"Plastic Continent" roughly the size of Texas in the Pacific

Seeing things like this make me want to die, simply for being part of this wretched species.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


I am sorry but I think you are underestimating your fellow countrymen. Either that or passing the buck. And once again, what does this have to do with your rant about TPTB and my response about how it isn't a problem with TPTB?????

Originally posted by the_raven_mind_body_soul
Seeing things like this make me want to die, simply for being part of this wretched species.

Reading comments like this makes me want to vomit.

First of all, yes it is bad that such a plastic island exists, but this plastic island exists because people in developing nations do not have other way to dispose of the garbage. Do you want these people to live with all this garbage close to them? Around their homes so that rats will infest even more their homes, and neighborhoods and so that they die of diseases?

Second of all, how are people who can barely even get enough money to buy food, get any money to properly dispose of their garbage?

Did you ever think about that, or did you just blurt out your comment without puting any thought into it?

[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


Yes, blame the problem on others. I call BS.

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

I am sorry but I think you are underestimating your fellow countrymen. Either that or passing the buck. And once again, what does this have to do with your rant about TPTB and my response about how it isn't a problem with TPTB?????

I am sorry but you are underestimating developing countries as to their part on the creation of this plastic island.

And once again, do you not understand that third world governments are not being made accountable for what their populations ahve to do to dispose of their garbage? and instead of taking care of real environmental problems they make up scams, such as Global Warming, to suck more money from the people meanwhile still nto taking care of these REAL environmental problems?...

Again, respond to my question, how do you intent for people in third world countries to take care of this plastic island? People who can't even barely get enough money to eat.

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

Yes, blame the problem on others.

I call BS.

How about you PROVE that in the United States, or even Canada, or the UK people throw all their garbage into rivers and lakes, like they do in most developing countries.

I call your BS back.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


You are aware of the fact Lake Erie caught on fire once right?

Lake Erie holds the distinction of having been the most polluted of the Great Lakes in the 1960's, when a flash fire on the surface of the Cuyahoga River raised an uproar from the Cleveland environmental activists. The result was the creation of the EPA, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, immortal photographs and a Randy Newman song called "Burn on, Big River

SOURCE:www.greatlakeswiki.org...

Crap, do some research and deny ignorance please.

Now, as to my proof. here are photos of some of the dirties rivers and lakes in the world.

This is actually a river in indonisia, and lookie here.



The Yangtze River




[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

And just because someone else paid more attention and time to your contrarian "We aren't doing anything wrong because I can distort a simple analogy in a silly attempt to discredit it." BS doesn't mean I am going to.

reply to post by Lasheic

However, there is a difference in the species creating these things. A beaver is incapable of projecting abstract thought into the future to apply knowledge of the environment. It doesn't know the consequences of it's actions. We can, and because we can, we take on the moral obligation to try to recognize and mitigate our interactions with the environment out of empathy of our fellow animals and for our future generations.

I'm not trying to say we shouldn't be managing our waste far more responsibly (littering is a bit pet peeve of mine, and most of the stuff in that plastic continent comes from land-based litter swept out to sea by storm drains). I'm just pointing out the silliness of your statement.

So... yeah. While I by NO means suggest we just dump our trash everywhere and let nature deal with it, what I am suggesting is that we are a natural product of a natural environment.

The question is... do we want that? No. It is radical and accelerated change which WILL lead to ecosystem collapse. By the time it can fully recover, we'll have "new trash" they aren't adapted to... and even then, if a species depends on our trash for it's survival and an ecosystem is adapted for our junk, then we go extinct... we collapse the ecosystem again since we no longer produce that trash/waste. We can do FAR better, IMO.

I don't know who the hell you think you're arguing against, but it isn't me. Once again you lack any kind of context in regards to the situation. So instead of substantiating your own position you play some kind of appeal-to-emotion moral highroad card while mischaracterizing my position in order to knock around a couple strawmen.

I think you should take a moment and step out whatever Garden of Eden/Noble Savage mentality you're laboring under and look at the world objectively. We are the natural products of a natural system, and anything we do is therefore natural. Unprecedented, perhaps, but not unnatural... and if we die, the struggle for life WILL continue on without us. I hate to break it to you princess, but we're not that special.

The sun does not revolve around the Earth, we are not the center of the galaxy, we are not all born blank slates, and we are not the stewards of the Earth. We are just one species out of many in the biosphere, and an invasive species for over 90% of it.. But as said, because we can know the impacts of our actions on our ecosystem, we hold a moral obligation to mitigate that impact. I don't blame the snake that bites me for it's actions, but I can blame the man who cuts me.

Reality is filled with a lot of hard truths that are still hard truths no matter how badly you wish they were lies, such as the fact that humans no different than you or I can unabashedly engage in acts of wanton genocide. But just because something is true, does not make it right. It's the same situation in regard to the environment.

For one plastic doesn't biodegrade.

It doesn't decompose in the way organic material does, but it does break down and leech chemicals, diffusing them out into the environment while destroying the original form of the plastic. There isn't really a reliable set of estimates on how long it takes plastic to degrade - since there are so many different types of plastics which break down at different speeds in different environments. I haven't really seen many estimates over 1,000 years for the most resilient plastics.

That is of course, assuming nothing evolves to digest (making it biodegradable) that plastic material. There's nothing to say it would, and so we shouldn't labor under that impression, but again I point out the development of nylonase in Flavobacterium

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
..............
Crap, do some research and deny ignorance please.

Crap...first of all we are talking about "plastic garbage"...

Second of all, yes the United States also has pollution in some rivers, but it has nothing to do with plastic, and third the U.S. or canada, or the UK ARE NOT the worse polluters...

Yes deny ignorance. You do know what "plastic" is right?

[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

Now, let's look some more rivers, and lakes where the plastic comes from. And people, and even children swim in these rivers and lakes..

I am just posting pictures of rives, and lakes with PLASTIC.







searching4.co.nz...


[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

i wonder how much real estate goes for on that plastic island.

Will i need a visa to move there? Or can I just homestead it?

With the way things are looking here, this plastic island sounds more like the promised land!

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by ElectricUniverse

 

1) We are talking about the Pacific not the Atlantic. Gulf of Mexico or the Carribean.
2) A large part of the trash in the Pacific Gyre is from America. We are not third world.
3) I am sorry to hear crap is getting bad for your family.
4) What in the nine hells does any of that have to do with my response that the people not the politicians or government is the problem to your stance that is as follows:

At the end the only thing that matters is that tptb, governments, and politicians dont care about real environmental problems such as this one, they just want to claim "You are all responsible for Global Warming, so give us money in the form of taxes on a gas that is perfectly normal and needed for life on this planet, and of course all living beings exhale this gas, so we can tax your pets, farm animals, and eventually we will charge the amount of CO2 and methane you release"....

reply to post by Lasheic


Ah, stranger, anymore high horsed massively self rightous ego laced assumptions to fling at me? You have absolutely no clue what I think about pretty much anything so stop pretending you do.

And incidentally, the analogy that you were against when you started this little "I'm smarter and better than you." fest is apt.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows]

Originally posted by and14263
reply to post by Lasheic

 

Sat view here>
www.greenopia.com...

Not sure on source etc

That satellite picture shows the ATLANTIC ocean.

reply to post by Yazman


A algae bloom in the Atlantic according to another site. Though I imagine some will think I am just hurting my case.

reply to post by ANNED

At the end the only thing that matters is that tptb, governments, and politicians dont care about real environmental problems such as this one, they just want to claim "You are all responsible for Global Warming, so give us money in the form of taxes on a gas that is perfectly normal and needed for life on this planet

It's not that they don't care, it's that they have more concerns than just the planet's welfare. We're still kind of flying blind here, and action taken to actually clean up the environment could well have unintended side effects - both economically and environmentally. Michael Crichton made an excellent case example of Yellow Stone National Park and how the efforts to preserve and clean it up have changed it irrevocably.

Complexity Theory and Environmental Management

Though often seen as a shill for big businesses (no actual proof of this exists), I can post plenty more videos and speeches where he endorses strong environmental action as well as the institution of carbon credits as a form of "punishment" in the social game of give and take we all play. And if you want, I can look up the source - but there have been actual psychological observations during "games" set up to roughly mimic the social constructs such government and religion wherein players are encouraged to put money into the pot during a round, and everybody splits the pay out and benefits as new money is added. However, it only lasted about seven rounds before descending into bickering and non-compliance. The rules were then changed to allow players to put some of their money towards "punishing" other players who didn't contribute as much by taking even more of their money. This helped keep order and cooperation.

Everyone modifies the environment in some small way every day, and to ensure we all do our part to help mitigate our footprint, it will be interesting to see how this "carbon tax" works out as a punishment. I would express grave concerns over ensuring that any money collected from the tax actually go towards environmental cleanup and research into clean energy sources... but... it's money we're talking about. Let's be realistic here. Everyone in line is gonna find some way to get their piece.

reply to post by Yazman

That satellite picture shows the ATLANTIC ocean.

Yes, well as I said I couldn't source the picture's origin - so it's not something I would stand behind to make a case. I just threw it out there to hopefully get someone else to verify or debunk it with an actual source.

While you may be very well right that it is from the Atlantic Ocean, I would need a source before accepting that claim.... unless you can point out a specific lat/long coordinate for me to compare the coastlines. As it is now, I can't tell if it's from the Bahamas or the Philippines. Hell, it could be a complete forgery drawn by hand by a VERY skilled MS Paint user for all I know.

Again, if you have a credible source - please provide it, because as I said my source on it isn't one that I trust - and I am curious as to it's origin.

What on earth are we thinking?


Well you see, therein lies the problem. We aren't thinking, my young friend.

Originally posted by Ecidemon
If this is TWICE the size of texas, they're no real reason why it hasn't been caught on camera via google earth or something similar. I mean, that's 537,640 square miles... that's nearly the size of Alaska.

I want pics or it didn't happen.

i agree, for mre than a year ive been following stories about the trash contonent .. in not one of them their are any actual pics, like sattalite or otherwise which shows this... ive even scoured google earth, thats alot of sea, but something the size of texas aint that hard to spot.

im not agruing the story, i think its blown out of proportion, as all we have seen so far are dirty beaches, and not of this "mass"

just saw the sat pic ... its a shame theirs no way to view it closer, as from that distance it could be something else .... dont ask me what though.

[edit on 13-9-2009 by boaby_phet]

reply to post by Deus Ex Machina 42


Actually I think we are thinking. Just pitifully short term thinking. We tend to have a problem thinking about the big picture.