
Cutting the speed of ships has benefits for humans, nature and climate – report - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50348321
======
phillc73
All well and good, but who is going to enforce these speed limits in
international waters?

Reading Ian Urbina's Outlaw Ocean[1] was an eye opener regarding what
activities happen in effectively un-policed international waters.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/02/the-outlaw-
oce...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/02/the-outlaw-ocean-by-ian-
urbina-review)

~~~
dustinmr
In the US, you already have to report the cargo’s arrival date before it
leaves its origin port. So the information is there.

Graduate the port fees based on average speed for arrival.

~~~
sillyquiet
It's hard to visualize, but a ship's engine speed is only one factor in its
overall speed across an ocean, even with powerful engines, wind and especially
current will improve or degrade a ship's overall speed as measured by
satellite. So a naive port fee based on time of departure will not exactly
work.

~~~
gwbas1c
I thought all ships have some kind of international tracking system now?

You should be able to accurately estimate all ships's speeds, using basic high
school physics, from a site like
[https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/cent...](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:25.0/zoom:4)

~~~
andy_ppp
Speed != to fuel burned.

~~~
frosted-flakes
It's a roughly accurate measure though. If there's a storm that slows them
down, it would be perfectly acceptable for them to burn more fuel to arrive in
port on time.

~~~
andy_ppp
I think you are wrong about this, there are so many variables and sea
conditions can affect things, for example older engines and maintenance at
sea. AIS data is also known to be wildly inaccurate.

Source: built an engine performance model at a maritime company.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Require reporting engine run times and performance stats to regulatory bodies,
along with fuel loading data from fuel providers.

~~~
jsharf
Too easy to fake. Maybe instead base it off of fuel consumption. At the end of
the day, they can't fake a full tank of gas -- Require it to be documented
when they buy fuel and use that to approximate what they're using for a cross-
seas voyage (giving appropriate margin so that in case of storm/emergency they
can still make it, but perhaps tax them if they eat into buffer)

------
sfifs
20% increase in the world's trading inventory and working capital tied up to
get a 0.7% reduction (24% x 3%) in emissions. Yeah makes complete sense to
pursue vs. other avenues! </sarcastic>

~~~
paganel
> 20% increase in the world's trading inventory

Which will most probably cause the producers to want to reduce that inventory
by not producing that much anymore, which will further ease the pressure on
the environment. Yeah, that will most probably raise some prices, but as a
species we can't have our cake and eat it at the same time, at some point we
do have to price in the externalities.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> Which will most probably cause the producers to want to reduce that
> inventory by not producing that much anymore

I don't think that's how that works. I'm pretty sure producers produce because
there is demand and they are selling their product. They aren't producing for
the fun of it.

~~~
paganel
> there is demand and they are selling their product.

I agree with this, but reducing the ships' speed will reduce the rate and the
price at which you can potentially deliver said products to the consumers,
which in effect will reduce the effective demand.

As an example, I bet there's lots of people that would want to have rocks
delivered to them from the Moon, i.e. there is a notional demand for Moon
rocks, but because transporting rocks from the Moon to said customers is
prohibitively expensive the effective demand for such an item is close to 0.
Making trans-oceanic transport more expensive works the same way.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Wouldn't this just move more goods that need to be delivered time-sensitively
to the air, which pollutes even more?

~~~
paganel
Some of them probably, yeah, but it will make them more expensive by at least
an order of magnitude so that demand will certainly fell. Measures like these
are in effect additional taxes.

------
dghughes
All ships in my region now have to slow down compared to just a year or two
ago. In recent years right whales have migrated into the gulf of St. Lawrence.
Ships were plowing into a whale each week it seemed.

When the order was given to slow down many cruise ships opted to just not come
here. But now it seems they understand the problem and follow the rules.

It's become so bad recently that even a Coast Guard ship hit a right whale.

~~~
BurningFrog
As whales come back to their natural population levels - from memory 100 or
1000 times today! - this will become a big problem.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Why doesn't the theory of evolution work here? "The whales who get out of the
way of ships will evolve forward"

~~~
Taylor_OD
Evolution is really really really slow. Ships are not.

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bharam
Analogy: "In the past, a well-meaning body of public servants decided there
was a need to slow down microprocessors to protect jobs threatened by
automation, reduce resource consumption and benefit the climate. CPU frequency
was capped at 25MHz and instruction length was limited to 8 bits. The move was
hailed as a great victory for humans, nature and the climate"

As a nation, where would we be today (compared to where we are) if a policy
like that had actually been adopted?

~~~
ajdlinux
This analogy is completely broken, obviously.

But off-topic: I wonder what computers would look like if there _were_
arbitrary restrictions like that. What directions would we have pursued in
microarchitecture, distributed systems, etc etc if there was a regulation
capping clock speed or number of transistors, or a rule that made it illegal
to have asymmetric network connections?

~~~
bharam
Enlighten me. How is the analogy broken?

~~~
rpmisms
Electronic devices != giant diesel engines with very very specific use cases.

------
nabla9
Ocean shipping is extremely energy efficient. As the article says, it produces
only 3 percent of the global co2. Cost benefit ratio is very good.

There is still room to improve:

* scrubbers or cleaner fuels can reduce pollutants other than co2.

* slower & thinner ships improve fuel efficiency

* rotor sail can improve energy efficiency another 10 percent.

~~~
Already__Taken
It's coming -
[http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-20...](http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2020.aspx)

------
upofadown
The rule of thumb for well streamlined objects in a liquid is that the power
required goes up with the square of the speed. So twice the speed costs 4
times the power. This works for ships, aircraft and ground vehicles.

So it is possible that the future will be significantly slower because we are
currently like to run well above the most efficient speed for things.

~~~
javiramos
Power required to overcome a drag force is proportional to the _cubed_
velocity (drag force is proportional to the squared power). So twice the speed
equals 8 times the relative power. Nevertheless, it makes your point even
stronger.

~~~
esotericn
Your factor of two is removed by the fact that the power is applied for half
the time.

A car travelling 70mph gets to its' destination twice as quickly as a car
travelling 35mph.

------
asoo
Article completely ignores the fact that most shipping companies are already
"slow steaming" because it's cheaper.

------
throwawaysea
People here talking about putting a price on speed and letting the market
figure it out - on principle I agree with that approach but climate isn’t the
only impact. Ship noise is enormous and for those who haven’t listened to
recordings, it would drive a human subjected to it insane. It affects the
ability of marine life to navigate, echolocate, and hunt but also subjects
them to a torturous condition that we wouldn’t put up with. See
[https://www.seattlemag.com/article/noisy-ships-affect-
orcas-...](https://www.seattlemag.com/article/noisy-ships-affect-orcas-
hunting-and-communication) or numerous other articles on the subject.

How do we enact an effective tax to manage the pending extinction of various
animals? Is the cost to transit at high speed going to be in the thousands or
millions to account for that? Here in the Northwest there are only 70ish orcas
left of the local variety (southern resident) and boat noise is a major cause
of their dwindling health and numbers. A voluntary speed limit reduction in
their main grounds was respected by 61% of boats as part of a trial
([https://phys.org/news/2017-09-ships-busy-channel-
endangered-...](https://phys.org/news/2017-09-ships-busy-channel-endangered-
orcas.html)) but we need broader ocean-wide solution to noise.

I can’t see our culture of instant gratification being worth the permanent
loss of flora and fauna.

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dr_dshiv
If they are charged by the warming impact, it would create an incentive for
warming mitigation technologies. For instance, lofting saltwater with a jet
spray can support marine cloud formation, which increases albedo and lowers
warming impact. Adding additives to fuel might also optimize marine cloud
formation. Note there is currently no economic incentive to develop these
technologies, but there would be a huge incentive if companies were charged
based on the externality (warming).

~~~
icebraining
Charging by the warming impact is fraught, because it's hard to measure that.
Instead of investing in technologies, they'd probably invest in lawsuits
claiming the "warming amount" wasn't correctly calculated. Seems better to
separate the two, regulation-wise.

~~~
dr_dshiv
Why do you believe it is hard to measure warming impact? Seems relatively
straightforward to determine an estimate based on a CO2-ton equivalent.

~~~
icebraining
Estimates are always more easily attacked than measurements. Remember we're
not talking about people trying in good-faith to evaluate something, we're
talking about a few getting hit with a tax based on that number. A good tax
should be hard to question legally.

~~~
dr_dshiv
And your view on carbon taxes?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/carbon-tax-most-powerful-
way...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/carbon-tax-most-powerful-way-to-
combat-climate-change-imf.html)

~~~
icebraining
Carbon taxes sounds reasonable, since you can measure the carbon emitted :)

~~~
dr_dshiv
But it won't be a measure -- it will be an estimate

------
excalibur
> Cutting the speed of ships has benefits for humans, nature and climate

Owners care about none of these things. Slowing down has to help their bottom
line, or they won't do it.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Thankfully, it's not only up to owners. People (governments) can set the rules
the owners need to abide.

Of course, people need to value this rule changes enough to enact it.

~~~
excalibur
The rules need to create a reliable financial incentive, or they will be
routinely ignored.

The easiest way to accomplish this would be to utilize existing AIS signals
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system)).
But doing so could create an incentive for captains to switch off their
transponders, which would lead to safety issues.

------
andy_ppp
You know what actually fixes this the simplest way; a carbon tax set at a high
level!

~~~
jkepler
Actually, isn't it a tragedy of the commons? I don't think a carbon tax would
adequately address the problem, and it would require a large regulatory
apparatus to enforce it.

The oceans and atmosphere get polluted because societies don't have robust
enough property rights. Markets are really good at efficiently allocating
scarce resources, so we need to figure out how to define strong property
rights to allow damaged parties to hold shipping companies liable. As I see
it, citizens, companies, and smaller governments (cities, counties, small
countries) are powerless to hold large polluters accountable, either because
there's not an adequate property-rights based legal framework, or the
litigation costs too much.

~~~
int_19h
Strong property rights require a large regulatory apparatus for their
enforcement, regardless of how those rights are allocated. It's not about the
legal framework.

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thdrdt
Is this true? As far as I know sea ships are designed for a specific speed.
Especially when they have a bulbous bow. Those bows are very inefficient at
lower or higher speeds.

Edit: what I mean: I can imagine a speed reduction reduces emission by 20%.
But when travel times will be over 20% longer nothing is gained.

------
dr_dshiv
Just charge them for the warming impact and let the market decide to slow
down, if that's the most efficient way.

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mikece
“Shipping generates 3% of all greenhouse emissions” — I would like to see more
info about that because the big ocean-going container ships are the most
efficient mode per ton per (nautical) mile when it comes to fuel consumption.

And is there any chance the operators of the new China-to-Europe railway has a
sponsorship role in this report?

~~~
nabla9
oil tankers, bulk carriers and container ships together produce roughly half
of the shipping co2 emissions. 1.5% of all greenhouse gases.

There is 19 other ship classes that produce the other half. fast roro,
reefers, ferries, , etc.

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jmpman
Could we get carbon credits for paying these ships to go slower?

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m23khan
question: Is transporting cargo via airplanes more environmentally friendly
than ships?

Because, one thought comes to my mind: If speed of ships go down, then
airplane cargo industry would probably benefit. So, I am not sure if this move
would be beneficial for environment at the end of day.

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blisterpeanuts
Maybe it's time to take another look at nuclear freighters.[1]

1\. [https://www.flexport.com/blog/nuclear-powered-cargo-
ships](https://www.flexport.com/blog/nuclear-powered-cargo-ships)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Maybe it's time to stop buying so much crap that we don't need.

~~~
ttraub
So, encourage lower consumption? Or just produce more goods domestically to
reduce the need for international trade?

Neither proposal sounds very practical. Maybe it's more realistic to focus on
cleaner propulsion systems like electric.

