Titanic Revisted: Cruise Ships and Climate Change
On October 15th, I penned a post comparing the Earth to the infamous Titanic. I’ll continue with that comparison for a bit here. My wife and I were married in the spring of 1998 (a wonderful marriage that has yielded us two beautiful daughters and the best years of my life), and
The Dawn Princess, photo courtesy of Stan Shebs under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.
for our honeymoon we were blessed with the only cruise that either of us has ever taken, an 8-day voyage traversing the eastern islands of the Caribbean on the Dawn Princess, a freshly minted luxury liner less than a year old at the time. The cruise was a wedding gift from both sets of parents; and…can you believe it…we actually took my wife’s parents along with us! The trip was the most enjoyable vacation you could imagine.
Ever the inquisitive child when confronted with any new technology, I lunged at the opportunity to take the “Bridge Tour,” a guided visit to the cockpit of this 14-story, 77 thousand ton floating city. I was rewarded handsomely for my curiosity; and learned many new and fascinating things about cruise ships.
Of all the ship trivia imparted during that little adventure, none fascinated me more than this: The ship cruises at a speed of roughly 30 miles per hour, about the same speed as our family compact car achieves in the secondary roads of north Atlanta. Ships, unfortunately, don’t have brakes and must effectively coast to a stop. The crew must, therefore, anticipate arrival to port well in advance; and would anyone volunteer to share how far out to sea they cut the engines when steering into port? (OK, you may put virtual hands down now, and thank you for playing along!) They turn off the ship’s props at about 5 miles out! I can’t get over that. The Dawn Princess has that much inertia.
And that is why, you understand, icebergs are so dangerous to ships (especially so in 1912). Its the lethal combination of the unyielding momentum of the ship and hidden danger…with almost 90% of the instrument of destruction concealed from view under water. The situation at night is perhaps analogous to steering a car on pure ice…to avoid an invisible concrete wall…and correctly anticipating the best direction for the maneuver a day before you get into the car. We’ve never faced man-made climate change before, so the truth is we don’t know how deep a down-side we could be facing. We have no idea how bad it could really get. We can make very educated guesses. But there is one thing we can count on with absolute certainty: the economic inertia of fossil fuels; and it is that unyielding momentum that concerns me very deeply; and that is what I’d like to explore with you in posts ahead if I am fortunate enough to enjoy your company. Please stop back to visit; and until then, bon voyage, SevenCell.
