OT: HighImpact.AsWildAsGlobalWarming, TheStoryOfOurOceansIsFinallyToldComprehensively

The sewage we pump into the ocean is partially-treated for bacteria, but contains enormous amounts of 'nutrients' algae thrive on. The algae rapidly grow, then die, then fall to the seafloor. As the rot comsumes availible oxygen bottom dwellers die, creating 'dead zones' where nothing lives, save weeds and bacteria. There are many deadzones now, even off the coast of california between long beach and newport (my back yard), austrailia's great barrier reef, and maui to name a few. The number of dead zones roughly doubles every 10 years.

Fireweed is a bacteria that floats to the surface and emits toxins that kill big fish, the ones most like us. It makes human skin break in to rashes, burns eyes, throat, lips, skin and make nauseous and dizzy. When it floats to shore it covers the beaches. As it rotts, the wind blows the noxious burning stench in to nearby towns.

Corel reefs are turning in to forests of seaweed. An acidic shift prevents shell-based creatures from forming shells.

Over 90% of the big fish in the ocean have vanished in a short time mostly by the nets of fisherman. Meanwhile prehistoric creatures like crill and jellyfish are breeding like wildfire globally including off US shores. In Georgian waters fishermen netting canonball jellyfish-- sold to asians--are making twice as much as fishermen hunting down dwindling supplys of traditional shrimp.

A waterbelt flows between the US and Asia. Like two wheels in the belt, two whirlpools twice the size of Texas eternally swirl megatons of human trash (much of it plastic) that was pumped into the ocean or has drifted away from our beaches.

And these are just my words.

This is just a glimpse of what is covered in the LA Times online 5 part multimedia presentation.

Each part is short containing a few 2 min videos, ~15 pictures with subtitles, and 1 or two interactive diagrams, yet it's enough to think about for days. Don't pass up the pics with subtitles. It's all very informative.

Blow my mind.

edit:http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oc...842752.special

If your prudent and interested you should check it out fast. who knows if and when the LA Times will put it behind a paywall.

The LA Times didn't mention global warming at all.

though in the back of my mind I did remember that glaciers reflect 90% of the light/heat and ocean water absorbs it. It made me picture the ocean waters getting warmer and creaper as the glaciers melt.

The LA Times article is great. It doesn't appear much of it can be refuted; time will tell.

Also in the back of my mind, i wonder what we will find after we have enough technology to find every creature in the ocean I'm sure there's some funky creatures hiding out. Maybe one big one the size of the Empire State Building! maybe not, but surely 1 or 243 creatures just as shocking.


As far as global warming. I saw gore's 'an inconvenient truth a few months ago when I first heard of it. The only ones in the audience was me and 12 really old people, and liz.

If you want to see gore and some experts on global warming speak for free, here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9882461&q=gore

47 min, one more interesting adventure

The link I left in the original post only went to 'Part 1'. There are 5 parts. I edited the Original post link so it takes you to the page with all 5 parts.

here's the same link to all 5 parts:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oc...842752.special

I was going to go a different direction with spyderturbo's comment.

rant:
Spyderturbo, me and you are the government. Those paid government people are hired help.

If you or I haven't used your brain, or in some cases picked up a stick and shut some of these things down you are letting down the people around you.

Past that, it's hard to think about, but that's the frame of mind I think people should be in.

"If 'violence never solved anything,' cops wouldn't have guns and slaves may never have been freed."

I read it off a Starbucks cup. If you don't believe me google it.

couldn't resist

If I were fringing on violence do you think that would be the right lecture and the right timing? brilliant. I've gotten out of a few hairy situations by knowing they aren't.

Sadly, i bet similar lectures and timing precede ~half of domestic violence cases.

ok, too much info

But to throw beef on the fire, I gotta tell you something accidentally funny that happened to me today.

I went to the post office to pick up a package (on my door I got the nonchalant card taht said you weren't here when we came, come pick it up). When I signed for it I commented 'ah, my package from Bulgaria'.

Then I went over to a table and like a fool I said, "am I allowed to open packages in here?" I don't know what I was thinking. Reading too many NSA type articles no doubt.

Here is another article that should completely blow you away. There's an aweful lot to know about plastic but few have given it much thought. By reading this article I'm guestimating I'm 1 out of 100,000 that know the first thing about plastic. Yip, yip, yay. Unfortunately, all the the information is quite depressing.

random points from the article:
>plastic continually breaks down to microscopic particles, but doesn't biodegrade (for a looooooong time)
>all plastic ever made basically still exists
>In the waterbelt between the US and japan swirls a floating plastic garbage patch twice the size as Texas. It is just one of the 5 or 6 such garbage patches in the oceans.
>Fish consume plastic the size of plankton, and plastic enters our food chain.
>There's 100s of chemicals in our bodies that weren't present in people 50 years ago.
>soda cans, caned foods, microwave popcorn bags are coated with plastic: another way plastic gets in our food supply.
>plastics in the food chain are linked to obesedy(sp), reproductive problems, all kinds of crap
>scientists are just starting to figure out the implications of eating/being exposed to plastic

The article is filled with tons of information, real brain food.


Our oceans are turning into Plastic
http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/pu...c_are_we.shtml



.....


trippily, less then a week ago I read an article about new plastic blood that can be used in ambulances. It has long shelf life and can be used quickly.(with video):
http://www.reuters.com/news/video/vi...?videoId=54039



P.S. btw, plastic is made from petrolium

Here's George Carlin's take:

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...ass*ole.

Wow, Sheryl Crow must have a really tight bod. When she does the front I bet there's like one drop.

nah, she has taste. For the front she uses a Q-Tip, and saves it so she can use the other end the next time, all awhile imagining a perfect drop of dew forming on the lips of the ~5000-7000 African children under 5 who die each day because the lack of availibility or contaminated water.

With that said, I haven't eaten all day. Off to choose some fattening/low nutrient food for dinner.

(I have no idea what this post means)