Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Scientists estimate that at least 30% of the bulk is made up of Collectors edition Daikatana boxes.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
If you wanted to do that, pretty much any municipal solid waste dump would be a better bet. This is more like a gigantic patch of watery plastic soup(plus, it's in the middle of the pacific, transport costs would be irksome), dense enough to cause all kinds of trouble for aquatic fauna, tenuous enough to make collection a serious hassle.
Gentlemen, grab the closest hairdryer. The time has come to melt the plastic, and make our own nation!
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
the images one conjures up reading the title is this big area filled with recognizable objects, however reading the wiki article states that the particles that comprise the bulk of the suspected pollution are too small and disperse to be imaged by satellite or aircraft.
So don't let the title fool you. While there may be occasional large pollutants its not like something your bound to spot on the horizon and just sail to it. Think about it, if it were we would have seen pictures all over the news by now.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It is not an island. It is a patch of high garbage density but not high enough to see it by satellite. I encourage reader to tag this story !island.
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."
http://www.livescience.com/environment/071102-micro-plastics.html
"...The seas eventually break down all this plastic garbage into microscopic particles. ...
adding just a few millionths of a gram of contaminated microplastics to sediments triggered an 80 percent rise in phenanthrene accumulation in marine worms dwelling in that muck.
Such worms lie at the base of the food chain,..."
From wikipedia: Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
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
We (humans) caused that huge mass of plastic to form in the sea by dumping our garbage in the beach or sea and in my opinion we should also try to get it out, or at least stop in from increasing in size. The problem with modern Western society is that we are not ready to start a long term project like that unless it is profitable for us in short term. And that is something that it isn't. It would be a long term money sink with no real market value, and thats why not many seems to care. In a way it feels like we are crapping our own pants because we have more important things to do than go to the toilet.
Algalita Marine Research Foundation have been studying this garbage patch in the Pacific for the last 10 years.
10 times the size of Alaska would make this thing about 1/10th the size of the Pacific. That is pretty huge.. and a little unbelievable.
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
Those particles will/have become a geological marker, there's not a beach in the world where a handfull of sand does not contain them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
According to Wikipedia: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex..."
Pacific Trash Vortex would be a good name for a band.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
OK, where is the Great Atlantic Garbage patch?
New Jersey
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Go through and find all the messages in bottles. We've got to see if these poor guys are still alive.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
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.
http://www.ted.com/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html Interesting stuff in here. Also good to show people who think that humans can't possibly have an "impact" on the biosphere. I can't add much to what's already in this talk...go take a peek.
As other people have pointed out, you cant pick it up on satellite.
Fortunately, some nice fellows have gone out there on boat and looked around. A quick search on youtube will get you a lot of videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnUjTHB1lvM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNqzAHGXvs&feature=related
for example.
Some dude went out from Hawaii on a raft made out of recycled plastic bottles, and kept a blog, there's some nice photos of what they found. http://junkraft.blogspot.com
They pulled some water samples out of the water, and frankly, they look like utter shit.
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.
Absolutely. "[M]odern Western society" is the problem. Fortunately we have those other societies that will take care of this for us.
What? No? So then why single out "modern Western society?"
Oh, because "modern Western society" is the only polluter. Yeah, that's it.
Nature is not exclusively 'red in tooth and claw.' Cooperation is at least as much a part of ecology as competition. Cooperators are simply more likely to survive than pure competitors. Every creature on Earth evolved from the same thing, and uses the same building blocks. Like cells in your body, nothing can live on its own. Everywhere you look you will see altruism and cooperation in nature, as well as violent competition. However, all this is beside the point.
Your argument boils down to a classic naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean that is how it should be, or how it must be. We have brains. We aren't simple animals. We can predict the consequences of our actions and adjust our actions accordingly. Another point to consider is that we are not desperate. We are not being chased by a lion. We have enough resources to give everyone on the planet a decent standard of living. When you look at history, resource depletion is one of the primary factors in culture collapse. Some cultures have learned from this and developed sustainable ways of living. Ultimately, those are the cultures with the best long term chance of survival.
Finally, we can punish non-cooperation, making it less profitable than cooperation. Pollution is only potentially profitable to you if your neighbors won't come over and put a stop to your activities. We can change the risk/reward ratio for any activity individuals or groups engage in, whether they like it or not.
In closing, let me just add that I'm glad I don't live in your mental world. It sounds like a lonely and frightening place.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
To quote George Carlin, "...and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole. So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now."
Now that the Chinese and Indians have adoped Euro-American lifestyle - about 1.5 billion of them are chucking waste into rivers (which eventually lead into the ocean). So this is a now a worldwide problem.
We could fix this problem quite easily if the world just stopped using plastics and other non-degradable packaging. At my local store some of the packing peanuts are made from corn starch. When they get wet they literally dissolve into a puddle of goo, which within a few days gets eaten by bacteria or fungus, and then disappears.
We need more of this biodegradable packaging, and it has to be degradable within a year, not like the plastic bottles my milk comes in that claims to be biodegradable, but takes 1000 years to do it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And that's where you're fundamentally wrong. We, a bigbrain species, actually can rise above our nature. It's what almost every belief teaches, and what growing up to be an adult is all about. Our societies are built for this specific reason: control your urges so that we can all get along. We exterminated smallpox a few decades ago. We've been to the moon. We have cameras in orbit around Saturns moons. We do all sorts of thing that do not benefit us in the shortterm, but somehow have come to be through hard and long labour (people have fought and died for beliefs and facts put forward by periods like the Renaissance). We know for a fact with our current level of knowledge this trash is a problem. With our level of population density we are in fact gardeners of this planet. The choice is once agian: sit there and grab what you can, or put our minds together and do something about it. It's always attractive to be cynical, because you get to sit on the bench, and maybe be even the first one who grabs. We can tackle this problem, we just need to put our minds to it. That may take years, or hundreds of years. The Western level of personal freedom took thousands of years as well. It starts with believing "we can" and telling everyone you know this is a problem and we should do something about it.
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
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. After the deer is dead, there is no deer to have a point of view, as stated in your first point, so: they can not think about it ahead of time, and afterwords they are dead. Your point is moo, it is like a cow's opinion. It's a moo point. :)
If I am in a survival situation, I will do whatever it takes to get myself and my loved ones to safety. After I and my loved ones are safe, I will help others escape the situation.
Let me rephrase my next point: the planet has the carrying capacity to give everyone a decent standard of living. If the majority of people act selfishly, we will fail, if we (the majority, that is) act cooperatively, we can create a future where no one has to fear the desperate actions of starving individuals.
Yes, we the majority need to make sure the selfish minority do not take what is not theirs, and shit where they are not supposed to. You need to read up on modern experiments in game theory. Humans are not primarily self interested. Most people will voluntarily harm themselves to punish selfishness in others. When a society has degraded to the point it is primarily selfish, people will act selfishly out of necessity, but when cooperation is rewarded and selfishness punished, everyone is happier, has more freedom, and a greater chance of survival and satisfaction.
This science has been peer reviewed and stands up to scrutiny. Only sociopaths act selfishly all the time, and we (the non sociopaths) do not need to take their desires into account. It is perfectly fine to kill someone who would kill you and everyone you love without any qualms. Heck, we'd be doing society a favor if we wiped out all the sociopathic non-cooperators rather than letting them take advantage of our good nature.
Except, sociopathy comes from a spectrum of genetic influences, and if we killed off all the sociopaths, we'd also be removing many of the genes responsible for leadership and survival instincts, probably not a good idea, so we need a system that takes the existence of a small number of sociopaths into account.
Your world view is a self fulfilling prophecy. It seems realistic to you because it creates the conditions it purports to protect you from. It also points to a serious case of confirmation bias. You easily ignore data that does not support your worldview, rather than changing your worldview to incorporate the new data into a cohesive framework, but don't feel bad, the majority of people sem to live that way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You can't mate with a starfish, only with other humans. If all other humans died out, your genes would perish. Look at eusocial creatures like ants and bees. Yes, I know we aren't ants or bees, but I'm illustrating a genetic point: many ants and bees never breed. Their genes only give them the power to support the breeders, and those breeders also create the next generation of non-breeders. If genes were totally selfish to the individual, and not to the species, how could species that include non-breeders ever evolve?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton