"North Pacific Garbage Patch"

North Pacific Garbage Patch

The North Pacific Garbage Patch is easily one of the top 5 blind spots of
civilization. Everyday civilization cheerleads over the material benefits it has
provided to humanity. Cars, money, alcohol, drugs, toys, conversation-pieces, an amazing array of food, plumbing, sneakers, clothes, the list is literally endless. From the depths of South America and Mexico immigrants team towards the United States in droves grasping for the coattails of the lifestyle civilization has provided the “Western” world for the last century. In China and other Southeast Asian countries people are willing to work literally for pennies for a chance at the civilized lifestyle – the chance to get material possessions to miraculously appear like those in the western culture.

I found out about this last night from a doco I watched...and I am embarrassed to admit that I did not know about this...

I feel so ashamed to be a human being right now

We scuffed through the deep trash on uninhabited Red Sea beaches and wept. We sailed garbage patches in the Indian Ocean, counting the left and right thongs to prevent ourselves from weeping. We didn't even see the worst example of all - the North Pacific Gyre, but Ian Kiernan sailed through it, and researcher Charles Moore has been studying it for 10 years. Now a Canadian teenager has found a potential solution to the world's monstrous plastic problem.

Pacific Ocean Trash Patch - Solutions in Sight?


Further reading:
Floating Garbage 'killing marine life'

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch



[edit on 8-7-2010 by Thurisaz]

I remember reading a newspaper article about four years ago concerning this. The beaches in Hawaii and / or around that area are suddenly becoming OVERWHELMED with plastic crap etc etc ....... It is an outrage that human society carries on doing this and polluting that ......

It is about time for a Human CULL i think !!! OR a GLOBAL catastophy to 'WAKE UP' the world.....

Bravo to the Teenage scientist - his idea offers hope but unfortunately until there is unity from all nations change will probably be a while in coming......

Regards

PurpleDOG UK

A kid comes up with this revolutionary way to help degrade plastic - not a bunch of paid scientists who should be able to do this in their sleep, right?

It's no wonder we will never see free-energy, or any real attempts to try and figure it out. The paid scientists are either paid to push global warming, Big Pharma's crap or paid to NOT create anything helpful for mankind.

Seriously, a kid did this and all those paid think-tanks couldn't?

I guess I shouldn't complain, they did bring us Oxy cleaner and the Sham-Wow. I'm impressed.

Not.

I think this subject is certainly worthy of attention but none of the links really show the large floats of garbage I expected. Do they exist?

Whilst looking for images of what this 'Plastic SLICK' looks like, I came across this !!!!! --- check this out....!!!

This is what the scientists are doing as opposed to clearing the mess up !!!... unbelievable ??!

www.dailymail.co.uk...


Then this got me thinking, I read another thread on ATS recently which referred to TPTB and their future control of the planet..... It referred to a 'floating Island from which they controlled the planet ........


EH VOILA.....


Regards

PurpleDOG UK

Theres a lot of info here..............
www.abovetopsecret.com...

That's not the end of it. Until we've poisoned the sea to death we won't realise that we can't eat money....

Another patch forming in Antarctic area...

www.dailytech.com...

After discovering a swirling patch of plastic bottles, bags and other bits of debris in both the North Pacific Ocean and throughout the Atlantic Ocean, another potential garbage patch has been uncovered in the coastal seas of Antarctica. A majority of the Earth's oceans are remote and untouched by garbage and debris, but as researchers take to the sea more frequently, they're finding that plastic trash is reaching even the most distant waters. According to Anna Cummins, an environmental activist who sailed the Atlantic in February collecting plastic samples, "Humanity's plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint."

reply to post by DCDAVECLARKE

That thread has more info on this indeed. I've heard about the patch just few years ago, and even more recently about the Hawaii beaches.... disgusting.

Here's more about plastic beaches:
Hawaiian beach turning into plastic

reply to post by Thurisaz


I think it's wonderful that this kid has found two bacteria strains that can biodegrade plastic, and I think it's great that he's gotten a scholarship. However....I seriously hope that before these strains are let into the ocean, they make sure that the pseudomonas is not the same deadly strain of pseudomonas that kills humans.

One of the worst bacteria we've had to fight in the hospital over the years is a strain called pseudomonas aeruginosa. It is one of the main strains of bacteria that we keep having to come up with newer and better and stronger bacteria to kill it. Pseuomonas is one of the "super-bugs" we have to worry about in the hospitals these days, along with MRSA, etc. Especially in patients who are immunocompromised.

So, although I think it's AMAZING that this kid has found something that could dissolve all the bacteria, I just hope it's not a strain of psudomonas that could become dangerous to ocean life and humans, if it gets into the oceans. We don't want to make the situation worse than it is. (i.e. introduce bacteria to eat the plastic, and then have it start eating all the fish, the whales, the dolphins, the sharks, the swimming humans, etc...)

[edit on 8-7-2010 by nikiano]

We need to see what languages show up on the packaging, if it is 65% Chinese packaging, then they should foot that part of the bill to clean it up. Not picking on the Chinese, just using them for an example.

If the countries that contribute the trash would have to pay for the cleanup, maybe they would do something to prevent it in the first place.

Originally posted by PurpleDog UK
Whilst looking for images of what this 'Plastic SLICK' looks like, I came across this !!!!! --- check this out....!!!

This is what the scientists are doing as opposed to clearing the mess up !!!... unbelievable ??!

www.dailymail.co.uk...


Then this got me thinking, I read another thread on ATS recently which referred to TPTB and their future control of the planet..... It referred to a 'floating Island from which they controlled the planet ........


EH VOILA.....


Regards

PurpleDOG UK

There is a lot of things I do not agree with TPTB on but human nature
is hard to change, so taking lemons and making lemonade does
not seem like such a bad idea.

I like this idea better than the Guidestones ,the book Ecoscience,
or the Mims-Pianka controversy.

Also in 1 of the 4 major currents a large fortune in uranium
floats by every year...

"There is a concentration of uranium passing through this current every year (between 5 and 6 million tons).[2]"

en.wikipedia.org...

I cannot even imagine what a ton of uranium sells for...
let alone millions of tons...

In the last 20 years the region has seen 2 tropical storms.

20 yr Tropical storm track map

So it would need to be made hurricane proof.

As it floats it would rise with the tidal surge so that would be a
non-event, the wind damage could be mitigated if the buildings
are made like honeycombs out of plastic recycled into something
akin to kevlar also know as body armor.

"...5 times stronger than steel on an equal weight basis..."[3]

en.wikipedia.org...

The island should be flexible so it can move with the swells that
such high winds would surely kick up.

Recycling the plastic into the same nylon rope used to tie
aircraft carriers to piers should work well for intersection linking.

Some new synthetic rope being used by the US navy is 10
times stronger than steel by weight.

www.netcomposites.com...

I think one option would be to have the island act like a submarine
in a time of a tropical storm and sink itself below the waves.

Top water buoys with the equivalent of dry snorkels could be
the source of air for the ppl below waiting out the storm below.

The other option is build it to withstand the possible 190 mph winds.

The temporary submarine move might be cheaper and safer.

Another option would be large spheres similar to Geodesic domes
but fully circular that could open and close triangular storm doors
and interconnect the spheres with super strong nylon ropes like
they are using to tie up aircraft carriers.

Large airbags could act as shock absorbers if storms try to
smash them together.

This is just theory, but it is a start.

Taking this trash plastic and changing it into a different polymer
strings will take some seriously bright chemists.

There is plenty of sun power out there, and the power of the
current could be captured underwater for power as well.

4 large currents move in the area to create the Gyre.

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

This device could get power from the currents.

www.smh.com.au...

It has been prototyped and it works.





[edit on 8-7-2010 by Ex_MislTech]

Originally posted by OZtracized
I think this subject is certainly worthy of attention but none of the links really show the large floats of garbage I expected. Do they exist?

They do exist there and in other places.

A man spoke at TED about it and this video explains it
better than I can.

The North Pacific Garbage Patch:



[edit on 8-7-2010 by Ex_MislTech]

Here's a site that gets pretty in depth on the topic.

5gyres

The "Global Research" portion of that site has some great information.

There are more "trash vortexs" in the oceans.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

North Atlantic Garbage Patch

They are accumulated the way the are due to ocean gyres.

reply to post by ThaLoccster

Good post there, and it brings home the point that if we don't
fix this it could kill off all the plankton in the ocean and thus
kill off the whole food chain.

If the whole ocean food chain dies it "might" trigger another
Anoxic event.

en.wikipedia.org...

If we get one of those all O2 breathing creatures on Earth could die.

This needs to be fixed before most of the life in the ocean dies.

And as mentioned above it will start affecting humans.

Some researchers are already saying the BPA is entering the
food chain and causing health effects in humans.

en.wikipedia.org...

Good Luck to you all !

reply to post by Ex_MislTech


Yeah I think it could wreak havoc on the ocean ecosystem, couple that with an oil spill that could also wreak havoc.

If you look at the wiki link for the pacific vortex, theres a picture of albatross chicks who were fed plastic by their parents, and died.

Thanks to everyone for the extra info.

I am at a public library and I actually want to cry my eyes out over this.

I looked for an image I had seen on the doco; I did not find it and perhaps it is just as well? It was a little pic of a fluffy bird with a coathanger around its neck. I am still teary eyed over it.

I am so emotional about this and even last night when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, I could not get the image of the little bird out of my mind.





[edit on 9-7-2010 by Thurisaz]