[HN Gopher] Preserving the history of retiring cruise ships
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Preserving the history of retiring cruise ships
Author : trevin
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-10-30 13:08 UTC (4 days ago)
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| drewm1980 wrote:
| No mention of how cruise ships are essentially entire cities
| powered by fossil fuels that dump their waste directly into the
| ocean?
| seydor wrote:
| No more than other cities. I wonder if a modern ship is more
| efficient than the centuries old city centers
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Cities have vast water and trash treatment facilities, at
| least in developed countries. Those facilities are at most
| decades old. Even if the sewer system itself may be centuries
| old, it is maintained as failing sewers are health risks.
| Also, cities make less use of disposable items.
|
| I can be contrarian at times, but that's just plain wrong.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Absolutely more than other cities. These things literally run
| on crude oil and dump shit (literall, and worse) unfiltered
| into the ocean.
|
| Plus, as someone living a few hundred meters from a harbor
| that hosts these abominations, I can tell you that the kind
| of tourism they foster is super toxic to local politics. And,
| as someone engaged in local air quality measurements here, I
| can also tell you that they're toxic, in the literal sense,
| to the people living downwind from the harbor.
|
| At this point, the only way forward I see is to outright ban
| these things.
|
| /rant
| pveierland wrote:
| Probably not. The average EU citizen living in "centuries old
| city centers" emits ~5.66 tCO2eq/year [1], while an analysis
| of cruise ship vacations for Seattle shows each passenger
| emitting on average ~421 kg/day [2], equaling ~153
| tCO2eq/year (27x the EU average).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon
| _di...
|
| [2] https://foe.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/07/Comparison_of_CO2...
| morsch wrote:
| I wonder. From first principles, I don't quite understand
| how cruise ships can be that bad.
|
| It's not obvious to me how tourists on a ship can use much
| more energy than of they were in a land based resort. Yes,
| they're moving, but ships move very efficiently, which is
| why it's used for bulk transport. And tourists on land also
| move, often by car. Or are cruise ships more comparable to
| cars than cargo ships in terms of movement?
|
| The facilities themselves, pools, rides, restaurants, A/C,
| theatres, are all also used on land and I don't the why
| they would be less efficient on a ship. Unless being on a
| ship results in trade-offs that impact efficiency, e.g.
| less insulation requires more A/C. I'd kind of expect the
| opposite, with everything from cabins to restaurants being
| comparatively cramped. Maybe energy is just being wasted,
| what with the power plant being right there.
|
| Obviously the power generation is 100% fossil, but the
| power on land is also generated somewhere, and it's usually
| not green -- though this is increasingly an argument.
|
| The crude oil is bad, yes, but also used by cargo ships
| which must dwarf cruise ships by a ludicrous amount.
|
| The raw sewage is specific to cruises, admittedly, though
| I'm sure plenty of raw sewage and worse is dumped into our
| oceans by land dwellers. But that is no defense.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to go on a cruise, it
| sounds like hell to me. I'm perfectly willing to believe
| they're inefficient, I just don't quite understand why.
|
| The linked study is pretty bad. It seems to get it's data
| from https://seattlecruisecontrol.org/learn/greenhouse-gas-
| emissi... which itself is based on website CO2 calculators.
| That's not exactly science.
|
| Also, a third of the CO2 attributed to the cruise ship
| vacation is the flight there and back. Which is fair enough
| if you ask me, just noteworthy and is gonna vary a lot
| depending on how far people have to fly to get there.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The crude oil is bad, yes, but also used by cargo ships
| which must dwarf cruise ships by a ludicrous amount.
|
| Cargo ships don't need much power output in port. The
| main power plants are shut down, usually it's only the
| (tiny) auxiliary generator unit in use.
|
| A cruise ship however? That one runs orders of magnitude
| more electrical stuff all the time, and that's a loooot
| of fuel consumed.
| gus_massa wrote:
| >>> _The average EU citizen living in "centuries old city
| centers" emits ~5.66 tCO2eq/year_
|
| As the GP said, that excludes the flight to get there.
| Also it does not include going to a swimming pool
| everyday, and probably not crazy 15degC/60degF AC [1].
| It's not a good comparison of old style turism with
| crouse turism.
|
| [1] At home I use the AC at 26degC/79degF. It's insane to
| use a wool pullover in summer just because someone likes
| the AC at 15degC/60degF.
| bergie wrote:
| > I wonder. From first principles, I don't quite
| understand how cruise ships can be that bad.
|
| Because of tragedy of commons. There is very little
| environmental regulation affecting shipping. And cruise
| ships can utilise flags of convenience to skirt the
| little that there is.
|
| You could totally make them more efficient and less
| harmful, but that would cost money, and hence hurt
| shareholder value.
|
| For example, we've been cruising on a sailboat since last
| April. Germany - Scotland - Madeira - Canary Islands. All
| areas also frequented by cruise ships. Almost all of our
| electricity (~1.4kWh per day) comes from solar and wind.
| We do burn some fuel when becalmed or doing harbour
| manouvers. Since mid-July we burned 140l of diesel, which
| comes to 380kg of CO2. Not nothing, but also not
| terrible. On top of that we burn about 1l of ethanol per
| week for cooking purposes. Building the sailboat of
| course caused a lot of emissions, but amortised over the
| 45 years this boat has been sailing, probably aren't too
| bad. And equipment like sails and ropes are mostly made
| of recycled plastics, and last many years.
|
| But of course we lack some luxuries that the cruising
| customers expect. There's no AC, and the only swimming
| pool available is the sea. Showers are on deck and
| require boiling some hot water. And worse of all, we
| don't have the energy budget to run Starlink 24/7, so
| there's only couple of hours of Internet per day.
| leoedin wrote:
| Thanks for applying scepticism to the claim! Yes, cruise
| ships are bad for all sorts of reasons - but from an
| absolute energy consumption point of view there's no way
| they're as bad as people are making out.
|
| Just as high density apartment living is the most
| efficient way to live on land, there must be similar
| benefits in a ship. I'd be surprised if the energy
| consumption per person was much higher than that of a
| land based resort.
|
| The ships engine will be less efficient than a modern
| power station, and there's no zero carbon generation on a
| ship. That might account for 4x CO2 per kWh. Anything
| more seems suspect.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is drastically, drastically, drastically underestimating
| how efficient cities are.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Exactly. In terms of CO2 emissions, you're better off flying to
| a tropical destination and booking a hotel. The cruise ship
| will burn much more fuel than the jet per passenger in just a
| couple of days. If you stay on the thing for a month, it's
| going to be an order of magnitude more. There's nothing green
| or clean about these things.
|
| They also have a huge ecological impact on the destinations
| they go to; some of which may have fragile coral reefs or other
| marine life that doesn't respond to well to the presence of
| waste dumping cruise ships. The Venetian lagoon is now off
| limits for cruise ships. But that's because it has sustained a
| lot of damage over the years. A lot of other destinations are
| still being actively destroyed by cruise ship tourism.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The Venetian lagoon is now off limits for cruise ships. But
| that's because it has sustained a lot of damage over the
| years.
|
| The problem with Venice is more that the cruise ships bring
| in large amounts of "day tourists" - they come in in the
| morning, eat some overpriced pizza and pasta, buy overpriced
| Chinese-made "authentic" souvenirs, and leave in the evening,
| not contributing much to the local economy.
| omnimus wrote:
| How is that not contributing much to the local economy?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Because the income is spread to _a very few_ people -
| those lucky enough to own a pizza or coffee store along
| popular tourist routes. Everyone else doesn 't profit at
| all from the tourists or makes only pittances.
|
| That is not enough to sustain a healthy city, which led
| to most of Venice being left for grabs for AirBnBs - good
| luck finding regular Venetians actually living in their
| city.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Hasn't the entire city of Venice been anlmost exclusively
| funded by and setup for tourism for hundreds of years?
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| Day tourism is far less beneficial to locals than
| overnight tourism.
| omnimus wrote:
| Not hundreds but it is for sure right now. It has been
| for decades.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Responsible tourists not only buy food and souvenirs and
| tours, they also hire carpenters and assistant key
| account managers, as well as purchase sheet metal,
| plastic pylons and diesel engines to support local jobs.
| Thorrez wrote:
| I don't see how "day tourists" are different from other
| types of tourists.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Other types of tourists spend much more time in the city,
| they sleep in hotels, they also visit more than just the
| Piazza San Marco (and thus, distribute traffic flow much
| more evenly).
| omnimus wrote:
| Saying that only very few people profit from the tourists
| is like saying only very few people profit from the
| factory behind the city. You are totally right that only
| few people profit but this is the case with everything
| unfortunately.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Everything you mentioned is a contribution to the local
| economy, though?
|
| Tourism is EUR215 billion of Italy's income, about 1/10th
| of its GDP. Rich tourists coming off cruise ships doing
| impulse buys at huge profit margins sounds like a good
| thing to me, from a purely capitalist perspective.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Problem is that it doesn't actually work that way. The
| boat tourist don't spend too much, or comparatively spend
| lot less than those that visit cities in other ways. The
| infra to support the ships cost money, and then usually
| any activities are run by ship owners. Plus full board is
| standard so many prefer to eat there and also sleep.
|
| It is much more efficient to focus on tourists that live
| in hotels, buy every meal from local restaurants or at
| least shops. Have actual time to spend in more than main
| attractions as such diffuse over larger area. And well
| have more time for shopping or do it at local airport.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Wait until they hear about people travelling in camper
| vans that cook their own meals and just park by the
| roadside for sleeping! Or even worse, bicycle tourists
| who bivouac by the river, they don't even buy gas!
| nkrisc wrote:
| How many camper cans and bike tourists descend on Venice
| every day?
|
| Sure, camper and bike tourists probably don't contribute
| much to local economies, but they also have negligible
| negative impacts, so what's your point?
| leoedin wrote:
| Camper vans are already a big problem for some rural
| areas. And they don't tend to contribute much to the
| local economy. You phrased it like that was a gotcha, but
| it's not really. Camper-vans and cruises are both high-
| impact low benefit forms of tourism.
|
| I wouldn't put bike tourists in that group - because they
| are incredibly low impact in comparison, and in my
| experience most bike tourists are spending money as they
| go - either on accommodation or food.
| m000 wrote:
| It is the "local economy" only if you believe in trickle-
| down economics.
|
| The area of visited by cruise ship tourists is typically
| a very small fraction of the port city. Worse, the
| establishments in that area only account for a small
| fraction of the overall local employment, and are owned
| by a handful of families or (worse) funds/corporations.
|
| So money does flow, but not really to the local economy,
| apart from a number of low-paid service jobs.
|
| You also appear to have a very outdated view of cruise
| ship tourism. What "rich tourists"? These days it is the
| less well-off that go on cruises, even choosing to cruise
| through their retirement as the cheaper option [1].
| Nobody is going to make expensive purchases as they have
| already visited half a dozen ports before their current
| stop and have another half a dozen to go.
|
| [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/10004079/retired-
| couple-51-consec...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Which is why they started charging money to enter the city.
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| The estimates I'm seeing is that cruise ships are about 2x-3x
| the emissions per kilometer than flying to a destination and
| staying there (obviously, it varies with a lot of factors).
| So if you were flying to a nearby island, you would have
| fewer CO2 emissions. But something like a trip to Thailand
| could end up having more CO2 emissions than a cruise.
|
| It is kind of strange, though, that I always hear about the
| carbon foot print when cruises get brought up, but I almost
| never hear about it when vacationing in general is brought
| up. It seems like if people were really concerned, they'd be
| telling people to go to local beaches and not beaches on the
| other side of the planet, but I've never seen people say
| "Don't go to Malaysia! If you go to Cancun you'll be creating
| much lower CO2 emissions."
|
| I get the feeling that cruise ships in particular are
| targeted because, unlike trips to Southeast Asia, going on a
| cruise ship is considered "uncool."
| zamadatix wrote:
| Plenty of folks say "try not to fly" in general (was it
| France that banned short haul flights for trains recently?)
| but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed of
| your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch
| than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend more time
| there by taking a more eco-friendly flight rather riding on
| a cruise ship".
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| > but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed
| of your whole life" is a significantly less practical
| pitch than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend
| more time there by taking a more eco-friendly flight
| rather riding on a cruise ship".
|
| This framing is already putting a pretty strong bias into
| it. Your preferred vacation is something "you've dreamed
| of your whole life," while their preferred vacations is
| simply how they prefer to "ride" to a location.
|
| One could also say that "don't take that cruise you
| always dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly
| less practical pitch than "well if you want to go to a
| beach, go to a beach closer to your house."
|
| Both of that statement and yours treat something that
| most people consider extremely important (being on a
| cruise, having the beach they go to be in South East
| Asia) as being merely incidental to the vacation itself.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'd agree there is bias but argue the framing is
| highlighting, not introducing, it. E.g. how many wanting
| to take a cruise are just as happy with Norfolk,
| Baltimore, and Wilmington as stops vs San Juan, St.
| Thomas, and St Martin? I'm sure someone out there is but
| they are certainly going to be the minority. In a cruise
| where you are going is still a central part of the
| vacation and you can keep a large part of that even if
| you remove the ship. In your alternative you're throwing
| out the entire trip with the bathwater - one is a
| compromise, the other a full sacrifice. No matter how you
| want to slice that it's a much more grating pitch for the
| average tourist.
| amelius wrote:
| Also, cruise ships must be extremely boring to be on. You're
| basically held captive inside a floating shopping mall for
| weeks.
|
| I wonder how many people book a second trip.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Depends on the trip but it's more like a hotel that shows
| up in a different city every day, so there's something new
| all the time if you get off the boat.
| hildolfr wrote:
| So someone pitches you a floating city complete with
| amusement park, hotel, entertainment venues and restaurants
| that trots around the world dropping you off at nearly
| everything interesting on the way, and you think it sounds
| boring?
|
| I don't like cruise ships for reasons, but they never
| struck me as 'boring '.
| bell-cot wrote:
| It's a short article in a travel magazine, about one guy's
| adventures sneaking into scrapping facilities to snag a few
| trinkets. A pretty niche topic.
|
| From the editor's PoV, your facts aren't relevant to the
| article. And, by travel magazine standards, he's already
| slipped in a boatload of more-relevant cruise industry
| negatives.
| lobochrome wrote:
| I agree that they aren't exactly clean. But the article is
| about something else.
|
| If we can't have articles about specific topics without first
| having disclaimers about general issues.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I see it more like having a discussion, of some things the
| topic triggers and are very adjacent, crticism of cruise
| ships fit very well with articles about cruise ships.
|
| You may very well add more thoughts about the specific one,
| about saving historic cruise ships to improve the balance.
| paulgb wrote:
| Also, the article does touch on the environmental and human-
| rights issues of shipbreaking.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Well since they are not clean; what's the point in trying to
| preserve them? I'd argue getting rid of them is a good thing.
| Especially the older more inefficient ones.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Read the article
| lobochrome wrote:
| Not actually saving them. Just collecting souvenirs and mementos
| before they are scrapped.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah the title is a bit deceptive; nobody in their right mind
| tries to "save" an old cruise ship. A home rental company here
| (idk what they're called) invested in buying an old ocean liner
| (the SS Rotterdam) to convert it to housing or an event center,
| it was a flop that cost them over a hundred million euros and
| led to a parlimentary investigation - since they're a housing
| company, that >100 million should have been spent on building
| and maintaining their properties, including social housing,
| instead of risky investments in asbestos-ridden old ships.
| User23 wrote:
| Someone in Long Beach did.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The City of Long Beach itself did as a way to promote
| tourism. It was government funded and turned into a
| financial disaster too, with management of the ship
| changing hands a bunch of times because it wasn't
| financially viable.
| russfink wrote:
| Yes. Before the article got to that revelation, I was wondering
| where this guy got all his money to save entire ships.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| No mention that the British Cunard liners, like the Queen Mary
| and Queen Elizabeth, were subsidised by the government.
|
| The government loved having big fast ships it could requisition
| as troup carriers. The two queens were too fast to be intercepted
| by uboats. Mary moved 800k troups in WW2
|
| As late as 1982 the Canberra was requisitioned and sent to the
| Falkland Islands conflict.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| *troop.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Couldn't make it past the second paragraph. So pretentiously
| written
| moffkalast wrote:
| I was half expecting our friend, Mike Brady, from Oceanliner
| Designs.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'll remind my wife that my vintage computer collection hobby
| could be a whole lot worse...
| whartung wrote:
| My favorite anecdote of this is talking with railroad people.
| Talking about rolling stock, and locomotives.
|
| And talking with someone (at a museum, or something, I don't
| recall) they mentioned something like "Yea, we think we all of
| the locomotives tracked down, but there's always the chance one
| might be in someones private collection somewhere."
|
| And I just have to marvel at the idea that someone, somewhere,
| has a locomotive shoved in a barn somewhere out of public view.
| This isn't Steve McQueens Bullit Mustangs under a tarp
| somewhere. It's a locomotive!
|
| I had a friend that collected pinball machines, that was an
| endeavor all its own.
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