Thank St Greta for saving us

I would not want to have bought a huge widebeam narrowboat with the intent of shuffling round London right now for sure. They are definitely after the urban liveaboards, burning coal at jogger head height is not going to be tolerated for too much longer and already causes gallons of green ink. Why would anyone volunteer this information unless it was to say you were powered by grass and emit only unicorn farts late at night. One of the joys of cruising (even inland) is the remarkable liberty compared to other lifestyles where you are not even allowed to wire your own plug. It won't stand for much longer in this world.

Energy use wise, I currently work from a cruising boat with a kW of solar, which makes me so green I p*ss rainbows compared to most landlubbers. There's no practical way of getting round urban emissions, unless CRT find a couple of billion to stick charging posts along the cut people are going to be legislated off it.
 
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scotty123 said:
What, is the point of this investigation, when they don't seem to bother about the pollution from commercial vessels in places like Portsmouth & Southampton, the latter being one of the most polluted even well away from the docks?
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+1. ..The brown trail of exhaust pollution from merchant ships in the English Channel on a calm day is a disgrace.
 
Tomahawk said:
Probably another stunt inspired by oircsaviour...

https://www.yachtingmonthly.com/new...61.1656621819.1566116213-343000188.1565535338
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What a nasty and vindictive posting. Are you perhaps and elderly male who cares less about our environment than many millions of other people.

It is clear that this study is about pollution from ALL vessels, including, as it should, yachts as being part of all vessels.

If you have sat in a harbour downwind of some fishing boat, or yacht, running it’s engine for long periods of time then you might realise how nasty the emissions from old Diesel engines can be - and far far worse from ships running on cheapest dirtiest fuel oil. Countries downwind of major shipping Channels are experiencing significant pollution from dirty ship emissions.
Perhaps you have never suffered asthma. Or don’t care about those who have. Perhaps you don’t care about your children or grandchildren breathing in particulates and gases from ship, fishing boat or yacht engines.
The few times we have had to motor downwind, it has been clear that even a recent Volvo marine diesel is much less clean than a modern car diesel.

Perhaps there may not be sufficient volume of yachts to make this a priority for action. But a study of all vessel pollution is surely a good thing to do. It has nothing to do with the Swedish lady, but I hold her in much higher esteem for her actions than people who make nasty snide comments.
 
mainsail1 said:
+1. ..The brown trail of exhaust pollution from merchant ships in the English Channel on a calm day is a disgrace.
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I've noticed that as well, 2 distinct lines in the shipping lanes of the brown/yellow pollution. I believe that it is caused by the type of 'fuel' that they use. They should have some form of filter system in the 'funnels' to remove it.
 
dunedin said:
...

It is clear that this study is about pollution from ALL vessels, including, as it should, yachts as being part of all vessels.

Perhaps there may not be sufficient volume of yachts to make this a priority for action. But a study of all vessel pollution is surely a good thing to do. It has nothing to do with the Swedish lady, but I hold her in much higher esteem for her actions than people who make nasty snide comments.
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+1
This clearly says ALL vessels, including yachts. And I for one would love to see the reduction in the waste of natural resources by those who think we all need to suffer from Diesel fumes around our coast. By the way, I am also all for the scrapping of this rediculour "tax free" Red Diesel in the UK. I'd rather pay extra and encourage our community to use less. One of the few ... "I remember when ..." views I have of the old days. Most times I look forward, but when anchored in a bay that was once tranquil and encouraged contemplation, i look back to the absence of folk letting children drive whining outboards while they sit back letting their generators keep the aircon at the perfect temperature. Grrrrr!!!!
 
dunedin said:
What a nasty and vindictive posting. Are you perhaps and elderly male who cares less about our environment than many millions of other people.

It is clear that this study is about pollution from ALL vessels, including, as it should, yachts as being part of all vessels.

If you have sat in a harbour downwind of some fishing boat, or yacht, running it’s engine for long periods of time then you might realise how nasty the emissions from old Diesel engines can be - and far far worse from ships running on cheapest dirtiest fuel oil. Countries downwind of major shipping Channels are experiencing significant pollution from dirty ship emissions.
Perhaps you have never suffered asthma. Or don’t care about those who have. Perhaps you don’t care about your children or grandchildren breathing in particulates and gases from ship, fishing boat or yacht engines.
The few times we have had to motor downwind, it has been clear that even a recent Volvo marine diesel is much less clean than a modern car diesel.

Perhaps there may not be sufficient volume of yachts to make this a priority for action. But a study of all vessel pollution is surely a good thing to do. It has nothing to do with the Swedish lady, but I hold her in much higher esteem for her actions than people who make nasty snide comments.
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Well said!
 
Boathook said:
I've noticed that as well, 2 distinct lines in the shipping lanes of the brown/yellow pollution. I believe that it is caused by the type of 'fuel' that they use. They should have some form of filter system in the 'funnels' to remove it.
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I read yesterday that the high sulfur fuels currently used by ships are to be phased out https://www.raconteur.net/finance/high-sulphur-fuels-shipping Some technical problems to come for the refiners but a big step forward for the atmosphere.
 
Good - it was recently reported that cruise ships visiting Lisbon generate 86% more emissions of sulpher dioxide than that emitted by Portugal's entire car traffic over a year - and there are some pretty environmentally dirty cars on Portugal's roads as well!
 
I saw one ship changing from 'clean' 'Eurofuel' to 'crossing the Atlantic burn what you can filth' a few years ago. It created more pollution than literally every car, van, lorry and bus in the UK for the whole of that year in about sixty seconds.

Someone is kidding us if to think that we can make any detectable difference compared to industrial emissions.
 
steve1963 said:
And your solution to the roblems of climate change is what, exactly? It's so easy, but very stupid, to just sneer at people trying to tackle very real problems
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Very simples..

You and that means YOU and not someone else start by stopping buying anything that is made in China/Asia/India/Pakistan/Malaysia..
Only buy locally manufactured goods that are produced with clean energy and where manufacturing processes have full environmental controls.

Of course everything you buy will be a hell of a lot more expensive than cheap imports. Until people start to take responsibility for the environment by changing what they buy and where it is made... they are being hypocrites.
 
Boathook said:
I've noticed that as well, 2 distinct lines in the shipping lanes of the brown/yellow pollution. I believe that it is caused by the type of 'fuel' that they use. They should have some form of filter system in the 'funnels' to remove it.
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As one of «*them*» I’m happy to tell you that as of the first of January next year «*they*» will either burn low sulphur fuel oil or «*they*» will indeed «*have some form of filter system in the funnels to remove it*».
 
Tomahawk said:
Very simples..

You and that means YOU and not someone else start by stopping buying anything that is made in China/Asia/India/Pakistan/Malaysia..
Only buy locally manufactured goods that are produced with clean energy and where manufacturing processes have full environmental controls.

Of course everything you buy will be a hell of a lot more expensive than cheap imports. Until people start to take responsibility for the environment by changing what they buy and where it is made... they are being hypocrites.
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Of course one answer is not to buy anything you don't need at all. "Roof over one's head, food on the table and somewhere to sleep" comes to mind.
As the grumpy old man in the pub says "Too many people and we can't afford it."
 
Minn said:
As one of «*them*» I’m happy to tell you that as of the first of January next year «*they*» will either burn low sulphur fuel oil or «*they*» will indeed «*have some form of filter system in the funnels to remove it*».
Click to expand...

The link I posted above is not entirely hapoy with scrubbers in the stacks, akthough it admits that there are unknowns at present. Apparently the sulfur is reacted with seawater, the resulting product then pumped overboard.
 
vyv_cox said:
The link I posted above is not entirely hapoy with scrubbers in the stacks, akthough it admits that there are unknowns at present. Apparently the sulfur is reacted with seawater, the resulting product then pumped overboard.
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I can bore for Britain on this.

There are four «*solutions*»:

1. Buy low sulphur fuel oil. That’s what my outfit are doing. There are issues with this that I can witter on about if asked - there are some crude oils that have a very low sulphur content (some Chinese and West African crudes) and there are several arrangements for making low sulphur fuel oil from higher sulphur crudes but the fuel oils tend to be unstable or incompatible or both.

2. Burn marine gas oil. That’s basically the same stuff as road diesel. You can probably spot the problem given that the world merchant fleet uses about the same amount of fuel as diesel road vehicles.., there are also exotic engineering issues

3. Fit closed loop scrubbers. Significantly expensive - say US$ 6M per ship plus operating costs including proper sludge disposal which few ports are set up to handle as well as supply of chemicals.

4. Fit open loop scrubbers and simply wash the excess sulphur oxides into the sea. The cheap and dirty solution, already banned in many places, including the entire coast of China...
 
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