Sometimes, one needs to be shocked into action. We all know that plastic is a major environmental issue - plastic bags and bottles, etc.
When I first heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I realized that nature has a way of making sure you cannot ignore the consequences of your actions. In an amazing and visceral way, the ocean is aggregating our plastic waste and making it impossible for us to ignore the environmental impact of our plastic use on the oceans.
Currently, over 700,000 square kms are affected.
Charles Moore, who helped publicize the garbage ocean, wrote, "As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments."
How terribly sad.
How terribly sad.
10 comments:
How terribly sad that you mislead. Facts according to Scripps:
"Little is known about the exact size and scope of the vast debris field discovered some years ago by fishermen and others in the North Pacific that is widely referred to as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."
Large items readily visible from the deck of a boat are few and far between. 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."
Not to mention that the Oceans in all their glory are nothing more than giant toilets from everything to human effluent to marine effluent. This is a fact and something that has been going on for a long time. Now all of a sudden the attacks on plastics are creating the gnashing of teeth and great green wail? Please. This is such a farce.
Dear Methadras, what is the farce? Is it that pollution has accumulated in a convergence zone? It can't be disputed. Is it that now that we are becoming aware of the problem, attention has been given? What is so wrong with being made aware of a potential hazard and then telling others about it. I'll bet you believe that deforestation is good for the planet.
Maybe Methadras doesn't know the meaning of the word farce.
The comments were hardly misleading. It's easy to get an approximate size of it. Simply drive a ship in a straight line through it at various angles and locations and you can get a good approximation of the affected area. "Over 700,000" km seems like a reasonable estimate. also when you try to refute a a statement, provide links and resources to back it up. Sources are everything if you want to be taken seriously.
Something that big should be visible from space.
I haven't found a single picture of it.
I don't believe this patch exists.
Exactly!!!!
I have yet to see anything even approaching a picture of this fictitious phenomenon.
I am willing to bet this thing does not exist.
are you high, saying you don't think it exists?? are you, perhaps, 12 years old- or republican?? scientists all over the world are talking about this problem, and if you doubt it exists, why not do some research on your own? denial is a much bigger problem than what you imagine to be a "media conspiracy". and check yourselves: when you throw away some bit of plastic at your house, exactly where do you *think* it goes? do you ever wonder?
and as for effluent- marine animals *live* in the ocean, and as such their waste products are part of the natural ecosystem, consumed by other organisms as nutrients. ours, on the other hand, is contaminated with chemicals and pharmaceuticals which pollute the environment, altering and destroying the natural cycles of things. i'm surprised you haven't picked this up along the way, or have you not hit 8th-grade science yet?
pick up the movie "idiocracy"- you're it.
"I have yet to see anything even approaching a picture of this fictitious phenomenon.
I am willing to bet this thing does not exist."
Google is your friend. Or were you expecting to be personally mailed photos, since no one is to be trusted aside from fellow conspiracy theorists.
A bit late, but someone should point out the obvious. The bit about particulates comes from obfuscation about a paper that Moore et alia wrote - the paper sampled neustonic plastic particulates, but several sources (including wikipedia) have falsely claimed that the particulates sampled were the entire plastic, rather than about 0.1% of it - the larger plastic is clearly visible, but wasn't the focus of Moore et alia's study. Spread the word - I don't want to fight this battle alone on wikipedia (great pacific garbage patch).
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