
Toxic fumes from idling cruise ships are still a problem in New York - JumpCrisscross
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/nyregion/cruise-ship-exhaust-shore-power-nyc.html
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ehvatum
Pleasure boats spewing heavy particulate matter into tenement complexes where
asthma occurs at 2x elevated rates, while shore power plugs twist in the wind,
unused, and the mayor spends $200mm on political advertising. This reads like
scene-setting for a Warhammer 40k battle.

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mc32
While Bloomberg oversaw the shore power project while mayor, he hasn’t been
mayor for years. It’s deBlasio’s admin now that is overseeing this. So I don’t
see how you get to connect those dots like that.

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ehvatum
Fair point. My mind classifies all NYC mayors past and present as being the
same entity, except for Giuliani, who gets a special category as "the 911
guy".

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memn0nis
I've never understand why the problem of "the X largest ships contribute a
shocking amount of pollution" hasn't been solved. It can't be that hard given
the limited number of ships, right?

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agentdrtran
People who own or travel on boats are rich and the people most affected by the
pollution they spew are not

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graeme
....this article is about NYC, one of the richest places in NYC. Air pollution
doesn't spare the rich.

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Ericson2314
NYC is not uniformly rich at all. It is only the astounding wealth of the
richest New Yorkers that makes it appear so. Who exactly is affected in NYC
depends on the dock and wind direction. I have read (somewhere I forget) that
air quality is in the mean worse in the Bronx; by no means is the outcome of
this affecting all classes uniformly.

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ganzuul
Cruise ships ought to be the first candidate for a luxury tax to pay for
marine vehicle electrification. There are many candidate battery technologies
which seem well-suited for this application.

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JumpCrisscross
> _Cruise ships ought to be the first candidate for a luxury tax to pay for
> marine vehicle electrification_

Tax burdens are tough to pin down. For something like cruise ship docking, the
fear is losing the docking business to a neighboring port. That can change
ground economics for voting families, a problem for policy makers.

State or national-level regulation is probably needed.

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Ericson2314
In general, yes, but New York is uniquely privileged as the most glamorous
east cost destination and should just act decisively. This isn't the freight
business moving to NJ and Oakland. This is bougie tourists who want to
disembark straight into their destination.

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JumpCrisscross
> _tourists who want to disembark straight into their destination_

Hoboken, New Jersey and Red Hook, Brooklyn are roughly the same distance from
the city.

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Ericson2314
Fair that's true, but note how the article mentioned many docking in Manhattan
too. And at least in Red Hook you can truthfully say it's NYC.

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jillesvangurp
As soon as someone puts a price tag on the human cost, diesel engines will go
extinct in no time at all. The alternatives are nearly there technically (for
practically most use cases) and once that excuse is removed from the table,
operating diesel engines will become very expensive and legally risky very
quickly. As soon as people wake up to the notion that smog kills a rather
large amount of people (affecting the smallest and weakest first), the notion
of going after people that produce, operate, own, or otherwise are associated
with them might gain popularity. Think very expensive class action suits
followed by expensive inspections, heavy fines, area restrictions, damages
payed, etc.

Right now the status quo seems to be that we pretend everything is fine even
though we already know that it is not. All it takes to change this is to stop
pretending it is fine and just say no. It will make diesel engines extremely
expensive and will cause people to get rid of them as soon as they can.

If you think about it, parking a continuously running ginormous diesel engine
anywhere near where people (or anything for that matter) lives seems to border
on criminally insane. Then if you consider that the sole purpose of these
things is to sustain and transport a population of tourists the notion becomes
ludicrous.

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Ericson2314
> If ships were required to plug in, Mr. DeMeo said, then they would just go
> across the harbor, he said, and dock in New Jersey.

When the race to the bottom augment involves not nations half way across the
globe, but two sides of a river, sigh.

Also, that's just ridiculous. No bougie cruise ship passenger wants to be
dumped in NJ any more than mayor LaGuardia wanted to land in Newerk.[1]

[1]: [https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-laguardia-
crown-j...](https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-laguardia-crown-jewel-
airport-bears-article-1.787753)

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brenden2
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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totalZero
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...](https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one-corporation-
pollute-them-all)

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TheCoelacanth
> 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.

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washadjeffmad
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.

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cardiffspaceman
Cost seems to be the thing, and the reporting doesn't drill deeply enough into
this. The cost of the electricity is mentioned, as well as some sensitive
ports where shore power is used. Does the Regal Princess fit the apparently-
fixed arrangement that the QM2 uses? How much time would the ship be hooked to
shore power compared to how long it is berthed? Does it take costly shore
personnel hours to hook up the power?

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sesuximo
if they cannot afford the price of operating cleanly, then they shouldn't
operate at all imo

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cardiffspaceman
I'm not passing judgement. But I know from observation, and TFA confirms, that
in most other ports they use shore power, so I suspect that it is unusually
inconvenient or the laws are weaker than CA or AK. Cruise lines do watch costs
and some were avoiding Antarctica just because Ushuaia was charging more
(compared to today) for the special fuel required for Antarctica.

