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Comment by brenden2 | Hacker News Reader

The reporting on this is very weak. I'm not a genius, but my guess is that cruise ships contribute a tiny proportion to the pollutants people are exposed to on a day to day basis in NYC. Most of the pollution is from automobiles.

The article mentions (and can be entirely summarized by):

> Idling ships release potent diesel air pollution — similar to diesel exhaust from automobiles but in much larger quantities, and laced with harmful metals — that is linked to cancer, asthma, heart disease and other serious health problems.

The author states "in much bigger quantities", which is probably true when you compare a ship to an automobile. However there are no details on the relative quantities involved when you compare all polluters combined. I'm guessing the article would be much less dramatic if you did.

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Cruise ships totally outclass cars as a source of pollutants.

An example from across the pond:

"The results show that the luxury cruise brands owned by Carnival Corporation & PLC emitted in 2017 in European seas alone 10 times more disease-causing sulphur dioxide than all of Europe’s 260+ million passenger vehicles."

https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one-corpor...

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Still, my point was that automobiles exist alongside people within cities, in near proximity. A diesel truck driving down my street is probably going to expose me to more harmful pollution than a cruise ship passing by 10 miles from me.

So I guess to make my point another way: if you could trace the damage done to individuals in cities, I think the bigger fish to fry would be automobiles.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to discount any claims that cruise ships are causing unnecessary outsized pollution. Airplanes also cause a significant amount of pollution, but for some reason society generally accepts air travel because it's fashionable.

Can you do better than guessing? Hint: Automobiles and trucks have had steadily tightened regulations for a long time. Ships burn much worse fuel than cars and trucks, and have only recently been regulated. And they aren't regulated in NYC.

> “The oil that ships use has a lot more heavy metals in it that have a negative impact on human health,” said Adam Freed, who was the deputy director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability in the Bloomberg administration. “We understood how important of an impact it could have.”

Older diesel trucks are largely exempt from these regulations. There are a few loopholes that allow people to purchase older truck parts, refurbish them, and continue to operate them without needing to adhere to modern emissions requirements.

That's true in general, but not true near many large ports, for obvious reasons.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191029005379/en/100...

> 10 times more disease-causing sulphur dioxide

That is one specific pollutant. Cars produce more pollution when you look at all forms of pollution.

Ships are a problem, but cars should not be let off the hook for the massive amounts of pollution they produce.

They're not, it's just a reminder that vast amounts of the world's pollution is also being caused by large sea vessels, of which cruise ships are a variety.

It's an oft neglected point in the global climate discussions because it's hard to associate their scale with a direct human impact like with cars. Tying it to a cruise ship around a populous city helps people bridge that mental gap.

Cars have been regulated to the point where they have an incredible array of pollution control mechanisms since the smog crisis of the 80s. No, most of the pollution isn't from cars.

Cruise ships, in contrast, have very little regulation, burn the worst of the worst types of fuel, and have effectively no pollution control. A single cruise ship is estimated to produce more pollution than one million cars. In Europe, cruise ships emit 10x more pollution on the coastlines than the EU's entire 260 million cars. Etc.

Add in the ships carrying containers (of goods) and the amount of pollution is massive. It's ironic that we we're able to cooperate to make the global market work, but we can't address the unintended consequences of all that transporting.

Yeah very suspicious, isn't it.

I.e. if you can't enforce some environmental tax elsewhere, you can still tariff the difference. Other countries will then be incentivized to make the same tax so they get the revenue instead of you. Race to the top! What's the problem?!

The EU is about to roll some out and the new fuel standards might help for anyone docking in the EU...

But ya, we need to do more.

Yet it won't have any effect on international waters. Indeed more needs to be done.

There was a time when a dominant navy might enforce their will in international waters. A more climate enlightened USA (or China) might one day do the same.

> A single cruise ship is estimated to produce more pollution than one million cars. In Europe, cruise ships emit 10x more pollution on the coastlines than the EU's entire 260 million cars.

That statement, unqualified, is simply untrue. They produce more of specific types of pollution, NOx and SOx. They do not produce more pollution in general. Cars still produce a huge amount of carbon, particulate matter and VOCs.

Ship pollution does need to be addressed, but this sentiment comes dangerously close to letting cars off the hook for the massive amounts of pollution they produce.

Cars produce little VOCs and are not a significant source. When it comes to particulate matter cars are absolutely eclipsed by sea vessels, with a single cruise ship creating more than a million cars.

VOCs -- irrelevant to this conversation.

SOx, NOs, Particulate Matter -- A single cruise ship is worse than a million cars. The cruise ship industry absolutely eclipses cars by a magnitude+.

Carbon -- cars produce a lot of greenhouse gases. That isn't an air quality issue, though, which is the topic that we're talking about.

Cruise ships are an absolute disaster ecologically. Cars are bad, but again because cars are bad we have made incredible progress.

Looks like someone elsewhere in the comments did the math, it is absolutely true. Cars literally use precious metals to catlyze pollutants form a highly refined fuel source, controled for a perfect stociometric burn in real time while ships... well they just belch it out. If you think the two are even nearly equal you are uninformed about how cars work, how ships work, or likely both.

No, they made the same error I just called out. Ships produce more of certain specific pollutants. They don't produce more pollution in general.

How is that an error? Other people might not interpret "in general" the same way you intend. CO2 is much less hazardous (per ton) than nitrogen and sulfur oxides.

"Pollution" is not a synonym for NOx and SOx. Unless you are taking a holistic view of pollution, you shouldn't be making such broad claims about "pollution".

Cars are a bigger contributor to climate change than ships and in most geographical areas where people live, they are a bigger contributor to poor air quality than ships.

I didn't even mention the word "pollution", are you sure you responded to what I said?

> A single cruise ship is estimated to produce more pollution than one million cars. In Europe, cruise ships emit 10x more pollution on the coastlines than the EU's entire 260 million cars.

The statement I'm refuting is this, which says "pollution" twice with no further qualification.

This conversation is about air quality. The use of the word pollution is clear. Further we are talking specifically about areas where ships frequent, so if now you want to claim victory by citing someone living mid-continent...

No one gave a pass to cars. But the cold, hard truth is that for air quality pollution of all sorts, cars have improved dramatically[1]. Cruise ships have not.

[1] - Even in Europe where diesel is far more prevalent, and the problems it brings. A relatively tiny cruise ship industry still eclipses the car industry for every variety of air quality pollution, by a magnitude plus.

'Bunker fuel' is the big difference here.

I'm not an expert on the topic, but I'm pretty sure ships cannot burn bunker fuel unless in international waters. They have to switch to diesel when this close to the shore.

Absolutely, they keyword here is ECA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_Control_Area

That being said, the calculation that a cruise ship generating its own power emits as much SO2 as 34400 idling trucks seems to hold up.

According to the article one cruise ship idling emits as much pollution as several myriad semi trucks idling. That seems significant to me and moreover easy to abate.

Also note that semi trucks aren't allowed to idle in NYC.

even if it's not the biggest improvement, it's a big and an easy one that can be done in parallel with others.

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