Killing off flying

Think that's bad? Check this. I have gotten off the boat in the middle of the Pacific and played Jesus Christ and walked on water.

I have made the comparison before between the US and Indonesia being basically twins raised by different parents, the difference is in 1972 we passed laws and seriously started a cultural education program of conservation. That never happened in SE Asia or China. Singapore is an exception, and they have WAY harsher laws than ours. Littering in Singapore doesn't got you a fine and ticket, it gets you a fine and a caning, and they seriously strip the flesh off your bare ass.
 
Henning said:
Think that's bad? Check this. I have gotten off the boat in the middle of the Pacific and played Jesus Christ and walked on water.

I have made the comparison before between the US and Indonesia being basically twins raised by different parents, the difference is in 1972 we passed laws and seriously started a cultural education program of conservation. That never happened in SE Asia or China. Singapore is an exception, and they have WAY harsher laws than ours. Littering in Singapore doesn't got you a fine and ticket, it gets you a fine and a caning, and they seriously strip the flesh off your bare ass.
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I have to tell you though, when I was in Singapore they stripped the raw skin off my wallet every time I wanted a beer, something to eat or even to take a ****.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I have to tell you though, when I was in Singapore they stripped the raw skin off my wallet every time I wanted a beer, something to eat or even to take a ****.
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Ain't that the truth, damn, $14 for a beer? Luckily I was on the company card.
 
Henning said:
http://www.midwayfilm.com/
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Very sad and dramatic. But impossible to determine the scope of the problem from something like that. Decayed Albatross corpses without plastic debris may not have made it to the film; the skeptic in me always wants to find formal studies, if any.

Google Scholar search yielded only a few hits for me using the word albatross and midway as keywords. Most were studies done over ten years ago; such as these:

http://www.jwildlifedis.org/content/26/3/329.full.pdf
http://www.cosee-west.org/files/cos...y Laysan Albatross chicks on Midway Atoll.pdf

These seem to indicate that plastic ingestion is possibly a problem, though not as bad as researchers expected. Actual contribution to increased mortality is not clear.

A 2007 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't list any studies later than about 1997 regarding plastic ingestion:
http://www.fws.gov/pacific/migratorybirds/PDF/Albatross Action Plan ver.1.0.pdf

News reports and Wikipedia makes some claims (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll), but none reference the origin of their numbers.
 
It sometimes amazes me for how smart people can be, how really stupid we are. You wouls think with what we know about pollution every country in the world would make minimizing the adverse effects of our modern society on the rest of the world's inhabitants. It goes to show you how truly selfish modern society really is. The US may do the environmental stuff better than others, but I still think we can do better.

Doug
 
They don't call them dodo birds for nothing. :rofl:

:redface:


Kidding, this sucks. When I was on Midway 40 years ago none of that was there.
 
Geico266 said:
They don't call them dodo birds for nothing. :rofl:

:redface:


Kidding, this sucks. When I was on Midway 40 years ago none of that was there.
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Uhhh, they call them Gooney Birds, Dodos we already drove to extinction a century ago.
 
I liked the Charlton Heston version better.
 
douglas393 said:
It sometimes amazes me for how smart people can be, how really stupid we are. You wouls think with what we know about pollution every country in the world would make minimizing the adverse effects of our modern society on the rest of the world's inhabitants. It goes to show you how truly selfish modern society really is. The US may do the environmental stuff better than others, but I still think we can do better.

Doug
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I think Germany has it down pat. Probably the cleanest nation I've ever been to.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I have to tell you though, when I was in Singapore they stripped the raw skin off my wallet every time I wanted a beer, something to eat or even to take a ****.
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Henning said:
Ain't that the truth, damn, $14 for a beer? Luckily I was on the company card.
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There twice this year. And, yes, the beer is very expensive.
 
Henning said:
Nothing natural about plastic polluting the entire planet, we are a plague upon Earth.
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We may be a plague, no argument there, but just like the plague, we are natural and therefore, the results of our existence is natural, just like the plague. The Earth will survive and thrive for billions of years more. Us? I'm not so sure. Like plagues do, we might just die out and go away.

It is what it is and here we are. The world is changing, as it always does, but the only difference is, we are now even more in number and we are becoming ever more inventive. The more we try to fix things and progress, the more the world changes.

I like your plague analogy, we are like the plague. We will continue to grow and expand until we run out of food, or until the environment we live in changes to the point where we can't survive, or we adapt to the new world as it has become.
 
The sad thing in my mind is how some folks would like to go back to the "good old days" here in America. Generally, the argument revolves around economic competitiveness and how we trail some developing countries. Having flown to some of these economic powerhouses, I can tell you my layman's view. They are more than willing to turn their own countries into a sewer to make a buck. Nobody seems to have learned from our experience and gone clean from the start.
 
Dav8or said:
I like your plague analogy, we are like the plague. We will continue to grow and expand until we run out of food, or until the environment we live in changes to the point where we can't survive, or we adapt to the new world as it has become.
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As I understand it, in ecology theory, humans are considered K-strategists.
Bacterial plagues would be considered r-strategists.

One group is characterized (in part) by fast reproduction, short lifetimes, and a population that grows very quickly to the limit of local resources, at which point the population quickly crashes. This pattern is due to overuse of the resources and a reproduction rate generally independent of external controls.

The other group is characterized (in part) by slower reproduction, longer lifetimes and smaller number of offspring, and on reaching the limit of local resources the population stabilizes. This pattern is sometimes due to behavioral changes made by that group on their reproductive and mating patterns.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
The sad thing in my mind is how some folks would like to go back to the "good old days" here in America. Generally, the argument revolves around economic competitiveness and how we trail some developing countries. Having flown to some of these economic powerhouses, I can tell you my layman's view. They are more than willing to turn their own countries into a sewer to make a buck. Nobody seems to have learned from our experience and gone clean from the start.
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What we sometimes forget is being "Green" is a luxury of wealth. When you have no wealth clean and green is secondary to basic survival.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
The sad thing in my mind is how some folks would like to go back to the "good old days" here in America. Generally, the argument revolves around economic competitiveness and how we trail some developing countries. Having flown to some of these economic powerhouses, I can tell you my layman's view. They are more than willing to turn their own countries into a sewer to make a buck. Nobody seems to have learned from our experience and gone clean from the start.
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You have to remember, the industry that creates the polution is international. They moved over there when we passed the laws here. It's because we worship money above all else.
 
LDJones said:
What we sometimes forget is being "Green" is a luxury of wealth. When you have no wealth clean and green is secondary to basic survival.
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There is nothing to 'basic survival' about it. The plastic problem is purely one of education and laziness just drop garbage wherever instead of trash, putting land fill trash piles next to ocean and don't do any cover work on it so every time there's a storm 10,000 cubic meters of plastic bags and bottles blow into the ocean. Indonesia is NOT poor, Indonesia is very wealthy, it just all stays in the hands of industry and the leadership, no welfare, food stamps, or public health costs for them, They get to keep it all. China is a huge gross polluter, they are wealthier than we are, heck, they hold the mortgage on most of our debt. It's just greed, stupidity and laziness.
 
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I just don't think we recycle well enough. In Germany, the plastic and glass bottles are thick and durable. This is because they are recycled and reused without destroying them. They just sanitize the crap out of them and put them back out there. I believe in the U.S. we just take all the plastics and destroy them to manufacture a completely new product which is an enormous waste of energy and resources.

Imagine your Deer Park bottle of water. It's made of thin, flimsy plastic. You squish it when you're finished. Now you can't reuse it and it has to be destroyed to ultimately create a new one. In Germany, you can't squish your Deer Park bottle because it's hard as a rock. You can't destroy it, so it's cleansed and sent back out. There's an incentive to bring it back, anyway, because you pay a deposit on the bottles.

We also have a lot of trash because people just don't think. They give everyone a plastic bag regardless of what you bought. I don't need a plastic bag for a candy bar, bottle of asprin or even a six pack of beer. The beer has a handle for me to carry it! That's a bad example, but you get the idea.
 
The flimsy bottles are done in recognition that they are just going to be thrown out. There has been a substantial move to decrease the amount of plastic (and cost) in making such disposable bottles.

Even in aggressive recycling ares and places with bottle deposits, getting the empties out of the trash stream isn't very high in compliance.

When I was growing up water, soda, milk, etc... all came in bottles that you gave back to whoever supplied them. Coke you'd get your 2 cents back, the water and milk men wouldn't deliver your new stuff if you didn't return the empties.
 
flyingron said:
When I was growing up water, soda, milk, etc... all came in bottles that you gave back to whoever supplied them. Coke you'd get your 2 cents back, the water and milk men wouldn't deliver your new stuff if you didn't return the empties.
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That's not a bad strategy!
 
Glass bottles were much better than plastic for recycling and reuse, but the problem with that is that recycling and reuse don't consume therefor don't make an additional profit. Our culture's economy relies on waste.
 
flyingron said:
When I was growing up water, soda, milk, etc... all came in bottles that you gave back to whoever supplied them. Coke you'd get your 2 cents back, the water and milk men wouldn't deliver your new stuff if you didn't return the empties.
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I remember those days. Oh, that was a long time ago.
 
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