February 07, 2008

• I've been teetering on badmoodish all day. this just pushed me off the fence. I feel ya kamus, this sort of thing makes me wish for the destruction of humanity...soon :(
• and I can't see this on satellite pictures.. because ...?
• From the second link: Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.
• So where are the photographs from ships? I find myself still skeptical. I've no doubt there are rubbish slews but the size reported here seems excessive.
• I think y'all should fund my research trip out there to see if the story is true. Also, if it is true, and if it's how I envision it based on this link, the increased area may not mean increased volume of rubbish, rather that it's drifting outward, dispersing.
• Again, from the article: pictures of rubbish from ships along with an explanation of why seemingly low visible concentrations are actually deceptive. If you are picturing a contiguous island of plastic, that's not what's going on. What's going on is that there is a huge amount of plastic dispersed over an equally huge area. We're talking 14.5 million metric tons of crap soon to be entering our digestive systems via the food chain. Also: Are There Really 'Continents' of Floating Garbage? and pictures galore. Not to be snarky here, but you could have learned all this by actually clicking on the links and reading.
• I think y'all should fund my research trip out there to see if the story is true. Well, if you hadn't blown the five bucks on a stupid lollipop you wouldn't be panhandling us now.
• Five bucks won't get me out of my house, yo. It reminds me (mostly only tangentially) of the floating island in Life of Pi, and it seems appropriate that a massive swath of human garbage should remind me of the evil carnivorous island in the book. Who would be in charge of a cleanup project? The UN? And how to collect it without collecting half the marine life living among all the crap? Gah, we've screwed it up again.
• And this photo, of an albatross carcass full of trash, is just awful.
• And this photo, of an albatross carcass full of trash, is just awful. I would love to see what this planet would like without homo sapiens. Sometimes I wish we'd all just die off. And quickly. (Sorry, it's just so overwhelming sometimes, and seems so hard to get billions of people to change, and...)
• I find that many -- if not most -- of the world's problems could be addressed or solved simply by reducing the world's population. This would be the least popular political position to take, but it would do more for the environmental cause than just about any other ideas combined. The US should begin wildly encouraging and providing tax incentives to have two children or less. They should make it free to get vasectomies and hysterectomies or their equivelants should be free and encouraged. Shortages of water, oil, and food are addressed by reducing population. Carbon emissions and all types of pollution and waste are addressed by reducing population. Is China the only country actually trying to do something about its population? This is an issue that will not become an issue until it is way too late. It needs to be an issue now.
• Where are the panoramic shots? Come on, anyone can find a dead bird and a rubber johnny floating in the sea.
• I find myself echoing Warren Ellis/Spider Jerusalem: "One day I'm going to drop a bomb on this city. A contraceptive bomb." But the sad fact is, even if the world's population were reduced, it would still be full of ordinary people who use and throw out plastic without giving a thought to where it goes, and nations that fail to legislate and enforce proper waste disposal, and waste disposal companies that dump illegally because it's cheaper and no one cares. And annoying fucks who drop litter into rivers. But hey, that's why the sniper rifle was invented.
• We need proper deposit values on plastic containers, like 15% of the product cost or something. And we need to stop producing billons of cheap flimsy bottles and switch to hard-wearing plastic that can be sterilized and reused. Plant cellulose seems to be a decent replacement for light packaging. Efforts to cut plastic bag use seem to be working (at least in my experience). Why not ramp it up to the next level? For all the crud that's already out there? I dunno, can we do some terra-forming?
• Shouldn't there be one in the Atlantic, too? Or is this strictly a West Coast/Pacific Rim thing? And I think what Hank's getting at is that the headlines referring to this as a 'continent of floating garbage' make it sound like a near-solid mass. So what is it really? One bag per square meter? One per hectare? Someone needs to give a sense of scale.
• OK...I think I have an answer. One of the links said 3 million tons in an area twice the size of Texas. A quick calculation gives me about 2 grams per square meter or 17 kg per hectare. That's a significant amount, imo.
• See also.
• World's largest man-made object! Used the most architects, too. Betcha half that trash has the word "recyclable" printed or embossed on it with those cute lil' arrows that go around in a circle.
• > Is China the only country actually trying to do something about its population? India has been trying to reduce population growth for decades, with poor results.
• They should come up with some PSA about condoms.
• heh
• We decry the horror of the situation but yet still flick the switches of our own destruction. The blame dosen't lie in what we do but who we are. Ah, fuck it. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
• We are already beginning to feel the effects of this in Hawai'i. “What you’re looking at is a future in which Hawai‘i’s beaches are covered with plastic, and plastic sand will become the norm.” =(
• The thing is that if all the humans were to die tomorrow, all this plastic will still exist. Some people estimate that all the plastic that exists on our planet will still be around when the sun explodes and dies.
• I read something about this last December, which is why I went out and bought some reusable grocery bags. I like the ones from Safeway best. They're larger than many other totes on the market, sturdier, made of recycled materials, cost only a dollar (at least at my store), and are black (which is way more cool than dark green). Best of all, each tote holds more than a plastic bag, so I find myself wrangling two totes rather than 12 plastic bags.* I like to keep a running total of the number of "regular" plastic bags I have used, and the number that I would have used if I hadn't bought the reusable totes. For the last six weeks, those numbers are: 2 used; 90 saved. Not bad! * I know, I know - "SafewayReusableGroceryTote Blue."
• A lot of our local eateries are converting to the bioware (corn-based) plastic takeout dishes. I'm very happy with them.
• I've used canvas bags for shopping for years, and when it's necessary to put produce in plastic bags (so the goods can be weighed), I bring my reused ones. I wash and reuse storage bags. It's easy - perhaps very easy for me as I no longer have pets, or children - and it's nice on my mind not to deal with all that wasteful plastic crap.
• Alphabet Soup, a short documentary about the situation.
• This is horrible. We're so good at f@#king up this planet. No wonder there are so many weird illnesses and cancers. Heh, mech, I'd say "SafewayReusableGroceryTote GREEN." Nthing reusable grocery bags, although I still use way more than I should.
• My handbag is, like, a grocery TARDIS.
• roryk - I don't know what kind of results India was expecting, but their population growth has diminished significantly and consistently in the past 40 years. I've linked this presentation by Hans Rosling before here, but I'll do so again because it is just a fantastic lecture. Seriously - it's short and riveting and it just blows away the common idea that the third world is still filled with women having 10 and 12 kids.
• Thanks yentruoc, I'll look at the presentation. India's efforts at population growth rate control date back to the 50s or 60s, but they consistently failed to meet the targets they set. Recently, targets have become more realistic, but there remains a strong possibility that India's population in 2050 will exceed that of China (but with about a third of the land area). I guess "poor results" was a bad choice of term, as India has reduced its total fertility rate by about third (6 to 4) during 1960-90, which is impressive. It's probably not enough to avoid a population crisis, however.
• ABOUT GARBAGE ISLAND