Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our biggest ever river catch?

theoceancleanup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 190 posts

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#161

Post by renewiltord »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #28
buovjaga wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still working on open oceans: https://theoceancleanup.com/oceans/

This river cleanup is brilliant and effective. Messing with the top meter of ocean water does its own kind of damage. So much of the life in the ocean surface layer is going to be involved with the floating trash, like it or not. Ocean surface sterilization seems incautious and worrisome. Never mind we don't like to see trash. Stripping the ocean surface water will have unforeseen consequences.

I'm calling for a moratorium on the river barricades until we can determine that it's not damaging to the environment. They were so occupied with whether they could they didn't stop to ask if they should. This is why they need to teach ethics in school next to engineering.

Messing with fragile systems like this is dangerous. Many studies show that blocking river flow causes the extinction of species. Until we can be sure that this is safe, we shouldn't do it.

We should first study it over a reasonable period of time (say 20 years) before doing anything like this. Humans think they can just modify the environment without consequences. That is the root of the issue. We need real change.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#162

Post by arrowsmith »

klysm wrote: post #87
aspectmin wrote: post #72

I LOVE this company. We need more of them. Innovative, Solving world problems. Aware of their impact. I am always encouraging people to donate. These are the kinds of projects that might save us. I wish YC, and it's kin, would fund companies like this.

Wouldn’t make sense for YC - where’s their return?

Living on a habitable planet seems like it would be a good return on anyone's investment.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#163

Post by usrusr »

xnx wrote: post #9

Credit to this organization from pivoting (AFAIK) from their original plan to scrape the plastic out of the water on the open ocean ("System 001"). Intercepting plastic at river mouths seems much more practical and cost effective.

Thanks for pointing that out, it never occurred to me that it might be the same organisation!

The open ocean approach had always been far out in terms of good intentions but unrealistic expectations in my eyes, but with this pivot it's actually awesome: the fancy idea as an accidental Trojan horse to get the reasonable but not quite as exciting idea off the ground.

In hindsight this could have been the one best possible path, I doubt that they would be where they are if they had started out with the effective but boring (compared to their exiting off-shore fantasies!). And neither would they be where they are if they deliberately started with the Trojan horse, knowing of its nature. The best salespersons are always those who honestly fail to understand why the buyer might prefer something different than what they are selling.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#165

Post by rmah »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #159
doubloon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is just adopting western ideas. Socialize the cost and privatize the profit. The western solution which is to make criminals of business people doesnt work well enough. Epa superfund sites go unfixed for decades. Governments should just print money and hire cleanup companies. Its like a massive jobs program for when AI takes normal jobs.

95% of all plastic from rivers comes from these 10, none are in the west: Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger. https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2017/11/06/jus...

Are those rivers, by any chance, the rivers along which most people live? Weird that.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#166

Post by rmah »

renewiltord wrote: post #161
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This river cleanup is brilliant and effective. Messing with the top meter of ocean water does its own kind of damage. So much of the life in the ocean surface layer is going to be involved with the floating trash, like it or not. Ocean surface sterilization seems incautious and worrisome. Never mind we don't like to see trash. Stripping the ocean surface water will have unforeseen consequences.

I'm calling for a moratorium on the river barricades until we can determine that it's not damaging to the environment. They were so occupied with whether they could they didn't stop to ask if they should. This is why they need to teach ethics in school next to engineering. Messing with fragile systems like this is dangerous. Many studies show that blocking river flow causes the extinction of species. Until we can be…

How do you know they didn't stop to ask if they should? And concluded after, detailed and deep study, that yes, they should. Perhaps they (or someone else) already did studies of the impact of blocking rivers partially or totally? Are you, perhaps, making assumptions about what they did without first stopping to think if you should make such assumptions?

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#167

Post by arrowsmith »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #147
stevage wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's certainly an unusual take

It's not a take, it's strictly true. Plastic pollution is bad, but it's different (and orders of magnitude more manageable) than the pollution that is causing climate change.

Plastic pollution is the pollution that is causing climate change. The process of producing plastic emits huge amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that's nearly 300x more potent than CO2.

"Greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic lifecycle threaten the ability of the global community to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C. By 2050, the greenhouse gas emissions from plastic could reach over 56 gigatons—10-13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget. "

- https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Plastic-and-...

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#168

Post by arrowsmith »

missedthecue wrote: post #81
stevage wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean it is a carbon sink? Extracting oil from underground then turning it into plastic above ground? Or do you mean something different?

Basically yes. Petroleum burned produces CO2. Petroleum plasticized does not. The more market share that plastic packaging eats up, the lower emissions are.

Not true. Plastic has a huge carbon footprint because huge amounts of greenhouse gases, in particular nitrous oxide, are emitted by the process of manufacturing it.

(Source: Saul Griffith's excellent book Electrify, which cites this report: https://www.ciel.org/plasticandclimate/)

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#169

Post by bart_spoon »

rmah wrote: post #165
NicoJuicy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of all plastic from rivers comes from these 10, none are in the west: Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger. https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2017/11/06/jus...

Are those rivers, by any chance, the rivers along which most people live? Weird that.

Do 95% of the world's river-adjacent population live along those rivers? That's the question to be asking.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#170

Post by denton-scratch »

etiennebausson wrote: post #100
denton-scratch wrote: post #98

I got a choice of "Settings" and "Accept all cookies". I closed the tab.

The choices in settings were "Required" and "Optimal", with optimal being added tracking and adtech. Not sure if or why a NGO would need either of those.

In the EU, opting out must be as easy as opting in. Apparently "The Ocean Cleanup" is based in the Netherlands, which is in the EU. So they're breaking the law.

In fact, I found opting out to be as easy as it would have been to click "Accept"; but that prevented me reading the article.

Post reply on HN