Plastic pollution

[thekeip]

Midway, 2009.
Pic courtesy Chris Jordan...more at chris jordan photography
howard Keiper
Berkeley

[thekeip]

Sorry, didn't realize the photos were duplicates.
hk

[DCClancy]

I am VERY upset at our political system that does lip service to our problems . Plastic is used everwhere and we seem to do nothing about it ! If we really wanted to do something .... OUTLAW all plastic ..PERIOD. Glass is a great alternate WE are killing ourselves and all living things with the use of this stuff. Plastic never disappers , only breaks down , to microscopic parts. NOTHING in the ocean is considered organic , ALL fish have this product in thier system. OUTLAW the stuff Black & White thinking YES but if we don't do something real soon ........????

[peptobysmol]

Originally Posted by DCClancy

I am VERY upset at our political system that does lip service to our problems . Plastic is used everwhere and we seem to do nothing about it ! If we really wanted to do something .... OUTLAW all plastic ..PERIOD. Glass is a great alternate WE are killing ourselves and all living things with the use of this stuff. Plastic never disappers , only breaks down , to microscopic parts. NOTHING in the ocean is considered organic , ALL fish have this product in thier system. OUTLAW the stuff Black & White thinking YES but if we don't do something real soon ........????

Pick ONE or pick them ALL!

ban cars they are responsible for MV fatalaties and of course greenhouse gases
ban heating oil - DUH!
ban aircraft - they emitting gases at very high altitudes = bad
Tractors are destroying the Great plains and we are selfishly turning land to food production destroying the habitats of countless indigenous species - ban them
Obama's healthcare plan is solved by the banning of plastics- u can't get ANY surgery without it now. so ban all hospitals.
ban smoking its bad for ur health and haven't you seen all the cigarette butts everywhere?
ban alcohol its reponsible for liver failure
ban sex it is responsible for STD's

lets all live in huts and eternally sing verses of kumbayah

[scottyt]

Originally Posted by eherlihy

The Marietta, Ohio, Times


Scientific American

okay, there is a simple obvious lie in one of the two above article. the marietta times article says the guy on the boat just finished a race, when he went out to see the patch. in the second article same boat is a research boat. which is true... is it a privately owned boat that somebody races or is it a research vessel

the Irish times thing is a comment opinion, not an article. i could write a opinion that the sky is green. does not make it true

i just spent about 20 mins on the union leader web site, they seem pretty middle of the road. not right leaning or really left leaning. they have articles and comments that go both ways, i do see slightly more left leaning stuff, but they have right leaning comments

[scottyt]

Originally Posted by DCClancy

Plastic is used everwhere and we seem to do nothing about it ! If we really wanted to do something .... OUTLAW all plastic ..PERIOD. Glass is a great alternate WE are killing ourselves and all living things with the use of this stuff. Plastic never disappers , only breaks down , to microscopic parts. NOTHING in the ocean is considered organic , ALL fish have this product in thier system. OUTLAW the stuff Black & White thinking YES but if we don't do something real soon ........????

that would make life real hard. then when you tried to make every tv out of metal it would use lots of energy to make all that metal. okay now lets look at cars, how many cows would we need to bred to make leather for seats and dash boards, sense we cant use plastic. next clothing, go look up how much water is used to grow cotton. well at least making glass does not use tons of energy... oh wait yes it does

[vega1860]

Originally Posted by citation34

Common sense doesn't appear often enough in these agenda driven times. Gullibility prevails.

Mark
~~~_/)~~~

All too true.

However, the Pacific Garbage Patch or "Gyre" is all too real. I commented on it in my video log while crossing the Pacific in 2007

Much more from the crew of "Junk"

[GeorgeB]

Despite hailing from the SF Bay area, I’m poles apart from your run of the mill wood nymphs and the various and sundry tree huggers. However, when I raced to Hawaii last year I was shocked to see the amount of floating plastic crap. Saw the usual small stuff, plastic bags, lighters, bottle tops etc, but we also encountered the unusual such as a hard hat being kept afloat by the headband and sporting a mini reef underneath and a 5 gallon jerry jug. Mind you, this stuff was more than 700NM off the coast. We used a towed generator (Duo-Gen, pretty cool unit) and that would collect shards of net and plastic bags which would jam the impeller. And this was on the North American side of the high. When the boat was delivered back and crossed the high north of Oahu, they encountered much more junk. The Duo-Gen would get jammed daily. They were fouled by hundred foot section of net and suffered a steering gear failure when they snagged a long line fishing leader and hook that worked their way around the rudder shaft (and it was a skeg hung rudder!) Yes, the folks on the western side of the Pacific need to clean up their act. It ought to be illegal for fishing boats to abandon their nets. But that doesn’t absolve us from doing our part. As yachtsmen, we should take pollution seriously and be shining examples to our dirt dwelling brethren. Remember, their garbage dump is our playground!

[GreatWhite]

Vega1860 thank you for your first hand account of the Plastic in the ocean. I related to the flat earth comment when faced with the deniers who claim there is no appreciable amount of plastic in the ocean...

Regarding whether governments should outlaw plastic I think that what you have done with the creation of a video is the likely the best course of action...that is to work within your own area of influence. if you work in education make change there...etc.

[DCClancy]

YouTube - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Good Morning America Please watch
There is a problem ! Only the plastic industry will refrute this . Maybe we can't stop production , we could keep it on LAND ?