California is mandating that all ships operating within 24 miles of it's coastline burn low sulphur diesel
fuel beginning in '09 with final regs achieved in '12.
What does this mean? It means that the HFO, or heavy
fuel oil, that modern diesel-powered ships burn will no longer be able to be used. Some ships blend or use IFO, or Intermediate
Fuel Oil, and it's not clear whether that grade will be readily and economically available in a low sulpher grade. High grade, low sulpher diesel is prohibitively expensive compared to the bunkers that marine diesels in ocean-going ships use currently. The technology that enables modern marine diesels to burn HFO is what has caused the diesel engine to supplant the older, less maintenance intensive steam turbine. It's hard to see how the immediate impact cannot be but to the detriment of the ports of California and the benefit of Seattle. Most shipping
lines currently call at both the port of Seattle-Tacoma and at least one Californian port. The popularity and widespread use of the mini-bridge concept (containers on board trains inland) now makes that requirement less essential.
Ship's service power is provided by two or three diesel generator sets and it could reasonably be expected that those could be run on low sulpher diesel at a modicum of increased cost. The real problem will be in the ship's main engine. Of course the irony lies in that, the main engine in a modern diesel- powered ship only runs for propulsion purposes and is therefore idle when in port. From 24 miles offshore I'd estimate that most ships might be running that engine for three hours during arrival and departure. Whether they remain within 24 miles of the coast of California depends on the next port called, or prior port called. The SF to LA route would probably be the only one significantly affected.
Here's a news release on the matter.
Hurricane Dolly Rips into South Texas
If for some reason that mis-named link doesn't work, here's the home page for the news service:
Environment News Service
A cursory reading gives one cause to ponder the matter. The usual mumbo-jumbo of the effect of the regulations is transparently made up of wishful thinking versus actual science. It makes no allowance for the wide variety and varying efficiencies of different ship's engines. How diesel particulate matter can be isolated as to source remains a mystery in port cities with legendary traffic volumes. This becomes especially perplexing when one considers that the ship's largest consumers of
fuel oil are not even operative for the majority of time spent in Californian waters. The engines that are run are something short of 1000 HP and only one is generally run at a time. Another words, the ship is running about the equivalent of what two tractor-trailers would put out in horse power.
Perhaps the most startling statistic is the one stating that this will reduce emissions by 15 tons a day. I'd say that's a lot of carbon when considering the source. In fact, I'd be real curious as to how you could manage to capture 15 tons of carbon a day from almost any number of ships. But that curiosity is dwarfed by how shipboard diesel
exhaust is able to effect 80% of Californians. I guess the number of citizens living on the docks has increased.
The last item of interest in the news release is that Californians are now at cancer risk on the order of ten chances in a million from shipboard emissions. In the statistical world that's known as an unquantifiable risk or a risk of incidence that is so small it is difficult to determine if there is risk at all. Broken down that comes to 1:100,000 cancer risks. What is a 100,000:1 occurrence? Well the odds that you'll date a supermodel are calculated out at 88,000:1 so there's a better chance you'll have an opportunity to become the next Mr. Christie Brinkley than die from cancer caused by a ship in California. I'll admit that I was thinking of "bestfriend" when researching this as he could plausibly be affected by both statistics. Your chances of drowning are only 79,000:1 while the odds of you dieing in some type of explosion are calculated at 108,000:1. Conversely, your odds of being murdered are around 18,000:1 which means you should stay in the car because your odds of dieing in a car accident are only 18,585:1. And your odds of flying on a plane with a drunken pilot are about 117:1 while your chances of fatally slipping in the tub or shower are at an alarming 2232:1.
If it's up to me, I'd just as soon fall in the shower with a supermodel scrubbing my back. It's a lot more likely to happen than my demise from shipboard diesel
exhaust.
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