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Expedition To Explore an Alaska-Sized Plastic "Island"
Peace Corps Online writes "An expedition called Project Kaisei has departed bound for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge 'island' of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean estimated to be the size of Alaska (some estimates place it at ten times that size). The expedition will study the impact of the waste on marine life, and research methods to clean up the vast human-created mess in the Pacific. The BBC quotes Ryan Yerkey, the project's chief of operations: 'Every piece of trash that is left on a beach or ends up in our rivers or estuaries and washes out to the sea is an addition to the problem, so we need people to be the solution.' The garbage patch occupies a large and relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bound by the North Pacific Gyre, a remote area commonly referred to as the horse latitudes. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the region. 'You are talking about quite a bit of marine debris but it's not a solid mass,' says Yerkey. 'Twenty years from now we can't be harvesting the ocean for trash. We need to get it out but we need to also have people make those changes in their lives to stop the problem from growing and hopefully reverse the course.'"
They should collect this in barges and burn it for fuel.
Humorous tone, but couldn't it be done ? I know that the patch is really a zone of high garbage density that are not that close to each other, but couldn't we aggregate enough of them to build habitats ? Could be one hell of a T.A.Z. I am suspecting that this is one of the informal goals of this expedition of enthusiasts...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
What is the actual density and particle size, and how near the surface is it concentrated? Although the Pacific is enormous, it might actually be possible to do something with some kind of filter system, given long enough. After all, the East Anglian fens were drained by pumps running for over 100 years, so long term projects are not exactly unheard of. Something that stops plastic and allows through fish - there's a challenge.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What is the economic feasibility of building a floating recycling (hopefully solar & wind powered mostly) to gather up and process a huge stockpile of unnatural plastic reserves?
If it costs less than the prevailing price of crude, then it's a go - hassles be damned!
Just look at the hassles and cost ($40/barrel) to get oil out of the oil sands in Canada. It says something about our oil supplies when paying $40/barrel to get it out of the ground is considered reasonable.
The overwhelming majority of the "patch" is invisible, composed of very tiny particles the size of plankton. It turns out plastic actually can degrade over time -- not biodegrade, but photodegrade. When plastic floating in the ocean is bombarded with sunlight, it breaks down into smaller and smaller particles, which is what most of this garbage patch currently consists of.
I have to wonder if the "sponge effect" of the patch -- the way it absorbs high concentrations of DDT and other chemical threats to marine life -- is necessarily bad; perhaps if the patch can be removed, scrubbed, and reinserted, the levels of these chemicals in ocean waters could be lowered.
Palm trees and 8
Are you on crack, oh wait no you're just a troll. Do a youtube search for Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there is actual video of this stuff, the amount of area this covers is scary as shit, and even worse, the shots of cut open fish with their stomachs filled with small bits of plastic freaked the crap out of me.
But hey fuck it, it's just hysterics, lets keep dumping garbage into our oceans, there's nothing wrong with that.
What about just having 1 humongous ship built to take care of the problem, with its front end able to open and scoop up the garbage, then compact it inside itself (like a garbage truck except a boat), and about as wide as it is long. It could just be used once in awhile, or as much as is needed, and it would crush all the garbage into small squares which could then be brought back on smaller boats to the coast and then dropped inside one of the hawaiian volcanos... I know it might be a bit costly, but it would be much quicker solution to a big problem getting bigger by the minute.
As for air dropping the garbage into a volcano, a military helicopter couild be used, the ones without a bottom, with room to pick up the square and drop it in...that is the way I see it done the quickest and cheapest solution.
OK, where is the Great Atlantic Garbage patch?
I read somewhere that a none insignificant proportion of "sand" on a beach is actually tiny pieces of plastic and is far, far more difficult to clean up.
Quick Google found some old reports: ...Northumbrian coast, every one of them was found to contain microscopic plastic fibres at densities of up to 10,000 per litre of sand. More have been discovered in plankton samples dating back to the 1960s. Already, there may be no such thing as a clean beach. ...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6570001.ece
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0506_040506_oceanplastic.html
Ta
Here are some pictures, linked from the wikipedia article.
http://www.algalita.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=68
The emperor's clothes are there, you see--they're just beneath the surface and very small.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Ten times the size of Alaska???
okay, let's run the numbers.
Alaska's area is 663,268 sq mi.
10x Alaska's area would be 6,632,680 sq mi.
the USA's TOTAL area is 3,794,066 sq mi.
Russia's TOTAL area is 6,592,800 sq mi.
You're telling me that some people think there is a mass of garbage in the Pacific Ocean SLIGHTLY LARGER than Russia???
I'm not saying it's not as bad as it sounds but I really doubt the numbers are right.
This pacific floating plastic formation is mentionned here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17379_6-real-islands-way-more-terrifying-than-one-on-lost.html
For my money though, the snake island is WAY more terrifying.
PBS had a great 1 hour segment on this not too long ago. Their segment covered the rapid decline in albatrosses due to offspring being fed the plastic from the pacific. I haven't been able to find the complete coverage of the segment I saw on my local PBS station, but I have managed to locate part of it here titled: World's Oceans Face Problem of Plastic Pollution
Let me rephrase : by collecting efficiently (be it water filtering or using small nets) would it be possible to heat it, maybe through solar lens, in order to melt and molt it ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Vegetarian environmentalists will be at the bottom of the food chain. Carnivorous conservatives will be one step above it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Establish a small fleet of permanent skimmer barges.
The plastic is already broken down into pellets even finer than those delivered to molding factories it's ripe for harvest and sale!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Anyone should be able to punish non-cooperation by reciprocating that non-cooperation and making that non-cooperation known to others. If you employ child laborers, I will not do business with you, and I will tell everyone I know about your actions.
As well, in a democracy or republic, the majority or their representatives get to say what is punishable non-cooperation, like murder, pollution, and fraud. Seriously, have you never taken a civics class or explored the way your society is supposed to work?
Your knee jerk reaction makes you seem like a hardened non-cooperator who wishes that other people did not have the power to hold him to account for his actions: in other words, an overlord wannabe. Thankfully, we do have the ability to hold you to account and protect ourselves from your selfishness.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Deer don't have a 'point of view.' They do not conceptualize. They can not think ahead and imagine what it would be like to be killed and eaten.
Don't be so sure. I saw this programme and am damn sure that the horse in question knew the kind of thing that was planned for her. That's why she escaped - jumped over a fence she had not jumped over all the rest of her life.
I'm not suggesting that animals philosophise in French in terrace cafes - but I find it hard to believe that they have don't have some kind of "world view" that is based around life experiences with a few "abstractions" to fill in the gaps.
You may be right about that, especially in regards to social animals. I think they may have some sort of rudimentary conceptualization. It seems like it would be genetically advantageous to be able to conceptualize your place in your pack, herd, or what have you. But the horse may just have been picking up on subtle cues from her owners, as the 'mathematical' horses have been proven to do.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Who said anything about a powerful intelligence? I merely speculated that we have the potential. Obviously, we aren't realizing it now. I don't know where you are getting 'smug' from, honestly, nor am I seeing any actual argument for why 'my world' is impossible. Just a lot of hot air, is that what you meant to convey?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As I mentioned, I am not advocating for the removal of sociopaths, and I actually gave reasons why this would be a bad idea.
I still don't understand why cleaning up our own crap is a bad idea. Do you shit in your kitchen? Do you let other people shit in your kitchen? If you found shit in your kitchen, would you clean it up or let it fester there, because, hey, it's there and that's the status quo? If you argue that it was not there before, and thus is not the status quo, how is an Alaska sized heap of human created trash the status quo? It wasn't there before, either, right? You seem to have a definition of 'status quo' that is awfully convenient for you, in that it gets you out of doing anything you don't want to do without having to come up with an actual reason not to do it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton