'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' Far Bigger Than Imagined, Aerial Survey Shows (theguardian.com) 220
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined. A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the "great Pacific garbage patch," located between Hawaii and California. The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated. The heart of the garbage patch is thought to be around 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles), with the periphery spanning a further 3.5m sq km (1,351,000 sq miles). The dimensions of this morass of waste are continually morphing, caught in one of the ocean's huge rotating currents. The north Pacific gyre has accumulated a soup of plastic waste, including large items and smaller broken-down micro plastics that can be eaten by fish and enter the food chain. Following a further aerial survey through the heart of the patch on Sunday, the Ocean Cleanup aims to tackle the problem through a gigantic V-shaped boom, which would use sea currents to funnel floating rubbish into a cone. A prototype of the vulcanized rubber barrier will be tested next year, with a full-sized 100km (62-mile) barrier deployed by 2020 if trials go well. "Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it," said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup. "That was the plan for this survey. But when we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Ever half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots -- it was impossible to record everything. It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean."
But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't a huge sieve designed to strain out the plastic catch everything else as well? Like, you know, fish and seabirds and other critters?
Having read the FAQ on the Ocean Cleanup website, what they are proposing is not a seive, more of a barrier - it's intending to collect the larger floating pieces, not the smaller ones.
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Having read the FAQ on the Ocean Cleanup website, what they are proposing is not a seive, more of a barrier - it's intending to collect the larger floating pieces, not the smaller ones.
...and then turn them into a giant floating island that will be filled with windmills, tulips, and people wearing clogs. It will be called "New Netherlands".
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Re: But... (Score:2)
"Newer England: We'll get it right this time"
"The Bride of New England" would also be acceptable.
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"Newer England: We'll get it right this time"
"The Bride of New England" would also be acceptable.
North Newest England? The best England!
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So what? Look around the US and you'll find Berlin, Moscow, Paris... actually, you'll find more Moscows in the US than in Russia!
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you'll find more Moscows in the US than in Russia!
In Soviet Russia, Moscow finds you!
Actually, that's not really joke - is it...
Sounds like a Google product (Score:2)
It's new!
wait, there's a New Mexico? (Score:2)
Unless Elon's called dibs on that, too
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Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
That was what I was wondering too but it's not going through a sieve.
From the Ocean Cleanup site: https://www.theoceancleanup.co... [theoceancleanup.com]
Building an artificial coastline in the center of the Garbage Patch.
Instead of using nets, The Ocean Cleanup uses solid screens which catches the floating plastic, but allows sea life to pass underneath the barrier with the current.
It's all detailed there, but basically the current goes around in a big circle, they build the "artificial coastline", funnel it to a central point and collect it.
Hopefully, it will be built to higher standards... (Score:3)
...than their webpage.
Most of useful... no... ALL of the useful info on it is textual. .jpeg headers and images of similar file size scaled down to 1/8th of their pixel dimensions - like a 5000 by 3333 pixel image scaled down to a 660 by 440 display size. .gif of a diagram of a floating ball.
Yet it features 2 megabyte
And then there's a 20 (TWENTY) megabyte
For a moment there it felt like I was using dial-up again.
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Your numbers are trumped-up.
There largest file is 854KB at 1920x1280, scaled down to about 70% on my 1920x1080 screen. It's probably scaled up on a high-resolution screen.
The entire frontpage combined is slightly below 4MB.
For comparison, Apple's frontpage is 6MB.
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I never said "frontpage".
Which at 4 megabytes would be INSANELY HUGE.
Even at 3.37 megabytes it's still insane.
BTW, Apple is a "mere" 1.14 megabytes, which is tiny in comparison.
But do feel free to enjoy the wonders of this [theoceancleanup.com] scaled down to 660 by 440 pixels while this [theoceancleanup.com] keeps loading and loading and loading...
If they're gonna have a 3-30 MB page where all actual info is text... why not just put up a pdf? Preferably a high resolution one, so it's even bigger.
Without images their "frontpage" is actually ~400 kilo
Not certain if... (Score:2)
...dissing web developers or being serious. [rnkr-static.com]
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Wouldn't a huge sieve designed to strain out the plastic catch everything else as well? Like, you know, fish and seabirds and other critters?
Yes, but in the garbage patch, they are probably dead already.
Humanity is like a dog that shits on his dinner plate.
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Yes, you fucking idiot. It is a problem. The monoculture humans are rapidly creating will also lead to their demise. I suggest you get your head out of guns 'n' ammo, and read a few books.
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no, a sieve won't be a problem because they're note deploying a sieve. RTFA! the barrier is not a net and it extends only a few metres below the surface.
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Get your head out of your bag of tropes and actually meet and talk to people who aren't like you.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
To find the plastic-eating bacterium described in the study, the Japanese research team from Kyoto Institute of Technology and Keio University collected 250 PET-contaminated samples including sediment, soil and wastewater from a plastic bottle recycling site.
Next they screened the microbes living on the samples to see whether any of them were eating the PET and using it to grow. They originally found a consortium of bugs that appeared to break down a PET film, but they eventually discovered that just one of bacteria species was responsible for the PET degradation. They named it Ideonella sakainesis.
Further tests in the lab revealed that it used two enzymes to break down the PET. After adhering to the PET surface, the bacteria secretes one enzyme onto the PET to generate an intermediate chemical. That chemical is then taken up by the cell, where another enzyme breaks it down even further, providing the bacteria with carbon and energy to grow.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n... [phys.org]
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n... [phys.org]
but - (Score:4, Informative)
"there is no island of trash in the pacific"
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html
Re:but - (Score:5, Funny)
Can you stop providing factual information, you're hurting the funding drive of those who make a living pretending to save the environment.
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Frankly I think it's more a natural media reporting distortion thing at work, as happens with almost all science articles. To get an article published and make it go viral, you have to exaggerate and conjure an image of something visually dramatic.
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you have to exaggerate and conjure an image of something visually dramatic.
that same strategy, when employed by Big Oil or Big Tobacco, is called FUD.
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Calling this area a "Island" where the oriArticle does not is not "factual" but misleading at best. The best way to describe this are might be a thin plastic soup. With occasional bigger floating plastic dumplings. The article calls it a "patch", nobody but clueless lazy media calls this a "Island".
Calling people who actually try to do (as little as we can) something, in a non profit, "pretenders trying to make a living" is down right malicious.
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Calling people who actually try to do (as little as we can) something, in a non profit, "pretenders trying to make a living" is down right malicious.
Non-profit doesn't mean that people are not making money, it means that the organization doesn't aim at making a profit. Those are completely unrelated.
For instance, go on glassdoor.com and look at how many people pull a six-figure salary at greenpeace. I'm sure all those people have lots of expenses like Starbucks coffee or Macbooks, but you can bet that their savings account gets bigger year after year.
There's a reason why those organizations don't tackle unpopular environmental problems (like greenhouse
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Can you stop providing factual information, you're hurting the funding drive of those who make a living pretending to save the environment.
Your comment has been moderated to Score:-1, Funding
Re:but - (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe they can also get the photo with a Dolphin crying in the foreground.
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Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
From the second fucking paragraph:
"Because of its large area, it is of very low density (4 particles per cubic meter), and therefore not visible from satellite photography, nor even necessarily to casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper water column."
Or are you going to take the conservative approach and pretend it doesn't exist?
That's exactly the point of the grandparent post: The news article and press conference has a scary dump of trash in a pile. The only other photo is a close up of a pile of trash. Saying "we opened the window and saw trash every half second" without context gives the impression that they're puttering about over the East Coast's dirtiest industrial marina harbor.
If the reality is that there are 4 micro-beads of plastic every cubic meter and every square mile or so someone finds a floating shoe that's very, v
That's true (Score:5, Insightful)
All that plastic rubbish is not collected into a huge floating island, nor does it look at all impressive on photos (which is why there are none in the articles). It isn't clumped together - it's more like flecks of plastic floating in a soup.
That does not lessen the problem. There's still a vast amount of debris out there, just spread out a lot [noaa.gov], over multiple areas. And any plastics that do break down form "microplastics" that have now found their way into more than a quarter [independent.co.uk] of fish sold in Indonesia and China.
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>That does not lessen the problem. There's still a vast amount of debris out there, just spread out a lot [noaa.gov], over multiple area
How do you know? Dilution lessens the problem of many toxins. Why not this? Have you got a control Earth on the other side of the Sun where you tried it without the plastics?
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Dilution lessens the problem of many toxins
Homeopathy disagrees :-)
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But then it would cure plastic poisoning, so we're OK.
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Homeopathy does not disagree.
Perhaps you want to read up how it is supposed to work?
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Homeopathy does not disagree.
Perhaps you want to read up how it is supposed to work?
Homeopathy doesn't work.
Hormesis certainly does work. Don't confuse the two.
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Actually, homeopathy doesn't disagree. Homeopathy says they magically turn into cures if they're sufficiently dilute.
Too many people mock homeopathy merely for its magical increasing-dilution-is-stronger claims, and forget to mock it for its toxins-reverse-effect-at-a-certain-dilution-level claims. :)
And really, if you think about it, it's all perfectly logical. Diluting lessens the problem, so if you keep diluting, eventually the problem becomes zero, and therefore, if you keep diluting, simple extrapolati [xkcd.com]
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Granted, less microplastic per cubic metre does reduce its effect on fish (according to this study [squarespace.com], which did use a control). But spreading it out affects correspondingly more fish.
And in the cited study, many of the effects were non-linear - testing with 1/8th the microplastic concentration still produced 1/2 the negative effects (compared to the control), which would indicate a wider distribution of debris may actually worsen the overall problem.
But my main point stands: oceanic plastic debris is getting
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How do you know? Dilution lessens the problem of many toxins.
Dilution doesn't work for a number of reasons. It doesn't work here at all and it doesn't work in general as well as you think it does. Currents, for one. Bioconcentration, for another. The persistent nature of the compounds (or indeed particulates) in question, for another.
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How do you know? Dilution lessens the problem of many toxins.
Dilution doesn't work for a number of reasons. It doesn't work here at all and it doesn't work in general as well as you think it does. Currents, for one. Bioconcentration, for another. The persistent nature of the compounds (or indeed particulates) in question, for another.
So once more - How do you know? You're telling me stuff that happens, not how it is a problem or evidence for that problem..
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So once more - How do you know?
We know because it's in fish. Nom nom!
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Except that a lot of 'our' fish is (especially cheap seafood like tilapia and processed food like fish sticks), like everything else, imported from China and surrounding nations
Re:That's true (Score:4, Funny)
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And any plastics that do break down form "microplastics" that have now found their way into more than a quarter [independent.co.uk] of fish sold in Indonesia and China.
Good place for it. Maybe they will stop putting toxic chemicals and heavy metals into products when they realize it's on their dinner plate.
Now, how would they realize it? Who would tell them? We already know that business interests trump public interests in the eyes of the government (just about any government). I saw an article further up talking about laws against defamation and slander in Indonesia. Might telling the public about the quality of a businesses products fall under that? I imagine it could.
No, people will continue to eat shit because it's cheaper.
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"there is no island of trash in the pacific"
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html
I took as some kind of information, the total lack of pictures of the 'garbage patch' in articles about the garbage patch. How hard would it have been for the people who have been there to pull out their phone and take a picture?
There are good reasons to be concerned about digging carbon out of the ground and burning it. I'm not so sure a patch of microbead pollution in the middle of a huge ocean is something to be concerned with. Certainly nobody has put forth a compelling mechanism by which it will bring
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So you claim to be smart enough to know the term microbead, but are also too stupid to Google it....
No at all. I claim to be smart enough to identify when I don't know something and to call people out when they claim to know something that they obviously don't.
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I took as some kind of information, the total lack of pictures of the 'garbage patch' in articles about the garbage patch. How hard would it have been for the people who have been there to pull out their phone and take a picture?
It's right there in TFS. They sighted a piece "ever half second" while flying over in a C130. If they're going 100 miles/hour, they cover a bit less than 150 feet per second, or a visible bit of plastic every 75 feet. Dunno what their search width was, but I'd guess less than a quarter mile. They're not looking for microbeads - they're looking for visible, macroscopic floaters
If you're walking through "remote wilderness" park and you come across an empty water bottle or a candy bar wrapper every 100 feet, you'd probably come to the conclusion that the park is full of garbage.
If I'm told there's a floating garbage island in the sea, I expect evidence of it could be seen in photographs. Those that were claiming there were such islands or high densities of free floating garbage were simply lying. That some people were accurately reporting what was seen doesn't alter the fact that others were openly lying.
Re:but - (Score:5, Informative)
"there is no island of trash in the pacific"
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html
Yes, as the article you cite [slate.com] says, it's mostly, well, smaller broken-down micro plastics that can be eaten by fish and enter the food chain, not large items.
So it's not as if there's nothing wrong with that part of the Pacific, it's that what's wrong is not a just floating obvious garbage dump.
Ah - the goalpost shift (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see why the poster with the goalpost shift was far too ashamed of their action to even post under a username.
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firstly, you should read the article before commenting.
"there is no island of trash in the pacific" != "there is no concentrated area of garbage in the pacific"
No, it's not an island of trash, and yes the name may be a bit fanciful.
But the natural currents of the ocean do create areas where floating garbage does congregate in far higher concentrations than in the rest of the ocean.
Specifically the major ocean gyres, of which there are 5 world wide, each become collecting points where this garbage accumulate
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I would point out Ocean Cleanup makes no mention about a control sample of ocean. They surveyed a portion of ocean they believe to have a high concentration of garbage. Do they have data on the amount of garbage in the rest of the ocean?
^ Mod parent up
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The notion that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an "island" of trash is how the media spun it. In fact it's quite a bit worse than such a floating landfill would be, as explained in this video [slashdot.org] from NOAA.
The Wikipedia entry is likewise very informative:
The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.[2] Because of its large area, it is of very low density (4 particles per cubic meter), and therefore not visible from satellite photography, nor even necessarily to casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper water column.
It is this combination of massive extent, depth, and modest concentration (typically four pea-sized pellets in 250 gallons of water) that make it impossible to remedy, but the ecological impact is nonetheless massive -- and likely to grow as human populati
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because that's what ticking time bombs do.. they crumble down to micro plastics. whatever they are.
You should check out the concept of figurative [dictionary.com] speech. I think it's going to blow your mind.
Micro plastics are small pieces of plastic. The prefix "micro" comes from greek and means "small".
Glad I could help.
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Now now, don't mock the poor AI. It's impressive enough that it was able to parse the summary well enough to post its complaint. Expecting it to reliably understand figurative language and idioms is really a bit much, given the state of the art.
I mean, if an actual human had posted that comment, it would be pretty laughable, but people on Slashdot are supposed to be reasonably intelligent, so I have to assume it was an experimental AI. :)
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they crumble down to micro plastics. whatever they are.
They are very small pieces of plastic. Glad I can clear that up for you, but do try to keep up net time.
No Pics? (Score:2)
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And speaking of pictures, I heard that in USA, there is a big tumbleweed problem. I have seen a picture of one, or several of them, but why isn't there a picture of ALL OF THEM?
Re:No Pics? (Score:4, Funny)
Because it's really a tiny garbage patch. A complete loser garbage patch. A weak garbage patch.
When I'm president, we'll have a garbage patch that'll make your head spin. A big, classy garbage patch that Americans can finally be proud of.
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Are we refurbishing old Soviet jokes again? Like the one where Brezhnev did a factory inspection and was told by the proud workers that they didn't have boiler scale in five years. And dear Leonid said "I know you're doing what you can with the little you have, but I will do what I can to make sure that you will have much more boiler scale very soon!"
Re:No Pics? (Score:4, Informative)
Why doesn't the original article have any pictures of this giant patch?
Because the patch is not actually visually distinctive.
People read these stories and think we're talking about something that looks like a floating landfill - but, by all accounts, that's not the case. You still mostly just see water and only occasionally see a piece of trash.
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Uh, no. It's broken down bits of plastic. If you scoop your hand in the water you'll find bits of plastic stuck to your hand. Fish eat that crap, and then we eat the fish.
It's basically a soupy mixture of sea water and bits of plastic that stretches for miles.
It's not a giant heap of trash that you would imagine a dump to look like. The trash isn't easily visible because it breaks down into smaller pieces over time. That doesn't mean it's not there.
There's videos on the subject where they show this if you b
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Yup. If it really were a "floating landfill", it would probably be relatively easy to clean up. But teeny-tiny pieces of plastic is another matter.
Re:No Pics? (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is a very large area of the ocean in which plastic particulates float. It probably doesn't look much different from the rest of the ocean to the naked eye.
You don't realise that, because you haven't read the article, nor any of the linked articles that might help further your understanding of the problem. That's ok, you're probably busy. I've taken the following quote from here [noaa.gov], to help you out a bit.
The debris is continuously mixed by wind and wave action and widely dispersed both over huge surface areas and throughout the top portion of the water column. It is possible to sail through the “garbage patch” area and see very little or no debris on the water’s surface. It is also difficult to estimate the size of these “patches,” because the borders and content constantly change with ocean currents and winds. Regardless of the exact size, mass, and location of the “garbage patch,” manmade debris does not belong in our oceans and waterways and must be addressed.
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Came here to ask this exact question. Taking and posting photos cost next to nothing these days. Hell, they can even be geotagged to show precisely where they were taken to prove their case. Instead, they take a photo of some jetsam on the airport ramp. Seriously? That's almost as bad as giving people lab coats to wear for a political photo op claiming doctors support socialized medicine.
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As an idiot, I would like to sign up for all this money you speak of that's being given out for the giant garbage patch.
If I get some of this money, do I get upgraded to "genius" status or do I maintain my idiocy?
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From TFA:
Charles Moore, the racing boat captain who discovered the floating vortex in 1997, once said that the cost of a cleaning operation would âoebankrupt any countryâ.
But around half the scheme's initial â30m (£20m) budget has now been raised through online donations and wealthy sponsors. In the long term, the project plans to finance itself with a major retail line of ocean plastic fashion wear.
And they've not even made it to the scaled model phase yet.
Much like jeans made from ocean plastic [wired.com] worn by our "hero" there the project itself will do nearly nothing for the oceans, something for the people who are desperate for a solution for their many existential anxieties which make them crave for a way to validate their life styles while shedding the self-perceived quilt over their own existence, holier than thou assholes and clueless treehuggers - and a lot for certain people's bottom line.
AN
Re:No Pics? (Score:5, Informative)
There are several *independent* documentaries that provide not only photos, but -- much to your heart's desire -- actual video footage of said patches. I'd recommend starting with the film Plastic Paradise [plasticparadisemovie.com] (the film isn't that great, but it will provide what you seek). There's VICE's TOXIC: Garbage Island [vice.com] (also available on YT in 3 parts), which provides actual footage, and Midway: A Message from the Gyre [midwayfilm.com].
What you'll see in all the documentaries is not an island of floating trash, but water that is actually filled with plastics and other crap, mostly under the water line. In 2 of the 3 I linked above, you'll see them essentially using a sieve though small spots only to get a large sum of trash, a lot of which can't degrade fast enough, thus harming sea life in several ways.
As with all information, take from this what you wish.
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This is Slashdot - you read the headline and skip both the summary and the article and go straight to the comments. A search engine is far too much work.
Come on..... (Score:2)
As others have said.....they have many names for this elusive garbage collection in the pacific such as garbage patch and Plastic vortex, and yet, no one actually has a picture of said trash. Just infographics.
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As others have said.....they have many names for this elusive garbage collection in the pacific such as garbage patch and Plastic vortex, and yet, no one actually has a picture of said trash. Just infographics.
I bet you're waiting for a picture of atmospheric CO2 before you believe in global warming, too.
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Oh aint that cute.
So without having a scale to go on, I would say the great Pacific Garbage Patch is the size of a Mazda3?
Let's throw money at it.
Aerial survey with no pictures (Score:2, Informative)
Every half second you see something.
So, a plane cruising covers 500+ ft/s. So "one item per half second" is one item every 250 feet. The descriptions make it sound like a floating island of plastic you could walk across, but the reality from their description is a thinly spread cluster of debris over millions of square km.
Evolution and plastic (Score:2, Interesting)
You might recall that a type of bacteria has evolved that eats plastic bottles. Since plastics are a rich source of energy, they are like cellulose. But for that to work, there needs to be a concentration of smaller plastic particles, the Japanese researchers who found the bacteria, found it in a dump.
The whole issue with plastics was the lack of decay, yet even this lot admit that's not the reality:
“Most of the debris was large stuff. It’s a ticking time bomb because the big stuff will crumble
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He was engaging in hyperbole, with objects less often than that. But even trying to over-state the amount, it still sounds like not much.
If you walked through Denali and found an empty water bottle or an old pair of shoes every 250 feet - even every 250 yards - I imagine you'd be pretty upset that tourists had trashed the pristine wilderness. It's not a garbage island, but this place is even more remote than the deepest alaska wilderness, and here it is littered up with trash like a DC subway.
Pics (Score:2)
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Pics or GTFO
Will scans of the cancerous tumors growing inside you from eating a food supply laced with plastic suffice?
Just curious, since the real damage isn't 10,000 feet in the air.
So, what's the plan? (Score:2)
Life of Pi algae island (Score:2)
Yann Martel's book, Life of Pi, and the movie based on it feature a puzzling algae island .
(http://www.shmoop.com/life-of-pi/algae-island-symbol.html)
Maybe the island is made of plastic.
Pristine ocean? Guess again (Score:3)
All the sea creatures poop and pee in the ocean. It only looks pristine from a distance. Up close there's all kinds of shit in the ocean.
It's a plot! (Score:2)
They're going to set up their own floating kingdom
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/593369/summary [jhu.edu]
solar freakin sea booms (Score:2)
The durability of the booms, emptying of the booms, safety to wildlife, the ineffectiveness of the booms since the patch is so huge... all of these issues have pointed to the fact this can't work. Basically this kid is pitching Solar Freakin' Roadways, but somehow got lots of money and a international coverage anyway. I think its the culture of celebrity getting behind this, along with the: screw the problem, lets treat the symptom strategy deployed when the problem is simply too big to address.
Can't wait (Score:2)
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So yeah, there is evidence, I've seen it.
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Go to Southend pier on the SE coast of the UK (i.e. the wrong side for any kind of Great Pacific Garbage Patch). The same happens.
That's not proof.
I'm sure there is a ton of plastic floating in every sea-sized body of water on Earth, but that we've just found out that this one is X times bigger than we thought? That suggests nobody's been looking properly and/or it doesn't have that much an effect that we've not noticed a glaring hole in our data up till now.
It's shit that shouldn't be there, we should st
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Go to Southend pier on the SE coast of the UK (i.e. the wrong side for any kind of Great Pacific Garbage Patch). The same happens.
England is right next to the North Atlantic gyre. Notably, it doesn't happen on California beaches.
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~30 Belgiums.
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Or for bigger, Rhode Islands, or for even bigger Texas.
And since nothing is bigger than Texas, at least for Texans, there is no other area unit necessary.
Re:So much plastic in the food chain its poisonin (Score:2)
I don't watch YouTube links to get the 1.5 facts you're trying to point me to. Certainly not when they are overloaded with links, all from one "facts" website, and by a guy who is a "professional speaker on public health issues, particularly the benefits of a plant-based diet and the harms of eating animal products."
He's at the extreme end of the bias scale. Using big-words and showing screenshots of scientific papers doesn't make whatever you spout true.
Do you mean health issues in our fish or in us?
Becau
Re: (Score:2)
So you go after Smith&Wesson if a bank gets robbed?
Re:It's a hoax (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing published in the federalist ever counts as "debunking" or indeed anything other than "blatant lies to support our fantasy dream world".
You really want to know what a deregulated market looks like ? Think Chicago during prohibition. Now before you go yelling about how prohibition *was* regulation - that's smoke and mirrors, the people who remained in the business after it was illegal - were the ones who didn't care about the law - and so they didn't obey regulations of any kind. A black market is always an entirely deregulated market - the very regulation that prohibits it also makes it deregulated in practical terms.
What do black markets look like ? Killing the competition is a valid way to stay competitive. Shooting your own staff if they underperform is a perfectly viable way to keep workers productive. Turf wars. Torture - and the community living in fear with a rapidly declining life expectancy.
But that's what EVERY business will do if it thinks it can. Because that will always be the most profitable way to run any business. The ones who are run by people that wouldn't *do* that - well they don't stay in business.
Prohibition is not an argument against regulation - it is an argument against prohibition but it's a false equivalence to pretend those are the same thing. It's proof of what deregulation inevitably leads to. It turns every market into a gangwar, every industry into a mafia.
Back during the industrial revolution it was standard practise to rape a female employee every Friday afternoon to keep workers disciplined. Every single factory owner in the UK did it. Every fucking one of them. It was 'rape' of the 'fuck me or I fire you' variety but rape nonetheless. The interesting thing is - a LOT of those factory owners kept diaries. They all admit to doing it in their diaries. They also, every one of them, write about how abhorent they find it. Many of them were once men who would find such behaviour disgusting. So why do it ? Because all the other factory owners do - if I don't, I'll have less disciplined workers than them - I could not compete, I would be out of business. Every single one of them blames all the others for forcing him to become a rapist.
That's business without regulation. Regulation is designed to prevent the most profitiable business practises (which is why libertarians hate it) but that is not a bad thing - because the most profitable business practises are always the ones that kill people. You simply cannot preserve life and the welbeing of others as cheaply as you can destroy it. You simply cannot ever compete more efficiently than to put your competition out of business for the price of a bullet.
And because this is the reality, those who embrace this as an outcome they want must constantly lie about reality. They must pretend that reality is something other than it is. Lying about the bad things rich people will do to get richer becomes standard practise. Once you do that- you will lie about anything that threatens the rich's ability to kill to get richer. There's a problem though - nobody believes a pathological liar... what to do what to do... oh I know, accuse everybody else of being pathological liars, misrepresent what they say, tell clever lies like when somebody speaks of arctic ice melt you link them to an article about the ice growing and hope they don't notice that this is in the antarctic and actually the growth is only in surface area, the volume is decreasing, and even then all the new shallow ice is refrozen melt-off from the arctic (fresh water freezes more easily than salt water).
And in that grand tradition of flat out lying about reality, but doing it very cleverly, comes the federalist with another classic case. There are lots of reasons why microplastics are bad for the ocean and people - their spelled out all over this board by many posters - the article never denies the massive amount of microplastics around, it just says "not many big pieces" and pretends that disproves the shit ton of plastic floating around
Re: (Score:2)
I did respond to the false and misrepresented facts in the logic. I also didn't ridicule the source - but pointed out that their reputation predicts exactly what I found inside. Flagrant lies. I don't see anything funny about that.
Oh and Occam's Razor says it's much more likely an ideological propaganda publication like the federalist is lying than hundreds of scientists in fields as varied as marine biology and biochem all lying about the same thing,