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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."
So, because one problem exists, we should ignore even worse ones? (Climate change and the mechanism that is causing it does more than simply warm things up, it also causes things like ocean acidification)
That is some sound logic I tell ya h'what.
It's not even funny how grotesque this is.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They have already been harvesting birds in Florida that have a diet of mostly plastic since the 1970s. After the birds have digested enough it causes them to freeze and become immobile. The companies that harvest the birds will then turn around and sell them to various hardware, lawncare, and similar stores as pink flamingo lawn ornaments.
By 2050, nearly all articles posted on "news" sites will be hyped-up predictions of the distant future.
It's too bad China (who will easily be out-polluting us in years to come) doesn't give two shits about our energy policy
Did you know that last year, China investments in renewable energy was bigger than that of all European countries combined? They accounted for more than 60%of the world's investment in that sector. And it's even bigger in other "green" areas (forest and wildlife protection, etc).
Nobody in China is thrilled by pollution. But over the last decades they had to deal with insane urbanization rates, the constant threat of starvation and other problems that are completely foreign to us, so yes, fighting pollution did not come first, but that doesn't mean they don't care. They just have to juggle many impossible priorities.
lucm, indeed.
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.