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

reply to post by x2Strongx


Oh so you think that this problem started with this administration? You are groping at shadows looking for excuses.

reply to post by Ecidemon


It's about twice the size of Texas, but that doesn't mean it's as dense. It's more like a soup. Most of those picture you see are from small tightly packed clumps or chunks that wash up close to shore. It's not like looking down on Australia or something. Plus, most of it under water .

*EDIT*
Pic was already posted while I was looking for a credible source for it. Reiteration below.

Here's a supposed sattelite photo of it that has been circling the net. I didn't bother looking up the original source, and it come from a site called "treehugger" (wow, no bias there!), so I understand if you don't accept it. Or you can go find the original source of the photo.

[edit on 3-9-2009 by Lasheic]

[edit on 3-9-2009 by Lasheic]

reply to post by antar


No I don't think it started with this adminstration. MHO it started a long time ago... it's just being more visible now that's all. Not trying to take a shot at one side of the other... Mankind brought this on themselves.

Originally posted by Lasheic
reply to post by Ecidemon

 

It's about twice the size of Texas, but that doesn't mean it's as dense. It's more like a soup. Most of those picture you see are from small tightly packed clumps or chunks that wash up close to shore. It's not like looking down on Australia or something. Plus, most of it under water .

Here's a supposed sattelite photo of it that has been circling the net. I didn't bother looking up the original source, and it come from a site called "treehugger" (wow, no bias there!), so I understand if you don't accept it. Or you can go find the original source of the photo.

I guess I didn't think about the density... You'll notice the picture you posted appears twice on page 1, another poster is dubious, as I am...

arent u talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

en.wikipedia.org...

You know what....I've seen articles on the great pacific garbage patch before (it's not an island, but a patch, guys)... but like humans often do, I conveniently filed it in my head as "something I can't do anything about".

Well, I can. I can start withmyself. I can set an example. We all can.

In the 60's, people were so horrified at the state of the polluted earth when the river in Ohio caught fire because of all the pollution, they started Earth Day, and they started the "green movement."

Well, there is no reason that we, in the 2000's, cannot do the same.

I have been looking for a cause for myself for years now. I think I just found it. I realize, however, that I have no right to ask others to do what I cannot. I am the prime example of someone who is not living within harmony of the earth. I might "try" to go organic for a few weeks here and there, but then, invariably, I get lazy, and go back to drinking coke, buying chips, buying things that come wrapped in plastic.

What if I created a challenge for people all over the world (including myself) for an entire month to not eat, drink, or buy anything that doesn't come wrapped in plastic? This includes going to restaurants, because most chain restauants get their meals prepackaged in plastic, too! So you think you're going out to a restaurant that cooks things from scratch, but they don't. They basically heat up pre-prepared food dispensed to THEM in plastic.

I think of all the plastic we use and waste in the hospital where I work...we don't or can't recycle plastic medical waste....pill bottlles, etc....it's disgusting.

I'm going to do it..... I'm going to blog about it..... I've found my cause.....something greater than myself that demands attention. A new challenge. It begins today.

Plus, this combines my eating raw challenge that I started a few months ago and never finished. Eating raw/organic and not using plastic goes hand in hand together.

I cannot wait to start my blog!

Originally posted by ScaredCabbage
fail without pics

2nd line

This is my thoughts exactly. I know, I have often asked people to take things at my or other peoples word without visual evidence. However, in those cases I always tried to provide SOMETHING for people to base it on. On this post I get to read a HORRIBLE STORY but cannot begin to believe it fully. Why? Because people with agenda's like to truly exagerate their points to try and make a bigger impact. Twice the mass of Texas? Really? Like, twice the mass of the top 1' layer of soil of Texas or the entire state plus 50' down? You see, to make a statement like that is kind of stupid.

Twice the size of texas. Now that is more understandable.

I'm not arguing against the need for cleaning things up. Heck, when I lived in Hawaii I saw this crap all of the time washing up from cruise lines that dumped their garbage before they came into harbor. It's wrong.

But to make a story like this, one that is actually pretty old, without any visual pictures to give a point of reference is kind of fruitless.

Yes, you'll get those that will be up in arms! "MY GOD! Twice the mass of TEXAS! Holy Hell!" But I like to think that people will make things worse than they are to make their point more important than others.

reply to post by Lasheic


If you do not understand the concept of analogy or how this analogy fits into the scenario I am talking about. I am sorry but I am afraid I cannot help you. But thank you for your opinion.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


So why don't you go ahead and explain just how I'm "not getting" your overused cliche stupidity of an analogy, hmm? Defend it. When Picao84 challenged my rebuttal, he at least attempted to point out where he thought I was mistaken. I defended my statement up with a few paragraphs and observed demonstrable evidence.

I think it's YOU who doesn't even understand your own analogy, because you apparently lack any sense of context to the situation. You're just parroting feel-good one-liners you've heard somewhere else.

The fact is, that when you see video of, or read about turtles choking on plastic bags and baby birds stomachs being filled with plastic and starving... you're witnessing natural selection in process. This is the mechanism by which life diversifies. The apparent "balance" to nature is an illusion, because we're seeing the current result of thousands of years of this kind of environmental adaptation. We are now changing the environment very very rapidly. As a result, we are seeing natural selection removing those species which cannot adapt well to the new environments we are creating. An example of a species adapting very well to human modified environments is crow. Crows are found all over the world, except the arctic, but rarely more than about six miles from human settlements. They have adapted very well to our presence. For an example, see below:



Crows are not, of course, without their casualties from human environmental change. Our distribution of West Nile Virus to the northern hemispheres of the Americas is destructive to crow populations. In fact, they're so sensitive to it that it is how we indicate early signs of outbreak. Still, their amazing success in adaptation has bolstered their populations even while other species they share their local ecosystem with diminish (woodpeckers, for instance).

Now, to reiterate an earlier sentiment, there is essentially no difference, aside from complexity, in regards to what's natural between beaver dams and this plastic "continent" humanity is creating. 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.


Crapping where we eat... ugh, come on man. I take it you don't take many trips down south then eh? One inch man... just about one inch...

brilliant raven! love the vid.
in 2000 i took my wife to fiji on a very small island 60 miles off the main island of viti levu. so basically we were way out in the pacific ocean.

i went for a walk on the far side of the island one day with my shoes off, and lo and behold i almost stepped on a needle. then i looked over and saw all kinds of plastic garbage intermittently scattered about the beach and island.

it was pretty heart breaking.

hopefully science will find a solution to the gyre in the pacific sooner than later.
(like the plastic eating microbes we read about recently)

reply to post by Lasheic


There is vast differences than beaver dams and what we do. I am shocked you would even think otherwise. For one plastic doesn't biodegrade.

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. Sorry I don't feed trolls that much. I understand I might add perfectly what the analogy means and just because I am not wasting my time attempting to explain it to someone who will just distort it to suit his bullcrap justificational philosophy doesn't mean I don't hate to tell you. And I say justificational bullcrap because you provided me with a wonderful Natural Selection rhetoric. Especially since we can and have caused ecological collapse, destroying the very thing that sustains us and if we push it too far and do it on too large of a scale we will go extinct.

Call me a tree hugger, call me a econut, but your BS we can continue to do what we want when anyone who bothers to look can see we shouldn't be doing it MAKES ME SICK. Nature is a cycle and we continue to screw up that cycle it WILL end in our extinction because it is from nature we get our food.

[edit on 3-9-2009 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows]

reply to post by havok


Or really humanity at large if you think about. How often and how many do you see individuals who always pass the buck, always rationalize and justify their every action?

reply to post by rogerstigers


That could work.
Another second pretty line. Aint it beautiful?

We have had this same discussion in several threads already, how is this one any different?

Plastic 'toxic soup' bigger than US

Giant garbage patch floating in Pacific

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

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 ElectricUniverse


TPTB is not the problem here. It's the people. It's easier to blame the governments though.

This gave me the best idea ever.

What if we made custom titanium shells for these crabs with %^$&ING SPIKES!!!! I wonder....

reply to post by Wertdagf


Um............... Say what?????

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

TPTB is not the problem here. It's the people. It's easier to blame the governments though.

You think the people who threw all the garbage into the oceans, which btw come mainly from third world nations, are going to go swimming in the middle of the ocean to pick up the trash they threw away?

This has nothing to do with what the people want to do. Most people in third world countries are unaware of this problem, they just have to try to survive to the next day.

Cuba is an example of what happens in third world countries. I was last time there in 2001, and almost every other block there were mountains of trash, but not only that, a river which i remember as a child in Marianao is choked with garbage, and no water runs through it anymore.

They have a Socialized society, but castro, and his Communist thugs are more interested in getting richer, and sending part of the money and resources, which includes enough food to feed all Cubans well, Cubans make to other third world countries to "expand la revolucion", or to spread the Communist/Socialist ideals.

Last time i was able to get word from my family, which was last week, they have told us that things are much worse now. They are having, more, and more problems trying to find food. If things are bad in the U.S. and other western countries, things are much worse in third world countries.

These people have to use a large amount of time getting water from a well, and finding food which the Socialist rationing programs do not povide well even if Cubans have money. You think these people have the time, or resources to take care of the garbage?...

First of all TPTB, and their environmentalists claim that it is impossible to clean this up, so instead they make up a scam in which we have to pay taxes over a gas needed by all living beings in this planet.





[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

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"....

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

1) We are talking about the Pacific not the Atlantic. Gulf of Mexico or the Carribean.

In case you didn't know the two oceans are interconnected to each other, as well as to the other oceans.

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
2) A large part of the trash in the Pacific Gyre is from America. We are not third world.

It does not come from us in North America. At least not mainly. We don't throw our garbage into our rivers, and oceans, they do that in third world countries, we burn some trash, and most is buried, but not thrown into rivers and oceans.

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
3) I am sorry to hear crap is getting bad for your family.

Thanks.

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
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:

It has everything to do with them. For the most part these plastic island did not occur because of countries like the U.S., or Canada, but rather other countries like Mexico, India, China, central America, south America, and African nations.

Yes there are "some" people in countries like the U.S. who throw garbage into oceans and rivers, but we have programs to take care of the garbage, the problem comes mainly from third world countries.

As to how governments have anything to do with this? because developing countries do not have programs to bury, or burn trash, hence people in third world countries throw their trash in rivers, lakes, oceans, and since in nations like China, India, and Mexico there are much less restrictions on manufacturing companies, many foreign nations build their factories in developing countries due to cheap labor, and less restrictions on how they can dispose of their chemicals, and trash which they do by releasing them without treaating them into rivers, and lakes, which go to the oceans.



[edit on 4-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]