The Pacific Ocean is now "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch"

Most people do not realize that our reckless polluting has turned the Pacific Ocean into "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch" which is a "plastic soup" of trash, plastic, garbage and human waste an area about twice the size of the continental United States that stretches from Hawaii to Japan.

We are literally destroying the Pacific Ocean and the situation is getting rapidly worse every single hour of every single day.

Someday historians will look back on our time and will refer to us as "those crazy Plastic People".

futurestorm.blogspot.com...

Now this really scares me. What the hell are we thinking?

Nice post, I guess this was predicted by NOAA and is caused by the North Pacific Ocean Gyre! Its also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, I like that name better!

Wiki Info

I have got to believe a majority of the trash comes from China, India and others who have lax environmental laws. I am also sure good part comes from the US & Japan, but I am confident we can clean up in those two countries the others maybe hopeless! Check my thread on these two prolific polluters!

ATS Thread - 2 Countries that need to clean up their Act!

I have added a couple of graphics to explain this phenomenon!





I got a believe somebody will come up with an idea to "harvest" and recycle the plastic.

this is another one of those threads where the problem and solution for all that trash is pretty obvious, and I'm gonna say right now that no one wants to hear the real problem and solution because they're really selfish. I pretty much guarantee that even tho this is one of the first responses to this thread, it won't receive any stars or replies.

The problem is there's way to many people on this planet. You can't tell me that nearly every problem facing mankind could not be solved or at least alleviated to some extent by population reduction, pollution is no exception. As a people we know this to be true but most everyone wants to have kids, they see it as their "right." There's no doubt that producing more people who have bigger carbon footprints is the worst offense against the planet that anyone can commit. The cumulative amount of pollution made by one's blood line for generations to come is astronomical. Especially those living in first world countries.

well thats my 2 cents.

I don't expect anyone to argue with my post because their is no argument against it. I don't expect anyone to reply at all, because no one wants to admit that it's absolutely true.

reply to post by mel1962


Wow, good post, thanks for the info!

Originally posted by liquidsmoke206
this is another one of those threads where the problem and solution for all that trash is pretty obvious, and I'm gonna say right now that no one wants to hear the real problem and solution because they're really selfish. I pretty much guarantee that even tho this is one of the first responses to this thread, it won't receive any stars or replies.

The problem is there's way to many people on this planet. You can't tell me that nearly every problem facing mankind could not be solved or at least alleviated to some extent by population reduction, pollution is no exception. As a people we know this to be true but most everyone wants to have kids, they see it as their "right." There's no doubt that producing more people who have bigger carbon footprints is the worst offense against the planet that anyone can commit. The cumulative amount of pollution made by one's blood line for generations to come is astronomical. Especially those living in first world countries.

well thats my 2 cents.

I don't expect anyone to argue with my post because their is no argument against it. I don't expect anyone to reply at all, because no one wants to admit that it's absolutely true.

Sadly, i think you may be right. A vast majority of people dont even care, thats part of why its a problem in the first place

Maybe that's what is causing all those Pelicans to be sick on the West coast.

Well i dont think the cause of our problems is overpopulation in the slightest ..ive already stated why before on ATS,i personally find it an easy scapegoat instead of drastically changing the way we live. Anyway assuming you are correct,it should be Europe and America that gets depopulated first.We are the largest throw away society and have been for decades,seems only fair. Maybe china can burn all the fat from obese Americans and brits to power their country for a few thousand years

Ive seen this topic a few times..

But, if we've created such a ocean of sludge/garbage.. I want to see a photo.

Something that big? yet all we have a pretty dots on a colour map?

Im not doubting we have polluted, but this article makes it sound as if you couldnt surface for air because the top layer is literally an island mass of garbage.

This post is off topic and I admit it, but it is a response to a previous post in this thread, and I felt obligated to post it. So if you are reading this and are solely concerned about the topic at hand then skip this post.
Sorry,

Liquid

i personally find it an easy scapegoat instead of drastically changing the way we live.

I shouldn't have to tell everyone that "drastically changing the way we live" is incredibly vague. I'm positive that every detail of this drastically new life would benefit from, if not require, a reduced population.

Anyway assuming you are correct,it should be Europe and America that gets depopulated first.We are the largest throw away society and have been for decades,seems only fair

You act like it has to be violent and it has to be now. We could get this done in a couple generations, and be well on our way in just one generation! Say what if one in every 100 people could have children, then we reduced it after some years to 1 in 1000, I'm just throwing some numbers out there, but you know that would be the way to do it. And think of how cared for those kids will be, there wouldn't be any of this "filler" that we have in society today, they'd probably all be very top notch people. I advocate bringing the population down one generation at a time. I do not advocate selling fat people to the Chinese, who by the way have saved their nation by having population control, it's only a matter of time before that has to be implemented worldwide....don't people realize that?

And australia is the fattest country in the world so why don't you leave the good ol weight conscious, health minded, regularly exercising, organic eating yanks and brits alone. My city could outrun your city any day, loser gets sold to china.


anyways thanks for actually responding to my post, usually when I offer that solution I get no responses. And it IS a solution, for damn near everything you can think of...

When I was in the Navy (Pacific Fleet), we always ALWAYS dumped our garbage overboard when we were well within international waters. If we were close to port, then okay, we stored the trash until reaching port, but otherwise, sploosh.

Some things we always had to do while dumping: Food stuff was okay to toss during daytime, as it was degradable and the sharks / other animals ate it. Normal garbage and trash had to be dumped at night, with numerous holes in the bags so they would sink; if not, we had to sink them (gunner's mates). If we did dump in the day, we had better be damned sure there were no other vessels around, and that the bags sank.

I am certain that things have changed since then... I've been out since 1994.

reply to post by Agit8dChop


When it was posted earlier there was a video documentary where the guy trying to make money to afford studying the stuff more took some kids out on the boat and it wasn't an island of bottles but more of a bottle chopped up a thousand times and thrown in the water. Only it was millions of bottles turned into the aforementioned 'soup'. Though I felt a little ripped off at first because there weren't seagulls sitting on a bottle island catching a breather, it was still disturbing.

Originally posted by Agit8dChop
Ive seen this topic a few times..

But, if we've created such a ocean of sludge/garbage.. I want to see a photo.

Something that big? yet all we have a pretty dots on a colour map?

Im not doubting we have polluted, but this article makes it sound as if you couldnt surface for air because the top layer is literally an island mass of garbage.

You want pictures?

images.google.com...

Here, view to your hearts content, there are 180,000 for your purview...

Originally posted by Grock

Originally posted by Agit8dChop

But, if we've created such a ocean of sludge/garbage.. I want to see a photo.

You want pictures?

images.google.com...

Here, view to your hearts content, there are 180,000 for your purview...

I dont see anything there "twice the size of the continental United States" as stated by the original poster.

As asked by Agit8dChop, please show photos of this huge mass. All the photos that came up in your provided search show small patches.

If such areas exist in such mass, why are we worrying about it? It seems to me that nature has swept everything up in a nice little package for us to remove.

The general problem with cleaning pollution is that it is dispersed throughout a large area. In this case, it is not scattered willy-nilly throughout the entire ocean, but is apparently clumped together in one or two large areas in a nice little layer just under the ocean's surface.

So, let's see... we can all start killing people to reduce population, or we can demand that everyone change the way they live in some 'drastic manner', or we could get a ship and a net and go cleaning.

OK, that last choice is just ludicrous... where did I put that disintegration chamber....?

TheRedneck

Lets harvest this stuff using the "overpopulated population" on barges using spears and rakes. Then ship it to India and China for re-processing!

We could call it soylant plastic!

But, really we should look into recycling it somehow, its actually good it has consolidated into one general area, making it easier to clean up.

Id like us (the human race) to take this as a wake up call.

Obviously, we are polluting our mother earth faaaarrrr more than each of us realize.

This topic should discust each and every one of us who becomes aware of it.

I for one will pay faaarrrr more attention to what i throw away, and how i contribute to the degredation of this planet, having read and understood this OP.

Okay heres a solution that makes everyone happy.

Trash the planet.
Leave the planet in the process.
Restore the planet once we live in space.
Living in space = send garbage barges towards Solaris.

Boom, done.

wake up call??
you mean you didn't realize we're trashing this place?
people just keep going about their unimaginative little lives never giving a second thought to the world 100 years from now.
You can recycle and watch what you throw away all you want, but you'll still make waste, and you'll still add to the already massive junk piles not just in the oceans, but everywhere. I bet everyone in this thread wants to have a couple kids too, if they haven't already.....as I've already explained, and what no one wants to hear is that not having kids is the best way out of this. Unfortunately at the end of the day, as much as you all wanna talk about how you wanna help the planet and our species, when it comes down to it, you'll take your own selfish wants above anything else......

humans are pathetic, we've designed our own fate, and therefor deserve it to the fullest.

Originally posted by liquidsmoke206
this is another one of those threads where the problem and solution for all that trash is pretty obvious, and I'm gonna say right now that no one wants to hear the real problem and solution because they're really selfish. I pretty much guarantee that even tho this is one of the first responses to this thread, it won't receive any stars or replies.

The problem is there's way to many people on this planet. You can't tell me that nearly every problem facing mankind could not be solved or at least alleviated to some extent by population reduction, pollution is no exception. As a people we know this to be true but most everyone wants to have kids, they see it as their "right." There's no doubt that producing more people who have bigger carbon footprints is the worst offense against the planet that anyone can commit. The cumulative amount of pollution made by one's blood line for generations to come is astronomical. Especially those living in first world countries.

well thats my 2 cents.

I don't expect anyone to argue with my post because their is no argument against it. I don't expect anyone to reply at all, because no one wants to admit that it's absolutely true.

Since anything taken out of the Earth can be put into it, put it into old mine shafts. Where does the human body come from if not the material elements which make up the Earth as so they came so do they go. Creating more people isn't the problem and so destroying more isn't the answer. If you simply look up, I'm sure you can find a rock we don't use and transfer the trash to mines on it. The problem is the waste produced by the increase of all life, not just humans, don't forget all the species we save and allow to populate each day. Killing people isn't the answer, it's a narrow minded solution created by someone who has no love for their own life, much less anyone else's. Though objectivist's feel they are making the rational choices no one else will, they are generally, as limited in their thinking as anyone else. Of all the inexpensive and easy to accomplish solutions genocide is their fall back because they know best. Yet, none of you are willing to go first, which belies your true intent, which is to have more for you at the expense of strangers- since, you won't kill off those you love and care for either, unless you don't really love and care for them which just proves you have no love for yourself. If you won't volunteer yourself and those around you first, what gives you the right to volunteer anyone else??

Ironically, you're the same selfish bastards who opt to dump trash and radioactive materials into the sea. Just so it doesn't affect your precious section of the World. I know your type well, you're all the same. For all you know, you know nothing.

[edit on 18-1-2009 by PhyberDragon]

Dear PhyberDragon, please read my second post in this thread and then pull your foot out of yer mouth and apologize for wasting bandwidth with your post, which is wrong wrong wrong, through and through....here's why....

Creating more people isn't the problem and so destroying more isn't the answer. If you simply look up, I'm sure you can find a rock we don't use and transfer the trash to mines on it.

Creating more people is precisely the problem, in fact as I've already stated population reduction would solve or at least help to alleviate EVERY problem facing mankind just think about it. I suppose shipping all out waste to some moon somewhere is one of your "inexpensive and easy solutions to accomplish." Get real dude.

The problem is the waste produced by the increase of all life, not just humans, don't forget all the species we save and allow to populate each day.

Are you serious? You must be joking, why would anyone post this kind of nonsense when they know I will make them look like a clown for it. Not only are you contradicting what you just said, "Creating more people isn't the problem", you actually believe that bears and eagles, and fish,etc etc are producing as much waste as humans....excuse me but when was the last time you saw an eagle burning fossil fuels buying diapers, or throwing plastic into a landfill or ocean? Completely ridiculous claim, for a sight that denies ignorance, you should be denied membership.

Killing people isn't the answer, it's a narrow minded solution created by someone who has no love for their own life, much less anyone else's. Though objectivist's feel they are making the rational choices no one else will, they are generally, as limited in their thinking as anyone else. Of all the inexpensive and easy to accomplish solutions genocide is their fall back because they know best.

And yet...NO ONE is as limited in their thinking as you. Had you read my second post you'd see that I DO NOT advocate genocide, and had you read my first post without jumping to conclusions, you'd notice that I not once used the word genocide, kill, or killing. Thank you for attempting to put words in my mouth, it makes trashing you that much easier.

Yet, none of you are willing to go first, which belies your true intent, which is to have more for you at the expense of strangers- since, you won't kill off those you love and care for either, unless you don't really love and care for them which just proves you have no love for yourself. If you won't volunteer yourself and those around you first, what gives you the right to volunteer anyone else??

Well as I've already stated, I DO NOT believe in genocide to reduce populations. So this entire quote does not apply to me, but since it was in response to me, I'll be happy to continue tearing you apart for posting it. I'm not willing to volunteer myself or anyone else because I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GENOCIDE, should I type that in bigger letters so maybe you'll see it this time? I will also NOT REPRODUCE, as to do my part to save the world. What are you doing Mr. I'm not as selfish as everyone else?

Ironically, you're the same selfish bastards who opt to dump trash and radioactive materials into the sea. Just so it doesn't affect your precious section of the World. I know your type well, you're all the same. For all you know, you know nothing.

Oh you're soooo wise, and such an amazing judge of character. I don't directly dump trash into the sea, and if you know the type so well that does, then your circle or acquaintances is very questionable. Apparently you don't produce any waste, or if you do it somehow stays out of landfills, and the ocean. Let me guess, your shooting it to the moon. Thanks for your reply. It was def fun making you look like a fool.

-Liquid