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:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
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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:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 clea
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6570001.ece
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Absolutely. "[M]odern Western society" is the problem. Fortunately we have those other societies that will take care of this for us.
What? No? So then why single out "modern Western society?"
Oh, because "modern Western society" is the only polluter. Yeah, that's it.
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that the Chinese and Indians have adoped Euro-American lifestyle - about 1.5 billion of them are chucking waste into rivers (which eventually lead into the ocean). So this is a now a worldwide problem.
We could fix this problem quite easily if the world just stopped using plastics and other non-degradable packaging. At my local store some of the packing peanuts are made from corn starch. When they get wet they literally dissolve into a puddle of goo, which within a few days gets eaten by bacteria or fungus, and then disappears.
We need more of this biodegradable packaging, and it has to be degradable within a year, not like the plastic bottles my milk comes in that claims to be biodegradable, but takes 1000 years to do it.
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Because most of that pollution has come from western society, dumbass. Just how many Chinese and Indians do you think are chucking milk jugs and water bottles into the ocean?
BWAHAHAHA! You've never been to either China or India, have you?
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
Nature is not exclusively 'red in tooth and claw.' Cooperation is at least as much a part of ecology as competition. Cooperators are simply more likely to survive than pure competitors. Every creature on Earth evolved from the same thing, and uses the same building blocks. Like cells in your body, nothing can live on its own. Everywhere you look you will see altruism and cooperation in nature, as well as violent competition. However, all this is beside the point.
Your argument boils down to a classic naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean that is how it should be, or how it must be. We have brains. We aren't simple animals. We can predict the consequences of our actions and adjust our actions accordingly. Another point to consider is that we are not desperate. We are not being chased by a lion. We have enough resources to give everyone on the planet a decent standard of living. When you look at history, resource depletion is one of the primary factors in culture collapse. Some cultures have learned from this and developed sustainable ways of living. Ultimately, those are the cultures with the best long term chance of survival.
Finally, we can punish non-cooperation, making it less profitable than cooperation. Pollution is only potentially profitable to you if your neighbors won't come over and put a stop to your activities. We can change the risk/reward ratio for any activity individuals or groups engage in, whether they like it or not.
In closing, let me just add that I'm glad I don't live in your mental world. It sounds like a lonely and frightening place.
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Granted.
There's nobody watching from above. If a rogue coment sterilized the
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
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. After the deer is dead, there is no deer to have a point of view, as stated in your first point, so: they can not think about it ahead of time, and afterwords they are dead. Your point is moo, it is like a cow's opinion. It's a moo point. :)
If I am in a survival situation, I will do whatever it takes to get myself and my loved ones to safety. After I and my loved ones are safe, I will help others escape the situation.
Let me rephrase my next point: the planet has the carrying capacity to give everyone a decent standard of living. If the majority of people act selfishly, we will fail, if we (the majority, that is) act cooperatively, we can create a future where no one has to fear the desperate actions of starving individuals.
Yes, we the majority need to make sure the selfish minority do not take what is not theirs, and shit where they are not supposed to. You need to read up on modern experiments in game theory. Humans are not primarily self interested. Most people will voluntarily harm themselves to punish selfishness in others. When a society has degraded to the point it is primarily selfish, people will act selfishly out of necessity, but when cooperation is rewarded and selfishness punished, everyone is happier, has more freedom, and a greater chance of survival and satisfaction.
This science has been peer reviewed and stands up to scrutiny. Only sociopaths act selfishly all the time, and we (the non sociopaths) do not need to take their desires into account. It is perfectly fine to kill someone who would kill you and everyone you love without any qualms. Heck, we'd be doing society a favor if we wiped out all the sociopathic non-cooperators rather than letting them take advantage of our good nature.
Except, sociopathy comes from a spectrum of genetic influences, and if we killed off all the sociopaths, we'd also be removing many of the genes responsible for leadership and survival instincts, probably not a good idea, so we need a system that takes the existence of a small number of sociopaths into account.
Your world view is a self fulfilling prophecy. It seems realistic to you because it creates the conditions it purports to protect you from. It also points to a serious case of confirmation bias. You easily ignore data that does not support your worldview, rather than changing your worldview to incorporate the new data into a cohesive framework, but don't feel bad, the majority of people sem to live that way.
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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.
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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.
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Selfishness presupposes the existence of a self, and the primacy of said self in controlling the organism. This is a flawed assumption. Your genes do not care what you like or dislike. They care about the survival of the human genome. You value love and cooperation not because you have arrived at the conclusion they are valuable through any logical means, but because it enhances the chance of the human race surviving.
The idea of death springs entirely from the misapprehension of a separate existence. What i
Re:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't mate with a starfish, only with other humans. If all other humans died out, your genes would perish. Look at eusocial creatures like ants and bees. Yes, I know we aren't ants or bees, but I'm illustrating a genetic point: many ants and bees never breed. Their genes only give them the power to support the breeders, and those breeders also create the next generation of non-breeders. If genes were totally selfish to the individual, and not to the species, how could species that include non-breeders ever evolve?
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You know there's a line of human cancer cells that can live outside the human body? They've been around for nearly fifty years, taken from one woman, and they are so successful that labs need to take precautions that their experiments are not infested with these cells, skewing the results. (searches diligently on wiki for the half-remembered article: aha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa [wikipedia.org])
Freaky stuff. There are single celled humans out there, living in the wild.
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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
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Take for example, any tribe or country. When faced with merciless invaders, there have to be a few members who are more concerned with protecting the majority, even by sacrificing their own life. A few have to sacrifice their lives to ensure the survival of the majority. Such behavior is desirable and encouraged, and that is why such people are cal
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 k
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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 harshe
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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 begin
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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 pre
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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:Wouldn't this make a good source of fossil fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's where you're fundamentally wrong. We, a bigbrain species, actually can rise above our nature. It's what almost every belief teaches, and what growing up to be an adult is all about. Our societies are built for this specific reason: control your urges so that we can all get along. We exterminated smallpox a few decades ago. We've been to the moon. We have cameras in orbit around Saturns moons. We do all sorts of thing that do not benefit us in the shortterm, but somehow have come to be through hard and long labour (people have fought and died for beliefs and facts put forward by periods like the Renaissance). We know for a fact with our current level of knowledge this trash is a problem. With our level of population density we are in fact gardeners of this planet. The choice is once agian: sit there and grab what you can, or put our minds together and do something about it. It's always attractive to be cynical, because you get to sit on the bench, and maybe be even the first one who grabs. We can tackle this problem, we just need to put our minds to it. That may take years, or hundreds of years. The Western level of personal freedom took thousands of years as well. It starts with believing "we can" and telling everyone you know this is a problem and we should do something about it.
Its mostly invisible to human eye (Score:3, Informative)
the images one conjures up reading the title is this big area filled with recognizable objects, however reading the wiki article states that the particles that comprise the bulk of the suspected pollution are too small and disperse to be imaged by satellite or aircraft.
So don't let the title fool you. While there may be occasional large pollutants its not like something your bound to spot on the horizon and just sail to it. Think about it, if it were we would have seen pictures all over the news by now.
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I was also wondering about the "island" suggestion. I listened to a recent Science Friday podcast where it was explained that the average density is a thumbnail-sized piece of plastic per cubic meter. That's pretty much invisible to the eye, yet still a high density.
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I recommend we nuke it from orbit
Re:Its mostly invisible to human eye (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Its mostly invisible to human eye (Score:4, Informative)
Treating this seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Treating this seriously (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch [wikipedia.org]
Density of neustonic plastics
In a 2001 study, researchers (including Moore) found that in certain areas of the patch, concentrations of plastic reached one million particles per square mile.[12] The study found concentrations of plastics at 3.34 pieces with a mean mass of 5.1 milligrams per square meter. In many areas of the affected region, the overall concentration of plastics was greater than the concentration of zooplankton by a factor of seven.
he floating plastic particles resemble zooplankton, which can be inadvertently consumed by jellyfish. Many of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals,[13] including sea turtles, and the Black-footed Albatross.
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I didn't see where the gp suggested continuing to pollute, merely that it might be possible to clean it up.
Apparently, taking efforts to clean up our mess offends you. I think most of the rest of us agree that cleaning up after ourselves is a good thing.
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When you burn that kind of plastic, you'll get lots of dioxins produced.
I don't know about you, but I think I've already mutated enough, thank you.
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.
Hrmm (Score:4, Funny)
Scientists estimate that at least 30% of the bulk is made up of Collectors edition Daikatana boxes.
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
Scientists estimate that at least 30% of the bulk is made up of Collectors edition Daikatana boxes.
The remaining 70% is made of coffee-stained AOL disks.
Sealand #2! (Score:5, Funny)
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I am suspecting that this is one of the informal goals of this expedition of enthusiasts...
That and all the hawt sex on the cruise out there.
(Would that I had mod points to waste them frivolously on your referencing Bey....)
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Gentlemen, grab the closest hairdryer. The time has come to melt the plastic, and make our own nation!
Yeah, but not Sealand again. It should be something along the lines of The Raft (Neal Stephenson) or Stateless (Greg Egan).
Re: closet hairdryer (Score:2)
Hairdryer? I'm bald, you insensitive clod!
I do have a heat gun in the toolbox, though....
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And lo, a million geeks rushed out to form their own nation
travelling by whatever craft they could find that would float
by sailboat and barge, by raft and by dinghy
And, when they arrived at the great floating sea of garbage
The call went out:
"Use your hairdryers, use your heatguns!
"Push the mass to the center, melt it together!
"Soon, we shal have an island paradise of our own!"
And the geeks let up a mighty cheer
Until one, far in the back, raised the ominous question,
"So, where's the outlet?"
I smell (Score:2)
A redundant episode for the upcoming Futurama season.
Serves a purpose (Score:2, Funny)
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microplastics particle soup (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.livescience.com/environment/071102-micro-plastics.html
"...The seas eventually break down all this plastic garbage into microscopic particles. ...
adding just a few millionths of a gram of contaminated microplastics to sediments triggered an 80 percent rise in phenanthrene accumulation in marine worms dwelling in that muck.
Such worms lie at the base of the food chain,..."
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The way we are going, we will be at the bottom once we kill everything else below us.
Groups are already studying this... (Score:5, Informative)
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 wo
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Tools you suggest in order of appearance:
> 1 humongous ship (It could just be used once in awhile)
> smaller boats (to the coast)
> the hawaiian volcanos (I know it might be a bit costly)
> a military helicopter (the ones without a bottom)
Wow....seriously? You are a closeted comedy writer BTW.
There is no landfill on the planet that could hold all of this debris. Just how big of a boat were you po
Up to 10 times the size of Alaska?? (Score:4, Insightful)
10 times the size of Alaska would make this thing about 1/10th the size of the Pacific. That is pretty huge.. and a little unbelievable.
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Just the Pacific? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just the Pacific? (Score:5, Funny)
OK, where is the Great Atlantic Garbage patch?
New Jersey
Good name (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Wikipedia: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex..."
Pacific Trash Vortex would be a good name for a band.
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recycle (Score:2)
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Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, but you vastly underestimate the scale of the problem. You'll need a hundred skimmer ships, and probably a bunch factory platforms on the edges and spread throughout the patch to process all this crap. We really fucked up on this crap.
The first order of business (Score:5, Funny)
Go through and find all the messages in bottles. We've got to see if these poor guys are still alive.
Harvest that stuff! (Score:2)
How hard could it be to make a giant barge that skims off the crud and harvests it?
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.
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!
Re:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:4, Informative)
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If you read the wikipedia article linked on the first line of the summary, then you would have seen in the very first paragraph that "Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography."
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>> "Who says it has to be a satellite photo."
mcnazar:
"intrigued to see aerial/satellite images of this"
you:
"If this "island" is that big, it should be easy to get satellite images."
-dZ.
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Holiday spot for German drifters... (Score:2)
it would actually just look like a picture of the sea with a couple of plastic bottles floating in it.
I wonder whether the label with the pawn icon [wordpress.com] is still affixed to them...
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:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:5, Informative)
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Here are some pictures, linked from the wikipedia article.
http://www.algalita.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=68 [algalita.org]
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And what about the just as toxic stuff that it releases? After all it is plastic. And usually produced with the use of toxic substances.
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:The size of Alaska or bigger and no images? (Score:4, Informative)
From wikipedia: Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.
How about from a boat? (Score:2, Troll)
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What, exactly, are you expecting to see a picture of?
Seriously. If someone presented you with a picture of the ocean at the location, what would you expect to see?
=Smidge=
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What if the trash was almost entirely below the surface, or in pieces too small to see in a panoramic photo of the ocean?
=Smidge=
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Or, as in this case, not enough trash to actually make an island the size of Alaska, but trash spread over an area the size of Alaska.
Face it, it would take more trash than we've ever made to make an island the size of Alaska. And this is just the refuse that got dumped in North Pacific-draining watersheds, which is a tiny amount of our total trash....
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Then it would not be an *island*, would it?
Also, if you look at it from above, there must be some difference in how some part of the electromagnetic spectrum is reflected and refracted. So you use a satellite with that spectrum, and scan the area. Then use a bit of Photoshop, and tadaaa!
And yes, it really is that "easy"! It's just a question of the right spectrum.
Re:How about from a boat? (Score:5, Informative)
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I have to agree with GP. The reflectivity should probably be different. So some kind of satellite picture should be available. Maybe just not to us great unwashed.
Maybe it's a regional thing but I've often heard here in the midwest USA of canoe referring to "some kind of vessel". I liked the hyperbolic touch actually.
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Maybe only a really wise man can see it, but it's invisible to fools
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Apparently you *haven't* looked through all the links in TFA...
Otherwise, you would have read in the Wikipedia article that "Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography." because "Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images."
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Well, you literally said "....it should be easy to get satellite images.
Anyone care to provide them?"
So no reason to be surprised several people quote the Wikipedia article explaning no such images exist, including a reason as to why they don't exist.
Yes, I am the moron. (Score:2)
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No need to apologize :)
(My second comment crossed your reply)
Reading it back I realize my comment was also a little more blunt than intended.
Re:Apparently your another moron (Score:4, Interesting)
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Reading comprehension is complex, I know, but if you persevere you can do it!
Or were you just trying to make some snarky anti-environment statement?
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Troll much?
"Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.[5] "
Re:The size of Alaska or bigger and no images? (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, some nice fellows have gone out there on boat and looked around. A quick search on youtube will get you a lot of videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnUjTHB1lvM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNqzAHGXvs&feature=related
for example.
Some dude went out from Hawaii on a raft made out of recycled plastic bottles, and kept a blog, there's some nice photos of what they found. http://junkraft.blogspot.com
They pulled some water samples out of the water, and frankly, they look like utter shit.
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What if they dropped a small asteroid on it?
Or set loose some sea going WallâE's?