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Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

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Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#301

Post by Grimburger »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #250
Grimburger wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If tire wear is proportional to road wear It's not though, rendering the point moot. They are two vastly different materials with different models of wear. A quick thought experiment would make this very apparent: Do trucks need to replace tires at magnitudes less distance travelled than cars? Do cars tires last 100x longer than motorbike tires?

Your thought experiment incorrectly assumes trucks, cars, and motorbikes have the same number and size of tires. Trucks have more, larger tires to allow for more wear between replacements.

Is it the magnitudes more though rather than 8x or 2x?

I've seen it often said that a fully loaded truck is equivalent to 1,000 cars wrt road wear.

Even accounting for tyre numbers and thickness/sizes, it doesn't add up.

> Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#302

Post by ornornor »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #297
ornornor wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, soy for animal feed is grown far far away.

You don't feed livestock soy, it's too expensive. The animal feed that contains soy is made from the stuff that humans can't eat - roughly 80% of the plant mass of soy is simply inedible by humans. If you've got a clever trick for using this without running it through a cow, you'll be rich. Otherwise, what are you going to do with it? Pile it up and let it rot, releasing even more carbon dioxide and methane?

These two pages, the kurzgesagt video linked above, and virtually every source I came across before all say cow feed uses corn, maize, soy. Not the human inedible parts but the actual cereals/beans: https://vetmedicinebd.com/list-of-cattle-feed-ingredients/ and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding.

You won’t do me once me that feeding cows food humans could eat is a good thing, or that raising meat isn’t an environmental train wreck, or that processing grain through cows to then eat them is more efficient than eating the grain ourselves without a cow in between.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#303

Post by ornornor »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #274
franga2000 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains

So you have to build railway lines everywhere. What's the ecological impact of all that? Where's all the concrete for all the bridges going to come from?

Everything has an impact. Rail has a lesser environmental impact than roads and cars.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#304

Post by tekknik »

franga2000 wrote: post #190
gruez wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce I agree with internalizing externalities, but let's not pretend that isn't part of individual behavior (consumer demand drives industry), or that individuals don't benefit from them in some way.

The fact that people benefit from something is not enough to assign any blame to them. Even if alternatives exist (they often don't), if they require a significant trade-off, blame is minimal. Even when it comes to buying products it's a tough sell - I know my phone battery is made with slave labor, but it's not like I can choose to buy the one that isn't. So when it comes to industry, we share exactly 0% of the blam…

> I know my phone battery is made with slave labor, but it's not like I can choose to buy the one that isn't.

But you can choose to go without the phone that requires the battery. Now I know the canned response is “it’s not practical these days to not have a smart phone”, but going without one will not kill you. If the only phone available killed one person for every phone sold would you still demand to have one?

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#305

Post by tekknik »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #170
gruez wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce I agree with internalizing externalities, but let's not pretend that isn't part of individual behavior (consumer demand drives industry), or that individuals don't benefit from them in some way.

> consumer demand drives industry And industry lobby drives government policy and regulation. Industry apologism will not help us move towards mitigating climate crisis effects. Industry has externalized most of their environmental costs, this needs to change ASAP.

What is your solution for bulk transport, last mile, etc?

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#306

Post by tekknik »

Tade0 wrote: post #229
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't well-optimized. It's certainly more optimized, but anything outside a major city is optimized for cars first and foremost. Anything below the size of Eindhoven included. The stats reflect this (car usage is still going up / barely going down, car size increasing) and it is easily explained given how far people are expected to live away from work without paying a small fortune in rent. On top of that, infrast…

> and it is easily explained given how far people are expected to live away from work without paying a small fortune in rent. My country (Poland) has been de -urbanizing since the turn of the century for this exact reason. People can't afford housing in city centres, so they buy properties in the suburbs and opt to drive everywhere instead. The first generation that did this is currently nearing retirement and they'l…

As an American who grew up in the country and gets anxiety in bit cities, this seems insane to me. You’re essentially forcing people to cram together in city centers and think this is a good thing?

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#307

Post by tekknik »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #291
biztos wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the rice mostly grown in Northern California, which is definitely not a desert and AFAIK was not a swamp?

Is there some reason that would continue to be true if Southern California[1] was replaced with swamps? [1] You're using "Northern California" and "Southern California" differently from everyone else; in normal use, Northern California is the Bay Area, not the north of the state.

> You're using "Northern California" and "Southern California" differently from everyone else; in normal use, Northern California is the Bay Area, not the north of the state.

No, norcal is north of LA, not just the bay area. I’ve never heard of anybody referring to the bay area as norcal, it’s always “bay area”

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#308

Post by thaumasiotes »

tekknik wrote: post #307
thaumasiotes wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some reason that would continue to be true if Southern California[1] was replaced with swamps? [1] You're using "Northern California" and "Southern California" differently from everyone else; in normal use, Northern California is the Bay Area, not the north of the state.

> You're using "Northern California" and "Southern California" differently from everyone else; in normal use, Northern California is the Bay Area, not the north of the state. No, norcal is north of LA, not just the bay area. I’ve never heard of anybody referring to the bay area as norcal, it’s always “bay area”

I mean, I assume there's a vaguely-defined line between San Francisco and Los Angeles that notionally separates the north from the south. It doesn't make any more sense to say Southern California is nothing but LA than it does to say Northern California is nothing but the Bay Area.

But my point is that the region to the north of, say, Berkeley, is not part of "Northern California". It's too far north for that.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#309

Post by tekknik »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #284
bbzealot wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I distinctly remember when Teslas became popular, the reaction from environmental types was often frustration because apparently environmentalism is supposed to be about sacrifice and yet Tesla is allowing the unwashed masses to help save the planet. Honesty this is hard to believe, do you have any source/example to back it up?

Yeah, I'm thinking that such people, if they exist at all, are heavily outnumbered by the people saying * Not actually physically possible * Its just coal powered * It's worse for the environment because batteries die after 3 years * Rare earths!! * Subsidized foolishness * Toys for rich people * Communism And weirdly those people all get paid to write op-eds in right wing tabloids.

What are you even saying here?

> And weirdly those people all get paid to write op-eds in right wing tabloids.

Oh, spreading hate. Got it.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#310

Post by tekknik »

paul_f wrote: post #244
airstrike wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%

As an example of this, most trash on the side of roads comes from stuff falling off commercial trucks, sanitation trucks, work trucks. Not from people chunking junk out the window of their car. Yet all the guilt is placed on individuals.

I once got community service for reasons, and will have to disagree with this. Sanitation trucks are usually covered, commercial trucks are sealed and work trucks tend to not want their tools to fall off. Most of the trash we picked up were soda cups, cans, cigarette butts and empty cigarette packs (and in one case weed stashed in an empty cigarette pack). What gives you the idea that most of the trash is not from people throwing crap out of their cars?
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