By Michael Grey* It’s New Year’s Eve, when people of kindly disposition wish each other the hope that the coming twelve months might be happy, or even prosperous. So let me begin with such a wish for our readers, despite most of the evidence suggesting that much of what made 2021 such a miserable experience […]
On our Forum: New Year thoughts on supporting seafarers and… handling fanatics Read More »
By Michael Grey* In the compromise that dictates the design of a ship, you don’t have to be cynical to observe that the needs of the crew come last, after the cargo, machinery and anything else that might remunerate the owner. The crew, it might be said “just fit in where they can”. It has
On our Forum: Crew needs come last in revolutionary new ship shapes Read More »
By Michael Grey* As the governmental delegates to Cop26, safely delivered home after their Scottish excursion, start to work out how they can deliver their extravagant zero-carbon pledges by the due date, it is becoming manifestly clear that it will be neither cheap nor easy. It is very easy for politicians and environmental interests to
On our Forum: Will there be any sea left? Read More »
By Michael Grey* It is funny how different items of news mesh with each other. Cop 26 is over, thank goodness and the thousands of delegates have jetted off to their homelands, leaving a heavy smell of jetfuel over Argyll, but what we are learning to call “the supply chain problem” remains. A queue of
On our Forum: The real cause of the supply chain quagmires… Read More »
By Michael Grey* In this world where virtue-signalling competes with the need to blame everyone, maybe we should not be surprised at the growing enthusiasm to second-guess somebody else’s decision-making. The dogs of blame are clearly out for the master of the 4526teu Zim Kingston, which in late October lost some 100 boxes over the side
The shipping industry needs to set ambitious targets to help prevent global climate catastrophe, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) cautions in a new position paper launched today. There are currently more than 50,000 cargo ships on the world’s oceans, the majority of which run on low-grade, heavy ‘bunker’ fuel. Together, the ships emit as
By Michael Grey* “Am I a man – or an animal?” This was a question dramatically posed by a huge Sicilian lorry driver on a ferry that was carrying his truck full of vegetables on the overnight run up to Genoa. It was a very new service, designed to move cargo off the country’s north-south
On our Forum: Seafarers and truckers: supply chain’s most vulnerable providers Read More »
By Michael Grey* Will what we used to think of as “normal” ever return? Black swans used to be rare, but now they are coming by the squadrons, like migrating geese, as one daft occurrence succeeds the last in bewildering succession. There is a world shortage of lorry drivers, as they all opt to drive
On our Forum: Stranger than fiction in a world ‘not far short of chaos’ Read More »
By Michael Grey* The results of an inquest in the UK on the deaths caused by a tram coming off the rails gave one pause for thought. The driver, it had concluded, had suffered a “microsleep” at the very moment he should have been applying the brakes and the tram had rushed on with
The many challenges to one-man bridge operations (Forum) Read More »
The “Ship Carbon Recycling Working Group (WG)” of Japan’s Carbon Capture & Reuse (CCR) Study Group has confirmed that carbon recycled methane produced by methanation technology (Note 1) can be recognized as zero emission ship fuel. A technical paper describing the details of the calculation procedure and evaluation conducted by the WG has been