Are Microplastics in Our Water Becoming a Macroproblem?

Ah, the Doom and Gloom - and no doubt another contributory factor to the virus which makes people more stupid:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/virus-that-makes-humans-more-stupid-discovered-9849920.html

I guess living in a plastic bubble is no longer an option for health and longevity ... 😉

http://ecowatch.com/2013/08/06/the-danger-of-plastic-bags-to-marine-life/
http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/ocean-trash-plaguing-our-sea

We are surely screwing up our planet and everything on it.

How arrogant to think that man can destroy a planet that existed for billions of years before them and will endure billions after man.

How arrogant to think otherwise.

No. It is arrogant, as mankind, to think we can destroy something like earth. That is the definition of arrogant

“You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”

Michael Crichton

Amen to that!

Meanwhile, plastics and other marine debris continues to impact our oceans.
http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/29/plastic-bags-stomach-dead-whale/

Alana did not say that man will destroy the planet.

She said: We are surely screwing up our planet and everything on it.

You can screw something up without destroying it. The earth will still exist, but it will be screwed up, because of technology and overpopulation.

Alana did not say that man will destroy the planet.

She said: We are surely screwing up our planet and everything on it.

You can screw something up without destroying it. The earth will still exist, but it will be screwed up, because of technology and overpopulation.

As you type from you computer/tablet. Irony is delicious. If everyone worried about THEMSELVES all life would be better off, yet we, as humans, like to try to dictate how other humans should act.

Screw you, you are an idiot.
I am not trying to dictate anything.

Screw you, you are an idiot.
I am not trying to dictate anything.

You want a hug? Hmmm no hug emojis here. Technology sucks! Did I say you were trying to dictate? I said mankind. As in a general sense. No need to be personal. I wasn't.

Yes you did say that.
You said:
If everyone worried about THEMSELVES all life would be better off, yet we, as humans, like to try to dictate how other humans should act.

So my reading of that statement was that you were putting me in the group of "we, as humans"

So humans do not like to dictate what others can do or you are not a human? I didn't say IslandJoan likes to tell me what to do. Sorry for any confusion.

Haunting Photos From Scuba Divers Across the World Show Devastating Impact of Ocean Plastic
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/photos-from-scuba-divers-across-the-world-show-devastating-impact-of-ocean-plastic/?utm_source=Green+Monster+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=b7ccff6a69-NEWSLETTER_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbf62ddf34-b7ccff6a69-106498917

The President just signed a bipartisan bill into law that bans the manufacture and sale of microbeads in the US. Other countries have already banned them or are in the process of doing so.

As for being able to destroy the Earth, we can indeed destroy the Earth as we know it and with just a little less effort, we can make it uninhabitable for the human species.

Microplastics aren't the only problem.
Yogurt Cups, Food Wrappers and a Shoe Found in Stomach of Dead Orca

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/yogurt-cups-food-wrappers-and-a-shoe-found-in-stomach-of-dead-orca.html#ixzz3wINlQsqR

Don't forget plastic grocery bags, plastic water/food bottles, and garbage in general. Also, runoff from fertilizers and animal poop.

No. It is arrogant, as mankind, to think we can destroy something like earth. That is the definition of arrogant

Agree!

If anyone doubts this, go out and calculate how much energy it takes to raise the temperature of a large body of water 1 degree... the scale of energy and numbers we are talking about at "global" level are incomprehensible to our small brains.

As for being able to destroy the Earth, we can indeed destroy the Earth as we know it and with just a little less effort, we can make it uninhabitable for the human species.

I think it would take a SHIT LOAD of effort!

Remember the scary radiation monster? how we could possibly render parts of the world unlivable for 10,000 years or some such nonsense?

Guess where this is:
Before/after

Fear sells and humans make mistakes... we are/were wrong about a lot of things.

http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/news/Microplastics

http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/27/marcus-eriksen-microplastics-invade-oceans/

4 Year Global Journey Ends in Must-See Documentary: ‘A Plastic Ocean’

Lorraine Chow | February 4, 2016
http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/04/a-plastic-ocean/

The Age of Plastic.
http://www.perreault-magazine.com/