I feel like out-there-annie over here, the red headed stepchild asking for clarification about global warming…Bunker Fuel could this be the cause of our global warming concerns?
This is a really complex issue and there are many causes.
- Burning Fossil Fuels in cars, for heating, for shipping, for air travel and producing power is a huge part of it.
- Deforestation is another major component.
- Making Cement is strangely a significant contributor
- In general manufacturing and especially smelting are major portions.
Adding to the problem is inefficient use of energy generated.
- Older not energy star appliances
- Incandescent bulbs are a horrible waste
- Just leaving stuff turned on when not in use
- poor insulation especially in attics
- The power distribution system itself is far from reasonable efficiency
Some other contributors, Cow/Cattle farts. Sounds funny, but seriously. A lot methane is released this way and methane is actually worse than Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a Greenhouse Gas.
I don’t know the current figures, but if the demand for bunker fuel is, let’s say, a couple of million barrels per day, that is still dwarfed by the production of other fossil fuels.
Bunker fuel is nasty stuff, but as @What_Exit notes, while it’s undoubtedly a cause of climate change, it’s almost undoubtedly not the cause – largely because, even as nasty as it is, it’s only a small percentage of fossil fuel consumption and manmade CO2 emission.
This article notes the following (emphasis mine):
Not really… global warming/climate change is due to the concentration of carbon dioxide (75%) along with other gases in the atmosphere (25%).
Bunker fuels only account for about 2% of emissions. While high, there’s another 98% that’s not related to them. The most obvious areas for improvement are electricity/heat and transportation.
(look at the pie charts labeled "Global Manmade Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Sector 2013)
It’s actually not that strange, if you know a few details. Specifically, it’s making lime, a key ingredient in cement.
To make lime, crushed limestone (calcium carbnonate) is heated up to 900-1000° C, usually by burning coal but sometimes natural gas. At that temperature, calcium carbonate breaks down to calcium oxide (lime) and CO2. So it produces a double dose of GHG, one from the fossil fuel and one from the limestone.
There isn’t going to be a single cause that you can pin this problem on, or that we can fix this problem by changing.
We are doing a whole lot of things that contribute to global warming. We’ll have to do a whole lot of things (including stopping or doing less of multiple things) to reduce it.
This. The nastiness of bunker fuel is mostly related to the high sulfur content - as much as several percent - which results in high sulfur dioxide exhaust emissions. Sulfur dioxide is a nasty air pollutant, and we’ve gone to great lengths to stop putting it in the air by other means, or at least keeping it away from populated areas. In many countries, ships are not allowed to burn bunker fuel within specified emission control areas, typically in/near ports and coastlines; they have to switch to a low-sulfur (and higher cost) fuel in those areas.
As noted above, bunker fuel can have several percent sulfur content. For comparison, trucks in the US these days run on ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, which has at most 15 parts per million of sulfur. Not only does that result in very low sulfur dioxide emissions, but it also enables the use of exhaust aftertreatment components that help mitigate soot and NOx emissions.
More emphatically, the problem with bunker fuel is that it contributes to acid rain. As to climate change, bunker fuel is just like other petroleum.