We can see that you stand by your views, and you are entitled to them. What is galling however is that you are actually defending micro plastics in the environment. It makes me wonder what else you would defend.
I understand your method of trying to drill down to to "metabolically inert", which is actually a red herring argument. As per the article, they also mention this:
"Plastic also attracts other chemicals in the water that latch onto it, including toxic industrial compounds like polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs."
And that is really just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the detrimental effects of plastics in the environment. So for you to use a phrase like environmentalist false outrage really is beyond the pale, and indicative of either someone who is knowingly trying to mislead and deflect or knowingly ignorant.
This is your brain once modern environmentalist movement gets to it. You become a religious fanatic, demanding death to those who so much as dare question your dogmatic beliefs.
Yet you yourself display dogmatic beliefs in other posts in this thread.
I agree that dogmatism is a non-starter, especially when it comes to correcting the course towards environmental responsibility.
There are a lot of examples on/. where posts will say something like:
So I'm afraid you have to pick one. You can't have it both ways.
So when I read your post, with ultimatum style rhetoric like that, in the context of micro plastics in the environment, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that you sir are a micro plastics apologist. And no, I'm not being facetious.
I can see from your posts that you see it differently, but in my opinion, and in the opinion of scientists of all fields, plastics in the environment, whether micro or not, are not a good thing. Actually, plastics in the environment are detrimental to life in general. There is no debate about this.
So actually, the only thing that is irrelevant are your weak attempts to "normalize" plastics in the environment.
Your superiority complex is showing. Keep believing how 65 million people are just beneath you, poorly educated and gullible. He's going to get even more votes next time because of the arrogance of the Left.
Your authoritarian complex is showing. Keep believing how a megalomaniac propped up by Americas long time enemy will stay in power. His authoritarian base are belong to Putin.
a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F)
Didn't realize that literally all of the upper midwest has a more "brutal" climate than mountains.
Fair enough, and I was expecting a response like that.
Though when I was a kid, it routinely was in the -10 to -20 range.
Another thing you need to take into account is that the upper midwest gets the cold air from Canada coming down, whereas in the intermountain west, that isn't as much of a factor like somewhere such as Minnesota.
I'm in the intermountain west, and I grew up here.
I have friends/relatives in Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and California that I regularly communicate with.
There is total consensus about how the climate is going.
And then there is the science.
Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change.
I would. But they are all preoccupied with taking my guns.
There are more guns in the US now, and it is easier to get guns than it ever was.
That is a ridiculous argument.
There are gun shows in my town all the time.
Everyone in town is armed...
Your guns aren't going to do much good when climate change has created food and water scarcity affecting billions of people.
No, it really IS that simple. Local environmental destruction is causing forest fires and flooding. But you can't write a paper about that, and no one is going to address it, so it is ignored. What do you think happens to water if you have no buffer lands to keep it contained?
Actually it isn't that simple.
In a perfect world, answers to big problems are simple.
We don't live in that world.
Do yourself a favor and research and read about how the heating and drying of the climate in the western US are impacting forests. Read about the damage beetles have done to western forests, and why those beetle infestations are happening.
Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.
I understand that black and white/0-1 answers are easier to deal with. However I would encourage you to try to have a more nuanced and well researched view of the situation.
I agree that part of the issue is the lack of management, another important factor is that fires haven't been allowed to burn in many of these areas because there are now lots of people, and lots of homes in those forests.
Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests, and when fires do start, they are worse, and the forests are primed for burning.
I just tried googling it and didn't find it. It seems like I read about this probably around 2006-2008.
I remember that the process ended up with three categories:
1. metals
2. compost like materials from the paper and food waste
3. various refined carbon fuels, which is where the "refinery" part of the facility happens. All the plastics are essentially refined/recycled back to another form of usable fuels of some kind.
I remember the proof of concept plant they built to test this was in Missouri.
Speak for yourself. Me and my family are doing everything we can to lower our energy and plastic consumption.
You could get off your ass and do something, too, if you really wanted to. It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself.
I agree, though with the recent revelations about recycling, it seems to be a losing battle, and that we need a different method of dealing with waste products. I remember years ago hearing about a guy who invented a "refinery" of sorts to recycle ALL refuse in garbage dumps. So instead of all this extra work we do to recycle, it all goes into the dump, then gets ground up and "recycled" on an industrial scale at one location.
No extra recycle truck pickups, no extra recycle facilities with people sorting by hand, no massive container ships taking trash to China.
Why aren't we doing this now?
Any solution will be technological; it will not be ham fisted attempts to force stone age living on the hoi polloi.
(Notice that the elites like Al Gore never do the stone age living thing anyway. That's for you plebes.)
Perhaps you should do some research on the technologies that have emerged in the last few years.
New developments in solar, geo-thermal and wind energy.
New insulation techniques and technologies.
New transportation technologies.
As some leaders(and many people) have been saying for the last 20 years, this is a huge business opportunity.
However the entrenched carbon extraction lobby has fought the change to the bloody end, to the detriment of all.
Its worth remembering that most of Russias territory is cold and unproductive. A degree or two of warming and it becomes a potential breadbasket whilst the USA turns into a desert.
That would be great if it was true. However, the soil conditions won't allow for intensive agriculture.
There are multiple reasons for the fires, and climate change is undeniably one of them.
These forested areas are now developed with larger numbers of residences, there has been concerted effort to keep fires, which normally would have happened anyway, from happening.
The persistent drought conditions in the west and the heating up of the atmosphere have led to many forested areas being dried out, and the health of the forests lessened. The bark beetle infestation has taken its toll, due to warmer winters.
Even though I work with scientists, and one of my co-workers is an actual climate scientist(we discuss weather and climate a lot) I don't need scientists or science or empirical evidence. I've seen first hand how quickly the climate has changed.
A small town in the mountain west I grew up in was known for having very cold winters. Starting about 10-15 years ago, when I would visit in the winter I noticed it wasn't as cold. Anytime I mentioned this to my friends and relatives that lived there, they would say, "yea, isn't it great!". A few times I was there in January it rained, and not a little. Raining in January in a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F). This town used to have avg summer temps of around 85 F, now the last few years the avg summer temps in the 90s.
I've seen all kinds of new plants showing up, new weeds, just in the past few years. I've been landscaping and gardening for a long time and I take note of the weeds I have to deal with. I've noticed how bird migrations are changing, and different birds are showing up in my town.
If you live in the western US you've noticed that in the last 10-15 years the climate has markedly heated up and dried up. What used to be arid or semi-arid is now turning into full on desert.
The piece I heard on NPR put a few more details into the story.
One was that because it has been an unusually hot summer in Europe, many more people were going swimming in pools, rivers, beaches, etc; These are people that perhaps wouldn't normally swim. Many of them had little or no experience swimming. Now in the "old days" when parents or guardians would pay attentions to others in these activities, there wasn't as much of a risk, because people were watching. With the advent of smart phones, there is less attention being paid to swimmers.
Also, less people now can swim or have had swimming lessons. Less people have had experience in the water. That right there is a story in itself regardless of the smartphone attention disorder story. However they are connected. Why do less people have experience in the water or with swimming in general?
Probably the same set of reasons people look at their phones all day.
Slashdot Mirror
We can see that you stand by your views, and you are entitled to them. What is galling however is that you are actually defending micro plastics in the environment. It makes me wonder what else you would defend.
I understand your method of trying to drill down to to "metabolically inert", which is actually a red herring argument. As per the article, they also mention this:
"Plastic also attracts other chemicals in the water that latch onto it, including toxic industrial compounds like polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs."
And that is really just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the detrimental effects of plastics in the environment. So for you to use a phrase like environmentalist false outrage really is beyond the pale, and indicative of either someone who is knowingly trying to mislead and deflect or knowingly ignorant.
I would guess it is the former.
This is your brain once modern environmentalist movement gets to it. You become a religious fanatic, demanding death to those who so much as dare question your dogmatic beliefs.
Yet you yourself display dogmatic beliefs in other posts in this thread.
I agree that dogmatism is a non-starter, especially when it comes to correcting the course towards environmental responsibility.
So I'm afraid you have to pick one. You can't have it both ways.
So when I read your post, with ultimatum style rhetoric like that, in the context of micro plastics in the environment, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that you sir are a micro plastics apologist. And no, I'm not being facetious.
I can see from your posts that you see it differently, but in my opinion, and in the opinion of scientists of all fields, plastics in the environment, whether micro or not, are not a good thing. Actually, plastics in the environment are detrimental to life in general. There is no debate about this.
So actually, the only thing that is irrelevant are your weak attempts to "normalize" plastics in the environment.
Right now science is the best chance we've got to ameliorate the circumstances we are faced with.
under a "new world order" to quote a-hole George Bush (41).
Get outta here, you voted for Bush!
I live in the intermountain west.
All we have is summer.
If you're hankerin for bright, sunny skies, no clouds and lots of heat, go west.
Your superiority complex is showing. Keep believing how 65 million people are just beneath you, poorly educated and gullible. He's going to get even more votes next time because of the arrogance of the Left.
Your authoritarian complex is showing. Keep believing how a megalomaniac propped up by Americas long time enemy will stay in power. His authoritarian base are belong to Putin.
I think what you really need from a negotiating stand point is a really, really hard Brexit.
The harder the better.
a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F)
Didn't realize that literally all of the upper midwest has a more "brutal" climate than mountains.
Fair enough, and I was expecting a response like that.
Though when I was a kid, it routinely was in the -10 to -20 range.
Another thing you need to take into account is that the upper midwest gets the cold air from Canada coming down, whereas in the intermountain west, that isn't as much of a factor like somewhere such as Minnesota.
My reply would be that you live in a fantasy.
I'm in the intermountain west, and I grew up here.
I have friends/relatives in Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and California that I regularly communicate with.
There is total consensus about how the climate is going.
And then there is the science.
Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change.
I would. But they are all preoccupied with taking my guns.
There are more guns in the US now, and it is easier to get guns than it ever was.
That is a ridiculous argument.
There are gun shows in my town all the time.
Everyone in town is armed...
Your guns aren't going to do much good when climate change has created food and water scarcity affecting billions of people.
No, it really IS that simple. Local environmental destruction is causing forest fires and flooding. But you can't write a paper about that, and no one is going to address it, so it is ignored. What do you think happens to water if you have no buffer lands to keep it contained?
Actually it isn't that simple.
In a perfect world, answers to big problems are simple.
We don't live in that world.
Do yourself a favor and research and read about how the heating and drying of the climate in the western US are impacting forests. Read about the damage beetles have done to western forests, and why those beetle infestations are happening.
Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.
I understand that black and white/0-1 answers are easier to deal with. However I would encourage you to try to have a more nuanced and well researched view of the situation.
I agree that part of the issue is the lack of management, another important factor is that fires haven't been allowed to burn in many of these areas because there are now lots of people, and lots of homes in those forests.
Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests, and when fires do start, they are worse, and the forests are primed for burning.
I just tried googling it and didn't find it. It seems like I read about this probably around 2006-2008.
I remember that the process ended up with three categories:
1. metals 2. compost like materials from the paper and food waste 3. various refined carbon fuels, which is where the "refinery" part of the facility happens. All the plastics are essentially refined/recycled back to another form of usable fuels of some kind.
I remember the proof of concept plant they built to test this was in Missouri.
I keep my house thermostat at 80 degrees, when AC is necessary.
Ceiling fans work wonders.
Speak for yourself. Me and my family are doing everything we can to lower our energy and plastic consumption. You could get off your ass and do something, too, if you really wanted to. It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself.
I agree, though with the recent revelations about recycling, it seems to be a losing battle, and that we need a different method of dealing with waste products. I remember years ago hearing about a guy who invented a "refinery" of sorts to recycle ALL refuse in garbage dumps. So instead of all this extra work we do to recycle, it all goes into the dump, then gets ground up and "recycled" on an industrial scale at one location.
No extra recycle truck pickups, no extra recycle facilities with people sorting by hand, no massive container ships taking trash to China.
Why aren't we doing this now?
Any solution will be technological; it will not be ham fisted attempts to force stone age living on the hoi polloi.
(Notice that the elites like Al Gore never do the stone age living thing anyway. That's for you plebes.)
Perhaps you should do some research on the technologies that have emerged in the last few years.
New developments in solar, geo-thermal and wind energy.
New insulation techniques and technologies.
New transportation technologies.
As some leaders(and many people) have been saying for the last 20 years, this is a huge business opportunity.
However the entrenched carbon extraction lobby has fought the change to the bloody end, to the detriment of all.
Its worth remembering that most of Russias territory is cold and unproductive. A degree or two of warming and it becomes a potential breadbasket whilst the USA turns into a desert.
That would be great if it was true. However, the soil conditions won't allow for intensive agriculture.
There are multiple reasons for the fires, and climate change is undeniably one of them.
These forested areas are now developed with larger numbers of residences, there has been concerted effort to keep fires, which normally would have happened anyway, from happening.
The persistent drought conditions in the west and the heating up of the atmosphere have led to many forested areas being dried out, and the health of the forests lessened. The bark beetle infestation has taken its toll, due to warmer winters.
Even though I work with scientists, and one of my co-workers is an actual climate scientist(we discuss weather and climate a lot) I don't need scientists or science or empirical evidence. I've seen first hand how quickly the climate has changed.
A small town in the mountain west I grew up in was known for having very cold winters. Starting about 10-15 years ago, when I would visit in the winter I noticed it wasn't as cold. Anytime I mentioned this to my friends and relatives that lived there, they would say, "yea, isn't it great!". A few times I was there in January it rained, and not a little. Raining in January in a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F). This town used to have avg summer temps of around 85 F, now the last few years the avg summer temps in the 90s.
I've seen all kinds of new plants showing up, new weeds, just in the past few years. I've been landscaping and gardening for a long time and I take note of the weeds I have to deal with. I've noticed how bird migrations are changing, and different birds are showing up in my town.
If you live in the western US you've noticed that in the last 10-15 years the climate has markedly heated up and dried up. What used to be arid or semi-arid is now turning into full on desert.
So Trump is actually DOING SOMETHING about Russia?
You mean besides getting a swirlie from daddy Putin?
Oh, I'm sorry, it was a wedgie.
Daddy Putin saves swirlies for successful hacked re-election party!
So Trump is actually DOING SOMETHING about Russia?
You mean besides getting a swirlie from daddy Putin?
The piece I heard on NPR put a few more details into the story.
One was that because it has been an unusually hot summer in Europe, many more people were going swimming in pools, rivers, beaches, etc; These are people that perhaps wouldn't normally swim. Many of them had little or no experience swimming. Now in the "old days" when parents or guardians would pay attentions to others in these activities, there wasn't as much of a risk, because people were watching. With the advent of smart phones, there is less attention being paid to swimmers.
Also, less people now can swim or have had swimming lessons. Less people have had experience in the water. That right there is a story in itself regardless of the smartphone attention disorder story. However they are connected. Why do less people have experience in the water or with swimming in general?
Probably the same set of reasons people look at their phones all day.
Let me see if I can walk you though this ... what if something that you think of as "middle" and "true" gets banned as supposedly being "fake"?
Then you're spending too much time on FB.
We're confusing manipulative lies with opinions incompatible with the worldview of a segment of the population, and it will destroy us.
What does Alex Jones have to do with this?