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The Ocean is Broken

theherald.com.au

1–10 of 47 posts

Re: The Ocean is Broken

#4
post #3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579760

Noticed right after I posted. Gave it an upvote

Cool. Suggest we delete the submission and this discussion, although if you don't, it doesn't matter. I'm just a bit obsessive about tidiness. Born from working on the C2 wiki, I guess.

Edit: Although I see now that this submission has a few upvotes, so maybe we'd better not delete it.

Re: The Ocean is Broken

#8
It's really really sad, and no less ironic, that in the midst of this government shutdown, particularly with the zealotry from the tea party about the evils of government, that a problem which so obviously needs addressing, and should naturally and probably only can be solved by governments, goes unaddressed like this. Surely we must all be able to agree on this. What is government for at all, if not to harness our collective will to solve problems that economics deem impossible to solve by individuals?

Re: The Ocean is Broken

#9
I saw some people comment on a thread similar to this yesterday called, "Sailor says pacific is lifeless form Japan onwards for 3k Miles". I am guessing it is the same gentleman in this article and this is the full article. Some comments there were skeptical and suggested they had been at sea and hadn't caught anything or had not "seen any whales or dolphins". Let me say that there are countless counter arguments but try to view it from another angle. Lets say you are a developer and you do that most of your life day in and day out for years and years - just as this man sails the seas. After years you will have certain observations that will be a culmination of your experience and accumulated knowledge for doing that job for many years... And perhaps young developers will not understand it or will question how you came to such a conclusion, although it is evident to you and experienced peers like yourself. You can't put it into a white paper because of several reason's like time, money, and test conducting. This is like that, its experience and years of wisdom that are talking. Maybe a state will fund a study which will cost 10 million bucks and 5 years to do statistical fish and trash sampling to confirm it later on but without doing such things in the immediate term such a keen observation has and should have the weight and impact it deserves, by that I mean not being brushed off as there is not data and " I didn't see fish either", its deeper than that and the approach should be constructing rather than deconstructing.

Re: The Ocean is Broken

#10
post #7

This is extremely unsettling and sad. The question is, is there anything we can do both on micro and macro level?

I would guess on a micro level the best thing you can do is recycle, reducing the amount of refuse that ends up in landfills and often times out at sea. A lot of it from coastal areas ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it's not like storing it on land is awesome either.

The problem really is that even decently sized macro action can be largely negated by economic freeriders. Unless some body like the UN or US sets out to enforce universal cooperation with agreements on pollution, or fishing, whole states that don't follow the regulations will continue to take advantage. Witness the failed Kyoto Protocol, which had 191/192 nations in agreement, but the very worst polluters (read: the US) who refused to be party to it.

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