The article I'm posting is truly important, but it makes me sad to post it...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

http://xposethereal.com/alternative-news/something-the-entire-world-should-see-most-of-us-are-simply-unaware-2.html

North East of Hawaii, the ocean currents form a giant whirl pool of debris from around the Pacific, the scientific name is called the North Pacific Gyre. It’s one of the largest ecosystems on Earth, comprising of millions of square kilometres.

Today it’s better known as “The Great Garbage Patch,” an area the size of Queensland, Australia where there is approximately one million tonnes of plastic spread throughout the ocean. Drag a net in any area of this part of the ocean and you will pick up toxic, discarded plastic.


All of it at the link. It's tough reading, but we really need to know what's going on.

[Warpy]

1. Intelligent billionaires might outfit a trawler

with a fine net to scoop up the garbage and a thermal depolymerization setup on board to process it into light sweet crude oil.

The first person with money and brains who realizes it's a resource to be mined will get a hell of a lot richer fairly quickly.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I wish someone would do that, my dear Warpy.

It could make a difference.

[Warpy]

9. I have a lot of great ideas like that

but neither the cash nor the physical strength to carry them out.

I hope someone does. Maybe this idea will propagate across the web like some of my other ideas have and maybe somebody with youth and cash on his side will do it.

It's a win-win situation, get rid of the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre while giving the world light crude oil that isn't nearly as nasty to refine or use.

[mopinko]

54. that's what i keep thinking every time i read about this.

it should be a piece of cake.

at least in the meantime it is illegal for ships to just dump their garbage at sea anymore. not that some don't but…..

[zeemike]

8. The real sad part is that it can't be fixed.

And even if you tried by dragging a net the cost of the fuel to do so would be astanomical...we are taking about the size of Australia.

[Warpy]

10. I still say it should be mined like any other resource.

Thermal depolymerization was made for plastic trash, although it'll work on nearly anything.

[zeemike]

16. Yes but before it gets into the water.

Once out to sea it becomes imposable to mine unless you can invent a trawler that uses no energy. and can pull a very large net...like at least a mile wide...and even then it would take at least a thousand passes to cover it...and at a speed of 10 knots for a thousand miles.

[Warpy]

17. Too late, it's already there

and that's where it needs to be mined.

[truedelphi]

43. Your inventive attitude reminds me of sanitary engineers in

Palo Alto who realized that the semi conductor firms were simply letting all the metals from the many small shops and even large businesses go into the drains that went into the sewer, destroying the water table in the process. So they figured out how to interest the businesses so they would change their behavior.

For some time before they took action, they had been cleaning up the large volumes of water the semiconductor firms seemed intent in destroying. Among the metals these firms allowed to go washing down the drain was gold. The sanitation engineers actually had so much gold to display that once the company executives could visually see that they were tossing away money, their behavior changed rapidly.

[El_Johns]

29. Oh c'mon. Trawlers can drag the ocean for fish so I imagine it's not much difficult to trawl for

garbage.

[AtheistCrusader]

35. One million tonnes.

The largest steel battleship ever made by man, the Yamato, weighed in at about 70,000 tonnes.

This is 14x that mass, scattered across an area the size of Australia, in bits as small as, in the case of a grocery bag, a square foot, and less than 1/10th of an ounce. And the proceeds are worthless, whereas trolling for fish is not. We yank about 140 million tons of fish out of the sea every year, but the fish are a lot more profitable, and a lot more dense. You don't have to troll an area the size of Australia to scoop up that much fish.


To even approach this problem, I would suggest automated sailboats, using both the wind, and solar power together, to perform the job. Small, get it swept up, over decades.

[zeemike]

40. Actually I heard someone say that very thing

robotic sweepers that traveled on the wind...but even still it would be a big deal.
And before it could be done organisms would have broken it down into fine particles and who knows what would happen next.
The only solution is stop using plastic shit and throwing it away.

[El_Johns]

42. It's mostly not on the surface:

Boats trawl for krill; they can trawl for plastic.

The krill fishery is the commercial fishery of krill, small shrimp-like marine animals that live in the oceans world-wide. The present estimate for the biomass of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is 379 million tonnes.[1] The total global harvest of krill from all fisheries amounts to 150–200,000 tonnes annually, mainly Antarctic krill and North Pacific krill (E. pacifica).

Krill are small animals, considered a type of zooplankton, and hence need to be fished with very fine-meshed plankton nets. Such nets pose several problems: they tend to clog fast, and they have a very high drag, producing a bow wave that deflects the krill to the sides. Trawling must hence be done at low speeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krill_fishery

BTW:

Trawling is a method of fishing that involves pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats. The net that is used for trawling is called a trawl.

Trawling can be contrasted with trolling, where baited fishing lines instead of trawls are drawn through the water. Trolling is used both for recreational and commercial fishing whereas trawling is used mainly for commercial fishing. Trawling is also commonly used as a scientific sampling, or survey, method [1].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawl


Trolling = using bait, hence internet "trolling".

[truebluegreen]

61. Area is estimated at twice the size of Texas.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

[El_Johns]

65. Kind of like how corporations use more than one boat to denude vast tracts of ocean.

[kristopher]

15. It's a rich resource that nature will exploit

I think it's probable that there are ecosystems developing right now that will exploit the abundant hydrocarbons.

I agree it's disgusting that we've created the problem and we need to alter our behavior, but I wouldn't give up hope and say it can't be fixed.

Welcome To The Plastisphere: The New World Of Microbes Living On Ocean Plastic
Scientists have discovered that all the garbage in our ocean has created a new community of microbes that live on our waste. What does this mean for our ocean’s ecosystem?
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682478/welcome-to-the-plastisphere-the-new-world-of-microbes-living-on-ocean-plastic

[AtheistCrusader]

36. We could be in deep shit, depending on what evolves to consume plastic.

Things are a bit in our favor here, in that such organisms are going to be aquatic based, but one hopes it stays that way.

[lonestarnot]

64. Yes it can be.

[aggiesal]

27. A 19 year old has already design one . . .

19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World's Oceans





http://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-cleanup-array-that-could-remove-7250000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans/

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. On the other hand...

http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/

[aggiesal]

33. They're both theories . . .

One says it can be cleaned up, the other says it's a waste of time and effort.

So let's not try anything?

I say try, if it works we're better for it.
If it doesn't we've found one way that doesn't work and
we'll be in the same situation.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

53. "Oceanba"

Instead of roomba.

[AdHocSolver]

37. There is a group that has the money and a strong motive to "mine" ocean plastic.

China has the resources to do this, and their incentive is to rid themselves of dependency on imported oil.

In response to the post down thread that claims it would be uneconomical to do this, I would point out that big oil companies are already subsidized at huge cost by the rest of us through tax breaks and paying for waging wars for control of oil resources (Iraq).

The economic costs of the huge ecological damage to the environment from oil spills (BP, Exxon Valdez) and "fracking" tar sands is not being paid for by the oil companies, but by the rest of us.

The oil companies are not going to pursue oil recovery from plastic, since that would increase the oil supply and prevent the corporate insiders from driving the price up to profit from manipulating the oil supply.

However, China has the means and the motive to develop a process of oil recovery from plastic waste.

[Warpy]

41. It's too bad US billionaires are used to having their money make more money

This country is going backwards at a frightening pace.

I'm glad if China will do it.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

52. Awesome idea!

It need not be done all at once every little bit would be a victory. The fuel it would take could be mined from the garbage and used for the project. Bigger concern then would be exhaust from the, let's say "ships" used. Although, with a well thought out plan, I'm sure we could over come the problem.

There are those that look at a problem and say you just can't do it, others will take that challenge and say "why not?".

[notadmblnd]

62. Well that's not going to happen until the billionairs figure

out how to get the government to subsidize the venture for them. Once they have we the people paying or it, then yes, they will pocket all the profits.

[hunter]

70. Or create genetically modified jellyfish that can eat plastic...

[MADem]

79. +1,000 nt

[Jefferson23]

3. Speechless here.

K&R

[Blanks]

4. There is a TED talk by someone who discusses the difference...

Between recycling metals and the problem that there has historically been with recycling plastic. Apparently that problem (sorting) has been resolved and it is now easier to recycle plastic.

Hopefully, if this plastic is that easy to gather up, someone will see it as a potential source of material.

We can hope anyway.

[Warpy]

11. Types of plastic that can be recycled come with numbers in a triangle stamped somewhere on the item

I manage to recycle a huge amount of plastic that comes into my house, even though I don't contribute water or soda bottles.

I just wish things that come in that horrible heavy plastic packaging you need to drag the tin snips out to free the thing you bought would start putting the recycling number on.

And yes, there are things I've put back on the shelf because of overpackaging that can't be recycled.

[northoftheborder]

18. I wish they would STOP packaging stuff with that tough plastic that is so hard to open, period.

Should be outlawed all over the world.

[Warpy]

19. Agreed, I wasn't kidding about the tin snips

and I still manage to lacerate something before I liberate whatever is inside it.

[northoftheborder]

22. I know, you would ruin a good pair of scissors, you have to use pruning shears, tin snips, or ...

box cutters. Then when you actually get the plastic open, the edges are sharp enough to take off your finger.

[Blanks]

46. I use a circular saw sometimes to open the packaging...

Just kidding, I usually use a machete. Ok, I don't, but sometimes the product itself isn't worthy of the fight required to liberate the product.

[northoftheborder]

49. Probably right!

[tclambert]

74. Try using a can opener.

[progressoid]

13. That's rather encouraging.

We need to expand that in the US and globally.

[chervilant]

5. Tough, but essential viewing.

Thanks for posting.

[niyad]

6. k and r, and bookmarking to depress myself later. thank you, peggy, for this very important

information.

[rwsanders]

7. Well I hate to add to the gloom, but...

this garbage is also a threat to the endangered Hawaiian Monk Seal as they often get tangled in discarded fishing gear that ends up on this area.
Also many of the birds that nest in the Hawaiian Island chain (that extends miles beyond the inhabitated islands out to Midway) pick up this junk and die from it or try to feed it to their young who then die with the stuff in their bellies.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

12. the planet could deal more happily with a lesser number of us....

But we humans won't take the hint.

I remember reading about an overpopulation experiment with rats.

As the population increased over a certain "personal survival space" per rat, all kinds of bad things increased.

Aggression increased markedly, especially; food, space, water, inter-rat fights....

Pollution piled up quicker. (Duh)

Anxiety (vicious circle there with aggression)

Health problems...hair loss, bacterial and viral infections.

Increased misery all around ....

It's all quite familiar, isn't it?

[PasadenaTrudy]

51. I did my part

by not breeding...

[BlancheSplanchnik]

55. same here.

There should be rewards and incentives for not breeding.

[PasadenaTrudy]

56. I know

We should be getting the tax breaks for our smaller carbon footprint. Very unfair, IMO.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

57. yep. I totally agree. have thought that for a lonnnng time. n/t

[jeff47]

66. You already get a major financial award

Kids aren't cheap.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

67. indeed!

The savings in money, time, stress.... incalculable.

But you don't really grok those things until later, when you have them yourself or see other people who do have them.

I just wish there were more incentives ahead of time that would motivate more people to think long and hard about adding to the load....more ways to break through the mists of over-emotional sentimentality about the subject of babies.

[jeff47]

68. I'm not so sure such a program is really necessary

We're already below replacement level. The US's population growth in the last decade is due to immigration.

And a declining population creates a hell of a lot of problems - Japan's economic problems for the last 30 years, for example. Cultural issues hurt immigration there, so they are pretty much left with the kids they produce. And they haven't been producing enough to keep their population stable.

I just wish there were more incentives ahead of time that would motivate more people to think long and hard about adding to the load....more ways to break through the mists of over-emotional sentimentality about the subject of babies.

Keep in mind those same people "subtract from the load" when they die. They also subtract from a lot of other things when they die.

We need to average about 2.1 kids per woman for zero population growth. We've been around 2.0 for a while. We don't need further negative pressure.

[PasadenaTrudy]

73. Immigration is fine by me....n/t

[PeoViejo]

71. Instead the crazies make babies like little sausages

reap the tax benefit and burden the Medicaid system without paying-in.

[mahina]

14. It sucks. Thanks CP.

It's like a plastic milkshake. Turtles, fish, whales, dolphins, seabirds…nobody can deal with it. It washes up on the beach in fine grained blue and white bits.

We all have to stop using this crap. It should all be biodegradable or off the market.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

21. I SO agree, my dear mahina...

I am aghast at what we're doing to our environment.

[TheKentuckian]

20. Important to raise awareness on this. Sometimes folks don't even believe it if you tell them.

[YOHABLO]

23. I just stay out of the ocean completely .. nothing but a toxic cesspool ... it's a shame.

[eggplant]

24. There have been some really cool prototype devices for harvesting this stuff.

Very simple designs, solar powered. Not the fastest thing around, but are able to collect all the tiny bits that netting would miss (and is particularly harmful because it is small enough to be eaten by fish).

Don't underestimate our ability to make lemonade out of garbage.

[SCVDem]

25. In an ideal world (yeah right)

Every major nation would build ships pretty much like the whaling fleet, with front wings to gather the waste about a hundred yards accross. The ships need to be nuclear powered. These collection vessels are towing the recycling barges which will by some means recycle or using a plasma furnace, de-atomize the plastic waste.

This fleet will simply sail around cutting swaths through the gyre. If they make oil, there will need to be a fleet of transfer tankers tending to them. This project may take 50 years to eliminate the garbage.

How to pay? We need a world which works together so we use defense money. We get money from the plastics manufacturers and the petro-chemical industries. Part is the recycled plastic to oil.

If we don't, it soon won't matter much because we will have fouled our planet and humans cease to thrive. The food chain will be broken.

In a perfect world.

[Demo_Chris]

26. If it makes you feel better, the article and images in particular are basically nonsense...

Yes, there is a garbage patch. No, it looks NOTHING like those images show -- which is all you need to know to question everything else they have to say. Here's what the ACTUAL garbage patch looks like:

[img][/img]

You want to know why no one is "Cleaning it up" or mining it, that's why. Here's some links with more information.

http://deepseanews.com/2012/08/three-ways-of-looking-at-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/

http://seaplexscience.com/2011/01/10/does-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-exist/

http://oregonstate.edu/urm/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-“garbage-patch”-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media

[El_Johns]

31. Interesting: "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch doesn’t actually look like much—unless you’re paying

attention. The plastic confetti are invisible unless you scrutinize the surface of the water."

[seveneyes]

45. Here is the picture used in the article

I doubt this picture represents the issue the article is talking about. That's unlikely to be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

[tclambert]

75. How would that teeny little boat get into the middle of the Pacific?

[lumberjack_jeff]

30. Most of that debris suspends 100m below the surface of the water.

You can't skim it.

It's also tiny little bits.


The solution is biodegradable plastics and beach cleanup.

[DFW]

32. You should google Roz Savage

I was just a lecture by her here in Charleston SC, about her experiences rowing across the Atlantic and the Pacific. On her way rowing from San Francisco to Hawaii, she rowed right through the North Pacific Gyre. It is an ugly story, but one that heeds to be heard.

She is one impressive woman, by the way.

[MrMickeysMom]

34. BUY ECO FRIENDLY PRODUCTS! REDUCE WHAT WE PUT IN OUR GARBAGE!

I've seen several films in 2013 as part of a group meeting at the library. This may be the most important thing we can do now because many can pressure local grocery stores to even eliminate plastic bags.

"Bag it" is the movie I was blown away by. It talks about this in meaningful ways, but I think we all know the immediate thing is to reduce our waste. I can't believe how much less we put in our garbage can this last year in particular, once we became more conscious about what goes into it. This isn't always easy, but what is these days?

Thanks, Peggy, for starting the year right. We have to keep working on this. We owe it to the only thing we HAVE… Mother Earth.

[KauaiK]

38. This is not NEW info...

There is a good book on this garbage patch called MOBY DUCK (not Moby Dick) - Moby DUCK. With the Fukashima disaster, the debris can now contain radiation. Because of the ocean currents, debris usually ends up on the west coasts of Canada and the US. Some migrates to Hawaii.

There is a 2 mile long garbage patch of plastic bottles, fishing line / nets and other debris off the south west coast of Kauai between Kauai and Niihau. Information regarding the debris has fallen out of the news (bad for tourism).

It's not just littering. Containers routinely fall off of cargo ships, but is kept hush hush due to liability and insurance issues.

[Oilwellian]

39. Yachtsman describes horror at ‘dead’, rubbish strewn Pacific Ocean

For the majority of the voyage to Japan, MacFadyen had to ensure that his yacht wasn’t holed by clumps of rubbish he said were “as large as a house”.

“There were fenders from ships, balls of net and telegraph poles with barnacles on them that were never going to sink,” he said. “There was nothing like that 10 years ago. I couldn’t believe it.

“We wouldn’t motor the boat at night due to the fear of something wrapping around the propeller. We’d only do that during the day with someone on lookout for garbage. When you stood on the deck and looked down you’d see the rubbish shimmering in the depths below, up to 20 metres under the water.

“We went onto the US and back again. We did 23,000 miles [37,000km] and I’d say 7,000 of those were in garbage. The boat is still damaged from it. We had to free the rudder of rubbish one night, which was scary. We were terrified of something ripping a hole in the boat.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/21/yachtsman-describes-horror-at-dead-rubbish-strewn-pacific-ocean

[grahamhgreen]

44. Oil & plastic company tax needed to pay for cleanup.

[OnionPatch]

47. It's pretty shocking.

I wonder if most people know about this new "ecosystem".

There's a wonderful organization founded by one of the sea captains who discovered the gyre.

http://www.algalita.org/index.php

Lots of info at their website.

[ybbor]

48. Truly a sad story

Check out a film by a friend of mine that deals with this issue. I want to incorporate it into my Earth Science class.

http://www.bagitmovie.com

[Blue_Tires]

50. From the archive:

2007: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2357730
2008: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3189613

[blondie58]

58. I know, Peggy

And This reminiscencias me of a story i read about years ago. It made me ashamed to be human And it made me cry.
Http://www.MidwayVoyage.com/
Hope i Got The hyperlink right.
Not using a desktop anymore, just my smart fone. 🌠

Http://www.midwayjourney.com/

[CrispyQ]

59. I feel sorry for all the other species who have to "share" this planet with us.

Midway: Message from the Gyre

http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24








I read that any time you see a photo of a gorgeous beach, it was probably groomed before the shot.

[Nay]

69. I suspect that is very true. 5 years ago we vacationed in Brazil (partly to

visit relatives who moved there) and, as a part of our travels, we took a tourist boat 20 or so miles out into the ocean to visit some supposedly pristine islands.

Yes, when we got there, the small beach looked beautiful, the huts where we were served lunch were cute and rustic, but. . . .

I took a little walk up past the delineated beach area and saw what the REAL beach looked like. It was covered in just the same plastic trash you see in the photos above. It was disgusting, and a real reality check.

[Major Hogwash]

60. California Peggy, flip it upside down and turn it around.

Think of the job opportunites that we are squandering right now cleaning up the environment just because of the Republicans in the House who refuse to pass a Jobs Bill.

We need to get Boehnor out of the Speaker's chair and put Representative Nancy Pelosi back in charge of that half of Congress.
That's all there is to it.

Our planet is suffering from the unwillingness of the House Republicans to act.
Boehnor is the worst Speaker in the history of the House.

[G_j]

63. SUFFOCATING THE WORLD

http://www.learnstuff.com/suffocating-the-world/

better to go to the link to view this,

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[CrispyQ]

72. What can 28,000 rubber duckies lost at sea teach us about our oceans?

What can 28,000 rubber duckies lost at sea teach us about our oceans?

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/what-can-28000-rubber-duckies-lost-at-sea-teach-us-about-



In 1992, a shipping crate containing 28,000 plastic bath toys was lost at sea when it fell overboard on its way from Hong Kong to the United States. No one at the time could have guessed that those same bath toys would still be floating the world's oceans nearly 20 years later.

more...

Perhaps the most famous Floatees, though, are the some 2,000 of them that still circulate in the currents of the North Pacific Gyre — a vortex of currents which stretches between Japan, southeast Alaska, Kodiak and the Aleutian Islands that the plight of the duckies helped to identify.

"We always knew that this gyre existed. But until the ducks came along, we didn't know how long it took to complete a circuit," said Ebbesmeyer. "It was like knowing that a planet is in the solar system but not being able to say how long it takes to orbit. Well, now we know exactly how long it takes: about three years."

[democratisphere]

76. Someday (and it better be soon!) humans are going to understand.....

they can not destroy every ecosystem on earth without ultimately destroying themselves.

[blkmusclmachine]

77. Whoa.

[bvar22]

78. It didn't take us very long.

[riversedge]

80. The video of the all the dead birds stomachs filled with plastic parts

was horrifying.

[spanone]

81. i share your sadness my dear CaliforniaPeggy

[libodem]

82. Thank you for caring enough to share

It isn't pretty but we can't hide from the truth. My oldest son just graduated in environmental science. He's was accepted into a masters program. Ecology is very important to me.

[Liberal_in_LA]

83. kick. i posted about the plasticphere last week

[Zorra]

84. K&R nt