EnviroLink Forum

We stuffed the atmosphere by pumping a range of man made pollutants into it
Now all we need to complete the job is to stuff the oceans
But no problem we are well on the way to completing that project.
We are in the process of changing the Ph level of the ocean by adding co2 to it which is making it increasingly hard for marine organisms to make their shells, but if that does not work we are filling the ocean with plastic rubbish. All this plastic is breaking down into ever smaller bits which is is getting incorporated into the marine food chain. Now plastic has a sort affinity for absorbing some our worst pollutants such as PCBs. Thus we are doubly contaminating the marine food chain. The result is that if you eat any ocean fish you too will be consuming plastic. I used to think that plastic bags where a bit of a problem because they killed the occasional turtle but in fact the problem is huge. Millions of sea birds are dying as a result and in the pacific one in 10 fish contain bits of plastic large enough to see with the naked eye. But just in case that we still do not mange to stuff the oceans we sending out giant factory ships dragging huge nets that remove all life in their path.
Do I need to bring ocean up warming ?
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_ship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_netting

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Pollution is not the solution

this pie chart is revealing on how we have gone from messing up a tiny part of the planet (human habitation at 0.05% of the planet) to a good chunk (agricultural land at 12% of the planet, 40% of land) to a bigger chunk ((12+10)/29 or 75% of the land that includes land being developed) to now a vast majority of the planet being destroyed (93% of the planet... 7% remaining for wildlife in places too difficult for humans to live)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Landusepiechart.png

The rampant mercury in high food chain fish that are depleting, and with others, too, is bad enough.
From a previous thread:
Still, the 6 huge oceanic trash gyres(2 in the N Pac, 1 S Pac, 1 N Atl, 1 S Atl, & 1 Ind), and the over-fishing to depletion by 2035-50, the 100 estuary dead zones, and the mercury pollution (mostly from China) to the oceanic food chain are caused by many coastal and island countries, and the water circulates as it is getting more acidic to the CO2 saturation point and warmed to the point, eventually, of massive methane releases.
I wrote Gore in '95 that we needed to torpedo the drift netters, among other things to reduce the population and pollution. I got a form letter back.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

they are starting to build prototype machines for turning plastic into fuel. Hopefully this will lead to harvesting these blobs of floating trash.

It would be good to clean up the oceans, however, we don't need more CO2 and water vapor that most plastics would burn into. Other plastics, like PVC vaporize at 200-400*F to form mainly deadly and highly carcinogenic PVC gas, then at 3000*F it finally breaks down into CO and Mustard Gas. Nice plastic. Then there are the cyanogenic plastics and rubbers that when burned release toxic gases, also.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle