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Trillions of Plastic Pieces May Be Trapped In Arctic Ice
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Humans produced nearly 300 million tons of plastic in 2012, but where does it end up? A new study has found plastic debris in a surprising location: trapped in Arctic sea ice. As the ice melts, it could release a flood of floating plastic onto the world. From the article: 'Scientists already knew that microplastics—polymer beads, fibers, or fragments less than 5 millimeters long—can wind up in the ocean, near coastlines, or in swirling eddies such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But Rachel Obbard, a materials scientist at Dartmouth College, was shocked to find that currents had carried the stuff to the Arctic.'"
Instead of aeons needed to turn glass to microparticles, humanity has managed to litter the seas with plastic bits in only around a century. If humanity goes extinct, perhaps one day visitors from another planet would know there was once sentient life here from the remains of our PET bottles and beer six-pack rings in the ice?
When I read stuff like this, sometimes I'm ashamed to be a human being. :(
nearly 300 million tons of plastic in 2012 [...] reaching 288 million tonnes in 2012
http://bash.org/?2999
Estimates of how much of that production has been trapped in Arctic ice provided in the article:
- "[some of] much of [the total amount of plastic produced]"
- "more than 1 trillion pieces of plastic"
- "abundances of hundreds of ['fragments less than 5 millimeters long' selected using a microscope] per cubic meter"
Would have really hurt to estimate the weight of those fragments? One plastic bag could easily end up as a million pieces of plastic. About one plastic bag or 10 grams of plastic per 10.000 cubic meters sounds a lot less dramatic, I guess.
these tiny bits exist for a few reasons.
1. Natural photodegradation permits older plastics to disintegrate into smaller pieces. new plastics impregnated with photo-inhibitors resist this for a seemingly infinite span of time unfortunately.
2. industrial processes like bead-blasting and resurfacing may sometimes rely on plastics instead of formed metal shot as its cheaper in many cases. plastics are also often fluid-formed from tiny pellets or beads shipped across the world, so naturally losing a conex full of them would contribute.
3. cosmetics. Pomace, apricot and peach pits used to act as surfactants in many soaps however seasonal limitations of production and particulate dimension were always a factor. They also didnt perform well in gelatinous suspensions like body washes. reprocessing and shredding waste plastics from other manufacturing processes however proved far more economical and reliable. As a result, the "micro beads" in your bottle of Gillette body wash are likely made from reprocessed Gillette body wash bottles that were damaged or defective during the injection moulding process.
Good people go to bed earlier.
There was a story on NPR radio a couple days ago..
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/21/313157701/why-those-tiny-microbeads-in-soap-may-pose-problem-for-great-lakes
If I remember right those micro plastic beads absorb toxins, and anything that east them is also exposed to toxins, such as fish, then humans not to mention the damage they cause to the environment.
Maybe a little of topic, but the article is about plastics, and the Arctic Ice.
I recall reading somewhere - and I hope a historian can come along and correct this - that most modern settlements are at a significant elevation because they're on top of the middens and trash of all the previous settlers on that site. If we actually dug out the areas we currently stand on, we'd find all sorts of interesting trash.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
When it gets cold, water turns to ice. When it gets warm, ice turns to water. The fact that both of these things occur naturally is not a statement on climate change.
You can't clean up all that garbage without sifting through all the ice...... Thanks, I needed an excuse to continue helping melt the ice cap :p
Environmentalist told us it was much better to use plastic bags than paper. Their argument is that it saved trees. My argument is that as long as there is industry that needed paper, tree farms would exist and an equilibrium state would also exist. Paper biodegrades quite nicely, thank you. So instead of reason, we now have billions of plastic bags that won't decompose in the lifetime of my 50th generation of descendants.
Possible but I think this Ducks cross the Arctic. shows that the researcher is a moron. This has been happening for years.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Most of the current sea ice is less than 10 years old, as the ice regular melts in the summer, and is replaced by fresh ice in the winter. It's hard to imagine that there are significant amounts of plastic trapped in the ice compared to plastic that is free floating in the ocean.
So you dump stuff into a giant whirlpool and you're shocked to find that the stuff ends up in various random place. Maybe they thought it would magically disappear ? Oh sorry, we are talking about science.
What sig ?
Firstly a disclaimer: I am not the historian you asked for (i.e. no expert). But I do have 2 cents to add to this comment.
I think cities/towns were often built on high ground as a prevention against flooding. People want to live near fresh water for irrigation, but still keep their houses dry.
Therefore, the main elevation of the town centers is not a giant pile of old trash, but a natural elevation (also known as a "hill"). But it is true that people would discard old items into a canal or river, or just in the mud, and in old cities you will almost always find something if you dig down.
Plastics that are still in visible pieces are nuisance, and all oceans have tons and tons and TONS of plastic based flotsam - I worked as a sailor before and even in the middle of a big ocean we saw plastic garbage floating
But the real danger are those teeny tiny plastic particles
Most plastic breaks down after prolonged exposure to sunlight, and they kept breaking apart as time goes by, until they became teeny tiny plastic (polymer) particles which inevitably end up in the food-chain (sea creatures - little fishes - bigger fishes - entrees in restaurants - people's stomach) and sooner and later all of us start eating food containing plastic particles
Yes, even those so-called bio-degradable plastics only degrade until they become teeny tiny polymer particles, and then stop degrading
What kind of problem will those plastic particles do to our health ? Anybody knows ?
It is already known that new microbes evolved which can consume plastic and disintegrate it
While it is known that scientists have found microbes in landfill sites and plastic floatsam in the sea that can consume / digest plastics, it is still an unknown whether those microbes could break down the many types of toxin that are embedded inside the plastics, such as phthalates, or merely pass the toxins intact, on to the next higher level organism on the food chain
http://www.nature.com/news/201...
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I recall reading somewhere - and I hope a historian can come along and correct this - that most modern settlements are at a significant elevation because they're on top of the middens and trash of all the previous settlers on that site. If we actually dug out the areas we currently stand on, we'd find all sorts of interesting trash.
Chicago is about 3' higher than it's supposed to be and juts out into the lake quite a ways because it's built on top the great fire of 1871. There are still a few buildings left from before the fire that sit significantly bellow street level. They look odd when driving through the area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
It's amazement that it is happening so much instead of amazement that it is happening at all. That is the difference between an observer getting a better quantitative idea and a "moron".
True, but the effect I was thinking of was more conspicuously artificial.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The current that comes up past Europe from the Atlantic sinks and flows back beneath the surface. Plastic that floats will accumulate at the surface around Greenland, and may spread around the Arctic Ocean.
It is stuff like this that bums me out, not the fact that we are so young on this planet that we are surprised that climate isn't stable.
Seasons. Every year the ice sheets grow and shrink.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Great book.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
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?”
~George Carlin
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
It freezes in the winter. It melts in the summer. The overall trend is down: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
Really ... a "scientist" to whom it never occured that the ocean's currents (and winds) might carry the stuff to the Antarctic? The presence of the plastic was the least surprising part of the article. BTW, it's also in the air and likely at high altitude, if anyone cares to look. Don't know that for sure but it would simply make sense. Also, look for it at the very bottom of the ocean; no it didn't sink, it was carried there by currents.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Wait...as it melts?? It melts every year, then freezes again. It's not like some barrage of plastic that's been sequestered in ice for billions of years is suddenly going to be dumped into the ocean because of the Arctic sea ice "melting", a thinly veiled reference to global warming as if the melting isn't happening every summer. And if it was created in 2012, then gets released, then a little bit freezes in the ice next year...it doesn't sound like this is even a story!
As an aside, what happened to Slashdot? What happened to our ability to critically think in general? Crap like this should never see the light of day on the main page, it's almost as if we're just expected to consume whatever the headline is alluding to, truth be damned, and subsequently have the proper level of outrage as is determined by the +5 comments. What happened to active discourse, agreeing to disagree, and civility even amongst people with different ideologies? Every day, I read more and more comments along the lines of "If you disagree with me, you should be executed." It makes me really, really sad and angry at the same time that we've been effectively reduced to the mental capacity of neanderthals when it comes to our science/religion of choice (and really, what's the difference anymore?)
And might this help explain the melting of the ice more so than global warming
Probably not unless the plastics are dark. If they are dark they will absorb solar energy that would have otherwise been reflected. Black carbon for example can accelerate ice loss: http://climatecrocks.com/2014/...
The study, in Proceedings to the National Academy of Sciences (Keegan et al. 2014) finds that black carbon from wildfires facilitated widespread Greenland ice sheet surface melting in just two years since the end of the 19th century: 1889 and 2012. They argue convincingly that not just warm temperatures, but the positive feedback with black carbon and surface solar heating can push the surface energy balance into net heating and ice melt. Further, the likelihood for future increases in air temperature and wildfire boosts the probability of high altitude former “dry snow area” surface melting by end of century to every few years, if not even more frequently, they conclude.
Arctic ice loss is occurring much faster than was anticipated by climate models, so it is likely that there are other factors at play.
Most of the current sea ice is less than 10 years old is suspiciously in need of references.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Actually most of the buildings and homes you see below street level, are due to the way the sewer systems were created and NOT due to the fire.
See: Raising of Chicago
When we were in Rome a few years ago there was a ruin undergoing excavation in the middle of the city. You could walk over to the edge of the excavation and look down about 7 or 8 meters to where the work was being done, since the subsequent 20 centuries of occupation had added that much elevation. There are places like the Parthenon which have been in continuous use and are in a slight dip in the terrain because trash was not allowed to accumulate there. IIRC they had to stop a planned subway expansion because the tunneling kept running into archeological sites.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I gotta say, are we talking about the same Parthenon? The one built at the top of a hill overlooking Athens as pretty nearly the sole structure on the hilltop?
It doesn't precisely show the elevations, but:
https://maps.google.com/maps?o...
is one view, or perhaps this will do better:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/...
As you can see, it is pretty much on top of a mesa. So I'm not sure where your "slight dip in the terrain" could possibly be.
I only point this out not because your argument is implausible in general, but your specific example is one of my favorite places on Earth and although I've only been fortunate enough to visit it in person twice in my lifetime (so far) I remember the walk up from Athens proper quite well, including stopping in some of the many small taverns that are along the trek for octopus and retsina.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
New Report Finds Climate Change Caused By 7 Billion Key Individuals
Well, he said he was in Rome when he saw it, so I think you are probably not talking about the same Parthenon, as the one he was talking about is imaginary.
And if it was created in 2012, then gets released, then a little bit freezes in the ice next year...it doesn't sound like this is even a story!
It does sound like it is accumulating year over year, otherwise how do you explain the "abundances of hundreds of particles per cubic meter. That’s three orders of magnitude larger than some counts of plastic particles in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch." - http://news.sciencemag.org/ear...
"Plastic."
The author is a materials scientist, not an oceanographer. So the AC is skeptical of climate modelers because a materials scientist found a concentration of plastic frozen in the arctic that is three orders of magnitude larger than found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (which is in fact a shocking find!). Any excuse to deny science.
My bad, I meant Pantheon in Rome. Brain burp.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
This must be ancient alien plastic.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Well the difference is that this "thrash" was mostly broken bricks and dirt (as in mud) filling the space occupied by houses. Thrash was disposed for centuries in holes , sometimes to fill in old and dry wells. Organic stuff broke apart easily so that even the thrash of these groves isn't more than a few shards of ceramics and minute pieces of bones. But we are not talking about the type of stuff we have today like plastics.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
The change in elevation is due to two causes: A) when people in the past wanted to build a new hose they tore down the old and used it to fill the foundations. B) The river PO periodically flooded Rome and remember that big parts of the city were abandoned for many centuries. I don't know how you come to the idea that humans may let dirt and mud accumulate in their houses and buildings. AFAIK the Romans also new how to use a broom, don't you agree?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Well, this one is not on a hill (AFAIK) but neither is in underground. It's still standing very nicely: Pantheon :)
I guess it was "Luigi's Pizza Emporium"
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Sure, but on the other hand municipal trash removal ceased for centuries at a time. No one living more than a block from the river is going to haul their trash any further than the abandoned lot down the street if they don't have to. And motor vehicles have only been around for a little more than a century, do you have any idea how much waste horses produce? In some cities of Europe there is a paved street, a meter or more of accumulation, another paved street, more accumulation, and the current modern street, the homes on the street have been altered (including being torn down and used for fill, as you correctly point out) to accommodate the changed street level.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin