Garbage pile twice the size of texas floating in South Pacific

CptStern

CptStern

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At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing."

To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe.

In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
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sad

61945943tm7.jpg



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...SS6JS8RH0.DTL&hw=pacific+patch&sn=001&sc=1000
 
That's where the seagulls congregate and come up with plans on how to dominate the world from the skies where nobody would expect it.
 
Give it to singapore, we can build land with it...

I think.
 
and people say climate problems are not important
 
Why can't we dump it all into a volcano or something clever like that.
 
Because that would be a lot of effort to waste since people will bitch about doing that.
 
unregulated burning of garbage = toxic gases/chemicals released into air/water
 
We should sell our groceries in delicious edible bags.
 
Is that any worse than the unregulated trash collection in our oceans?

Heck, we might start a new ecosystem down there or something. Underwater cockroaches.
 
Dammit. I was trying to find a Futurama picture from "A Big Piece of Garbage" but had no luck. I don't even know where my futurama discs disappeared to.

The image where the mayor of old new york secretly pushes off the garbage pile to the ocean.
 
I think it's cool. It reminds me of those cockroaches that carry around the brain bug in Starship Troopers.
 
babyheadcrab said:
I love that scene, I forgot how awesome that movie is.. I should buy it.
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agree, that movie was way underrated, it was pretty decent for what it was.


anyway i was saying more than a year ago there are other things besides global warming that are dangerous.
but of course who cares unless a giant trash wave hits them.:rolleyes:
 
Finally, we now have an excuse to repeal the above-ground nuclear test treaty.


As with most problems, a giant floating garbage heap could be solved by a nice 20 megaton thermonuclear airburst.

>.>
 
God bless America.


*avoids flying chairs*
 
It's also considered the largest garbage dump in the world. I've tried looking around online, can you see the garbage patch from satellite images?

No. See, most of this garbage is salt-shaker stuff, the breakdown of plastic products. When we trawl a net, we get a kaleidoscope of different colored little plastic particles, mostly whites and blues. We think the reds are taken by birds and fish because they look like shrimp. And inside the garbage patch we've found over six times as much plastic as plankton. While outside it's over three times as much plastic as plankton. So if you're a fish trying to choose whether something is food or not, you can easily be confused. Gelatinous plankton feeders are heavily impacted by this. Then they're eaten by fish, birds and turtles and so it accumulates up the food chain. And [the plastic particles are not] just indigestible, they are also a sponge for toxics, so it's like poison pills being ingested.
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Found this.
 
I don't think I ever threw anything in the water, in the street yeah but not in the sea..


Well how big is Texas anyway ?
 
Hellrider said:
I don't think I ever threw anything in the water, in the street yeah but not in the sea..


Well how big is Texas anyway ?
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2.3 times smaller than Alaska.

Or if you prefer it another way... 10 times the size of Florida.


And if you prefer it even another way... 1.4 billion square feet.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre
The most famous was the loss of approximately 80,000 Nike sneakers and boots from the ship Hansa Carrier in 1990: the currents of the gyre distributed the shoes around the shores of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii over the following three years. Similar cargo spills have involved tens of thousands of bathtub toys in 1992 and hockey equipment in 1994.
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W00t, free shoes!
 
I like the volcano/ land idea. Though land may have 'unforeseen consequences'. Volcano would have to be limited maybe... putting texas in there and all.
 
*Shudders*

Give it to Singpura, they need land.
 
Are you sure about the stats on that? Texas is pretty big. Twice the size of Texas would pretty much cover all of Europe.
 
I want to see more pics - I'm leery about this. If it's actually anywhere near as big as Texas, it'll get my vote for a new wonder of the world.
 
Dan said:
Are you sure about the stats on that? Texas is pretty big. Twice the size of Texas would pretty much cover all of Europe.
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Texas is small compared to the ocean though.

All you want to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre#Waste

It is entirely too strange though that I can't find any pics that show an expanse of water from a boat or something...

EDIT: Found this video on wikipedia.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3892310789953943147

Yikes... Surprising. So I guess the reason we're not seeing pictures of some thick mass of plastics is because most of it is broken down and sort of hides in the water as a soupy sludge.
 
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