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Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#31

Post by nurumaik »

alehul wrote: post #21
erikig wrote: post #11

Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).

While I understand the comparison you're trying to make, I'm not sure weight is the best estimation here. A whale can be heavier without being larger . While the whale may weigh 1000x more, it appears to be only around 10x as big (sperm whales are 40 feet long, and somewhat wider than humans). If you take a look at the picture in the article, and analyze what it had ingested: "115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles,…

Shouldn't we compare by volume, not length?

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#32

Post by MichaelApproved »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

82% of people who quote statistics get them wrong.

From your article:

> A recent study estimates that more than a quarter of all that waste could be pouring in from just 10 rivers, eight of them in Asia.

The 93% stat relates to just rivers as a source of plastic pollution.

> rivers collectively dump anywhere from 0.47 million to 2.75 million metric tons of plastic into the seas every year, depending on the data used in the models. The 10 rivers that carry 93 percent of that trash are the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus and Ganges Delta in Asia, and the Niger and Nile in Africa.

Still bad but much less than the original stat.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#33

Post by ajmurmann »

admn2 wrote: post #29
ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

Feels like such a helpless situation. Is there anything to be done in the US to help with these rivers?

Polluting the planet for everyone should be the main reason for punitive international measures (sanctions, etc)

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#34

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

So, can we filter at a point before they spread into their deltas? I’m guessing this is an incredibly complex task.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#35

Post by im_down_w_otp »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

That's nuts. Also, that seems ripe for a meaningful stop gap solution which addresses at least part of the problem through collectors at the river deltas.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#36

Post by sctb »

jweir wrote: post #27
PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally we measure how lethal something is by using an LD 50 that looks at mass of chemical per mass of body. There are exceptions to this, but as a first assumption it seems reasonable.

You are a moron. If you cut open your stomach and found a measurable amount of plastic you would known something was terribly wrong with your environment. You shouldn't have plastic in your stomach.

It's not OK to call names like that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#37

Post by rerx »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

> 93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers.

This statements contradicts your article, which states: "A recent study estimates that more than a quarter of all that waste could be pouring in from just 10 rivers, eight of them in Asia." Your 10 listed rivers contribute 93% of the plastic waste brought into the ocean _by rivers_.

Also see this breakdown by country: https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...

Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam each bring more marine plastic waste into the ocean than Egypt, but there is not a single river carrying it like the Nile.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#38

Post by Gorgor »

erikig wrote: post #11

Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).

Beside what others are saying, this whale does not look like a big sperm whale. According to Wikipedia [1], a 20-meter animal weighs up to 60 tons. This one looks closer to 10 meters and probably weighs less than 15 tons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale#External_appearanc...

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#39

Post by gedy »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

This elicits an emotional response from my acquaintances, but this gets to the main objection I have about feel-good measures like banning plastic straws. I understand the "everything helps" argument, but not when people and the media pour their energy and emotions into statistically meaningless measures then move on. I've been hearing the same concerns my entire life, yet things keep getting worse in statistically meaningful ways.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#40

Post by PavlovsCat »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #9
ryanmercer wrote: post #2

We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me,…

I say all of this as a thought experiment. But: > Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. I mean, if we're making mental jumps to wiping out billions of people - I'd argue that, does it even matter? Ie, in your example human life largely doesn't matter. Human survival maybe, but clearly not billions of lives. I'm not saying this negatively either, just acknowledging what topic…

In the movie Dr. Strangelove the president was very upset by the idea of choosing who lives and who dies, which is when Dr. Strangelove brightly exlaims "that could easily be done by a computer".

Decades later, Deep Impact doesn't bother with the qualms, and just has the president solemnly proclaim on TV that a computer will randomly select people, on top of a fixed pool of "VIP", and the people watching TV are all just... sad, and hope they get picked. Not one person goes "What? What did he just say?".

This "meme", that a catastrophy destroys all but a selection, is as old as the Bible, i.e. of Noah as well as the Book of Revelations. Flood myths in general are fascinating, some even have "the bad guys" surviving the flood they themselves caused.

edit: I tried to find the "bad guys surviving the flood" one, I'm 99% sure it was on here http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

But I couldn't easily find it again, it's such a giant page. I think it involved lying to the gods about who caused the flood (or other issue), who then punish the wrong guys, while the actually guilty people survive. Could have been about two island peoples, one good one bad, but I'm not sure, it's been quite a while since I read that page.

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