Much ado and attention has been paid to the pollutants emmitted from the tail pipes of cars and trucks in recent years, both here in the U.S. and across the pond in Europe. With an estimated 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. alone, it would seem that cars would be a major contributor to pollution and air quality issues here and abroad. But newly released data from Europe suggests that a single container ship may cause as much pollution as 50 million cars and release as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur oxide into the air annually. And there are 90,000 such ships of varying sizes across the world at any one time.

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“In 2010, the first round-the-world trip powered by solar energy will be realized, with stopovers, along the equator, where the maximum amount of sunlight is available. The over 40,000-km voyage will last 120 days, for an average speed of 10 knots. PlanetSolar’s two-man crew will cross the Atlantic Ocean, the Panama Canal, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and finally the Suez Canal, to return to the Mediterranean.”

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It sounds like science fiction, but Christopher Ottersbach’s concept airship may one day become a reality. The aerodynamic ship seats 2 to 4 people and could potentially travel for two weeks filled with helium. No infrastructure is necessary. Additional thrust and steering is provided by the crew’s pedal-powered propulsion.

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Rotterdam-based marine-engineering firm DK Group has been quietly testing one of the strangest-sounding technologies to come along in the recent past— a ship that floats on air. This past September, the company let loose a 272 foot long cargo vessel in Norway’s Oslo Fjord. 25 feet below the ship’s surface, recesses built into the underside of the vessel’s hull created drag-reducing pockets.

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Anti-whaling activists aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel ‘Steve Irwin’ have covered a whaling ship with a smelly cocktail of rotten butter, methyl cellulose and indelible dye.

The unconventional sliming operation was carried out in a bid to intimidate the Japanese whaler, Kaiko Maru, into moving out of Australian Antarctic territorial waters. According to Peter Hammarstedt, the Sea Shepherd’s second officer, “this is one stinky, slippery ship.”

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The Zemship runs on a hybrid unit consisting of two 48 kW fuel cell systems and a lead gel battery— a combination that has twice the fuel efficiency of a diesel engine.

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