Thousands of Rubber Ducks to Finally End Journey 210
Bert de Jong writes "The Daily Mail reports that thousands of rubber ducks who have traveled the seas of the world since 1992 are about to end their journey. After escaping out of a container fallen off a Chinese freight ship in a storm, scientists have been followed them on their fifteen year trek. This has turned out to be an invaluable source of information for studying ocean currents. Now it seems inevitable though that they will finally land on the shores of South-West England. '[Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer] correctly predicted what many thought was impossible - that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic. It proved true years later and in 2003, the first Friendly Floatees were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada. So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.'"
£50 bounty, for a duck? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a pretty cool story though (shock, someone actually read TFA). I'm sure that we've learned a lot more about oceanic patterns from those plastic toys than we have from a lot of other (more expensive) methods employed in the past.
Re:How can they identify one ducky from another? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not very comfort-giving (Score:1, Insightful)
When a big pile of rubber ducks floating around on the ocean can give oceanographers compelling new insights into how the earth works, and add a lot on top of modern instruments as quoted here, I am somewhat uncomfortable remaking world economic order on the basis of forecasts made on that data.
Re:Wanna bet? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How can they identify one ducky from another? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, oceanographers already do this sort of thing, though not on such a large scale (with so many objects I mean). And of course, they use modern technology, including satellites (See for example http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/oceans/drifter
In that post I was aiming for a "funny" moderation, yet it seems that there are some unamused moderators who think it is redundant(!), even though it was the second post! Ah well.
Rubber Ducky, you're the one (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is actually interesting... (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, another view.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, let's put the question in another perspective : Given the fact that we aren't perfectly sure how to predict climate and that rubber duckies still have something to teach us, will you take the risk to continue dumping into the atmosphere massive amount of CO2 - that wasn't there before in a recent time-scale ?
Are you ready to gamble that we won't encounter any problem ?
Isn't it best to decide that, because we can't be 100% sure, let's be on the safe side and avoid introducing perturbation in a model that we don't fully understand.
Remaking world economy on unsure data may seem unreasonable to you.
Avoiding to introduce perturbation in the climate that we may not perfectly understand seem a perfectly reasonable decision. If you don't understand it, don't touch it.
Re:Ebb (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:£50 bounty, for a duck? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:this will eventually turn into a pixar movie. (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking a blind dump? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and if you 'carefully dilute' something into the ocean by what process do you propose that you keep it from becoming undiluted? Life forms are the most efficient way to aggregate dilute substances.
Actually this is one of the dumbest, "If I can't see anything it must not be happening" suggestions I have ever heard.
THINK! Did it work for landfills? 'But we did such a good job of hiding it under the dirt and I can't see it there!' (Of course my well is contaminated now and I have to pipe water in...)
Re:Not very comfort-giving (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you AC for pointing out that people who don't know what they are talking about should be ignored. Just because there are not a lot of blinking lights does not mean that you're collecting bad data. I think / feel / guess / hope / pray / have a vested interest (remaking world economic order) / etc should be ignored because they don't provide high quality quantitative data like thousands of rubber ducks in the ocean.
PS: How would you suggest building a better system? What is a better instrument for studding ocean currents (on the surface over time) than 10,000+ floating objects dropped from a specific point? Now we could make some floats with GPS etc but most electronics are not going to survive 17 years in the ocean and people are not going to notice big rubber balls so the classic duck is basically the prefect design for such an experiment because people will notice them and report large numbers of ducks suddenly showing up. Now we might want to have more drop sites but the novelty promotes people reporting as soon as the ducks show up so increasing the number of drops lowers the quality of the data.