Archive for the ‘pollution’ Category
the shipping industry – a bit of a global warming headache
Ok, that’s sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, particulate matter and non-methane volatile organic compounds
I’ve been alerted, by a brief piece on a New Scientist podcast, and then by some passages in Tim Smedley’s book Clearing the air: the beginning and end of air pollution, about some pretty disturbing stats on the polluting and greenhouse impact of the world’s shipping industry – a factor we don’t often consider when we attempt to reduce our personal environmental impact. We tend to focus on the products we consume, the cars we drive, the homes we heat, the plane trips we take and so forth. But once it’s pointed out to us it becomes obvious. We’re the recipients of a vast global trading network involving foodstuffs, appliances and gadgetry of all sorts, as well as bulk supplies of crude oil, iron ore and a host of other raw materials, brought to us by more or less massive marine vessels.According to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), goods weighing 11 billion tonnes were shipped across our oceans in 2019, a 3-billion tonne increase from a decade before. And the increase is expected to … increase. So how are these vessels powered? To quote from the C&EN article,
“The shipping industry uses more than 300 million tons of fossil fuels every year, roughly 5% of global oil production,” says Camille Bourgeon, a specialist in air pollution and energy efficiency in the marine environment at the IMO [the International Maritime Organisation – an agency of the UN]. In 2018, global shipping activity emitted roughly 1.05 billion t of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accounting for about 2.9% of the total global anthropogenic CO2 emissions for that year, according to the IMO’s 2020 greenhouse gas study.
What’s worse is that for decades the shipping industry has been using the lowest grade, most noxious fuels, ‘the stuff no-one else wants’, as one maritime engineer describes it. This ‘residual fuel’ is also called HFO, for ‘heavy fuel oil’, which the oil industry has been more than happy to provide to the shipping industry rather than having to get rid of it some other, more expensive way. And when you’re out in the middle of the ocean, who’s going to check your emissions? The fuel used has seriously high sulphur content, and once ships come into port, the cargo is offloaded onto diesel trucks and then often onto diesel locomotives. Here are some of Tim Smedley’s opening remarks on the industry:
[Shipping] is easily the transport sector with the worst history. Shipping emissions contribute nearly 15% of NOx [nitrogen oxides including nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, some of the worst air pollutants] and 13% of sulphur dioxide emissions globally, and these numbers are increasing. Due to growing populations and consumer spending, more and more supertankers set sail every year. Since 1985 global container shipping has increased by about 10% annually, with only brief dips for each recession.
There seems to be no stopping this growth, and about a quarter of this transport is fuelled by crude oil. As Smedley points out, this ‘gives us the headache-inducing fact that a quarter of all shipping emissions come from shipping the fuel needed to produce the emissions’.
As mentioned, sulphur dioxide is a major constituent of HFO. On the website of Aeroqual, a company that provides air monitoring systems, I found this disturbing claim – the sulphur dioxide of HFO is 2700 times higher than that of road fuel. Sulphur dioxide emissions have been dropping for years in developed countries – a 76% decrease in Europe between 1990 and 2009 – leaving shipping as the primary source.
As also mentioned, ports are some of the most atmospherically noxious places on the planet. Most of them use diesel-powered machinery for off-loading and transportation. Diesel emissions significantly increase cancer risks according to a host of epidemiological studies, and various engine improvements have barely kept up with improvements in emissions monitoring, which have highlighted further dangers. But the diesel issue probably requires a whole new post.
The shipping industry, setting aside all those smelly and sick-making ports, and the sulphur dioxide problem, is a major contributor to greenhouse emissions, releasing over 3% of our carbon dioxide, a percentage that is set to rise in the aftermath of the covid pandemic. A website called ship technology sets out a plan to address the issues, which reminds me of the plans regularly emanating from the IPCC, requiring targets which seem to be seldom met by the major emissions culprits. The plan includes improved ship-to shore data feed technology, exhaust emission technology, behavioural change such as slow steaming (yes, that just means slowing down) and more preventive maintenance, and alternative fuels such as LNG, hydrogen and even solar. LNG is the most touted alternative fuel due to requiring fewer alterations to shipping infrastructure, though it’s surely an interim solution.
The IMO has been rather defensive about its role as the shipping regulator, and the degree of progress made in reducing emissions. Certainly it’s a difficult industry to police, with many nations and companies involved, including military vessels worldwide, which have other priorities, to put it mildly. But it’s clear that shipping officials are feeling the pressure. As one of them put it:
“… can shipping reduce more greenhouse gas emissions? I’m sure it will. But it’s difficult to say how much particularly not knowing the consequences from regional regulations. There seems to be a wish to require unrealistic emission reductions in order to collect money from ships.”
These remarks make me wonder whether money is being collected from land-based greenhouse emitters, and if not, why not? Interestingly, the same official has this to say in the industry’s defence:
“When discussing short-term measures, the figure over the next 10 years will bring the shipping carbon intensity reduction in 2030 to more than 40%, below the year 2008. This is a remarkable achievement by a sector that is, and will remain, the most efficient mode of transportation”.
This appears to be saying that the most efficient form of transport in the shipping sector is, and always will be, shipping. Or maybe I’m reading it wrong. In any case, they’re on the case, which is great. Must remember to have another look in 2030.
References
https://cen.acs.org/environment/greenhouse-gases/shipping-industry-looks-green-fuels/100/i8
Tim Smedley, Clearing the air: the beginning and the end of air pollution, 2019
https://www.aeroqual.com/blog/ship-pollution-port-air-quality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust
https://www.ship-technology.com/analysis/guidelines-and-goals-reducing-shippings-emissions/
clothing: when a solution becomes a problem
Canto: So we talked previously about the horror of stilettos, which was all about the absurdity of fashion, and the sad fate of fashion victims, sigh, but fashion, and the clothing industry in general has lots of problems at the production end as well as for the end-users.
Jacinta: Yes – of course at the user end there’s the huge problem of waste. I walked past a nearby Salvos shop on the weekend, and their donation bins were overflowing to a ridiculous degree, piled up in the doorway, and neighbouring doorways, extending a long way down the street.
Canto: At least people are trying to recycle, but I wouldn’t like the job of sorting that stuff out. And of course the people who do that job are volunteers, though living in a country with a reasonable safety net and a minimum wage which is one of the highest in the world according to this Australian Industry Group website. But wages and conditions, as well as our buying habits, especially those of your fellow female primates, are what I want to focus on today.
Jacinta: So women, especially teens, buy these cheap foreign-made clothes from overseas sweat-shops, wear them once or twice and chuck them out – they call it ‘fast fashion’ – and the cycle continues. A handful at the top are making tons of money, while others are getting sick from overwork or from ingesting toxic chemicals. Petrochemical-based textiles now make up 10% of the world’s carbon emissions and rising. They also add to the biosphere’s growing microplastics problem. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 35% of microplastics come from these textiles.
Canto: I should point out another issue with ‘fast fashion’. When the fashion changes, which it does on an almost weekly basis, the brand names, such as H&M, Topshop, PrettyLittleThing and please don’t make me name any more, they just dump them.
Jacinta: Yes, but not in recycling bins. Only about 1% of textile waste is currently recycled, for all sorts of reasons, such as the technology required to separate blended chemical textiles. They can be shipped to India or African countries, but that just delays the problem briefly.
Canto: It’s kind of fascinating how many problems we make for ourselves by becoming supposedly more sophisticated, manufacturing and then dumping all these techno-solutions. We’re the only mammals that wear clothes, and as with footwear, it’s hard to say exactly when all that began, never mind when it all morphed into competitive fashion shite.
Jacinta: Actually we can only say that we’re the only extant mammals to wear clothes. An associated question is, when did we start, and finish, losing our body hair? Here’s an interesting quote from one Charles Darwin:
No one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man; his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.
He thought it was a matter of sexual selection. Do we find hairless bodies more attractive? Maybe, but probably not universally. Today we undoubtedly find bonobo/chimp/gorilla-type hair unattractive, but that’s surely because we associate it with non-human primates. Many women I know find men with hairy legs quite the turn-on.
Canto: But not furry legs. They have to be humanly hairy. So maybe there was a natural advantage to being less hairy. The move into open, sunlit spaces seems to have been key. If you’re covered in hair, it reduces heat loss through the skin. Also, being upright exposed less of the body surface to the sun. Probably explains why we keep the hair on our heads, to protect those heads, and the ever-expanding brains inside them, from getting fried.
Jacinta: And in the cooler regions, and during cooler eras, and at night, we could supplement our hair with artificial coverings, proto-clothing. But in those regions and times, plenty of hair would be an advantage. But anyway, for some reason, our ancestors started losing their body hair. I wonder when, exactly.
Canto: There’s probably no exactly. But upright stature helped in hunting, allowing us to run long distances, in which case losing heat through sweating would’ve been advantageous. Remember, it would’ve been easier to keep warm, through covering, than to cool down, with all that hair.
Jacinta: They could stay in the shade, like bonobos do.
Canto: Big-brained humans require too much energy for their owners to spend time under yum-yum trees. We have lots of sweat glands compared to other primates. It helps us to run fast and long. Those monkeys that have more sweat glands than others are also fast movers. There are some puzzles about all this, though, about what came first and why – reduced hair, bipedalism, larger brain.
Jacinta: But getting back to modern clothing and fast fashion and the like – or maybe not modern clothing. I’m thinking, when did clothing become mandatory. Maybe it’s not manatory in all cultures, but among our European forebears, how did it manage to become grossly offensive to go about naked like our bonobo cousins? It seems to have happened very recently in paleontological terms. I mean it’s associated with civilised behaviour somehow.
Canto: Only ‘savages’ went about in the altogether. Or ancient Greek actors and athletes. Of course, clothing quickly became a hierarchical thing – the higher-ups dressed more elaborately, and the proles weren’t allowed to, and so were despised for their shabbiness. Being completely naked was real low-life stuff, and a sexual element evolved alongside all of that. And a gender element.
Jacinta: That’s going a bit fast, perhaps, but I’m sure it’s on the right track. So I’ve found various sites discussing this issue of hiding our genitals. John Romero provides a pretty comprehensive account, of clothing in general as well as our new age modesty. He reminds us, for example, that nakedness among the Greeks wasn’t confined to performers and athletes. Public baths were communal, as were Roman toilets – they didn’t blush when they flushed. Actually, they didn’t flush, at least not the way we do. Of course the creation myth of Judeo-Christianity, which had small beginnings but soon spread throughout Europe and the globe, had Adam and Eve feel ashamed when they realised they were naked, but it doesn’t explain the realisation, since they were the only humans on the planet at the time apparently. Nevertheless, this association with nakedness and shame was hammered home by church authorities, and has much to do with current attitudes.
Canto: But the association between nudity and shame was clearly felt by those early biblical writers. That dates it to around 2,600 years ago at most, though religious biblical scholars generally prefer an older date.
Jacinta: We just don’t have any way of dating the origin of nudity as shameful. Clothing is only the most obvious way of concealing nudity, but the origin of clothing surely has nothing to do with shame. And nobody really knows when clothing originated, or when we lost our body hair, which was clearly a gradual process. But to return to our arguably over-dressed, throwaway modern society – which often plays with modesty in a titillating way…
Canto: Modesty’s a tricky word though. Isn’t wearing showy expensive clothing a kind of immodesty?
Jacinta: I was thinking of the skin-tight fashion of young women – I don’t know about the price. Not that I disapprove, I’m only concerned with the waste.
Canto: Better for the environment if they go about naked, you’re right.
Jacinta: Hmmm…
References
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160801-our-weird-lack-of-hair-may-be-the-key-to-our-success
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-humans-initially-start-to-hide-their-privates-from-other-humans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothing