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Nearly Every Seabird May Be Eating Plastic By 2050
sciencehabit writes: According to a new study almost every ocean-foraging species of birds may be eating plastic by 2050. In the five large ocean areas known as "garbage patches," each square kilometer of surface water holds almost 600,000 pieces of debris. Sciencemag reports: "By 2050, about 99.8% of the species studied will have eaten plastic, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Consuming plastic can cause myriad problems, Wilcox says. For example, some types of plastics absorb and concentrate environmental pollutants, he notes. After ingestion, those chemicals can be released into the birds’ digestive tracts, along with chemicals in the plastics that keep them soft and pliable. But plastic bits aren’t always pliable enough to get through a gull’s gut. Most birds have trouble passing large bits of plastic, and they build up in the stomach, sometimes taking up so much room that the birds can’t consume enough food to stay healthy."
Most birds have trouble passing large bits of plastic, and they build up in the stomach, sometimes taking up so much room that the birds canâ(TM)t consume enough food to stay healthy.
We can start harvesting bird carcasses for plastic, taking it out of the environment, and acting as a source of plastic. Win-win. /sarcasm (that shouldn't be needed here... but...)
Trump is President of USA
Seems like a perfect example of natural selection. The birds that figure out NOT to eat plastic (or how to get their body to deal with plastic after it's consumed) will survive to breed, the others, well the rule of nature is: Adapt, Evolve or Die.
Instead of being concerned about the REAL environmental issues.... such as plastics and pollution of our bodies of water, hazardous chemical releases by our own government's negligence, and corruption of potable water supplies.
At last, our long, bloody war on seagulls may finally reach its conclusion!
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
considering the quantity, there has to be somebody dumping garbage on a massive scale somewhere. I checked the Wikipedia article and it doesn't mention anything about the source. Considering the high cost of land in asia a doubt if landfills are good option. there has to be large scale dumping going on somewhere of post-consumer garbage.
dont eat plastic
ok so you did
you stoopid bird
out of the gene pool!
now fishes gonna eat u
meanwhile at the dump
'ocean foraging' boids
have been gulpin' plastic
since 1950s
who weeps for them
hey stoopid man, clean up ocean
not fer boids do it fer yerself
quick before endangered specie
is found thriving in the gyres
becuz then plastic gyres will become
protected international habitat
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
With all the industrial food wrapped into plastic containers, human also eat plastic, since almost all plastic leak chemical into the food.
Polyethylene and polypropylene may be the exceptions, but they always come with other chemicals that improve color or plasticity.
An interesting but positive side-effect of pollution.
I thought that kid's plastic super scooper was supposed to be able to clean all that shit up in ten years! What's up with that?
...4,568% of seabirds will be made out of 5,643% plastic by 2080.
This sounds really doubtful. There are large plastic deposits, but the ocean is big, really big. The deposits make up 0.00004% of the area of the oceans.
But let me guess: they need money to go and "study" it for the next 30 years until they make enough to retire on.
I thought every bird was already eating plastic. Silly me.
This is why you shouldn't shit where you eat. I was watching a documentary on netflix about this. It's really sad and one of the reasons why I don't use plastic bags or drink from plastic water bottles. It'll take a revolution to fix this.
It's not even funny how grotesque this is.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
At least its not Alka-Seltzer.
Instead of watching them eat the garbage, why don't you get off your duffs and clean it up?
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
We can perform miracles when we apply science to the problem. All we need here is to reformulate plastics into a nutritious dietary enhancement. Plastics have long taken many forms, textures and other characteristics with the brilliant work of scientists and engineers. The only plastic on my 1950 Pontiac was a hood ornament that looked like amber. Today there's no place to put a magnet in your car- everything is plastic.
Furthermore, let's look on some past breakthroughs, like in the 70s when we created the Six Million Dollar Man and edible panties. Didn't Kennedy and dedicated American scientists put a man on the moon? We can do this people!
Apologizing for all caps in title; it seems to be required at slashdot.
...omphaloskepsis often...
...where most of this ocean-borne plastic comes from. How much of it is consumer waste, and how much of it is industrial waste?
It is a common belief that minor modifications of consumer behavior (like recycling plastic instead of throwing it away) can make a significant impact on this pollution, and that in many cases this is not true (for example, reducing one's use of paper products will not reduce global deforestation in the slightest, since our paper comes from tree farms that get replanted).
I try to keep my plastic use low when possible...if only as a token gesture....which may very well be all it is.
Indeed.
There are clouds of seagulls constantly hanging out at the landfills in the San Francisco Bay Area, picking food out of the trash as it's dumped. Lots of plastic in the same load (even now that the plastic grocery bags are banned.) Why haven't THEY gone extinct yet?
Do the "environmentalists" think these gulls are better at distinguishing, or surviving ingestion of, plastic than the ones at sea? Or do we have to put roofs over our landfills to protect these endangered avian pests?
Somehow I'm not convinced this is a real problem.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Just came across this picture yesterday, better than the one in the article:
http://www.afternoongossip.com/its-time-to-be-worried/14/
The ones who eat plastic die. The ones who don't, survive to breed more. Within a couple of generations, none of them eat plastic anymore. Problem fucking solved.
Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here
Stanford Report
June 19, 2015
That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said.
-- Stanford Report, June 19, 2015
The birds that survive will evolve and adapt to become capable of eating the plastic and somehow create the enzymes necessary to neutralize the harmful elements.
Not entirely unlike how humans have somehow managed to survive despite great disease plagues that SHOULD have wiped out entire generations. Although it may be like in Africa where those who are immune to terrible diseases, like Ebola, are shunned, and therefore unable to pass on their genes, unless they viciously rape and impregnate innocent women.
They steal My Chips.. Now the Blighters are Stealing My Plastic!!!
Mysidia is the location of the crystal of water, which was stolen by Cecil. So it should be obvious that water is a primary concern for them.
The crystal of fire and global warming simply aren't as big a concern.
Seabirds May Be Eating Steak by 2020
Seabirds May Be Living on the Moon by 2020
Seabird May Become the Dominant Species on the Planet by 2020
By 2050, nearly all articles posted on "news" sites will be hyped-up predictions of the distant future.
It's actually pretty funny.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What a brilliant plan! Instead of spending billions of dollars cleaning it up, we can let nature's garbage collectors do it for us. (I don't know if you've ever visited a landfill, but I can tell you there's nothing there killing off the bird population. They swarm 'round the plastic and thrive.) Thank you for proving that we don't need to do anything, researchers!
What is that crap in McDonalds nuggets and burgers?? Silicon Putty, the crap you rework seals with.
Haha yes .. and I got 240+ vaccines to stick into people please buy them wholesale and make them mandatory. There are over 240+ vaccines awaiting fda rubberstamp approval and your kid is going to have to take them all. Enjoy your new world.
By 2050, about 99.8% of the species studied will have eaten plastic
This sounds a lot like the "one in three women around the world will get raped in their lifetime" bullshit figure that has been repeated ad nauseam over the last 10 years by people who couldn't calc.exe their way out of a paper bag.
lucm, indeed.
You need an environmental 9/11, "Sandy Hook", Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, "Remember the Maine", "Remember the Alamo", etc. moment to move people's cheese. Until then, we have too many other crises to think about. I mean, didn't you hear about Miley Cyrus accidentally showing a nipple during the VMAs? Think of the children!...
Heck - If some educated official in a position of power tried to actually do something about it (good or bad), they'd be shot to pieces by lobbyists and special interests that would outright lie to keep the money flowing. (See the tobacco and leaded gasoline industries - and who's to say who's next? Cellphone companies and cancer?)
Require that the specific gravity of every form of plastic be greater than 1. End of problem.
then start putting some vitamins in plastic.
the least we could do.
Actually, if we keep having 3 cat4 hurricanes churning the Pacific garbage patch, you could easily argue that it's going to be one and the same problem.
Pretty sure that cat5 hurricanes is the minimum ...assuming you want a good signal.
Thats a really well worded find. "Can" is soft-speak for 'we imagined really hard and after alot of debate, we might just mention this because our Sierra club membership requires us to buy into the scare".
So, ignore all the real problems. Plastic in the oceans - gotcha. The birds wont have grand children, so we should be alarmed. Stop making drinks with ice cubes today and you'll be saving the planet tomorrow.
What huberus. Why are these things posted when there is so much going on in the world that isnt to do with man made global cooling and eco-stasis.
At least some birds will find a way. Perhaps some breeds humans like won't make it but birds as a group won't be killed by it. No way to predict what form the selective pressure will push.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Isn't this an excellent opportunity to establish a publicly funded program to educate birds against the dangers of eating plastic?
... the human did that first
What? You think we human beings are immune to the 'plastic eating' trend?
The fresh meat we bought in supermarket are wrapped inside plastic, ditto some of the veges, the fruits, the grains
And the cooking oils we use - also come inside plastic bottles
Furthermore, the soft drink we drink - even those came in aluminium cans, are still in contact with a thin layer of plastic inside the can (to prevent the acid from the soft drink from direct contact with the aluminium of the can
Even the pills we take, some of them are coated with plastic - http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1986-05-07/lifestyle/0220140024_1_enzymes-large-intestine-plastic-coating
Fact is that most types of plastic leach, and when we consume the food, plastic particles goes into our bodies - questions like whether the plastic accumulates inside and absorbed by our body, with some of the polymeric chain wrecking havoc to our our enzyme / hormonal level, are still being debated
Yes, we human beings are EATING PLASTICS , whether you realize it or not!
I agree with Darwin, fuckem!
You are right, of course. What amazes me is the fact that there are people in this forum who have modded your comment 'Funny'. Personally, I can't see anything funny in knowing that we as a society, because of our almost complete lack of concern for what crap we are spilling in the environment, cause millions of birds to die a slow, agonizing death. I challenge anybody - especially the idiots who think it is funny - to eat a couple of broken plastic spoons every day and tell me they enjoy the process of dying from pierced intestines.
Apart from whether one should feel a normal level of empathy towards wildlife or not, it is actually a significant issue. It is scientifically well established that different parts of the environment are closely connected - we talk about food webs, for one thing. We know that taking out just one, significant part of the food web can have a dramatic effect on everything, sometimes in surprising ways; a common theme, though, is that when it happens, it introduces instability, and when it finally settles down again, it is a much lower levels than before and with much lower species diversity.
Yet, we keep playing with these things, refusing to open our eyes and ears, like there was no tomorrow; I just hope we don't turn out to be right in that respect.
So, evolution continues and we select for birds who are smart enough *not* to eat plastic. Problem solved.
...because their pronouncements are as carefully contrived as anything by Leni Reifenstahl. Granted, this is slashdot, so it could just be incompetent editing.
Notice the summary starts with a categorical: ..."
"According to a new study almost every ocean-foraging species of birds may be eating plastic by 2050,,,"
Salted with a nice big statistic:
"..In the five large ocean areas known as "garbage patches," each square kilometer of surface water holds almost 600,000 pieces of debris.
Adds in a bit of fluffy FUD:
"...For example, some types of plastics absorb and concentrate environmental pollutants, he notes. After ingestion, those chemicals can be released into the birdsâ(TM) digestive tracts, along with chemicals in the plastics that keep them soft and pliable..."
And ends with a tragedy:
"...Most birds have trouble passing large bits of plastic, and they build up in the stomach, sometimes taking up so much room that the birds canâ(TM)t consume enough food to stay healthy...."
Except....these bits of information have very little to do with each other.
Those terrifying "600,000" pieces? Most of them are 0.5mm or less. A significant portion aren't even visible. Those pieces of plastic are hardly choking seabirds to death.
Look, BPA and other estrogenic compounds ARE an issue: for humans and for sea life. No doubt we need to work on that to get them out of the products we use and dispose of every day.
We need to stop talking in propagandistic terms about the 'Garbage Patch'es - that implies there's this floating reef of garbage which is simply a well-motivated lie.
Do I think it sucks that these particulates are in our food stream? Of course I do. But it's hard to imagine anything 7 billion use as ubiquitously as plastic NOT ending up in the environment. Histrionics and lies don't help the issue at all.
-Styopa
Of Course there's an explanation.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So, where are the green cleanup crews? If you found this by a roadway, you would pick it up and dispose of it. Why not the same here. There are places that actually pay for the trash. They recycle it. And there are companies that take trash to the oceans to dump. Why are they not fined? But then again, I'm not near a waste disposal facility, therefore I can only question.
Just came across this picture yesterday, better than the one in the article:
And the same picture 10,000 times makes idiots think isolated incidents are major wide spread issues deserving money.
Nice.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. You cows!
Let me ask you a sincere question, Beeftopia: does it even matter if Ehrlich's predictions have merit? Because they don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This sounds like great news, but I have to ask why we're focusing on feeding sea birds instead of people?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
600,000 pieces, or 6,000 or 6,000,000, it would depend on the size at which you stopped counting them surely? The problem is a variation on the Coastline Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... except they are counting bits of stuff that actually exist at many scales right down to the microscopic. I would have thought that the most meaningful measurement is kg of plastic per cubic meter of seawater in the range from the surface down to X meters. Because you know, Science!
There is no photograph real of this pacific garbage patch, because according to the people claiming it to exist it is made from microscopic plastic particles. The article uses a photograph that is commonly associated with this "garbage patch" which is cannot be proven to exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "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] Despite its enormous size and density (4 particles per cubic meter), the patch is not visible from satellite photography, nor is it necessarily detectable to casual boaters or divers in the area, as it consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic particles in the upper water column." Yet whenever there is a new story about this garbage patch they use photos like this: http://wastelessthinking.com/w... from article http://wastelessthinking.com/y... This photo is from a river not the pacific ocean. We are being lied to.