Floating plastic island in the Pacific

One More Time!

http://maps.csc.noaa.gov/RoisDataba...s.jsp?lawID=37

http://www.stumbleupon.com/de...article/354044

I apologize for my ineptness in posting links!

 

If we the Human race did not take this attitude "live today for tomorrow we're screwed" then maybe things would be different. But unfortunately we are a flawed race and we are stuck with it.

I am the kind of person who wants less talk and more action, but the key thing is money which is rated higher than one single Human person.

For an example in my country, a man goes out and kills another man result 10 to 15 years imprisonment. A man goes out and robs a bank and no one is killed result 30 years imprisonment. Sorry no, I rate a Human life more important than money but in the real world its the other way around.

I have no time for this global warming BS which politicians have now jumped on the band wagon saying we are all doomed. All it boils down to is paying more bloody Green Tax which really gets me angry.

 

BTW: I like to shake things up a bit to see people in there real light of day and Devilsadvocate You strike me as no bleeding heart sheep. Nice to see you can punch back.

 

One positive thing: soon will be out of petrol. No petrol no plastic: no plastic (unless we know how to make plastic with out petrol?) , then no more island. So no big deal. On the other hand is being out of petrol positive ?

 

Thank you!

 

You got more guts than the whole of Gordon Brown and his cabinet put together.

Skipper: I've been reading some books on the oil crisis and they very from we are screwed to we will get by but it will be hard.

 

Sure let's just risk everything and continue to ride SUVs nd maintaing our main power source as coal pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. I always wanted to see Venus up close anyway...




Cheers...

 

The point is, that no one understands the natural mechanisms that control planetary temperature, so no matter what we do, or don't do, there is a risk that harmful consequences will occur. If we reduce our emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere it could upset a balance and cause an ice age, or worse. Not a single scientist, real or one of the environmental phonies, can say for sure exactly how it all works, so doing anything, or nothing, carries a risk.

Besides that, unscrupulous politicians, mainly in the corruption-riddled UN, have seized on this issue to impose unnecessary regulation on commerce and and our lives, thereby increasing their political power. I have my doubts about the wisdom of allowing elected politicians in the US screw with my life, let alone unelected crooks from third world countries.

 

Now that's just nonsense. How, if we stopped polluting (meaning intervening), would we upset the natural balance of things?

Actually, if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosfere, an ice age will occour. The Golf Stream will stop if we continue to melt the North pole making everything north of france Ice.
And the peak in temperature that we are recording is unprecedented and coincides with the mega industrilization and the massive burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
How about the Tsunami that was provocked from the fall of a tectonic place due to the void left by oil extraction. If we hadn't stoped taking the oil out something worse would happen?


Cheers...

 

Why? Aren't we part of nature? Part of the natural balance of things? Look at the Endangered Species Act; nothing could be sillier than trying to preserve species that are going extinct. Species extinction is a natural process that clears niches in nature for new species evolving. When we arbitrarily decide that no species should go extinct, we end up taking sides against those that would otherwise evolve.

For example, here in Oregon, they are trying to keep wild salmon from going extinct by killing seabirds that eat salmon fry swimming to the sea. They have also killed sea lions who were simply trying to eat salmon, a natural food for seals.

In trying to control the temperature of the planet by tampering with natural processes and mechanisms we don't fully understand, we might inadvertently tip the balance some other way and cause the opposite of the result we want. No one really knows what causes ice ages, and just a couple of decades ago, environmental "scientists" were predicting one. Suppose we managed to remove a significant amount of CO2 from the atmosphere and the natural CO2 was suddenly diminished for some reason, that might be enough to push the scales the other way and create an ice age. Since no one really knows how it all works, no one can say whether it could happen or not.

Now, that is really non-nonsensical! You are just repeating some theory you heard somewhere; no one knows enough about the oceans to say what would happen one way or another. And if the phony scientists are correct about stopping global warming by removing CO2 from the atmosphere, how could doing the same thing cause an ice age? You don't know and neither does anyone else. Melting the Arctic will cause everything north of France to freeze? Now that would be pretty funny, a band of ice all the way from France to the Arctic Circle and then open water at the North Pole? Clearly, the environmentalists don't know what they are talking about.

Excuse my use of vulgar language, but such a statement is Bulls**t. The earth has been both much warmer and much colder than it is today, but generally speaking the prevailing temperature has been warmer than what we are currently experiencing. It's not far fetched to say that we are only just beginning to warm up to earth's "normal" temperature.

Paleocene Epoch: 65 - 55 million years ago.---the Paleocene - was cooler than the hottest part of the Paleozoic, but it was much warmer than today. Oxygen isotope ratios show the ocean was 10° to 15° Celsius warmer than today. For Americans who know nothing of metric units, that's 18°-27° Fahrenheit warmer than now. That's hot!

55 million years ago, at the very end of the Paleocene there was an drastic incident called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. You can see it as the spike labelled "PETM" on this graph. Ocean surface temperatures worldwide shot up by 5-8°C for a few thousand years - but in the Arctic, it heated up even more, to a balmy 23°C (73°F). This caused a severe dieoff of little ocean critters called foraminifera, and a drastic change of the dominant mammal species. What caused this? Maybe a sudden release of greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide from volcanos, or a "methane burp" released from gas hydrates on the sea floor.

Eocene Epoch: 55 - 34 million years ago-- At the start of the Eocene, the continents were close to where they are now, but the average annual temperature in arctic Canada and Siberia was a balmy 18° C (65° F). The dominant plants up there were palm trees and cycads. Fossil monitor lizards (sort of like alligators) dating back to this era have been found in Svalbard, an island north of Greenland that's now covered with ice all year. Antarctica was home to cool temperate forests, including beech trees and ferns. In particular, our Earth had no permanent polar ice caps!

The temperature began to drop rapidly in the middle of the Eocene. By the Oligocene, 34-24 million years ago, glaciers started forming in Antarctica. The growth of ice sheets led to a dropping of the sea level. Tropical jungles gave ground to cooler woodlands.
What caused this? Some seek the answers in plate tectonics. The Oligocene is when India collided with Asia, throwing up the Himalayas and the vast Tibetan plateau. Some argue this led to a significant change in global weather patterns. But this is also the time when the supercontinent Gondwanaland finally broke up, with Australia and South America separating from Antarctica. Some argue that the formation of an ocean completely surrounding Antarctica led to the cooling weather patterns.


See; temperature

It's obvious that the earth's temperature has been much higher than it is now for substantial periods of time, and also that the earth's temperature rises and falls without any help from man. Clearly, the causes of these temperature fluctuations are not very well understood, but real scientists think they include forces over which man, with all his modern technology, still has no control. So why worry about global warming when, even if we make herculean efforts, it could easily overwhelm everything we do simply through fluctuations in natural processes?

Not sure what you're on about here, but tectonic plates are huge and are NOT influenced by man's oil extraction efforts; they move in response to events deep in the earth's mantle and geologists do not fully comprehend the mechanisms involved. There has never been a documented tsunami or significant earthquake (which is what normally precipitates tsunamis) caused by oil extraction of other mining efforts. If you believe otherwise, pleas post your data.

 

It's going to take a "Rouge Comet" to convince the "Watermelons" (Green outside, Red inside)(thanks T.A.) that the Earth will get rid of us any time it wants to, regardless of how much guilt they spread, about how the last 5,000 years is what the Earth has to be forever, even though the Earth is 4.54 Billion years old and is constantly changing, but it's really all the fault of the SUV, and "Soccer Moms".
Just the letters SUV mean........"reaching"........."for anything"..........
If you want to by one, there are plenty in the paper. No one can afford to drive them. Somebody will just mug you for it anyway.
Stripping yourself naked and flogging yourself saying "Thank You Sir, may I have another", is not going to prevent anything.
Except happiness.

If this plastic island really exists, one ought to be able to find it on Google Earth. Ya think I can find my house, if it's bigger than that, and not moving as fast as a "cigarette boat"......it oughta show up.....eh?
Why isn't the liberal media hovering over it in helicopters? er is it all their junk?

 

If we keep on polluting the environment it´s sure to kick back at us at some point, it may not be us to pay the price but is it ok to let the next generatios pay it? And the problem with the methods with getting rid of waste is that the methods cost quite alot. How willing are companies to pay this money or in the end people in the product prices? Everybody seems to do alot when we talk about the idea but when it is said it costs more most turn away....

 

See that is my big problem with the whole Global Warming debate, the fact that idiots come away from it saying 'see, there is no evidence therefore we have no need to change our lifestyles at all!'

I hate to tell you this, but even if it isn't going to destroy the planet, pollution IS NOT A GOOD THING. Walking through your average large city is apparently equivilant to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. A friend of my parents has lung problems his doctor has put down to working in London for the last 30 years. Buildings are blackened by car fumes. If you stand on the hills overlooking Sheffield on a summers day you can see a grey haze of exhaust, Middlesborough is even worse.

This great waste dump in the pacific, yeah, you don't mind it when it's somewhere it doesn't affect you but imagine if it was on your doorstep, not nice is it?

Sure oil isn't going to run out in the immediate future but with demands increasing throughout the world, not to mention the petrochemical industry finding more and more uses for it, it is only a matter of time before we need to find alternatives. Now I know some plonker will come back with 'but nothing we have now is a good alternative' and that is true enough, but that is a bit like someone in 1911 saying 'none of our aircraft have the range to cross the atlantic, there is no point investing in trying to find ways to do it.' If we start researching now we may find ways to deal with the problem if and when it arises. With a bit of luck we can also reduce our demand for oil and push the price down into the bargain.

The endangered species list, great example, now I firmly believe that there are quite a few species on there that will die out one way or another, fair enough, these things are all very sad but will happen. There are however a fair few on there that are dieing out because of us. Animals hunted to extinction, habitats being destroyed just so you can get that cheeseburger you need oh so badly, it is un-necessary and wrong.

So yeah, by all means don't jump on the global warming band-waggon. That does not mean however that we shouldn't look at alternatives, surely common sense would dictate that running the whole world of one resource is stupid, putting all your eggs in one basket so to speak, and sooner or later it will bite you in the behind one way or another. Diversify or die as the economists would have it.

 

I agree Stefan, we can't just go blindly thru life saying that we believe or don't believe this or that when garbage and pollution is spreading everywhere! I don't care what you believe, you don't have to throw that Styrofoam cup out the window, put it in the garbage can, or "bin" as I think you say over the pond!

 

I've personally not thrown "any" rubbish into either ocean, lake, or river (apart from a few golf balls that went off course). We recycle everything we can. (we have garbage Police, and if they find "recyclables" in the trash, there is a hefty fine.) Not that we need that motivation, but some do.
We're not ready to give up resealable plastic containers, so we do more than we have to, to make sure we don't have to. Do you
the resin codes
http:Plastic Recycling Code List
what's nasty about them (besides being unsightly)
Bisphenol A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
like graphs ?
CRI - Beverage Container graphs
notice how "deposit" statistics increase return rates.
As well, I believe all containers ought to have a "deposit", and all who make them....or use them (for their products) should either by conscience/or law, take them back. If they can't recycle them (easily/efficiently, or at all), they should look into alternatives which they can.

 

While other morons read the exaggerated media reports of fabricated 'scientific" studies claiming the earth will burn up in three years time, and collapse in hysterical fits of activism to force the politicians to "DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING!" "here, take my rights, my property, my way of life! Just save us from this horrible fate the newspapers are telling us about." Some half-wits will believe anything, just so long as it plays into their need to surrender to somebody or something.

I don't recall anyone saying it was. Neither is it cause to panic. It's been around as technology, and technology, in case you haven't noticed, is what makes our cushy life possible.

What great waste dump in the Pacific? How big is it? I haven't seen any pictures of it, no one has quantified what's there, other than a bunch of uninformed "estimates". We really don't know anything about it, except what a bunch of "environmentalists" (who incidentally, have a track record of lying about, exaggerating, and fabricating, their "evidence") are claiming. Sorry, but before I start screaming the sky is falling and runnng around in panic, I'd like to have an accurate idea of the nature and extent of the problem.

Last time I checked there were lots of people working on alternative energy sources; try googling "alternative energy". My attempt returned "about 26,000,000" sites, even Google can't keep track of all the alternative energy sites. To claim there is nobody doing research into alternative energy sources is demonstrably false, but it's an easy claim to make. BTW, I seem to recall something called "nuclear energy" which was tried out in the '60's and '70's. But the "environmentalists" got scared of it and forced the energy companies to drop it.

So what? Why is a natural process "unnecessary" and "wrong"? Nature does not recognize such terms. It either happens or it doesn't, end of story. Man is a part of nature and if nature decrees that man should be an agent of extinction, who are we to challenge that? Anyway, it's self-defeating to keep dead-end species in existence, we simply come into conflict with a natural process.

Which, of course, assumes facts not in evidence, as the lawyers would say. Alternatives ARE being looked at, research is going on every day not only in order to understand basic natural processes and mechanisms, but into practical applications of alternative energy and materials. It's stupid to put the wrong eggs in one's multiple baskets, but without knowledge it's a very real possibility.

 

See now that's just plain stupid. No one is talking about 'just doing anything' or taking peoples rights and property, simply looking into ways to deal with a changing world. Jeez, we are paranoid today aren't we. Is there anything you don't see as a massive conspiracy to steal your tele?

Who said it was a cause to panic? Why do you see any action as panic? Sure pollution in one form or another has been around since man first started a fire, but never on this scale. We are polluting the world on a greater scale than ever before and it is about time we did something to stop it. I'm not suggesting panic, but that doesn't mean we can't look into better ways of doing things.

Calm down muckagee, no one is screaming or running around in panic, simply suggesting that it isn't good and might be worth acting on. Doesn't that seem logical to you? It's not too dissimilar to throwing all your trash into a corner for days until it forms a heap and then saying 'that isn't great, lets stick it in some sort of bin.'

Nobody 'claimed' no one was looking into it, simply that the lack of evidence for global warming was not a reason to stop.

Man is not a part of 'natural processes,' the term 'natural' implies that it is taking place without any artificial (or man made) change. Nature does not decree that man should be an agent of extinction, man does, unlike the rest of nature we have free will, the ability to decide what we are doing. If we hunt an animal to extinction we do so because we have chosen to, it is therefore not 'nature' acting but us. It does not need to happen, it is unnecessary and wrong. And who are you to go on about 'dead-end species?' If someone were to decide that you were a 'dead-end individual' and shoot you would that be ok? I mean apparently it is 'natural' since a man did it and to keep such a 'dead-end individual' alive would be wrong, conflicting with natural processes etc.

No, because we have free will we can decide what we do or do not destroy, nature does not do this, it just happens. That is where the difference lies and where the natural process ends and the wanton destruction by man begins. Hell, by your logic Chernobyl was a 'natural' occurrance.

No it doesn't, it assumes nothing more than that the world is changing, fact, the world is constantly changing.

Most intelligent post I have seen you make so far. It does make me giggle that all someone has to do is suggest looking into alternatives and you launch into a paroxysm and then at the end say 'but yes, you are right.' It also makes me chuckle to see the level of paranoia since, if you read your last paragraph it becomes quite clear that my original post wasn't really aimed at you

 

You are. "Anything is better than the alternative (i.e. doing nothing)." Quoted from your post on the Great Global Warming Scam" thread.

When people start proposing political schemes to raise taxes, restrict my use of my vehicles, impose restrictions on other activities, all because some "environmental scientists" have fabricated data and spun it into a world wide problem, yeah, I see it as conspiracy. Any one who isn't a fool would.

Any drastic action taken because of insufficient, misunderstood, or false data is panic. That's exactly what is being advocated. There is enough counter evidence to call into question the idea that global warming is not sufficiently understood and that data documenting it has been exaggerated to the point of fraud. To continue as we are without doing some more investigating is panic.

No, it's you who should calm down and ask a few questions. No one is suggesting that throwing trash in a bin isn't a good idea. What I'm suggesting is that before I get excited about another environmental "disaster", I want to see some evidence that it really exists.

What you "claimed" was that we should be doing it. I pointed out that we are.

Geez! Are you ever confused. Man is as much a part of nature as any other animal. And yes, nature has decreed that man should be an agent of extinction. There's evidence that for at least 12,000 years animals have been hunted to extinct by man. Just by producing in the numbers that he does, man causes some species to go extinct. Are you saying a bunch of people got together and "decided" to out produce other species, and because of this, it's not a natural process?

And comparing the demise of an individual to the extinction of a species is n invalid analogy. Of course I would object to being killed by someone else. Species do not "object" to being classified as "dead-end"; they can't because it is done by nature, not man. And please explain what is "wrong" and "unnecessary" about the extinction of a species. Tell us, for example, what was "wrong" about the extinction of the dinosaurs and why it was "unnecessary".

Man, as a species has "Free will" (whatever that is)? Sounds pretty religious to me. "Wanton" destruction? More emotionalism. Have you ever tried to reason with your head instead of your emotions?

Yes, it does, It assumes the world is changing because of man and that therefore man can direct those changes. Those facts are not in evidence, at least not by you. It also assumes that no one is trying to understand the processes nor look at alternatives, which is false.

Read it again, I said you are wrong. And you are. People are trying to understand what is happening and work out alternative strategies; you implied this wasn't happening.