was unreal. And the rules for "trash disposal" while at sea? Laughable. They could dump pretty much anything they wanted to after they were fifty miles out to sea.

If people are accusing you of being apocalyptic then Don Henry Ford must make them have apoplectic seizures!

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus

...The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal. ( http://gl-zephyr.blogspot.com/ ) It's a mess that is going to be very difficult to clean up.

However, I'd have to think that all that plastic might make a valuable commercial resource if someone could figure out a way to efficiently and inexpensively filter it out of seawater and bring it to market as raw feedstock. That might make it attractive to clean up - whereas just griping about it won't budge it, because it's such a large problem.

This stuff is literally being blown into the seas on the wind, not just dumped by ships and such. You could tighten up the shipping regulations for dumping all day long, and that might help, but it won't stop it. It needs to be worked from a regulatory perspective, AND an on-going clean-up perspective.

The is a multifaceted problem and knowledge and awareness of it is still relatively incomplete.

Regards,

Dan Stafford

Words are the mind's bridge - its connection to all the Universe.
Love is the heart's bridge - its connection to all other souls.
Loving words can work miracles.

Millions of litres of oil pouring into the Timor Sea from a ruptured well is causing an environmental disaster that will continue to unfold for years to come, campaigners say.

A fourth attempt was made on Friday to plug the West Atlas oil platform off Western Australia, amid claims the amount of spillage could be much higher than previously estimated.

PTTEP, the Thai based company that owns the rig, has thus far failed to stop the flow of sweet light crude oil, gas and condensate from the Montara wellhead, 250km northwest of the Truscott air base in Western Australia's Kimberley region.

PTTEP estimates the well is leaking 400 barrels of oil a day, but the Australian government said the maximum flow could be as much as 2,000 barrels a day.

"The simple fact is we don't know how much oil has been released into the environment," Rachel Siewert, a Greens senator, said.

"I've always been sceptical about the company's claim of 300-400 barrels, because they could never back it up."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/10/2009102442228460552.html

The giant plastic patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is an issue that the author believes needs to be addressed immediately. The article makes claims that the plastic pollution in the ocean is harmful to the organisms that live in the ocean and it is also disruptive to the environment. This mass is supposedly the size of “Great Britain,” so obliviously it is an issue of great concern. Apparently, the laws against dumping in the oceans are so minute that they basically don’t exist because they are so ineffective. Albatross chicks are dying by the thousands because they are ingesting the plastic and it is either causing them to choke to death, die from toxicity, and even die from starvation. The author even goes so far as to give a scenario about how if an archaeologist where to do a dig, there will be a “thin layer of plastic” in the soil because we have produced and polluted the Earth with an enormous amount of plastic. The article even mentions other factors that are working in combination with the plastic mass. This includes the increase of acidity due to CO2, drastic increases in ocean temperatures, and even the overfishing of the ocean. There is evidence that proves that this issue is a serious problem. The opinion column has a quotation from an oceanographer from Scuba Diving News, named Curtis Ebbesmyer who is a Ph.D. and an expert on debris in the ocean and their harm to the environment. He claims that the plastic problem is “choking” the Earth because the materials that claim to be “disposable” are seemingly “permanent.” There is also photographic evidence of the effects that plastic has on the albatross chicks. The reason that the author is adamant about this issue is because it obliviously is a problem and he strongly believes in this issue. The Earth is already feeling the effects of global warming, and the ocean can only take so much. The author wants you to believe that the ocean is being polluted at an alarming rate. His conclusion that he wants the reader to come to is to draw attention to the problem and get the proper people to figure out a solution to it before it is too late. The author provides valid and credible evidence that supports his argument about the plastic trash problem. The evidence is given from first hand testimonies from expert scientists that have studied these kinds of problems. I sincerely believe in the author’s argument that this issue should be addressed as soon as possible. I don’t understand how something so large of a problem could exist without someone doing something about it. It just seems to me that everyone would want to work together to fix this problem; especially now since everyone is more concerned about the environment with the “Go Green” movements and the new Energy Star qualified appliances and electronics. This swirling patch of plastic is a mess that is going to be very difficult to clean up, but that should not discourage people from trying to do so. One of the reviewers on the website named Dan Stafford had a great idea about how to solve the problem. He said that all of the plastic could possibly be a “valuable commercial resource” if someone was able to devise a system that would effectively filter out the plastic from the seawater. So after analyzing the argument that the author presented and reading the testimonies that the experts gave, I have come to the conclusion that the author has addressed a viable issue of concern. He had a clearly stated argument that was backed up by credible evidence and even an actual photograph to further show more evidence.