[HN Gopher] Brazilian researchers find plastic rocks on remote i...
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Brazilian researchers find plastic rocks on remote island
Author : isomorph
Score : 103 points
Date : 2023-03-16 10:38 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| rvieira wrote:
| Not saying this is good news, but given the current amount of
| plastic floating around in the oceans, isn't aggregating as a big
| chunk better for the environment[1] than disintegrating into
| micro-plastics or small debris?
|
| [1] excluding the "no plastics in the ocean" choice, of course
| hollander wrote:
| Aggregating in one big chunk can be good news, if it is treated
| as a garbage collector and if the garbage is removed. If the
| plastic isn't removed, then it will be an eternal source of
| microplastics. I can't see how that is a good thing, unless
| some fish, bacteria or plant knows how to eat that plastic and
| make it into something harmless. I doubt that this will act
| like a plastic-magnet for the microplastics in the area.
| squeegee_scream wrote:
| We are so fucked
| CalRobert wrote:
| Sadly it seems we're taking down a lot of other creatures with
| us.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| There's some beauty on it. Nature incorporates our garbage, and
| it becomes part of nature.
|
| It might kill us, but then new creatures will evolve and grow,
| with plastic being part of their ecosystem, perhaps even
| desirable. In million years the future civilization of these
| creatures might have "plastic preservation programs" because the
| old plastic rocks are a finite resource upon witch their culture
| was built.
|
| They might even gaze upon their plastic-filled oceans in awe,
| with some quasi-religious gratitude for the ancient race that
| gracefully filled the world with plastic that they might thrive.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Then again, they might not.
| nhatcher wrote:
| Yup, good old George Carlin thought that way:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vGE73tTSVU
| mistymountains wrote:
| Terrible take.
| caseyw wrote:
| Wow, now I want to gather bottles and throw them in the ocean.
| I kid of course, but that's sorta beautiful.
|
| I always knew someone would see me as a god despite what my
| wife says.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Now, if I could just get her to call me Lord.
| 8note wrote:
| Everyone gets quite excited about collecting sea glass,
| depending about what kinds of bottles you're going to drop
| themitigating wrote:
| "might kill us, but then new creatures will evolve and grow,
| with plastic being part of their ecosystem, perhaps even
| desirable."
|
| Is that possible? As far as I know nothing consumes rocks and
| they've been around forever.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Is that possible? As far as I know nothing consumes rocks
| and they've been around forever.
|
| Can you burn rocks? No. Can you burn plastics? Generally yes.
| Therefor there is useful energy to be extracted from
| plastics.
|
| NB, the quote was " part of their ecosystem" not "consumes".
| Molluscs, corals and diatoms construct out of rock-like
| materials, so making minerals part of their ecosystem is a
| thing.
| jaggirs wrote:
| Unlike rocks, plastic is high in energy (as evidenced by the
| fact that you can put it on fire).
| salamo wrote:
| Sure, but petroleum is also high in energy. There are even
| some bacteria that consume it. Yet petroleum is still
| available in huge deposits.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Deposits are the key, it generally isn't readily
| available on the surface where most of the living
| organisms are
| jhbadger wrote:
| There are already bacteria that eat (some) plastics.
| Plastics, unlike rocks, are basically just hydrocarbons, not
| that different from sugars and starches and quite digestible
| if you have the right enzymes. Whether or not animals could
| evolve to do it is another story, though.
| ogig wrote:
| I've been in a huge magnesite mine, tens of km of underground
| corridors, with big cathedral like spaces bored in a
| mountain. The biggest use for all this rocks is feeding meat
| producing cows with supplement minerals. So, yes, we all eat
| rocks.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I think lichens break down rocks. I know there are some
| microbes that do it.
| phistep wrote:
| Already happening. See
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359
| sva_ wrote:
| > As far as I know nothing consumes rocks
|
| Rocks do turn into soil which is then the basis for stuff to
| grow on it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| For something to be consumed it needs to have energy surplus.
| Plastics have plenty, you could just set fire to them to
| combine them with oxygen to get it.
|
| They only obstacle is to figure out set of enzymes that can
| do the burning in controleed manners. Life is very good at
| figuring that stuff out, it just takes time.
|
| Rocks pretty much don't burn. Although I wouldn't be
| surprised if in water environments there are some organisms
| that can utilize some rocks in their metabolism. It's just
| that rocks are pretty much useless on the surface that's why
| nothing eats them here.
|
| Similarly with coal underground. In airless environment coal
| is just rock. If there was plenty of it on the surface
| something would metabolise it for energy. I think coal from
| burnt forest doesn't just remain on the ground. Something
| probably eats it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| We are not the first species to trash the biosphere. When trees
| came up with lignin it took Earth life some millions of years
| to adapt to this new invention and still it was left with a
| layer of biological trash currently known as coal.
|
| Another example is oxygen. Highly corrosive gas that early on
| in Earth's existance was rare, but some organisms excreted it
| as a wastproduct of their metabolism. It got so bad that high
| concentration of oxygen in atmosphere wiped nearly all life on
| earth until the life adapted.
|
| And now came humans, who utilize the heaps and volumes of trash
| and waste left by other species. And produce their own that
| will stay on Earth for many millenia, long after humans in
| modern sense are gone.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Coral reefs.
|
| Edit: Those are homes for the animals while they're alive, of
| course, but after the animal dies you could view the
| remaining coral as a form of waste. Certainly that's how we'd
| view a big pile of abandoned mobile homes.
| est31 wrote:
| I agree with the oxygen example, but for lignin that has been
| debunked in a 2016 paper, see my earlier comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34654837
| scotty79 wrote:
| Is the paper you cite current scientific consensus or just
| one voice in ongoing scientific discusion on the subject?
| domatic1 wrote:
| It's just melted plastic from fishing nets and other debris
| mecklyuii wrote:
| 'just' srsly?
|
| Who cares if we live on a non diverse plastic rock...
|
| I thought a lot would care but often enough I get corrected
| even on hn
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Doesn't matter if it was made of fishing nets, bits of molten
| dragon dildo, or other debris, our plastic shit doesn't belong
| there.
| rrwo wrote:
| Yes, it means that the plastic is going to start entering the
| good chain there. Plastiglomerate rocks mean that there are
| bits of plastic in the soil, and this will be consumed by
| plants and worms, which will be consumed by animals that eat
| them.
| soco wrote:
| We are already quite touched by microplastics, checks show
| them everywhere in humans and their foods. https://www.nati
| onalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| note that toxic things tend to accumulate more higher in
| the chain (animals) than lower (plants/trees)
| vc9999 wrote:
| Really? I thought nature was manufacturing plastic rocks
| petodo wrote:
| Just another form of oil made by nature.
| paulcole wrote:
| This shouldn't be surprising. We as a society really like plastic
| stuff and _really_ like pretending our actions as individuals
| don't have consequences.
|
| It's like the hotdog meme guy.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/were-all-trying-to-find-the-g...
| fredley wrote:
| Individual action alone cannot stem climate change and mass
| plastic pollution. All the cheapest food is packaged in single-
| use plastic. All the cheapest clothes and toys are made of
| plastic. One simply cannot opt out of this system without
| making massive, potentially ostrasizing changes to one's life.
| Many/most cannot afford fancy plastic-free goods.
|
| Most plastic pollution in the ocean is directly related to
| shipping and in particular fishing[0]. Nothing I can do
| individually can address this, change must come from World
| leaders and industry bodies working in good faith across
| international borders. They all know this is happening, they
| all know measures that could be taken to address it.
|
| Much of the framing of climate change and pollution as
| individual responsibility comes from large industry bodies
| themselves, who would much rather you feel guilty about it
| personally rather than wonder if they might be to blame.[1]
|
| [0]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
|
| [1]: Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam | Climate Town
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g
| paulcole wrote:
| > Individual action alone cannot stem climate change and mass
| plastic pollution
|
| Yes, but lack of individual action also cannot stem climate
| change and mass plastic pollution.
|
| > Most plastic pollution in the ocean is directly related to
| shipping and in particular fishing[0]. Nothing I can do
| individually can address this
|
| You can stop eating fish and you can limit the amount of junk
| you buy! But if you like eating fish and you like buying junk
| and you don't want to inconvenience yourself, you'll say that
| it's the world leaders and industry bodies who must change.
|
| And don't get me wrong, this is an absolutely fine stance to
| have. You and I will be dead before the consequences of our
| choices are felt. But don't pretend like there's nothing you
| can do. It's just that there's nothing you actually want to
| do.
| mchanson wrote:
| It's not pretend there is nothing you can do unless you are
| participating in mass action _not_ individual action.
|
| Focusing on personal consumption is an illness of upper
| middle class Americans that keeps you from focusing your
| efforts on activity that might lead the actual change.
| paulcole wrote:
| Again no. The idea that you as an individual can't make
| choices that are better for the world is self-delusion.
| You choose not to make those choices because it is easier
| to blame someone else. And again, there's nothing wrong
| with this. But at least be honest about it.
|
| You can take individual action _and_ put effort into
| activity that might lead to actual change. But I'm
| guessing most people opt for the make no change, blame
| someone else, and put no effort into activity that might
| lead to actual change option. And again, nothing wrong
| with this! It's our planet to fuck up.
| mchanson wrote:
| We are talking about plastic in the environment. Your
| personal choices will make no difference in this problem.
|
| There are other problems where personal action on an
| individual level can make positive change, but this isn't
| one of them.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Your personal choices will make no difference in this
| problem.
|
| Of course they do!
|
| You are reducing your contribution to future plastic in
| the environment. We can argue over the extent of the
| difference this choice makes but to say it makes no
| difference is absurd.
| yesenadam wrote:
| OK, well, why say "there's nothing wrong with this" as
| you do above--
|
| > The idea that you as an individual can't make choices
| that are better for the world is self-delusion. You
| choose not to make those choices because it is easier to
| blame someone else. And again, there's nothing wrong with
| this.
|
| --when your whole point is that there's something wrong
| with it?!
|
| And it's mixed with unnecessarily confrontational
| language--"absurd", "self-delusion".
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > You can stop eating fish and you can limit the amount of
| junk you buy!
|
| I'm vegetarian, yet these plastic rocks still exist: my
| actions did not prevent their formation.
|
| _Collective action_ is needed. That will not happen until
| the "good" actions (e.g. using recyclable materials) are
| easier/cheaper than the "bad" ones (e.g. single-use,
| unrecyclable plastic trash). There are two ways to do that:
|
| - Make the "good" actions easier/cheaper. This is very
| difficult, and may require new inventions, etc.
|
| - Make the "bad" actions harder/expensive. This can be done
| using regulation and taxation; which (in a democracy)
| requires collective action.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I'm vegetarian, yet these plastic rocks still exist: my
| actions did not prevent their formation.
|
| But your actions are contributing less to the creation of
| new plastic rocks compared to the person who is out there
| buying a can of tuna. Whether your choice as an
| individual has a significant effect is another question.
| But it's undeniable that one choice is better for the
| environment than another. As people we can make the
| better choice or the worse choice. It's up to us as
| individuals.
|
| Anybody who's eating a can of tuna waiting for new
| inventions and government to save the day is just
| deluding themselves.
| fredley wrote:
| I would argue that not eating fish is not the solution.
| We can eat fish that are farmed or fished sustainably
| with minimal and sustainable environmental impact. A
| World exists where that is all fish. However without
| regulation, fish will be farmed using polluting methods,
| and fished in unsustainable and polluting ways, because
| it's cheaper and there's more profit to be made.
|
| Voting with my wallet for sustainably farmed fish doesn't
| really affect anything either - this will always be a
| niche, high-end market that's unaffordable for most
| unless the fundamentals at the bottom end of the market
| change.
|
| Fish is not the issue, fishing is, and only global
| regulation of the fishing industry can resolve the issue
| of (that industry's contribution to) ocean plastic
| pollution.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > Whether your choice as an individual has a significant
| effect is another question. But it's undeniable that one
| choice is better for the environment than another. As
| people we can make the better choice or the worse choice.
| It's up to us as individuals.
|
| Sure, but such an impoverished "choice" is essentially
| "do nothing" or "do nothing, with the option of eating
| tuna". It's basically table-stakes: once you've made the
| easy choices you have control over, it's time to make
| difficult choices which involve many people. (I see
| voting the same way: the _first step_ of political
| engagement)
|
| > waiting for new inventions and government to save the
| day
|
| That's a straw man; nobody is saying that's a solution.
| If you insist on viewing everything through the lens of
| individual choice, then we can just apply your own
| reasoning to more impactful choices, e.g. as an
| individual I can:
|
| - "petition legislatures for stronger fishing
| regulations" or "don't petition legislatures for stronger
| fishing regulations"
|
| - "file lawsuits against organisations/individuals
| breaking regulations" or "don't file lawsuits against
| organisations/individuals breaking regulations"
|
| - "campaign for representatives with good
| environmentalism credentials for key posts" or "don't
| campaign for representatives with good environmentalism
| credentials for key posts"
|
| - "infiltrate and disrupt environmentally-damaging
| organisations" or "don't infiltrate and disrupt
| environmentally-damaging organisations"
|
| - "help organise and spread awareness of collective
| efforts at systemic change" or "don't help organise and
| spread awareness of collective efforts at systemic
| change"
|
| - etc.
|
| These are all individual, personal choices; and are
| likely more impactful than choosing whether or not to eat
| fish. Since it's pretty cumbersome to talk about
| "individually choosing to work alongside other
| individuals in an effort to support each others' efforts
| to implement changes that adjust the cost/benefit ratio
| of the choices of other individuals who may have large
| impacts on the environment", it's common to abbreviate
| this using phrases like "collective action" and "systemic
| change".
| paulcole wrote:
| > once you've made the easy choices you have control
| over, it's time to make difficult choices which involve
| many people.
|
| Yes and my point is that the vast majority of people
| don't even make the easy choices let alone the hard ones.
|
| They pretend the easy choices are hard and that the hard
| choices don't exist.
| elevaet wrote:
| This is one of the better outcomes for plastics floating around
| in the oceans that I can think of. Melted and lumped into rocks
| it won't tangle living organisms, and it should be more inert
| than if it were ground into micro-particles due to far less
| surface area.
|
| It's even more beautiful than tangled nets and other plastic
| debris.
|
| I'm not trying to defend it mind you, we really really need to do
| a better job of keeping plastic out of the oceans.
| soderfoo wrote:
| The largest contributors for plastic inputs to oceans are
| commercial fishing and a few rivers in Asia.[1]
|
| I often feel powerless when a call to action is cloaked with
| the phrase "we must do ${something}" Some data at least gives
| me a concrete talking point if I ever talk to my local congress
| /parliament representative.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
| autopilot23 wrote:
| This narrative, i.e that the global plastic pollution in the
| ocean is primarily caused by a handful of Asian countries is
| misleading. It ignores the role of countries in the global
| north for overproduction of plastic and for exporting plastic
| waste to developing countries in the guise of trade. It also
| frames the problem as a "problem elsewhere", as if there is
| little a consumer or their local congress for that matter in
| global north can do.
| evancox100 wrote:
| You can do your part by not putting plastic in the recycling.
| Put it in the trash instead where it goes to safe, well
| regulated American facilities.
|
| I have totally lost faith in recycling anything other than
| aluminum/glass/some paper in single stream recycling.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Put it in the trash instead where it goes to safe, well
| regulated American facilities.
|
| Is this verified? I have a theory (and haven't bothered to
| investigate so that one's on me) that a lot of recycling is
| just parceling it up and exporting it to landfill or
| incinerators abroad.
|
| Mind you, the plastics found in the ocean should be
| traceable back to their origins; they may be from e.g.
| Asian rivers, but if the origin is from the US or Europe
| you know whose fault it is.
| ianburrell wrote:
| China said didn't want to recycle plastics. It did pile
| up in US while figured out where to send it. I don't
| think the US waste processors have found another place to
| send it so it is going to landfill. There might have been
| some plastics that got trashed by foreign recyclers but
| it shouldn't be common thing now.
|
| The solution is to have more regulations about where US
| waste processors can send recycling to prevent sending to
| dubious places that throw it away. It is better if
| recycling goes to the landfill in US instead of playing
| hot potato.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| Speaking of playing hot potato, the Khian Sea saga is one
| of the more egregious cases of trying to dump waste on
| the next sucker until finally they dumped it in the
| ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khian_Sea_waste_disp
| osal_incid...
| elevaet wrote:
| Yeah, by we I certainly don't mean you and I, but the greater
| collective of humanity. And we do all play a part in that, in
| myriad ways.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| Did you look at the article- it is tangled nets mixed with
| sand/stones. They still look capable of snagging small
| creatures. The location is next to a turtle nesting site.
| elevaet wrote:
| Yes I read the article, and I think it's sensible to say that
| fishing nets melted down into nuggets are much safer for
| turtles (and other life) than when they are loose and intact.
| blackshaw wrote:
| > we really really need to do a better job of keeping plastic
| out of the oceans
|
| This was really hammered home to me on a trip I took a couple
| of months ago. I was on an uninhabited island and, while the
| island as a whole was beautiful, the beaches were all COVERED
| in plastic debris from the high-tide line upwards. It was
| really quite shocking to see.
|
| I knew that there's a lot of plastic floating in the oceans,
| but I hadn't considered how much of it gets washed ashore. It
| doesn't accumulate if there's someone around to clean it up,
| but in uninhabited areas it's devastating. I wouldn't have
| believed how bad things are if I hadn't seen it with my own
| eyes.
|
| I wrote about the whole trip here, scroll down about halfway
| for a photo of what I'm talking about:
|
| https://blackshaw.substack.com/p/desert-island
| bsaul wrote:
| same here. I was so shocked at how beautiful thailand island
| beaches were ruined that for the first time in my life i
| considered joining an ngo...
| c1p0 wrote:
| Wow, I guess George Carlin was right about this one too.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I think so. Maybe Tardigrades will find some use for it..
| bell-cot wrote:
| Zzz...
|
| If a modern chemical plant is sloppy with $Stable_Chemical, then
| it's no surprise to find that chemical in the ground under it, in
| the groundwater, etc.
|
| The bottom of the Mediterranean is littered with thousands-of-
| years-old pottery fragments from ancient shipwrecks and such.
|
| Coal mining is a thing, all over the world, because
| microorganisms mostly couldn't break down dead trees back during
| the Carboniferous Era - ~300 million years ago.
|
| The sedimentary process how the Earth deals with ~anything that
| water doesn't dissolve, and microorganisms & such can't break
| down. That has not been news since 4 or so billion years ago.
| user3939382 wrote:
| We're not having our blood poisoned from the remnants of clay
| pots and trees.
| aperson_hello wrote:
| We kind of are from coal...
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Well the air's generally cleaner now than earlier times in
| the industrial revolution. If you think about pm2 and not
| co2 conc.
|
| Just look at the photo's of london when people burn coal
| for residential heating.
| themitigating wrote:
| Thanks to environmentalists who have to fight tooth and
| nail against other people who put human progress above
| all else
| bell-cot wrote:
| The annual ups and downs of Ancient Rome's economy can be
| tracked via lead in ice cores drawn from glaciers in
| _Greenland_. (
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/greenland-ice-
| cores-... )
| themitigating wrote:
| They weren't widely aware of its dangers (I know a few
| wrote about the dangers) and this is whataboutism
| edgyquant wrote:
| You've just moved the goal post
| themitigating wrote:
| I don't think so. Either way I made a mistake. The
| article is pointing out that lead use can track the Roman
| economy because of the levels of it use, nothing about
| its dangers.
|
| My general point was that most people were illiterate,
| proper science was almost never done, mysticism, etc and
| knowledge about hazards to the environment were not
| discussed.
|
| Therefore the decisions back then didn't consider
| environmental issues so it's not a good comparison to
| what's happening today.
| bell-cot wrote:
| "Found the facts unpalatable, and thus widely ignored
| them" seems a better description of the Roman situation -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#History
|
| Sounds darn similar to what modern humans are doing, eh?
| spicyusername wrote:
| This is true, but waiting around millions of years for a new
| global ecological steady state to form, when the underlying
| causes of these problems are knowable and preventable, is
| needlessly painful, to state it mildly.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Microplastics/plastics found everywhere ~100 years after its
| invention, disrupting life
|
| > yeah it's just like trees over millions of years
|
| The process being logical doesn't mean it's not worrying,
| especially when you look at the scale and pace of it
| bell-cot wrote:
| True. My point was not that the situation is good, but that
| the "OMG! OMG!! You wouldn't believe...!!!" tone of the
| article is click-bait hype BS.
|
| EDIT: The article is in _Reuters_. Vs. if it had been in a
| "Science News Supplement for Grades 3 and 4", I'd have seen
| the tone as fairly reasonable.
| themitigating wrote:
| Is the material that pottery is composed of dangerous? How many
| shipwrecks occurred where pots were lost compared to the amount
| of plastics we produce today that end up in the ocean?
| bell-cot wrote:
| My point was that the geological process is ancient, and
| hardly news.
|
| Of the 3 items I mentioned, by far the worst (given that
| we've been burning it for centuries) is plausibly coal. For
| example - https://phys.org/news/2020-01-shutdown-coal-fired-
| crop-yield...
| themitigating wrote:
| Are those points of contention? Does it the length of time
| have an impact on whether it's dangerous?
|
| I'm sure the amount pre industrial revolution is
| insignificantly small compared to recent decades
| [deleted]
| tambourine_man wrote:
| We don't call it the Anthropocene for nothing.
| 5040 wrote:
| Good or bad, this is kind of cool.
|
| _The most common way of distinguishing periods of geological
| time is by means of the fossils they contain. On this basis
| picking out the Anthropocene in the rocks of days to come will
| be pretty easy. Cities will make particularly distinctive
| fossils. A city on a fast-sinking river delta (and fast-sinking
| deltas, undermined by the pumping of groundwater and starved of
| sediment by dams upstream, are common Anthropocene
| environments) could spend millions of years buried and still,
| when eventually uncovered, reveal through its crushed
| structures and weird mixtures of materials that it is unlike
| anything else in the geological record._
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| If this plastic didn't decompose due to salty water and sunrays
| into smaller parts, isn't that actually convenient for us, since
| it is unlikely to get out of the rocks and cause harm?
| is_true wrote:
| I sometimes help an organizations that monitors the health of a
| river, a couple of years ago they started buying plastic buoys
| because the ones made from metal were a bit more expensive.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Does that seem like a major environmental issue to you? Are
| they leaving those buoys as trash there? I'm not sure I
| understand the concern.
| is_true wrote:
| Plastics are releasing "trash" all the time. And yes, they
| lose some buoys every year. The upside is that people don't
| try to steal the plastic buoys but they sometimes steal the
| stainless steel mounts
|
| I don't think is a big concern but it's funny considering
| they are scrutinizing what other organizations are releasing
| to the river
| justinclift wrote:
| Sounds like they're pointing out the double standard.
| etrautmann wrote:
| sure but it'd be penny-wise, pound foolish to hamper
| environmental research by eliminating the use of plastic
| components in research equipment. A few pieces of research
| equipment that are nominally retrieved are not going to be
| a major source of contamination no matter how you slice it.
| Dealing with environmental release of plastics is a major
| concern, but absolutism in this weird and focused domain
| accomplishes nothing useful and serves as a distraction
| from real solutions.
| csomar wrote:
| They'll eventually end up as trash even if the team properly
| get rid of them. That and they can produce some micro plastic
| pollution too even if they are being recycled.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Why would they end up as trash? Buoys are desirable,
| somebody would take them.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The supply chain favors new bouys. It's logistically
| simpler and more profitable.
|
| There is a surplus of all kinds of bouys, you can often
| see them repurposes for other uses in seaside towns but
| many just get dumped.
| Qem wrote:
| I think this counts against the Silurian Hypothesis. If a
| previous technical civilization existed on earth millions of
| years ago, by now we would have already found its plastic rocks.
| Those appears ours.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
| elevaet wrote:
| I think the silurian hypothesis still holds. It's unlikely that
| these plastic rocks would remain in their current form for the
| next x million years.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Or they never used oil. Or better managed their use, with no
| waste of the form.
|
| Not to say I believe a iota in such an hypothesis though.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| On a long enough timescale, any trace of a precursor
| civilization would be taken into the earth's crust through
| tectonic shifts; still curious to think about though.
|
| Closer to today would be Atlantis, if it was an island then it
| might still be somewhere under the sea / sediment.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Well, maybe. To name one example, the Canadian Shield, though
| heavily eroded, has never been subducted. You can still find
| exposed Precambian rock there. To name another, the Burgess
| Shale (also in Canada) contains fossils of some of the
| earliest known complex organisms.
| RickHull wrote:
| Terrifying, really? Terraforming, maybe, but it seems a little
| hysterical to react with terror to this phenomenon.
| jibe wrote:
| Does this article deserve some skepticism? Will fishing nets
| really melt like that? It looks like they took some oven waste
| and put it in the oven. If plastics were melting like this in
| nature, wouldn't we have seen a lot of it, all over the warm
| parts of the planet, by now?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I think you missed the part where the island is an active
| volcano.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Last vulcanic activity on the islands was 50.000 years ago.
| [deleted]
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I agree on the skepticism. The article says that these fishing
| nets just melted on the beach from high temperature, but there
| is no beach on earth that I've heard of where temperatures are
| hot enough to melt plastic. 56degC is the world record
| temperature, not hot enough.
|
| The origin of these melted plastic blobs are what's
| interesting. People here treat the discovery as some kind of
| warning against pollution, but it's an oddity: something that
| has been found in only one place.
| Strom wrote:
| > _56degC is the world record temperature, not hot enough._
|
| That sounds like air temperature. Surface temperature gets
| way hotter. It's well known you can cook an egg on desert
| sand.
| nylon_panda wrote:
| the effect of having plastic merged with rocks is unknown, its
| bewildering to see comments romanticizing it, akin to those
| staring in awe of the green sky during chernobyl
| WUMBOWUMBO wrote:
| took the words right from my brain
| CTmystery wrote:
| I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the "this is fine" comments
| here, but I am. Geological changes happen in geological time
| (outside of massive disruptive events). This change happened in
| 100 years. Also, comparing this to clay pots is simply not
| understanding the scale of modern production and waste. It's like
| saying a forest fire doesn't pose any problem to my house because
| I lit a match one time.
| kypro wrote:
| I guess I neither feel that "this is fine" or "this is
| terrifying".
|
| The truth is we ultimately don't know what the consequences
| will be. To your analogy, this really could be more of a match
| than a forest fire. We just don't know.
|
| I'm not trying to be dismissive though... It's concerning for
| sure, but I don't think we know enough to be terrified.
| Although, I'm happy to be corrected.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I almost get that, but the more I think about it the more
| unreasonable it sounds.
|
| If I put 1 bullet in a revolver and spun the chamber, would I
| feel afraid to pull the trigger with the gun to my head? I
| wouldn't really know that I was in danger, just that there
| was a chance... Yet I would be afraid, and really should be.
|
| Maybe the difference is that other people wouldn't put the
| risk of ruin at 1/6. Or perhaps it's just the "black swan
| effect" (the human tendency to treat improbable events as
| impossible).
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| But it's not so sudden.
|
| Say we have the same revolver with a single bullet. But
| this bullet doesn't kill. If you pull the trigger and the
| bullet fires, everyone's life may or may not be negatively
| impacted by an unknown degree sometime in the coming
| decades.
|
| I may feel hesitation, but I would not feel fear.
|
| It's not because it's a rare event, it's because it's a
| slow, "invisible", and uncertain event.
| code51 wrote:
| Aside from fire hazard probability, are there any studies done
| about whether plastics fused with rocks (cement) could be a good
| material for building houses that are resistant to earthquakes?
| (Not discarding the use of steel)
| hollander wrote:
| If concrete mixed with plastics is a good idea, then it should
| be done in a controlled environment (factory), not taken from
| the sea. I don't see what this has to do with earthquake
| resistant building. If you want some "flex" in building
| materials, we already have steel. If plastic can replace steel,
| or can replace it partly, that would be great. Mixing plastic
| with concrete is environmentally a bad idea in the long run.
| How are you going to undo that mix later?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's quite a few instances where they take plastic and
| incorporate it into bricks, cement or ground cover, e.g.
| https://phys.org/news/2022-03-trash-kenyan-inventor-plastic-...
| if you don't mind videos, Business Insider has a decent series
| on subjects like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmur3Z0Afau7p-Au2E1uY...
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