Shipping emissions grossly underestimated

Nice work catching this topic, which has clearly been ignored by important authorities!

p.s. Stumbled and tagged with del.icio.us!

Thanks James, it does makes you wonder how much more of emissions governments have failed to report. I wouldn't be surprised if countries didn't include data on military activities with the excuse that such data were secret.

Anyway, this raises the question as to what should be done about shipping emissions. You may have read my article "Iceland - The world's first hydrogen society". In that article, I wrote about Iceland's steps to use its abundant geothermal energy to power cars, buses and boats. I also see a lot of prospect in using excess wind power to produce hydrogen, which could subsequently be used to power ships. Hopefully, this new study will trigger more development in such directions.

James: "p.s. Stumbled and tagged with del.icio.us!"

Thanks for that, James! My username there is samcarana
http://del.icio.us/samcarana

PS. Did you also read about the German ship with the sail, at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSL1548100520071217
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7201887.stm

Good article!

I grew up near Los Angeles harbor...I completely believe it.

If the price of carbon fuels gets high enough we may go back to sails (though not exclusively, of course).

Another very big downside to Globalization.

Yes, and as global economies grow, so will shipping. I have previously read about that German ship with the "spinnaker" like sail, and it would seem to me that more emphasis should be put in that direction. Why not a return to the use of sailing ships for most of the journey? There must be plenty of product that could be sent by modern sail, that is not "time" critical to delivery.
Good article, thanks.

It seemed like just another piece of bad news at first glance, but that's where we have to start, and it does make me think about finding alternatives, like sails.

Thanks for bringing this news to the attention of more people at Gather. Now, how can we get people to actually pay attention? Perhaps we could say that ocean going vessels are the Britney Spears of international commerce? Would that finally bring stories like this the coverage they deserve?

Yes, it makes sense to grow more fruit and vegetables locally. Also, we've got a window of opportunity to produce electric cars locally. And if people around the world used more solar and wind energy, we needed less oil tankers and ships carrying coal. Most of all, though, I believe that this is the wakeup call to get serious about hydrogen.

This does highlight the true cost of shipping the goods. If these external pollution costs were actually borne by the shippers in terms of a cap-and-trade system, it would allow people to have greater ability to buy local for the same true cost. If shippers decide to use low-pollution alternatives like sail, that will increase green R&D, and allow economies of scale to come it to play to accellerate these exciting technologies. Without strong regulations and public outcry, shippers have little incentive to change.

Good article, Sam. I agree, that it makes you wonder just how many other sources of CO2 pollution are unreported. Of course, the more we move toward a renewable, distributed energy infrastructure, much of this shipping would be rendered unnecessary, since all that fuel wouldn't need to be shipped.

Sam: I hadn't seen the stories on the ship with the sail. Thanks for the links.

Your point about unreported and under-reported emissions is a good one. Elsewhere as part of one of the discussions, I mentioned an chemist at a Swiss university who works on green explosives and gunpowder. One of his motivations is the massive amount of pollution caused by space-shuttle launches and similar events- a very legitimate concern.

Also, many years ago, I was involved in discovering an unrecognized source of an ozone-destroying gas. I didn't co-author the paper because I was afraid of losing my job (a valid fear in theory, though maybe I over-reacted). The point is that a major industrial process released N2O and nobody in atmospheric chemistry knew about it, so they couldn't explain or understand why the levels of N2O were so high in the various atmospheric levels. At the time, EPA didn't require reporting of these releases of N2O to the atmosphere, so there were no Federal records. This kind of thing could still happen.