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Plastic Pollution Is Killing Coral Reefs, 4-Year Study Finds (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A new study based on four years of diving on 159 reefs in the Pacific shows that reefs in four countries -- Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar -- are heavily contaminated with plastic. It clings to the coral, especially branching coral. And where it clings, it sickens or kills. "The likelihood of disease increases from 4 percent to 89 percent when corals are in contact with plastic," researchers report in the journal Science. Study leader Drew Harvell at Cornell University says the plastic could be harming coral in at least two ways. First, bacteria and other harmful microorganisms are abundant in the water and on corals; when the coral is abraded, that might invite pathogens into the coral. In addition, Harvell says, plastic can block sunlight from reaching coral. Based on how much plastic the researchers found while diving, they estimate that over 11 billion plastic items could be entangled in coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific region, home to over half the world's coral reefs. And their survey did not include China, one of the biggest sources of plastic pollution.
Global warming and ocean acidification are other reasons.
Just 10 rivers carry 90% of plastic polluting the oceans
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
I'm glad this is out here, because right now everyone is focused on CO2. The reality is that there is are so many other forms of pollution that are destroying our planet that are much more devastating. We have lakes of sludge in China as a result of all our cellphones and laptops.
To stop general pollution, we need to consume less. Our cellphones need to last 10 years, not 2. Everything doesn't need to come in a cardboard box from Amazon. We generate so much waste in our day to day lives and consume sooooo much. To really fight pollution, we need products that last longer, fewer factories with workers that get paid more, more durable goods and a restructuring of how we value things. Companies should be praised for good products when people don't buy more stuff because their previous line has stood up so well (like CPUs and memory).
It's a tall order. It's not easy. It probably won't happen.
And it doesn't matter if you believe climate change is man made or not. If we reduce general pollution, consume lest, demand better public transport (which can be a reality now, unlike self driving cars that might be a reality ten years from now, and won't even touch 10% of the capacity of trains), we can reduce all kinds of pollution, including CO2.
I personally don't feel this will happen until America runs out of countries to bomb and manipulate, fuel prices hit $9/gal and the US collapses. The vote is a joke. Trump is the 2 minute hate (really 24/7 hate) and Americans have lost sight of the real enemies that are present, no matter which puppet is elected.
Not true. I am a scientist (Computer Scientist), and am definitely an untrustworthy bastard (I cheat at poker, and on my taxes)...and possibly part of a global conspiracy of evil (I write software for both world of Microsoft (the beast of Redmond) and for the open source community (who are all peace-loving hand-holding communists)...but I have never received any grant money from any government (Local, State or Federal).
So you see, you are quite wrong in your presumptions.
The only industrialized western country on the list of top 20 plastic polluters is the United States at No. 20.
The U.S. and Europe are not mismanaging their collected waste, so the plastic trash coming from those countries is due to litter, researchers said.
Smh. We have the money and organization to manage disposal properly, yet as individuals we ruin it by manually trashing the place.
Source for those who want it:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/paul-allen-megayacht-destroyed-most-of-protected-coral-reef-officials-say/
Actually, as we were able to find out only recently, that 'disposal' consisted in shipping it to China and declaring it 'recycled'. We learned that, when China refused to take any more of that plastic wastes from the US and GERMany, upon which both nations are now facing the problem of keeping their statistics 'green'. ;-)
I believe the term to use here is "whitewashing". The western world is very good at this, thanks to our – totally independent – media.
This was China's own plan to bolster its own plastics industry.
The fact that they decided to end it suddenly and then blame the shutdown on others trying to "push" their waste onto China is a rather consistent pattern for the Chinese government.
Net walls to capture the plastic and reuse it?
You can only downcycle plastic. Eventually you still end up with a mountain of plastic garbage. A more interesting idea is to replace petroleum based plastic packaging with something biodegradable. The dilemma is that with petroleum based plastics you sequester the carbon in the packaging but you are stuck with mountains of plastic garbage clogging up your landfills and your oceans, bio plastics degrade but that means they release, methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas. However, if we could come up with a packaging material that could actually be composted into soil with no harmful residue and bring it into universal use you might actually have a situation where you could make money off of disposing of the stuff in a sustainable way and you would skip the problem you currently have when recycling petroleum based plastics of washing and sorting the plastic before you can downcycle it. With bio degradable plastic you just pile your used food wrappers and other packaging into a composer, let bacteria do the work and harvest the methane. There are already Bio-plastics whose environmental footprint ranges from 0 percent less to 42 percent less than petroleum based plastics depending on the material. However, even if the environmental footprint of a bio plastic was the same as that of a petroleum based plastic, the fact that the bio plastic bio degrades means that with the bio plastics at least you don't clog up the oceans with garbage that takes it takes natural processes millennia to break down. Also, if there is a way to make a profit off of disposing of bio plastic there is an economic incentive to collect and dispose of it. If you compost the bio plastic and capture the methane you can at least burn the methane, turn it into less harmful greenhouse gasses and do something with the compost. Either way, there is no way around the fact that we need to seriously rethink our laws and regulations regarding product packaging starting with how much of it we even need and what materials we are going to have to banish because petroleum based plastic packaging will have to be eliminated sooner or later and I'd rather see it happen sooner. Why does a package of cookies have to consist of a cardboard box, with a plastic bag inside it that is full of smaller plastic bags each containing one or two cookies? ... and I don't remember Coca Cola tasting any worse when it came in mutli use bottles (who can be made from plastic) or that a Mars bar tasted worse when it came wrapped in paper.
I won't forget the time I learned about small plastic fiber pollution. Most of us are familiar with the dryer lint we have to clean, but just as much or more lint is ejected by our washing machines. The plastic based fabrics we wear and wash are emitting tons of these microfibers into the waterways and ending up in our seafood.
I'm trying to wear more cotton and natural fibers and have put a better trap on my washing machine.
I fear that we are one of the last generations to enjoy the level of natural beauty of our planet currently offers. The future of our planetary ecosysem is pretty bleak because the likelihood of humanity addressing pollution to the extent required is nil.
Greed is the root of all evil.