[ExI] sticks and things: was: RE: diets

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] sticks and things: was: RE: diets

...
>>... Billw, there ya go, thou unbeliever.  Stayed right on topic.
>
> spike
> _______________________________________________


>...To change the subject,  ;)  you generally can't see the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch. The ship might have sailed right through it...

Owww, damn that is disappointing in a way.  When I first heard of it, I
imagined a literal bunch of floating trash out there.  Imagine going out
there, finding the edge, then having a race of some kind, using any
technology or device the competitors want, to get across it, kind of like
the first car race across the US.

>...The horrifying photos of piles of plastic rubbish are from beaches and
harbours...

Ja I take scouts out regularly to clean up beaches.  Most of what we get is
bits of plastic.  We get many bags of plastic bits.

>...A lot of the plastic sinks down to cover the seafloor.., ....BillK

I heard that too, but it didn't make a lotta sense being as polyethylene
(and most other plastic) is buoyant.  It did give me an idea however.

You have seen barnacles on piers and such.  Those have shells of calcium
carbonate which is obviously more dense than water (about 2.7 g/cm3 (I have
helped scrape the bottom of a boat (they sink if you break them loose from
the hull.)))  Polyethylene has a density generally between about .95 g/cm3,
but if barnacles stick to them and devour plankton they grow and add to
their calcium carbonate shells.

Eventually the polyethylene bottle becomes brittle from the sun exposure and
breaks down, so the remaining poly is insufficient to keep the barnacle
afloat, so the bit of debris and (cursed) barnacle sink the bottom of the
sea where they damn well belong.  Both polyethylene and barnacles contain
carbon (polyethylene is 85% carbon) so each barnacle which sinks a bit of
trash sequesters carbon which would otherwise contribute to global warming.

In that sense, plastic bottles don't pollute the seas, they save the planet.

This is a good thing, but on the other hand, we don't get to have the epic
trans-trash pile race, which sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

spike
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