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POPSPlanet Killing Opps? Plastic Bags + Plankton = ? Talk about a major unintended consequence? Better start demanding quick switch to biodegradable plastic bags or how about carrying things in your own bags! Got to be one of the dumbest and laziest ways to kill our planet and ourselves!
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POPSSperm Whale Classified Carbon Neutral Prior analysis of whale carbon dioxide emissions attributes 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions total to the animals in the Southern Ocean region. Subsequent computation lowers the whales’ carbon dioxide emissions estimate to 0.3 percent, which is equivalent to 17 million tons of carbon a year. Lavery and team explain that there are low levels of iron in the Southern Ocean, and the sperm whales each contribute about 10 grams of iron to the surface. Since the iron comes from the whales’ waste material, it takes the form of liquid plumes, effectively acting as a fertilizer and encouraging growth of plankton. Depending on the exact values and environmental conditions, sperm whales can then be classified “either a net carbon sink or as carbon-neutral,” Discovery writes.
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POPSMan-made eruptions – 'Plan B' in the battle for the planet - #climate #geo-engineering Giving scientific researchers 10 million to do blue-sky geo-engineering research is not much for a Plan B considering the calamitous concsequences of green house gas emmissions. Plan A to be negotiated at Copenhagen is also totally inadequate because it is predicated on the assumption that people can keep on living as they are: driving, flying, consuming. Too bad that so few of us will even entertain Plan C(onsciousness) which is to change our purpose in life. If everybody's primary purpose in life was nurture and support nature, rather than exploit it for themselves, there might just be a chance. And even if there is no chance, at least we would end up doing the right thing. Virtue is its own reward.
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POPSGrowth of Ocean ‘Garbage Patch’ Alarms Experts Nope, it’s not going away. It’s the smallest pieces that are of most concern, the “bite-sized” pieces that are interacting with the food chain: bottlecaps, bags and wrappers. Plastic sea trash doesn't biodegrade and often floats at the surface, coming from overflowing sewage systems and then drift thousands of miles. The sheer quantity of plastic that accumulates in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex formed by ocean and wind currents and located 1,000 miles off the California coast, has the scientists worried about how it might harm the sea creatures there. Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the NOAA estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year. Only humans are to blame for ocean debris. Only humans can do something about it.
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POPSMany of Scotland's seabirds are too hungry to lay eggs Most of the seabirds depend on sand eels - which used to shoal in vast numbers. Shetland fishermen have stopped catching them, but scientists believe climate change could be to blame for their continued decline, which is causing the birds to starve. Lower fish numbers lead to lower numbers of adult birds surviving from one year to the next, and not enough chicks being produced and surviving to replace them. Sea temperatures have risen by up to two degrees in the past 20 years and that may be causing the sand eels and the plankton on which they depend to move to cooler waters.
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POPSMission to Break up Pacific Island of Rubbish Twice the Size of Texas
Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one. The damage caused by these tiny fragments is more insidious than strangulation, entrapment and choking by larger plastic refuse. The fragments act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants until mistaken for food by small fish. The toxins then become more concentrated as they move up the food chain through larger fish, birds and marine mammals. “You can buy certified organic farm produce, but no fishmonger on earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish. This is our legacy,” said Mr Moore. Because of their tiny size and the scale of the problem, he believes that nothing can
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POPSMission to Break up Pacific Island of Rubbish Twice the Size of Texas
Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one. Because of their tiny size and the scale of the problem, he believes that nothing can be solved at sea. “Trying to clean up the Pacific gyre would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went.” In June the 151ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco to try to prove Mr Moore wrong. Project Kaisei’s flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets. “The trick is collecting the plastic while minimising the catch of sea life. We can’t catch the tiny pieces. But the net benefit of getting the
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POPSThe Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France
I know this is an old story, but like the plastic and trash we keep throwing away, it just won’t go away. Measurements show there is six times more plastic than plankton in this area. Plastic does not biodegrade; no microbe has yet evolved that can feed on it. Prolonged exposure to sunlight causes polymer chains to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, a process accelerated by physical friction, such as being blown across a beach or rolled by waves. Worldwide, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic is killing a million seabirds a year, and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles. Bottle caps, pocket combs, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, cottonbud shafts, toothbrushes, toys, syringes and plastic shopping bags are routinely found in the stomachs of dead seabirds and turtles. Every single molecule of plastic that has ever been manufactured is still somewhere in the environment, and some 100 million tons of it are floating in the oceans.
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POPSThe Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Also Know As The Trash Vortex 
Sad Picture: No one to blame for this but ourselves. Four fifths of the plastic detritus floating over 2.5 million square miles of ocean surface arrives there from land-based run off: from stormwater, in other words: litter. Sadly - many people take the "out of sight, out of mind" approach. Plastic contamination in the world's oceans is worse than previously imagined and no amount of technology can clean it up. We are damned to a future of pollution by plastic. All succeeding generations will only see an ocean filled with trash. Net a piece of plastic, and you’ll find barnacles and small crabs clinging to it. Not a good thing for fish, birds, and mammals that mistake it for its natural food, such as eggs, jellyfish, or other sea creatures. Most of the plastic will eventually photo-degrade into small, dust-like particles to the point that it will be non-detectable to the human eye, but ingestible by sea mammals, birds, and fish—many of which we then consume ourselves.
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POPSUnusual facts Eskimos use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing. *Birmingham(UK) has 22 more miles of canals than Venice. *If an Amish man has a beard,hes married. *Mexico once had three presidents in one day. *The Coca-Cola company is the largest consumer of vanilla in the world. *Millions of trees are accidentaly planted by squirrels that bury their nuts and then forget where they left them. *9 out of every 10 living thing lives in the ocean. *Lipstick contains fish scales. *Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. *Cows give more milk when they listen to music. *'Puffs' tissues didnt sell well in Germany because 'Puff' in German means brothel. *Parsley is the most widely used herb in the world. *There is 200 times more gold in the world's oceans than has ever been mined. *The Wright brother's first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a 747. *The Sanskrit word for 'War' means 'Desire for more cows'. *Monaco's national orchestra is bi
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