Study Says World's 15 Biggest Ships Produce Same Pollution as All the World's Cars

One more reason to buy domestically. :)

brn hit the nail on the head. Local production is a great way to reduce pollutants and fuel consumption. A small, conventional, locally built car is probably more environmentally friendly than a Prius built halfway around the world. The problem is the most vocal and influential "environmentalists" only care about appearances and their own conspicuous power, so they push extreme measures and ignore more common-sense, reasonable solutions.

exactly what I was thinking as I read this, buy a damn viper and your probably being more environmentally friendly than buying a 4 banger thats shipped here from Japan

People up in arms about gas-guzzling cars are every bit as concerned with heavily polluting ships. One in five children who live in Long Beach have asthma, twice that of the national average. There have been steps to reduce emissions from ships - in the Ports of L.A., ships now plug in to local electricity as opposed to idling on bunker fuel, and ships switch to ULSD as they approach the shore.

By the way, this study focuses only on one group of emissions - local category air pollutants. In terms of GHG, ships are responsible for 4%, while passenger cars are responsible for 12%.

With megaships like the Jahre Viking (1504 ft, 826K tonnes loaded), it's no surprise that they spew so much. I am surprised that they run on crude, though. I'd think the maintenance costs would be tremendous.

An intersting book I started reading titled "Cool It: an environmental skeptic's guide to global warming" lays out a rational, market-based approach to reducing green-house gasses. Basically, but levying a tax on the emissions, but pointing out how this tax should be calculated to reap the greastest value. The author intends to cite the latest and most researched cost/benefit to design the best tax system. Really eye-opening! 'Cause, politians and activists have a hard time grasping cost/beneift.

Last I checked, and my figures are several years out of date, worldwide auto emissions accounted for 30% of all world carbon dioxide emissions while power production and industry acounted for about 50%, and this was almost certainly before these sorts of revelations about shipping came out I'm sure. I continue to support reasonable means of continuing to reduce automotive emissions, but they can't be the only thing that gets blamed, clearly.

There are a number of things that get a free ride on emmisions.

For example... home heating. I spend roughly $1800/ year to heat my house on natural gas and there are no emmision controls on my chimney. While it is very hard to convert a car to electricity, it is very easy to heat a house with it.

However I have never seen any attempt to get people to switch. In fact they made it harder where I live by coming up with a tiered billing system. If you use more then a certain amount of electricity, your rate jumps by a large amount.

They should start with the sources of pollution that are easiest to fix.

firstwagon, I got my furnace emissions checked 18 months ago. It's negligible. Unless something isn't working properly, natural gas burns pretty clean.

Disingenuous? The article is only about sulfur oxides!

A necessary evil! Someone has to do it!

"Domestic" is a misnomer. I assure you, every car available today has some imported components that are shipped on the ocean.

Secondly, if people drove more fuel efficient cars, then we'd need fewer ships to get the oil here and consequently, there would be lower emissions. Conservation has several benefits.