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'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' Far Bigger Than Imagined, Aerial Survey Shows (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined. A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the "great Pacific garbage patch," located between Hawaii and California. The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated. The heart of the garbage patch is thought to be around 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles), with the periphery spanning a further 3.5m sq km (1,351,000 sq miles). The dimensions of this morass of waste are continually morphing, caught in one of the ocean's huge rotating currents. The north Pacific gyre has accumulated a soup of plastic waste, including large items and smaller broken-down micro plastics that can be eaten by fish and enter the food chain. Following a further aerial survey through the heart of the patch on Sunday, the Ocean Cleanup aims to tackle the problem through a gigantic V-shaped boom, which would use sea currents to funnel floating rubbish into a cone. A prototype of the vulcanized rubber barrier will be tested next year, with a full-sized 100km (62-mile) barrier deployed by 2020 if trials go well. "Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it," said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup. "That was the plan for this survey. But when we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Ever half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots -- it was impossible to record everything. It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean."
Wouldn't a huge sieve designed to strain out the plastic catch everything else as well? Like, you know, fish and seabirds and other critters?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"there is no island of trash in the pacific"
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html
Why doesn't the original article have any pictures of this giant patch?
Must be a slow news day....
As others have said.....they have many names for this elusive garbage collection in the pacific such as garbage patch and Plastic vortex, and yet, no one actually has a picture of said trash. Just infographics.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
The Chinese are going to melt the plastic scraps into one big island.
It will be equipped with a runway, and submarine base.
Even my own brother-in-law claimed to have seen an "Australia-sized floating plastic mess" about half way between HI and SF, but strangely he didn't provide a single picture despite the fact he had an iPhone 5 I loaned him money to buy and my nice digital SLR I let him borrow for the trip.
All that plastic rubbish is not collected into a huge floating island, nor does it look at all impressive on photos (which is why there are none in the articles). It isn't clumped together - it's more like flecks of plastic floating in a soup.
That does not lessen the problem. There's still a vast amount of debris out there, just spread out a lot, over multiple areas. And any plastics that do break down form "microplastics" that have now found their way into more than a quarter of fish sold in Indonesia and China.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Every half second you see something.
So, a plane cruising covers 500+ ft/s. So "one item per half second" is one item every 250 feet. The descriptions make it sound like a floating island of plastic you could walk across, but the reality from their description is a thinly spread cluster of debris over millions of square km.
Learn to love Alaska
There is no evidence at all this patch exists (not even a single pic). This is nothing more than a scheme to swindle money out environmentally inclined people.
What's that in elephants (or Belgiums, if you prefer metric)?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
because its not the dramatic visual you would expect GMA did a segment on it that shows what it really is
http://www.schooltube.com/vide...
so pictures of it generally end up being a few little garbage clusters in frame, but it is vast, and takes days to travel through on a ship, you definitely notice the garbage where as in the rest of the ocean floating garbage is a rare sight.
Who manufactured this stuff? That's who we need to go after.
You might recall that a type of bacteria has evolved that eats plastic bottles. Since plastics are a rich source of energy, they are like cellulose. But for that to work, there needs to be a concentration of smaller plastic particles, the Japanese researchers who found the bacteria, found it in a dump.
The whole issue with plastics was the lack of decay, yet even this lot admit that's not the reality:
“Most of the debris was large stuff. It’s a ticking time bomb because the big stuff will crumble down to micro plastics over the next few decades if we don’t act.”
Really, a plastic bottle every 250ft is not a big deal. If it was a coconut every 250 ft would be a big deal too and tropical islands would be wastelands. We don't worry about starch and fibres because they can be eaten, but then if plastics can be eaten what's the issue?
So you claim to be smart enough to know the term microbead, but are also too stupid to Google it....
This. Read about this problem for over a decade, but never seen a picture. Seems like BS.
There is so much plastic in our fish that it's already causing major health issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOAc71p-PLg
Therefore, I don't give a shit because it doesn't affect me.
I don't watch YouTube links to get the 1.5 facts you're trying to point me to. Certainly not when they are overloaded with links, all from one "facts" website, and by a guy who is a "professional speaker on public health issues, particularly the benefits of a plant-based diet and the harms of eating animal products."
He's at the extreme end of the bias scale. Using big-words and showing screenshots of scientific papers doesn't make whatever you spout true.
Do you mean health issues in our fish or in us?
Because plastic is pretty inert, even more inert when it's been in the sunlight/ocean for a few years, and the quantities transferred to the human food chain via eating fish are minimal. In fact, there's a LOT more things we do that are much more dangerous.
And there is no evidence to suggest there's any kind of measurable human effect at all, really. If there was, we'd ALL be keeling over. So I think your "already causing major health issues" might just be a bit overblown. Sure, if we look deep, we might find out that it's not good.
But are we suggesting it's somehow worse than the crap that people choose to shove down their throats knowing full well that's it's no good for them?
Pretty much the only guys going to follow your expert's advice are other guys that think that plant-based diets are the only thing we can ever possibly eat (which is stupid beyond the extreme for a natural omnivore).
= 36400 FreeBSD Sudden and escape them by win out; either the dying' croSwd -
Really? Then why is the average human life expectancy still going up and is now approaching 100?
If what you are alluding is true then our life expectancy should be lower than in Medieval times before wide spread use of plastics and everyone should die by the ripe old age of 25.
Bear in mind that 'plastics' have been in use since antiquity. The ancient Egyptians already cooked up very strong plastics, glue and paint.
Calling a lot of floating bits of garbage an island is indeed a lie, but the lie is coming from the person framing it this way for a "goalpost shift" and not those actually talking about water dense with garbage.
I can see why the poster with the goalpost shift was far too ashamed of their action to even post under a username.
This story comes up every few years, and gets roundly debunked each time. http://thefederalist.com/2016/...
...than their webpage.
Most of useful... no... ALL of the useful info on it is textual. .jpeg headers and images of similar file size scaled down to 1/8th of their pixel dimensions - like a 5000 by 3333 pixel image scaled down to a 660 by 440 display size. .gif of a diagram of a floating ball.
Yet it features 2 megabyte
And then there's a 20 (TWENTY) megabyte
For a moment there it felt like I was using dial-up again.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A picture of a plastic island. Otherwise, it's just the Pacific.
Pics or GTFO
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Make multiple passes over it to drop water-activated glue until it's a giant raft, then get to work building condos.
I'll take 10% of annual revenue - email me to deposit funds :D
Requiem for the American Dream
So they install net/catcher/whatever things to scoop up all the rubbish, then what? Pick it all up and bring it to a landfill? Burn it? Contain it in a smaller section of ocean? It's all so well and good saying let's clean up the ocean but what do you do with the stuff after that?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I don't say this patch exists or otherwise, but why on earth in the 21st century there are no aerial photos of it? It's really easy to find aerial photos of different parts of the world (i.e. the shores of California, where miles and miles can be seen in the photo), but I have not found a single image of this patch. Most of them a close ups taken from a few meters away, making really difficult to guess whether it's the patch or just some random part of the world full of rubbish or some random pile of bags floating around.
It's not a technicality, I think, just a simple aerial photo.
Your numbers are trumped-up.
There largest file is 854KB at 1920x1280, scaled down to about 70% on my 1920x1080 screen. It's probably scaled up on a high-resolution screen.
The entire frontpage combined is slightly below 4MB.
For comparison, Apple's frontpage is 6MB.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yann Martel's book, Life of Pi, and the movie based on it feature a puzzling algae island .
(http://www.shmoop.com/life-of-pi/algae-island-symbol.html)
Maybe the island is made of plastic.
As someone that works in science, it took me forever to figure out that they meant 1 Mega or million sq km. I went from meter (as in a sq km-by-1m height) and only understood it after I saw a useful number in square miles. Next time just right million please.
I never said "frontpage".
Which at 4 megabytes would be INSANELY HUGE.
Even at 3.37 megabytes it's still insane.
BTW, Apple is a "mere" 1.14 megabytes, which is tiny in comparison.
But do feel free to enjoy the wonders of this scaled down to 660 by 440 pixels while this keeps loading and loading and loading...
If they're gonna have a 3-30 MB page where all actual info is text... why not just put up a pdf? Preferably a high resolution one, so it's even bigger.
Without images their "frontpage" is actually ~400 kilobytes.
41k when you also dump all the unnecessary scripts cause there's no reason for that page to be dynamic.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Damn Burns and His Damn Omni Net!
I was wondering where that went last August!
The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, Yes -it's called America. Populated by merkins who are full of shit and strive to amass 10 times their own body wieght in useless shit every day,
So what do the climate modelers say about how an extra continent sized pile of trash affects the climate?
It's new!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
this is a Chinese hoax
just kidding but damn we still have people who think that way
Is this not the kind of thing that would be seen from the ISS? Or from a normal plane flying at the appropriate altitude? Where are the pictures?
The Duchy of Grand Fenwick would also have been a cromulent choice.
Unless Elon's called dibs on that, too
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This problem will be solved in November when the garbage patch squelches ashore to vote for Trump. It's part of the 'basket of degradables'.
"Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it," said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup. "That was the plan for this survey. But when we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Ever half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots -- it was impossible to record everything.
Bullshit!!! This article claims a 1,000,000 square kilometer patch "seen" in an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined. But they could get a picture of it? They couldn't take video of this huge, terrible, mass that they were able to see with human eyes?
Why is it that this mass, "viewed in this aerial survey" between Hawaii and California isn't reported or photographed by satellites, countless planes flying over that area every day, Coast Guard, Navy, recreational cruisers...?
Why is it that this is only ever seen and reported by a small group of "environmental" groups who clearly have a financial benefit from its existence?
Pics or GTFO! Enough of this bullshit!
The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) stated several years ago that this is a myth.
NOAA's position has not changed and there is no scientifically sound estimates exist for the size or mass of these garbage patches
All the sea creatures poop and pee in the ocean. It only looks pristine from a distance. Up close there's all kinds of shit in the ocean.
When people discover a 'cause' that they can champion, they hurl at it all the resources and skills that they can. Apparently someone who is a web developer is passionate about the space garbage problem.
Pics or GTFO
Will scans of the cancerous tumors growing inside you from eating a food supply laced with plastic suffice?
Just curious, since the real damage isn't 10,000 feet in the air.
No they wont'! Nice try at hyperbolic bullshit, though. If you're going to try that kind of argument, I'll respond that your tumors are from exposure to your WiFi and have nothing to do with Pacific garbage or any other pollutants.
What we MUST HAVE is scientific evidence/proof, and none exist. These bullshit artists - who stand to benefit financially from their false claims - claim to have seen it with their own eyes, but were unable to photograph it or provide a video of it. How odd that the eye could see it but the camera could not possibly...
Meanwhile, I can provide actual citations to long established and reputable scientific organizations that have stated that the garbage patch is a myth and that there is no scientific estimate or measure of the extent of any pollution that may be or is present.
Wikipedia
From the second fucking paragraph:
"Because of its large area, it is of very low density (4 particles per cubic meter), and therefore not visible from satellite photography, nor even necessarily to casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper water column."
Or are you going to take the conservative approach and pretend it doesn't exist?
too ashamed of their action to even post under a username
As opposed to one who is so ashamed they have to hide behind a username?
Everyone that isn't using their real name on this site is hiding. If you think otherwise, you're only kidding yourself.
...dissing web developers or being serious.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If people like Zuckerberg want to throw money at a problem to show what great humanitarians they are, how about they throw money at cleaning up that huge island of trash in the middle of the ocean, instead of throwing money at something that everyone has been trying to solve for at least a hundred years like cancer, that millions of people are already working on anyway? Or is getting rid of the monument to humans being pigs not enough of a photo-op?
They're going to set up their own floating kingdom
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/593369/summary
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The durability of the booms, emptying of the booms, safety to wildlife, the ineffectiveness of the booms since the patch is so huge... all of these issues have pointed to the fact this can't work. Basically this kid is pitching Solar Freakin' Roadways, but somehow got lots of money and a international coverage anyway. I think its the culture of celebrity getting behind this, along with the: screw the problem, lets treat the symptom strategy deployed when the problem is simply too big to address.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Volume is a more accurate measure of how much plastic garbage is in the ocean than sq. ft. spread. The Pacific Ocean is about 64 million sq miles with an average depth of 14,000 feet. The Pacific Ocean is about 25 quintillion (25 with 18 zeros) cubic feet of water. The plastic spread is 1.35 million sq miles. Assuming a very very generous average depth of 1 ft of plastic, the plastic volume is 37.7 million cubic feet. The observed plastic garbage dump would be 1.5 millionths of the Pacific Ocean volume. If the plastic volume averaged a more realistic 1 inch depth, it would be 1.3 billionths of the Pacific Ocean volume.
Reaching hyperbolic proportions !!
Where are all of these pictures of the "great Pacific garbage patch"? All I've ever seen is close-ups of piles of garbage on a boat, or whatnot. I've never seen any wide-angle shots of the patch itself.
I can't wait for millions of lost/broken lightning port dongles and millions of wireless headphones with dead batteries to be added to the mix.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This garbage patch is supposedly half way between Hawaii and California. So HTF did a C130 get there? It doesn't have the range.
Militarize that sucker.
I think we should melt it all into one larger floating island. Then the in the ensuring years people that lose their homes due to rising sea levels can just move to the floating island.
I see no photo of this so-called "great Pacific garbage patch" so I'm inclined to think it's been hyped-up just a tad. I'm sure there is garbage floating around out there but its description is probably not an accurate reflection if none of these articles is game enough to post a decent photo of it, and only post illustrations.
To get an article published and make it go viral, you have to exaggerate and conjure an image of something visually dramatic.
OK, how about this? Chris says that he didn't touch anything... he only took pictures. I believe him.
http://chrisjordan.com/gallery...
"It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean."
Bizarre...? Hmmm. Not the word I'd use... more like DISGUSTING!
How a DVD Case Killed a Whale
http://news.nationalgeographic...
And the recent survey of the largest coral bleaching took out almost 1/4 of the Great Barrier Reef.
There's too much illness to report.. too many deaths from debris, bycatch, and overfishing, not to mention ~ 200 dead zones around the world.
There's NO distortion, rather there's no reporting of this in mainstream media. Obviously.
Kill the ocean and we ALL die. Forests barely make 20 percent of breathable oxygen.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make but I'm pretty sure it is fallacious.
Irony: an environmental organization wasting electricity via this wasted bandwidth.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
If you want irony, just read up their FAQ.
They originally wanted to process plastic into oil.
Because taking bunch of stable carbon which takes millions of years to decompose, making it into fuel and burning it into CO2 so it helps boost the greenhouse effect - that's green as fuck.
Why remove the plastic and transport it to land instead of processing it at sea?
After exploring plastic-to-oil conversion at sea, our team has determined that processing plastic on land is more practical.
Large-scale pyrolysis, the technique used to convert plastic to oil, requires heavy machinery.
To do this on the open sea, we would need a stable platform: a far steeper investment than transporting plastic back to land.
Until it is shipped to land, all collected plastic will be stored in an internal buffer which will have to be emptied approximately every six weeks, depending on the size of the transporting vessel.
For more information, please consult Chapter 4 of our feasibility report.
What will you do with the plastic once it's extracted from the oceans?
During the feasibility study we showed that ocean plastic is suitable for conversion into oil.
Because making oil from plastic consumes less energy than extracting fossil crude oil, this processing solution has a net positive carbon impact.
However, recycling into new plastic products appears to be a more attractive option.
Preliminary tests show that 100% recycled plastic can be turned into new, durable products.
The Ocean Cleanup receives tremendous interest from companies that want to use ocean plastic in their products, making large-scale recycling viable.
More information can be found in Chapter 9 of our feasibility report.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens