or going on pointless cruises.

      Everyone else should pollute less!

    • Re:A quick way to solve the problem (Score:4, Informative)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @05:45AM (#59561138) Journal
      No kidding. German and British researchers found the air quality on deck of some cruise ships to be as bad as in the worst polluted cities.

      In this day and age where some people are ashamed to fly because of the environmental impact, it might help to have more publicity around the amount of pollution caused by your cruise holiday. Most cruise ships run on fuel oil, the nastiest fuel and literally the dregs of the fuel refining process. And they burn a lot of it. One study [euronews.com] claims that Carnival's ships alone emit 10 times more NOx around Europe than all of Europe's cars do. And for greenhouse gases, the picture is just as bad: according to several studies, taking a cruise across the Atlantic results in 2 to 7 times more (depending on the study) CO2 emissions compared to a long haul flight.

      • Those ships are a nightmare in general. The employees are also treated and paid quite poorly, and there are norovirus and flu outbreaks all the time. The pollution should be enough to make someone think twice, but the whole experience is fraught.

    • I doubt it. First of all, the health risks of cruise ships are already fairly well publicised, like norovirus, chemical exposure, and crime on the high seas. Second, the ships have smokestacks, I wouldn't be surprised if the passengers are actually exposed to less of the emissions than the cities they are near.

  • >"They want the pollution controls that were promised by the Bloomberg administration. "

    Sorry, but Bloomberg has been too busy messing with Virginia's elections and also trying to strip good citizens of their 2A rights to deal with things inside his own area. And now he has another new distraction...

    • Sorry, but Bloomberg has been too busy messing with Virginia's elections and also trying to strip good citizens of their 2A rights to deal with things inside his own area. And now he has another new distraction...

      Bloomberg left NYC mayoral office 6 years ago. When do you plan to start pointing finger at de Blasio, the current mayor, for current NYC problems?

  • Plugging a cruise ship into shore power isn't an easy thing to do. Ship power systems can differ massively from ship to ship, as there is no internationally standardised cruise ship design. Even sister ships in the same class can have significant differences.

    Unfortunetly many older cruise ships simply have not been built to accept shore power, so retrofitting this capability is an expensive undertaking and would only be done for hotel areas and other non-critical systems. In these ships, generators will sti

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bobby ( 109046 )

      Thank you for facts and information. I'm an EE and do some wiring including commercial and industrial, but I've never looked into what would happen if you ran a 50Hz system on 60Hz. Many (most?) things would not care. Induction motors would run faster, and in many cases it would not matter. And more and more of them are being replaced by 3-phase (still induction) motors with VFD (variable-frequency drive) systems, so again, would not care about 50 or 60 Hz supply.

      I did some actual searching. "Shore pow

      • Many of the ships I worked on used 11kV for main feeds with a separate transformer substation down on Deck 0 for each vertical zone (these were the vertical firezones of the ship). The 230V (and 110V in pax areas) was all stepped down from this.

        A 50Hz motor running at 60Hz, will require a higher voltage to perform the same duty. In this situation this won't happen, so it will draw more current. Core loss will increase, causing overheating of the core, and Power Factor will decrease. As you said, shaft speed

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bobby ( 109046 )

          Thanks, and yes, I know about motor current, rotor-slip induced armature current, etc. There exist wonderful VFD and frequency converters. And when shore power is mandated, the ships will be upgraded. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bobby ( 109046 )

        Tried to do the link but /. code stripped out the 2 stupid spaces:

        https://sfport.com/ftp/uploadedfiles/meetings/supporting/2006/Item 4a Presentation.pdf

  • WHT? In the Navy we brought on shore power the second we could get it. Who in their right mind would want to keep manning engineering as if we were still at sea?

    There must be some reason, good or not, if they aren't hooking up to shore power as fast as their oil stained hands can hook up the cables.

    • TFA - power from shore for civilians is not as reliable as needed. If the power goes out, the cruise line would be sued, when grandma's O2 stops working. Get the delivery robust first.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bobby ( 109046 )

        Wait a minute, the ships are going to have standby generators. Titanic had several generators. Worst-case scenario you'd have special rooms with red outlets connected to a UPS and generator for O2 concentrators and other medical equipment.

    • The Navy doesn't care about the cost of shore power, but the Cruise lines definitely do. I'd wager the cost of low-grade diesel fuel to spin onboard generators makes self-generated power competitive with whatever outrageous commercial rates are being charged at the port.

      Plus these ships are probably never "off" or spun down very much. The lighting, HVAC, kitchens, laundry are probably nearly continuously in use, at shore or at sea. Their "uptime" is probably comparable to a warship in hostile waters, not

  • Give them a nice roof and some walls, they'll get the message.
  • The people with waterfront property want to export the pollution to where the power stations are. Remember power does not just come out of the wall like magic. It is produced somewhere, and much of it is produced by COAL. So these New Yawkers want clean water and export the pollution to where the coal is being burned outside the city. Put up windmills or whatever to make the city power independent, then this would be fairer. Otherwise it is the Urban population voting to move their problems out onto ot

    • The people with waterfront property want to export the pollution to where the power stations are. Remember power does not just come out of the wall like magic. It is produced somewhere, and much of it is produced by COAL. So these New Yawkers want clean water and export the pollution to where the coal is being burned outside the city. Put up windmills or whatever to make the city power independent, then this would be fairer. Otherwise it is the Urban population voting to move their problems out onto other people. (Our founding fathers saw this and implemented the electoral college.)

      Heat does not come out of the vents like magic either. New Yorkers reminds me of pipeline protesters coming out in their pickups to complain about fossil fuels. They should be the first people cut off.

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

    • 45% of NYC's electricity comes from fossil fuels [nytimes.com], so the net CO2 added by these ships is actually closer to 660 tons of CO2 (ignoring transmission losses). That is, if you hook the ships up to shore power, the electricity they're getting from the grid is still producing about 540 tons of CO2. So the net additional CO2 generated by staying off shore power is 660 tons/yr.
    • The Brooklyn terminal had 28 cruise ships [edc.nyc] dock there last year. 660 tons of CO2 / 28 ships = 23.6 tons each time a ship docks there.
    • A

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ruddk ( 5153113 )

      The CO2 part isn't really the important part. They emit a lot of NOx and SOx. For example, here in Denmark, Copenhagen, in 2017, cruise ships contributed with 14425Kg SOx and 310448Kg NOx whereas all the cars in the city releases 2511Kg SOx and 806206Kg NOx.
      So by targeting cruiseships, that often use cheap and dirty fuel, you can bring down the smog quite a bit.
      But that is of course hard to enforce because they do want the tourist to go shopping for expensive items in the city centre and make the cruise com

  • When talking about emissions from vessels it is important to know that new rules are implemented globally from 2020.

    Until now the standard fuel for large vessels has been High Sulphur Fuel Oil with 3.5% sulphur.
    From 2020 such fuel is essentially banned globally and the new limit is 0.5% sulfphur.

    Vessels with installed emission cleaning system (scrubber) can still use the old fuel.

  • How Teslas bring 1200 tons of toxic hipsters to Brooklyn a year.

  • In 2010 New York City added 54,349,650 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere = 148,903 tons a day = 6,204 tons an hour = 1.72 tons a second. 1200/54349650 equals 0.002207 percent of the NYC emissions. Wow, those ships are a huge problem......this type of reporting is why we cannot have nice things, or any intelligent dialog.
  • "1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes"
    "1,200 tons of carbon dioxide"

    Sorry, carbon dioxide is not toxic.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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