Expedition To Explore an Alaska-Sized Plastic "Island" 325
Peace Corps Online writes "An expedition called Project Kaisei has departed bound for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge 'island' of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean estimated to be the size of Alaska (some estimates place it at ten times that size). The expedition will study the impact of the waste on marine life, and research methods to clean up the vast human-created mess in the Pacific. The BBC quotes Ryan Yerkey, the project's chief of operations: 'Every piece of trash that is left on a beach or ends up in our rivers or estuaries and washes out to the sea is an addition to the problem, so we need people to be the solution.' The garbage patch occupies a large and relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bound by the North Pacific Gyre, a remote area commonly referred to as the horse latitudes. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the region. 'You are talking about quite a bit of marine debris but it's not a solid mass,' says Yerkey. 'Twenty years from now we can't be harvesting the ocean for trash. We need to get it out but we need to also have people make those changes in their lives to stop the problem from growing and hopefully reverse the course.'"
Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel? (Score:2, Interesting)
They should collect this in barges and burn it for fuel.
Re:Sealand #2! (Score:2, Interesting)
Treating this seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Solar powered recycling? (Score:1, Interesting)
What is the economic feasibility of building a floating recycling (hopefully solar & wind powered mostly) to gather up and process a huge stockpile of unnatural plastic reserves?
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:2, Interesting)
If it costs less than the prevailing price of crude, then it's a go - hassles be damned!
Just look at the hassles and cost ($40/barrel) to get oil out of the oil sands in Canada. It says something about our oil supplies when paying $40/barrel to get it out of the ground is considered reasonable.
Re:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to wonder if the "sponge effect" of the patch -- the way it absorbs high concentrations of DDT and other chemical threats to marine life -- is necessarily bad; perhaps if the patch can be removed, scrubbed, and reinserted, the levels of these chemicals in ocean waters could be lowered.
Re:Its mostly invisible to human eye (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you on crack, oh wait no you're just a troll. Do a youtube search for Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there is actual video of this stuff, the amount of area this covers is scary as shit, and even worse, the shots of cut open fish with their stomachs filled with small bits of plastic freaked the crap out of me.
But hey fuck it, it's just hysterics, lets keep dumping garbage into our oceans, there's nothing wrong with that.
What about... (Score:2, Interesting)
What about just having 1 humongous ship built to take care of the problem, with its front end able to open and scoop up the garbage, then compact it inside itself (like a garbage truck except a boat), and about as wide as it is long. It could just be used once in awhile, or as much as is needed, and it would crush all the garbage into small squares which could then be brought back on smaller boats to the coast and then dropped inside one of the hawaiian volcanos... I know it might be a bit costly, but it would be much quicker solution to a big problem getting bigger by the minute.
As for air dropping the garbage into a volcano, a military helicopter couild be used, the ones without a bottom, with room to pick up the square and drop it in...that is the way I see it done the quickest and cheapest solution.
Just the Pacific? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:3, Interesting)
I read somewhere that a none insignificant proportion of "sand" on a beach is actually tiny pieces of plastic and is far, far more difficult to clean up.
Quick Google found some old reports: ...Northumbrian coast, every one of them was found to contain microscopic plastic fibres at densities of up to 10,000 per litre of sand. More have been discovered in plankton samples dating back to the 1960s. Already, there may be no such thing as a clean beach. ...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6570001.ece
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0506_040506_oceanplastic.html
Ta
Re:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:2, Interesting)
Here are some pictures, linked from the wikipedia article.
http://www.algalita.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=68 [algalita.org]
Re:Apparently your another moron (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:4, Interesting)
Ten times the size of Alaska???
okay, let's run the numbers.
Alaska's area is 663,268 sq mi.
10x Alaska's area would be 6,632,680 sq mi.
the USA's TOTAL area is 3,794,066 sq mi.
Russia's TOTAL area is 6,592,800 sq mi.
You're telling me that some people think there is a mass of garbage in the Pacific Ocean SLIGHTLY LARGER than Russia???
I'm not saying it's not as bad as it sounds but I really doubt the numbers are right.
Reality is more terrifying than television (Score:3, Interesting)
This pacific floating plastic formation is mentionned here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17379_6-real-islands-way-more-terrifying-than-one-on-lost.html
For my money though, the snake island is WAY more terrifying.
PBS (Score:3, Interesting)
PBS had a great 1 hour segment on this not too long ago. Their segment covered the rapid decline in albatrosses due to offspring being fed the plastic from the pacific. I haven't been able to find the complete coverage of the segment I saw on my local PBS station, but I have managed to locate part of it here titled: World's Oceans Face Problem of Plastic Pollution [pbs.org]
Re:Sealand #2! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:microplastics particle soup (Score:2, Interesting)
Vegetarian environmentalists will be at the bottom of the food chain. Carnivorous conservatives will be one step above it.
Plastic = Profit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Establish a small fleet of permanent skimmer barges.
The plastic is already broken down into pellets even finer than those delivered to molding factories it's ripe for harvest and sale!
Never took a civics class, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone should be able to punish non-cooperation by reciprocating that non-cooperation and making that non-cooperation known to others. If you employ child laborers, I will not do business with you, and I will tell everyone I know about your actions.
As well, in a democracy or republic, the majority or their representatives get to say what is punishable non-cooperation, like murder, pollution, and fraud. Seriously, have you never taken a civics class or explored the way your society is supposed to work?
Your knee jerk reaction makes you seem like a hardened non-cooperator who wishes that other people did not have the power to hold him to account for his actions: in other words, an overlord wannabe. Thankfully, we do have the ability to hold you to account and protect ourselves from your selfishness.
Re:Never took a civics class, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't be chaotic lawful. That's just neutral! Chaotic good maybe? I'm going to assume that's what you meant.
Yes, of course you should be punished for murdering a person who raped your child. That is not how we do things in a civilized society. However, if you murdered said rapist while he was caught in the act, you would either get off or suffer a very light sentence. If you thought you knew who it was, planned the murder, and carried it out in cold blood after the fact, you would likely face far harsher punishment.
I'm probably older and more experienced in the ways of the world than you are (You like that? You see what I did there?) but give it a few years and you will understand what I'm talking about.
Face it, we live in an interdependent society. We have to get along with our neighbors or they will make our life hell, that's the way of the world. We have laws in order to codify this behavior and control its excesses.
Please, read about the ultimatum game and other recent experiments in game theory, played for many months worth of salary in developing countries. People DO like to cooperate, naturally and without being told to. They value cooperation and reciprocity over self interest, because that is what is best for the survival of our human gene-set. Most people will incur great personal costs in order to punish unfairness and lack of reciprocity. If society has degraded to the point that such punishment is impossible (or the games forbid it), people will act selfishly, but for the vast majority of the non-sociopathic population, this is an uncomfortable fall back position.
Maybe you should rethink your PhD thesis, as your initial assumptions are completely wrong, according to all recent science. Christianity makes so many assumptions that run counter to reality and human nature, it is a wonder that anyone finds any value in it whatsoever, but people find value in the strangest things. As a Buddhist (a philosophy far older than your religion) I do not need to take anything on faith. Everything my philosophy tells me can be verified in my life. Heck, Buddha even said, "Trust nothing anyone tells you, even me, unless it agrees with your ideas and common sense." A much better way to live, IMHO, than in constant fear of punishment from a capricious and unstable daddy figure.
Sure, different groups have different ideas about laws and customs, but we can keep looking at larger and larger groups, finding the things that nearly everyone can agree on. I posit that there is no ultimate right and wrong, but there is what is right or wrong for all living things, all life on planet Earth, all humans, all American, and so forth. We can discover what those right and wrong actions are.
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:3, Interesting)
Deer don't have a 'point of view.' They do not conceptualize. They can not think ahead and imagine what it would be like to be killed and eaten.
Don't be so sure. I saw this programme [telegraph.co.uk] and am damn sure that the horse in question knew the kind of thing that was planned for her. That's why she escaped - jumped over a fence she had not jumped over all the rest of her life.
I'm not suggesting that animals philosophise in French in terrace cafes - but I find it hard to believe that they have don't have some kind of "world view" that is based around life experiences with a few "abstractions" to fill in the gaps.
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:3, Interesting)
You may be right about that, especially in regards to social animals. I think they may have some sort of rudimentary conceptualization. It seems like it would be genetically advantageous to be able to conceptualize your place in your pack, herd, or what have you. But the horse may just have been picking up on subtle cues from her owners, as the 'mathematical' horses have been proven to do.
Re:Never took a civics class, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, no, I do not assume my ideals are correct, or that there is one way to handle anything. I learn as I go and handle each case individually, drawing from experience with similar situations, of course.
Buddhism did not derive from Judaism, Buddha knew nothing of the Jews when he was born around 400BC.
I've heard the theories of Christ's possible inspiration from eastern sources, also from Egyptian sources, as an explanation for where he went and what he did from, what was it? About 14 years through the beginning of his ministry in his early thirties?
If you look at history, you can see there are only about 8 reasons why civilizations fail. Resource depletion and conquest being the major ones. Failure to cooperate springs from other root causes, and while it is a contributing factor, it is not necessary nor sufficient to ensure the downfall of a culture.
Many athiestic societies have existed for far longer than theistic ones. Buddhism is atheistic. Well, agnostic, in that Buddha did not consider the existence of a soul, an afterlife, or a creator God to be important or interesting questions
The idea that 'the strong survive' is a very simplistic view of evolution. What is strong today may be a hindrance tomorrow. Big muscles give way to lithe bodies, and then back to muscles and size again. Big brains atrophy when they do not help the species anymore, only to pop up again when conditions change. Speed gives way to stealth, or poison, or size, or some other random thing that happens to be advantageous at the time.
Adaptability, not strength or fitness matters most in the long run. But by adapting, species change their environment, which changes the fitness criteria for themselves and others. We fall apart as civilizations because we hold on to the supposed 'strengths' that helped us in the past and do not adapt to changing circumstances.
I believe that humans have only two basic societies. The egalitarian, non hierarchical, cooperative, peaceful society of the feast, and the hierarchical, violent, competetive society of famine. It is adaptive to have both innate tendencies, which are brought out as conditions change. Unfortunately, when we developed agriculture, we set ourselves up for failure on a colossal level never seen before. We had given up moving with the climate and seasons, gained a surplus and intricate interdependent society, but then climate change in the Sahara (which was fertile up to around 4-5 thousand years BC) threw societies into chaos, and they became violent. A generation of post traumatic stress parents raised a generation of brain damaged children (no myelin sheaths due to malnutrition) and the culture of famine became locked in, culturally speaking. The cultures of feast were either destroyed or assimilated, for if they tried to defend themselves, they became like their attackers.
Anyway, that's my theory as to the origins and perpetuation of ubiquitous human violence.
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:3, Interesting)
Who said anything about a powerful intelligence? I merely speculated that we have the potential. Obviously, we aren't realizing it now. I don't know where you are getting 'smug' from, honestly, nor am I seeing any actual argument for why 'my world' is impossible. Just a lot of hot air, is that what you meant to convey?
Re:Never took a civics class, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Selfishness is not a virtue and Ayn Rand was neither a philosopher nor a writer, she was a sexually frustrated, power worshiping hack. Look at her biography, she idolized those who exercised power over others, and she loved being dominated by powerful men. She was a sick puppy, not that BDSM is wrong or bad, but she couldn't own up to her own fetishes, so they played out in very twisted ways.
Selfishness is a self creating idea, when people believe others are primarily selfish, they will act selfishly to prevent being taken advantage of. Then, others will see them acting selfishly, and do the same, so that original person will tend to see more selfishness around them, which reinforces their idea that all people are selfish, and they need to be selfish too. This results in a net loss for all of us, because cooperation is more efficient than selfishness, and the ideals of reciprocity and cooperation are more powerful motivations for most people.
Many people enjoy working for societal good. Their only gain is that good feeling. People who do not see the selfless, cooperative side of human nature are usually simply refusing to see it because that would invalidate their own selfishness. What you think of 'people' in general reflects more on your own self image than it does on the vast majority of humanity. People project the bad qualities they see in themselves, but can't admit to, onto others.
Not trying to be incredibly insulting or anything, just saying...
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:3, Interesting)
As I mentioned, I am not advocating for the removal of sociopaths, and I actually gave reasons why this would be a bad idea.
I still don't understand why cleaning up our own crap is a bad idea. Do you shit in your kitchen? Do you let other people shit in your kitchen? If you found shit in your kitchen, would you clean it up or let it fester there, because, hey, it's there and that's the status quo? If you argue that it was not there before, and thus is not the status quo, how is an Alaska sized heap of human created trash the status quo? It wasn't there before, either, right? You seem to have a definition of 'status quo' that is awfully convenient for you, in that it gets you out of doing anything you don't want to do without having to come up with an actual reason not to do it.