Great Pacific Garbage Patch

[Gerard]

I posted the link in the trees thread but I think it deserves its own.

 

I collect litter every single time I leave the place where I live. It is a constant battle like watching the mind. But at least is the way I can contribute to the clean up of Mother Earth, our Gaia.

 

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

 

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a soupy collection of marine debris—mostly plastics. It is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean.The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California.

 

Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic (Part 1)

Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic (Part 2)

Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic (Part 3)

 

 

[thelerner]

I bet our Western garbage patch is the biggest.  yay we win.

 

I wonder if heat and compression would do anything?   Compress it and you've got potential reefs.  Course that may be as easy as compressing a small town, yet we have awesome tools at out disposal, ie see mega-mining machines.   We've been chewing up and spitting out mountains for a hundred years. 

 

Maybe a few bites at a time.. I'm envisioning a megaship, that sucks in waste compacts (Simpsons did it first) and excretes it out in a tight form that conducive as an artificial reef.  The Kaiju that saves the ocean is one that just eats and poops.  

 

Next is dealing with massive oxygen deadzones, killer algae, depleted populations, massive coral bleaching die offs, genetic threats from farmed fish..  All dominoes teetering.. 

 

Putting aside the whole Global Warming controversy.. Is there any question that we've been screwing up the Oceans?  If we knock down one domino too many, destroy too many eco-systems, we invite our own disasters.   

[Brian]

We are damaging and altering our environment in many ways, and most of the people on the planet are either unaware or simply don't consider it a priority. This is understandable and often reasonable but this certainly doesn't help the situation.

 

Here's a curious thing...

 

Seems that every time we closely examine a man-made ecological disaster, we find nature already on the scene. That there are natural processes to handle sewage, for instance, is hardly surprising but what about radioactive waste? Yep, bacteria have been found eating it. Plastic? Several species have shown up, both in landfills and in the ocean. Oil spills? Yep. Styrofoam? A specific mealworm loves the stuff.

 

Setting aside the question of how life forms develop which thrive on molecules not naturally occurring, it seems clear that we are not bringing about the end of the world but only the end of the world as we know it. Ten thousand years from now, Gaia is likely to be thriving -- the question is whether we will still be here (and perhaps even whether we would recognize that future environment).

Edited May 6, 2017 by Brian

[cold]

*

Edited May 6, 2017 by cold

[dust]

Setting aside the question of how life forms develop which thrive on molecules not naturally occurring, it seems clear that we are not bringing about the end of the world but only the end of the world as we know it. Ten thousand years from now, Gaia is likely to be thriving -- the question is whether we will still be here (and perhaps even whether we would recognize that future environment).

 

True that the wild world is not something we can 'destroy' in the full sense of the word...

 

But I like the world as it is and has been for the last few million years: abundant lifeforms, large and small, roving the air, land, and sea.. algae, trees, birds, bears, bees, bacteria... it's the most amazing and ludicrous network of feeling and movement.

 

And regardless of the fundamental durability of the wild, and especially the smallest lifeforms, we are limiting its variety and making it all more likely that near-future generations of humans (who will, in all likelihood, exist in some scenario or other) and other animals will grow into a world of ash and acid water...

 

 

 

Maybe a few bites at a time.. I'm envisioning a megaship, that sucks in waste compacts (Simpsons did it first) and excretes it out in a tight form that conducive as an artificial reef.  The Kaiju that saves the ocean is one that just eats and poops. 

 

There are things...

 

https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/

[Brian]

True that the wild world is not something we can 'destroy' in the full sense of the word...

 

But I like the world as it is and has been for the last few million years: abundant lifeforms, large and small, roving the air, land, and sea.. algae, trees, birds, bears, bees, bacteria... it's the most amazing and ludicrous network of feeling and movement.

 

And regardless of the fundamental durability of the wild, and especially the smallest lifeforms, we are limiting its variety and making it all more likely that near-future generations of humans (who will, in all likelihood, exist in some scenario or other) and other animals will grow into a world of ash and acid water...

 

 

 

 

There are things...

 

https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/

I had actually typed, "Personally, I like the world as it is" -- but I thought that might open an entirely new line of discussion which would detract from Gerard's intent here, so I removed it.

[silent thunder]

I used to think that something like this was unnatural.

Lately, I no longer believe unnatural exists.  Though the things I used to consider unnatural I would now describe as seeming to be out of balance.

 

Humans used to seem unnatural to me along with all their various by-products... but now that all seems part of nature albeit a strange one to me, and as has been shown at places like Chernobyl, nature doesn't waste anything, not plastic, not radio-active waste, nothing.  Nature is never wrong, it is just always flowing toward balance, without effort or any bias. 

 

These images though and what they represent does still seem out of balance though.  But only because I have an opinion, based on a perspective.  Not because I am right. 

 

Wolves are thriving in Chernobyl, where it was supposed to be a desolate wasteland for generations and... turns out humans are harder on some aspects of nature than severe radiation.  And isn't there a fungus there that is also processing and cleansing the radioactive elements, or was it a bacteria? 

 

The ocean is already working on that island of garbage... something will be making use of it in some way.

[silent thunder]

i should clarify that my above response isn't meant to convey a sense of having no connection or responsibility for the imbalance.  I don't just leave it to nature.  I absolutely refuse to litter. 

 

and  haven't taken a single walk in almost twenty years, without bringing a bag with me to pick up trash as i go... the habit started in the early 90's when I would walk through Prospect Park in Brooklyn and continues to this day. 

 

I was at one point in my younger life, a hairs breadth away from being this gal...

 

 

[No One]

WUT?!?!? 

 

Max litter vigilante hero.  

Edited May 6, 2017 by No One

[ralis]

In the mind of some, nature will just take care of whatever waste the human species carelessly disposes of. I have read many stories that certain microbes will remediate radioactive waste. That is hardly the case in the Canyons surrounding Los Alamos (Los Alamos National Labs) NM where post Manhattan Project cleanup is proceeding at a snails pace. Plutonium, tritium and other radioactive toxic waste remain in extremely large quantities. Until proven other wise, plutonium and other radioactive materials have ranges of short half life to a very long half life.

 

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los-alamos-will-never-be-clean/article_a3cc7ce1-8af0-5113-8f38-5d4aa673fd7a.html

 

http://www.lasg.org/

[gendao]

In the mind of some, nature will just take care of whatever waste the human species carelessly disposes of. I have read many stories that certain microbes will remediate radioactive waste. That is hardly the case in the Canyons surrounding Los Alamos (Los Alamos National Labs) NM where post Manhattan Project cleanup is proceeding at a snails pace. Plutonium, tritium and other radioactive toxic waste remain in extremely large quantities. Until proven other wise, plutonium and other radioactive materials have ranges of short half life to a very long half life.

 

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los-alamos-will-never-be-clean/article_a3cc7ce1-8af0-5113-8f38-5d4aa673fd7a.html

 

http://www.lasg.org/

Right, although perhaps true over the span of millions of years, these rationalizations are really all mental deflections from the stark reality that we just don't want to really feel.  Because it's a sad fact that we are destroying what took millions of years to evolve naturally on this planet - in mere centuries.  And we are entirely responsible.  Not carbon, or any other SYMPTOMS of our wanton appetite for destruction.

The nature center, graced by new gardens and an expansive view of the Jemez Mountains, sits near the site of a chemical waste treatment plant used by scientists who built the first nuclear weapons. From 1943 to 1964, the treatment plant shed into the canyon more than 30 million gallons of treated and untreated liquid radioactive and chemical waste laced with tritium, strontium, plutonium and other radioactive materials that settled on rocks and soil. It was one of several canyons around Los Alamos used as dumping grounds by the lab during the Manhattan Project and the subsequent Cold War.

Free carbon is not cutting down forests or turning all waterways into plastic teas - we are.

 

Now, how does that really FEEL to know and fully acknowledge our own blissfully negligent parts in that?

Edited May 6, 2017 by gendao

[thelerner]

I used to think that something like this was unnatural.

Lately, I no longer believe unnatural exists.  Though the things I used to consider unnatural I would now describe as seeming to be out of balance.

 

Humans used to seem unnatural to me along with all their various by-products... but now that all seems part of nature albeit a strange one to me, and as has been shown at places like Chernobyl, nature doesn't waste anything, not plastic, not radio-active waste, nothing.  Nature is never wrong, it is just always flowing toward balance, without effort or any bias. 

 

These images though and what they represent does still seem out of balance though.  But only because I have an opinion, based on a perspective.  Not because I am right. 

 

Wolves are thriving in Chernobyl, where it was supposed to be a desolate wasteland for generations and... turns out humans are harder on some aspects of nature than severe radiation.  And isn't there a fungus there that is also processing and cleansing the radioactive elements, or was it a bacteria? 

 

The ocean is already working on that island of garbage... something will be making use of it in some way.

Yes and good points.  But.. fish eat the smaller pieces of plastic and die, whales and dolphins choke and are trapped by larger pieces.   Personally, I'm sloppy and don't mind a small mess, but once it spreads out a few miles, then I think someone's culture is getting a little too lazy. 

 

Western sized Garbage and it's byproducts are a form of communal laziness.  We can do better, be more efficient.  Keeping things clean is a pain at first, but worth the effort in the medium and long term.   It's been said environmentalists make lousy neighbors but great ancestors. 

 

You know the difference between walking now versus 25 years ago?  Dog shit, 25 years it was radical for dog owners to pick up waste.  Any long walk you'd see a dozen or so droppings on the ground.  Every week or so step in something unpleasant.  During the winter it'd be particularly bad because it wouldn't go away, near the end we'd be dreaming of a white Christmas without all the brown spots that lined the sidewalks. 

 

Yeah, its biodegradable but unpleasant, not healthy since it feeds rats.  Public opinion (and pressure) made a difference and in a small unnoticed way, it's improved our lives.  We should do better with plastics are most likely to end up in the middle of the ocean.  Work on the easy pollution fixes first, then move on.  

[Gerard]

Good people working for our environment, namely ocean clean up.

 

The 20-Year-Old With a Plan to Rid the Sea of Plastic

 

Saving the Big Blue

 

If you live in Australia you could sign this petition:

 

Ban the Bag

 

Thank you

 

 

 

 

[gendao]

Quote

Plastic pollution is so pervasive that even one of the most remote places on Earth, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean, is choked with litter.

On Henderson Island’s beach, “the density of debris was the highest recorded anywhere in the world,” research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed. In some places, there were nearly 700 pieces of debris in a square meter of beach although the average was a few hundred per square meter on the surface. Thousands more pieces were buried in the 10 centimeters of sand underneath.

The island, a territory of the United Kingdom, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with 10 plants and four birds native to it.

“An estimated 37.7 million debris items weighing a total of 17.6 tons are currently present on Henderson,” with more pieces washing up every day, the researchers found.

The island is far from civilization — the University of Tasmania explained in a statement that only researchers visit, with sometimes several years between trips — but ocean currents make sure plastic pollution reaches the island from places like South America. When people don’t recycle plastic, its buoyancy and durability helps the plastic product survive long trips through waterways before it washes up somewhere.

Its particular position among ocean currents means Henderson Island takes a beating when it comes to garbage washing up on its shore.

While being so isolated may have previously protected this island from pollution, the study said, demand for plastic products has increased over time and the material has become common in marine environments where it can last without breaking down for decades.

“Far from being the pristine ‘deserted island’ that people might imagine of such a remote place, Henderson Island is a shocking but typical example of how plastic debris is affecting the environment on a global scale,” lead author Jennifer Lavers said in the University of Tasmania statement. “Plastic debris is an entanglement and ingestion hazard for many species, creates a physical barrier on beaches to animals such as sea turtles and lowers the diversity of shoreline invertebrates.”

While the scientists have suggested plastic pollution at a higher density than anywhere else in the world, this may not even be the entire picture: It’s possible the litter data is a low estimate for plastic pollution coverage on the island, because the team only dug 10 centimeters down into the beach.

Previous research suggests that between 4 million and 12 million tons of plastic make it into the world’s oceans each year.

And as more plastic is produced worldwide, it further will affect places like Henderson Island, and the animals that call it home.

“What’s happened on Henderson Island shows there’s no escaping plastic pollution even in the most distant parts of our oceans,” Lavers said.

WEIRD culture really is one of archetypal MAD SCIENTISTS, isn't it?

Quote

Often plays God
Fail to recognize the evil in their actions
Insane, eccentric, & sometimes bumbling
Not always evil

 

Edited May 17, 2017 by gendao

[Marblehead]

Looking at that picture is sad.

 

[gendao]

Lol, even back in the Middle Ages, look at the environmental destruction wreaked by WEIRD populations!  Which only briefly subsided for a few years while 20 million were killed off by the Black Death plague!

Quote

Tracking the concentrations of lead in the environment via these ice cores, the team noticed that during the Black Death – specifically between 1349 and 1353 – the air was lead-free for the first and only time over the last two millennia. As it turns out, with so many people dying so quickly, mining for lead became a far less important priority than just basic survival.

“During the Black Death pandemic, demographic and economic collapse interrupted metal production and atmospheric lead dropped to undetectable levels,” the team write in their study.

Studies like this make it hard to argue against the idea that with less people around, there will be less environmental destruction. Less humans equals less resources required, which equals less lead in the sky and plastic in the ocean.

 

Quote

the only sliver of time during which the scientists’ instruments sniffed lead-free air was from 1349 to 1353, when folks were presumably too busy dying in droves to work the mines

researchers found that lead levels rose steadily in the early 1800s, coinciding with the onset of the Industrial revolution

in the period of time when 50% of the Eurasian population died because of a pandemic, the levels of lead dropped to zero.

This interpretation suggests that pre-industrial levels of lead, which are used as a baseline for forming air quality standards, are not as free of human influence as we thought. “We assume that anything before 1800 doesn’t matter, there was no industry and no pollution,” More said. “That’s not true. We’ve been exploiting nature and polluting the air for the past 2000 years, with consequences we still have to discover.”

Indeed, a large body of research shows that even small levels of lead exposure in air, water or soil can have harmful impacts on everything from fertility to early childhood development. The Centers for Disease Control says no levels of blood lead are safe for children, and that even low levels can have an impact on IQ. The researchers believe that tying pre-industrial lead pollution to human activity could bolster the case for tightening air quality standards even further.

Quote

Scientists warn of ‘biological annihilation,’ say mass extinction event is currently happening on Earth

according to a new research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we’re currently experiencing an extinction event of our very own. After monitoring the populations of nearly 200 species, scientists are now sounding the alarm and insist that the dramatic changes in their numbers could threaten humanity as we know it.

Among the tens of thousands of species studied for the paper, the researchers surveyed the population figures of 177 mammal species across all continents, comparing the population and distribution data from as far back as 1900 to the current numbers. What they found is that of the mammal species monitored, nearly half of them have lost over 80% of their distribution since their earliest monitoring.

The scientists pin the destruction of these species on human overpopulation, which has led to the mass destruction of natural habitats as well as an influx of pollution. Human effect on the climate of the planet has also not done nature any favors, as changing temperatures have pushed and pulled species into and out of various regions, causing overlaps and a spike in invasive species in many areas.

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by gendao

[zerostao]

 

[Starjumper]

On 5/6/2017 at 0:13 PM, ralis said:

In the mind of some, nature will just take care of whatever waste the human species carelessly disposes of. I have read many stories that certain microbes will remediate radioactive waste.

 

It doesn't matter if microbes eat radioactive waste, it will remain radioactive for the duration.

[Pavel Karavaev]

It is remind me, when I was on the islands in Indonesia, I saw how after every tide the whole coast turned into a giant plastic dump.

But I liked to see how quickly the local people cleaned it. First they collected recyclable plastic, glass, and broken trees, and at the end they cleaned useless garbage.

In Indonesia, the art of woodcarving is very developed, and according to local residents they use only trees that bring tides from the ocean and they try to not to cut down living trees.

[windwalker]

 

[silent thunder]

Carlin reminds me of Chuang Tzu.  Social commentarian with a humorous slant.

[Pavel Karavaev]

On 02.02.2018 at 5:57 PM, silent thunder said:

Carlin reminds me of Chuang Tzu.  Social commentarian with a humorous slant.

 

Well, in my opinion, with Zhuang Zi, he can not be compared. But he also often says reasonable things, and expressiveness gives it a kind of vitality.