New plastic pollution discovered: 'Plasticorals' coral rubble fused with plastic (oist.jp)
78 points by giuliomagnifico 5 hours ago
bmk44 4 hours ago
Reminds me of the classic George Carlin bit:
"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 paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward 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?”
autoexec 2 hours ago
> It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed.
Sadly this really isn't the case, and there are a lot of things we can do that will permanently fuck the planet. It can't be certain that we will kill ourselves off before we cross some tipping point that will eventually turn the Earth into just another lifeless rock in our solar system.
conception 20 minutes ago
That seems pretty arrogant that a hundred million years or more won’t restart life back on Earth. But I also might just be ignorant. What could we do to end all life on earth and prevent future life from forming?
culi 7 minutes ago
sublinear 35 minutes ago
Yes, and this era of comedy is thankfully over. Carlin became quite preachy in his later years. He has way better material.
Joel_Mckay 4 hours ago
"Saving the Planet" (George Carlin)
https://youtu.be/7W33HRc1A6c?si=HqyW8mys0uNBuFdW&t=147
Humorous, but not inaccurate about what climate change means to primates. =3
SoftTalker 3 hours ago
The planet is fine; the people are fucked!
sharpshadow 3 hours ago
In the cycle of life everything becomes a rock.
ninininino 4 hours ago
Plastic also visibly in rocks on the beach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5UoVDxjG1g
https://www.science.org/content/article/rocks-made-plastic-f...
And invisibly in trees: https://www.waldwissen.net/en/forest-ecology/climate-and-env...
Pick your favorite Disney movie, the beautiful nature in it is now infused with plastic.
pinevale 26 minutes ago
I really don't know what to make of stuff like this, because on one hand, it's repulsive that human waste products end up everywhere, but on the other, it feels like a lot of the discourse around microplastics is emotion-based. Nature mostly doesn't care, right? In a very similar way, trees have some amount of sand / silica in them, and in certain exotic species, it's high enough to cause problems in woodworking, but we're not grossed out about that. I'm sure there's also some amount of it in every human, where it doesn't cause any problems unless it happens to be precisely the wrong size and in precisely the wrong place (in which case, silicosis).
Like, I'm not working for the pro-microplastics lobby, but it's hard to calibrate how concerned I should be about stories that basically just say "we found ppm- or ppb-levels of mostly-inert material in X".
vatsachak 3 hours ago
Plastic is a source of energy. I am sure that we need to gameplan for a post-plastic world in the future after some bacteria/fungi learn to eat it
wongarsu 3 hours ago
We are increasingly finding bacteria and fungi that eat various plastics. Not just lab-grown, but actual organically evolved bacteria eating PLA and the like
That said, I doubt this will become apocalyptic. Wood is highly biodegradable, yet even untreated wood will last decades if you keep it dry and away from soil. Microorganisms eating plastic will make it less weather-resistant and maybe worse food packaging, but it won't kill all use of plastic
ErroneousBosh 3 hours ago
dvh 4 hours ago
It's our own K-T layer
testfoobar 4 hours ago
"The Plastocene – Plastic in the sedimentary record"
https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/ssp/2019/01/09/the-plastocene...
canadiantim 3 hours ago
This has been known for decades already. In the historical records we'll be known as the plastic age
criddell 3 hours ago
The article says it's already being called the plasticene.
so-gala-massey 2 hours ago
It even has a theme song from 1980: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k8vaoGQCuyg