New Manmade Islands… Made From Garbage?
A discovery found more than 12 years ago has no become an even bigger discovery. A garbage cluster found in the Pacific Ocean has now doubled in size. Scientists say this isn't the only one like it though, they say there is one off of Japan and another in the Saragasso Sea. There are most likely many other "garbage islands" that are of significant size. The garbage problem has been an issue for nearly 20 years. People rely on garbage mountains to hold the immense amounts of waste that the human race creates. It now seems that with the mountains running out of room, that there is no place to send all of the trash. There are not many alternative solutions to the garbage problem. People try to recycle, and it does wonders, but wonders is still not enough to clean up a whole planet of garbage, that takes a miracle, either that or an idea nothing short of genius.
A famous solution often portrayed in TV shows and movies is sending all the garbage into space on a rocket. This is a horrendous idea on many levels. For one, the garbage would then scatter all around the solar system when released, and that is a very typical human state of mind, thinking that we are more important than anything. If the garbage is spread around the universe, it could hit other planets and cause damage to them. It could also direct an asteroid towards Earth if humanity is that unlucky. If it was hurled into the sun, then that would destroy all the garbage, but the price of the rocket that would just be wasted would be incredibly high. No country on this garbage filled planet will want to fund a rocket which will just get destroyed at the end of its journey. A second reason this is a bad idea is the garbage could stick together, and then spin around for years, and when it has an insane amount of momentum, there is always a chance it could come right back at us. A smash of a solid object the size of all garbage on the planet put together would definitely obliterate Earth on impact. A third and final reason this is a bad idea is that if the human race found a way to do it like this, then humanity would learn absolutely no lesson at all and the exact same thing would happen again, except it would get worse as we kept shooting out rockets until eventually it was so bad that they had to fire 2 rockets, then 3, then 4, then keep going until no one could fund the journey and we would be stuck in what would almost be a garbage wasteland.
In the science article here, it talks about how the Leatherback Turtle is being threatened because of all of the garbage in the ocean. They are being pushed closer to extinction simply because of the lack of carefulness in humanity. All of the plastic and other waste in the ocean is starting to kill the animals off in strange and terrible ways. The most common is a wrapper around a six pack of cans, those things wrap around and constrict the animal's airway and then causes it to choke to death right then and there. This is horribly massacring the turtles at an astonishingly fast rate. Another common cause is the swallowing of various possible plastic objects. Scientists found that since 1968, over a third of the turtles that exist had ingested plastic in their lifetime. Something has to be done to save these turtles, or else they might go extinct quickly.
This article enticed me because it is interesting and even slightly humorous to realize how naïve the human race is. Everyone is expecting to be massively atomized on a global basis eventually. Whether it be 2012, global warming, Armageddon, World War III, or even a similar nuclear war, somehow ironically the only current thing that is exterminating us is ourselves. Humanity is slowly signing its own death sentence by dropping garbage anywhere it pleases and burning fossil fuels, which is melting the arctic and Antarctic regions. Also, building weapons of mass destruction pretty much everywhere doesn't exactly make the human race's chances of survival better. It is unknown when or even if the world is going to end at all, but when it does, one good thing is that it will take all this garbage too. This study could be further improved by discovering more garbage islands in the oceans. If this occurred, then there would be more proof and people would realize how stupid they've been. Then maybe with the most brilliant men on Earth thinking of a strategy there might possibly be a chance of saving Earth before we destroy ourselves.
= JM
*** This Email was sent by a student at Bedminster Elementary School Group 2.
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