international shipping is exempt from carbon tax but uses the worst toxic fuel possable

with all the talk of carbon taxes for cars, and the fact that cars use a catalitic converter and four stroke tecnnology to remove or lower emmitions yet large container ships are exempt from carbon tax.

the large ships use the worst heavey oils and fuels,
when making fuel a distiling tower sorts fuels into "weights" of fuels like jet fuel gasoline desil ect.
whats left over is a toxic sludge that is too heavey for most engines to run on, but very large ship engines can burn this left over sludge.

so while our cars are getting more and more friendly for the environment,
the ship builders are still building engines for the container ships that use this sludge.

why?

without pressure from govenments and environmnet activists the ship builders will contine to use the scummy fuel no one esle can use and continue to "exaust" directly into the ocean without a care in the world for the oceans health

list of contaminates,
sulphur
arsnic
radioacticve elements
CO2
and many other dangerous chemicals

why do we pay carbon tax on reasonably clean cars when the ships are allowed to burn and dump toxic sludge and vent the fumes directly into the water without any form of carbon or exaust capture system.

WHY DO SHIPS GET A FREE RIDE?
every body must play their part in the problem and nobody is talking about the fact that shipping is excluded from carbon tax and they are the worlds largest and worst polluters

IF YOU CANT SEE IT ITS NOT A PROBLEM

if we were to collect carbon tax from shipping there would be a reason to go away from heavey fuel engines and towards the superconductor electric/light desil option and with the carbon money subsidise the instilation of clean ship motors (electric/desil)

because if there is no reason to stop these ships will forever be built with the worst fuel and continue to toxify the worlds oceans.

IF PRIVATE CAR OWNING CITIZENS HAVE TO PAY,
WHY DONT THE LARGEST SHIPPING COMPANIES.

if this was really about saving the world then the worst must reform first
without a reason to change to the new superconducting engines the shipping industry will spew almost as much total carbon as every car on earth.

SHIPPING IS GETTING A FREE RIDE

ask yourself why do i pay a an individual yet shipping is exempt
we are told every one must do their part but the truth is unless it costs them carbon tax now they will forever use the worst fuel and dump the exaust into the oceans

why do you pay and they dont?
i am happey to answer questions

xploder

the shipping industry needs looking into, their influence on governments goes way back.

they ship soya beans from China to the USA, and the USA and Canada ship them soya beans.
it's as if there were no cost involved in crossing an ocean.
i'd love to see how they figure the math.

most laws are mostly to do with fleecing the citizens, most corporations, such as shipping have powerful political connections, and are exempt.

reply to post by citizen6511


rather than adress the "politicing" involved with the acual issue,

i instead would like to address the issue,
if we want a better world economic responce to the problem (ship design and codes of complience) there has to be the same mecanism used world wide on poulations, the carbon tax (collected)from shipping is used to impliment the standards and technology required to reform the industry.

i am sure with the help of govenments, support from the people and financial incentives we could address the acual issue.

dirty heavey fuel engines must be discourged from use and clean technology encouraged.

xploder

reply to post by citizen6511


i live in new zealand,
i am watching the rewa break up on a pristine marine reserve on my news every night.
more and more containers are ending up in the ocean,
and worst of all the ship is tearing appart spilling heavey desil oil into the water.
each ship carries a "HUGE" amount of desil and or heavey oils.
the amount of weight in fuel alone means you require more horse power to push that ship through the water at the same speed.

this means these engines are "massive" and produce astronomical amounts of pollution.

in a pristine marine environment we have the most "filthy" cargo container ships with building sized sludge burners, they call engines. i can sit in my carbon taxed car and watch container ships coming and going and think "whats good good for the goose is good for the gander"
which translated means,
if carbon tax must be payed on the road in my country (it is already in nz)
then carbon tax on shipping to reform the industry to electric hybrid "light" desil fuel engines
IS ONLY LOGICAL
why do we suffer as a nation?

xploder
xploder

Shows how much I know... I thought carbon tax was thrown out the window...

Are they still offering carbon credits?
If so, if the proposed program is still the same... The production of O2 and turn around of CO2 in Bamboo would make anybody filthy rich if they had the means to start a farm...
"some species have been recorded as growing up to 100 cm (39 in) within a 24 hour period"...
wanna talk about biomass for biofuels....
CO2 consumption translates fairly directly into dry weight gain. So look for the plants that produce the greatest biomass per hectare per year...

I for some reason thought the idea was long and gone, but now that it's still here, I would suggest that people start thinking seriously about Bamboo farms, and creating 'Carbon-Credits' and then the biomass could even be turned around in many ways...
such as, 'geothermal' energy type application from the decomposition of it..
Or just biofuels..
The Bamboo could even be harvested, sent to Africa or any where, where they could be utilized as building materials... I'd imagine it would be better than just some shack...

Carbon tax is a joke, but that's a whole different conversation... Dont really care to pull subjective 'proof' for that.

reply to post by MESSAGEFROMTHESTARS


truth is in new zealand, for better or for worse it is now law and must be abided by
thing is if we have to pay it would be very nice to see this form of pollution cease,
or at least a time frame for change over to new tech and a point where in the future cleaner ocean environments is a target we must as a planet set a goal for.

xploder

First of all , attempting to force shipping firms to update thier engines to non fossil fuel systems is always going to be tough. For one thing, shipping is so closely linked to oil these days that it just isnt funny , and there are trade agreements and treaties to consider both international, and between longstanding companies and magnate families.

Another thing is that although the people at the top of these firms are hideously wealthy, for a given company to replace all of its ships engines with modern , more eco friendly gear will represent a MASSIVE investment, and most shareholders are not going to agree to that unless they see some potential benifit in it. Logically you would have thought that avoiding spending money on fuel where possible would be better for the company, but the previously mentioned trade agreements would make such options costly ,and not just from the material and tech outlay, but from legal proceedings pertaining to breaking of such agreements.

Further to these issues, it is worth mentioning that for all the possibilities of new fuels and new power production methods being possible, no one is currently BUILDING motors of a size which could power a decently sized ship in these new configurations. Until it can be proven, that these technologies are reliable, equal to or greater than fossil based engines in terms of power , and as easy to fix when broken, there will not be an uptake in thier use!

No company or group of companies involved in shipping is likely to spend the cash on a venture of this nature , because it does not make good business sense to do so, or at least, it cannot be PROVEN to be benificial to business. And so the only way to ensure that the desired tech makes its way into the ships of the worlds largest importer/exporter organisations, would be to lobby governments, the UN , and every political organisation and entity you can name.

The fact is that until the technologies which can change the devastating situation of the shipping industries affect on the planets oceans, are proven to be no hinderance in cost or maintanance , AND until the governments of the world force these companies to not just consider it but HAVE IT DONE , this will never come to pass.

If you want it to happen, get proactive, get off your keyboard, and out in the street. Get out in the faces of the people and the companies and the policy makers, and scream your message from the highest rooftops, and do all this in the knowledge that you are not the first, and will not be the last to deliver this message, and to have it ignored by the only people who can force the change you want to see.

A simple answer is to remove the bogus carbon taxes. It is like the government taxing me to when a take a leak. Problem solved real quick and everyone is on equal footing. It amazes me how people pit each other against themselves in the name of a government tax.

reply to post by mugger


truth is i would gladly pay a little extra to help change the level of pullotion weather on land or sea,
but the worst polluters must be seen to set the standard that we are held too.

its pretty simple minded thinking i know but the alternative is the ongoing destruction of our planet.
why cant the carbon tax be used to fix the problem?
subsidize currently used hybrid electric/desil super conducting engines
and there is no need to "carry" vast reserves of heavey fuel oils.
keep the worlds oceans clean.

xploder

reply to post by XPLodER


But, your money will not help, because unless you OWN one of these massive cartels, your pocket isnt deep enough to make a difference. What you need to do, is walk out the door, and go and DO something about it!

As I say, get in the face of your political representatives , get your friends to do it also, and do not stop. That will help. Spending your money on it will not do enough fast enough to improve the situation in time to prevent catastrophy much larger than the one unfolding near you right now.

reply to post by XPLodER

Ironically, one of the elements that sludge fuel has in large quantities is sulfur.

www.gizmag.com...

Shipping is by far the biggest transport polluter in the world. There are 760 million cars in the world today emitting approx 78,599 tons of Sulphur Oxides (SOx) annually. The world's 90,000 vessels burn approx 370 million tons of fuel per year emitting 20 million tons of Sulphur Oxides. That equates to 260 times more Sulphur Oxides

Now there's an interesting thing about sulfur released into the atmosphere:

www.cotf.edu...

Volcanoes that release large amounts of sulfur compounds like sulfur oxide or sulfur dioxide affect the climate more strongly than those that eject just dust. The sulfur compounds are gases that rise easily into the stratosphere. Once there, they combine with the (limited) water available to form a haze of tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. These tiny droplets are very light in color and reflect a great deal of sunlight for their size. Although the droplets eventually grow large enough to fall to the earth, the stratosphere is so dry that it takes time, months or even years to happen. Consequently, reflective hazes of sulfur droplets can cause significant cooling of the earth for as long as two years after a major sulfur-bearing eruption. Sulfur hazes are believed to have been the primary cause of the global cooling that occurred after the Pinatubo and Tambora eruptions.

So if carbon tax is a penalty for causing global warming, what should be done about sulfur emissions which can temporarily create global cooling? Issue carbon credits? And I don't know how the balance shakes out between the effect of the sulfur and the effect of the CO2, the net effect may actually be a slight global cooling effect in the short term. But since the sulfur dissipates faster than the CO2 the long term effect is probably still warming.

But think about this. If it weren't for all that toxic sulfur those international shipping vessels emitted (which is a lot), global warming might actually be a lot worse than it already is!???

Something to think about.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


WOW
that is the most ironic thing huh,
polution staving off global warming

that really makes my head ache

xplodder

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

So if carbon tax is a penalty for causing global warming, what should be done about sulfur emissions which can temporarily create global cooling? Issue carbon credits? And I don't know how the balance shakes out between the effect of the sulfur and the effect of the CO2, the net effect may actually be a slight global cooling effect in the short term. But since the sulfur dissipates faster than the CO2 the long term effect is probably still warming.

But think about this. If it weren't for all that toxic sulfur those international shipping vessels emitted (which is a lot), global warming might actually be a lot worse than it already is!???

Something to think about.

Well, the problem is that much the sulfur usually emitted (say by coal and dirty shipping) is not high enough, it is lower in the atmosphere and causes acid rain and other real health problems.

There is some belief that yes some of the sulfate pollution is masking the effect from greenhouse induced warming and this has been studied by the climate scientists for a couple of decades now and is regarded as important.

Because many of the greenhouse gases have a time scale of thousands of years and the sulfates much less, this means that the actual effect from greenhouse gases will be much worse in the future than it seems from current experience---because the equilibrium amount of sulfate which can cool will level off, but the amount of greenhouse gases continues to climb at a roughly quadratically increasing rate.

There's another issue, soot (black carbon) also comes from dirty burning (common from poor people's stoves in India/Pak/Bangladesh), and this is probably warming and certainly is when even small amounts of it land on pristine white snow like in Greenland.

reply to post by mbkennel

So you're saying the ships need taller smokestacks?

Just kidding, they probably can't make them tall enough. But I pretty much agree with everything you said which confirms what I said, any effect from sulfur is temporary, the CO2 is longer term.

The problem is a governmental one, really.

About the only thing a country can do, reasonably, is apply a tariff-type tax onto goods shipped into the country by companies that didn't comply with certain environmental codes.

Politically, however, I am against government-mandated manufacturing standards. It has stalled the automobile industry horrifically, which has not seen mentionable improvement since the 80s (other than cost increases at the sacrifice of safety).

It is, generally, a bad idea to impose strong-arm legislation that attempts to set specific mandates that must be followed "or else...."

This is also impractical on a global scenario. Now - I'm a Navy guy, and would not be opposed to doing target practice on vessels found to be non-compliant (would make going on cruise much more eventful and justify manpower increases within the Navy - IE - Job Security); but that's likely to piss a bunch of other countries off - not to mention the rights groups (though it would be amusing to see what a MK. 48 ADCAP does to a cabin cruiser).

You can't really force compliance in international waters - and while you could simply deny access to your territorial waters/harbors, any non-compliant vessels... that's another hard one to enforce, from multiple angles. You would have to invest a massive amount of policing resources along with garnering unprecedented multinational cooperation to make it happen.

Which would simply be impossible in areas like Europe. Goods would be shipped into a country like Greece and rail-roaded into other European nations (Greece would be more than willing to accept the business to try and pull them out of the hole they are in - and the countries that helped bail them out will be seeing an ROI and simply turn a blind eye while still disallowing non-compliant shipping).

Which is why it would never happen.

The best option is to come up with more efficient means of utilizing the energy resources we have available to us, and/or discovering new sources of energy and practical methods of harnessing it (such as Fusion).

That is, really, the only practical way out of it. The problem isn't that ships are using a cheap form of energy (impure as it is). The problem is that there are no cleaner forms of energy available that make sense from a cost-effective standpoint. The "sludge" will always be some of the cheapest for the energy produced, and will always be available so long as more refined petroleum products exist.

There are many forms of efficiency and cleanliness. Materials that can be burned as fuel are materials that do not have to be disposed of. It's going to be made, anyway - why not sell it to someone who can use it... and why not find a use for it if it's being thrown out and can be bought for dirt-cheap?

Originally posted by XPLodER
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

WOW
that is the most ironic thing huh,
polution staving off global warming

that really makes my head ache

xplodder

LOL, those are my thoughts exactly.

Please Arbitrageur, stope educating people and making sense, I'm about to have a freakin' aneurysm over here lol.

I would suggest, like many others, this is just a silly game of politics and government using science and earth as a tool. It's rather disgusting, and I hope that the day I have children and they are my age, that his is no longer the case...