I thought this article was going to be about all the satellites and used rocket parts we dump in the ocean all the time, which is a problem that doesn't have a great solution other than launching cargo ships like Starship to retrieve old spacecraft for recycling.
Monitoring marine litter from space
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now in the UN, or at the next climate conference, people can actually say: "Look, Vietnam, you are somehow responsible for 12.2% of the marine plastic in the ocean, with only 1.23% of the world population. We are making this trade agreement or that international investment conditional on that number improving by 2028." Before, there was simply no way of monitoring these things. I had to invent that number. That is a…
> Using a six-year historical series of 300 000 satellite images, the team scanned the entire Mediterranean Sea every three days, at a spatial resolution of 10 metres, on the hunt for windrows. Indeed, but I'd assume it's also a long way to go from doing it for a small section of the world to doing it everywhere and with multiple countries participating.
The Sentinel-2 mission is doing that [0]:
> Systematic global coverage of land surfaces from 56° S to 84° N, coastal waters, and all of the Mediterranean Sea
The constellation is not complete yet though. Sentinel-2C is planned to launch in September [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel-2 [1] https://www.satnow.com/launch-mission-details/sentinel-2c
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#23What’s the use of tracking waste if no efforts will be done to stop its production? Cleanups are nice and all but you gotta stop the bleeding where it starts. Maybe I’m being too cynical?
You stop production by showing it's harmfulness.
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#24One thing I find interesting is how much more traction the problem of litter in the ocean has gained, compared to litter everywhere else, or any number of the other problems we have.
I wonder why this is. Perhaps people can still see the ocean as a wilderness, where litter doesn't belong, whereas we are very used to seeing highways etc lined with rubbish?
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#25At some point I wonder if its going to be viable to harvest ocean plastic, and use it to produce energy .. and every time I see one of my favourite remote-beach Youtubers climb over piles of plastic rubble on some remote tropical island, I can't help get the feeling that there has to be some kind of way to make a portable, self-replicating 3D printer that can go out there and just reproduce itself. But I guess the ch…
"At some point I wonder if its going to be viable to harvest ocean plastic" I hope not. You can harvest landfills much cheaper today. If that becomes more expensive than taking plastic from the ocean, then the oceans would be really full of plastic.
The ocean is a major source of energy which could be used to power the thing.
And I'd prioritize ocean cleanup over landfill, first of all. I mean, maybe we use the ocean to construct the fleet, and then when its nice and clean, send the fleet to land ..
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#26One thing I find interesting is how much more traction the problem of litter in the ocean has gained, compared to litter everywhere else, or any number of the other problems we have. I wonder why this is. Perhaps people can still see the ocean as a wilderness, where litter doesn't belong, whereas we are very used to seeing highways etc lined with rubbish?
It goes something like "not my fault, let's focus on others' problems not mine." You don't throw trash into the ocean so you feel like the real issue comes from something you are not knowingly contributing to with your hand.
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#27At some point I wonder if its going to be viable to harvest ocean plastic, and use it to produce energy .. and every time I see one of my favourite remote-beach Youtubers climb over piles of plastic rubble on some remote tropical island, I can't help get the feeling that there has to be some kind of way to make a portable, self-replicating 3D printer that can go out there and just reproduce itself. But I guess the ch…
"portable, self-replicating 3D printer" you mean bacteria? I am sure someone is working on plastic eating bacteria but it might not be a great idea to have it loose in the world.
I'd prefer it had an off switch and an API entirely subservient to our needs, rather than DNA.
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#28One thing I find interesting is how much more traction the problem of litter in the ocean has gained, compared to litter everywhere else, or any number of the other problems we have. I wonder why this is. Perhaps people can still see the ocean as a wilderness, where litter doesn't belong, whereas we are very used to seeing highways etc lined with rubbish?
The thing is most pollution and changes in the ocean are not visible right away, while hiking or on land in general I directly see consequences of littering and environmental impact and its possible to act upon (littering on highways)
in the oceans on the other hand a lot of environmental impact is just not visible, thus it needs to be made visible, I see a nice beach... I don't see particles floating just under the surface, I don't see the destroyed eco systems by trawling, I don't see "death zones" where there is no marine live...
so this is a good step into direction making these things visible
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#29One thing I find interesting is how much more traction the problem of litter in the ocean has gained, compared to litter everywhere else, or any number of the other problems we have. I wonder why this is. Perhaps people can still see the ocean as a wilderness, where litter doesn't belong, whereas we are very used to seeing highways etc lined with rubbish?
What you are seeing is a ratio of awareness and ease of solving the problem.
It’s a lot easier to stop throwing crap into the ocean than it is to replace a century of sunk cost in carbon emitting energy technology. We are plenty aware of climate change but almost don’t even want to face that challenge.
Re: Monitoring marine litter from space
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
"At some point I wonder if its going to be viable to harvest ocean plastic" I hope not. You can harvest landfills much cheaper today. If that becomes more expensive than taking plastic from the ocean, then the oceans would be really full of plastic.
The ocean is a major source of energy which could be used to power the thing. And I'd prioritize ocean cleanup over landfill, first of all. I mean, maybe we use the ocean to construct the fleet, and then when its nice and clean, send the fleet to land ..
You might want to learn something about engineering first. And run some numbers.
And read about them, who tried something way less ambitioned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Cleanup
And still were not that effective.