4 ms·

Which part of "freaking plastic is falling out of the sky in fucking ARCTIC" is misleading?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jessriedel 7y ago
Maybe this will help. Consider the first cup of water that Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun drank on his 18th birthday. That water is currently raining down on the Amazon forest. This is not a good argument that we are being overwhelmed by pharaoh water. (Of course, the plastic could be a big problem; this just doesn't show it.)
- perfunctory 7y ago
  So what in your view would be a better statistic?
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    I would assume Parts Per Million via random sampling or some other relative measurement. And looking at whether that quantity is increasing significantly over time.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    The fraction of the snow by weight that is plastic (ppm, or whatever), especially with a comparison to the amounts historically and to levels that are known or reasonably suspected of having bad consequences. This, for instance, is how particulate matter is quantified for assessing air quality in urban areas (one of the more harmful and less appreciated environmental damages).
- azinman2 7y ago
  It doesn’t. The point is the arctic is far away from humans. Yet our generated plastic is falling out of the sky. The importance of this is an ongoing recognition that our plastic is everywhere... no part of the planet is free from the impact of 20th/21st century humanity, and our imprint is forever lasting.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    Egypt is far away from the Amazon. Yet it's highly misleading (not reasonable) to say "no part of the planet is free from the impacts of Tutankhamun's thirst". Individual atoms of light elements will very often travel around the world on decade-long timescales, regardless of whether they are dangerous or benign.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
This is not an appropriate manner of discourse on HN.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  You can down me, but the parent to whom I was responding has since edited their post to remove the language and attitude to which I had objected.
semi-extrinsic 7y ago
A much better metric would be to classify the plastic found into major types (polyamides, polyesters, polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyurethane, etc) and then to quantify how much (either in mass or weighted also by surface area) there is of each type. All of these factors will have a big impact on how dangerous or safe the microplastics are. In fact, microplastic counts often do not even separate out cellulose based fibers such as Rayon. Then you are talking about a "plastic" which is safe enough to be used for sausage casings, it's just wood pulp which has been broken down and spun into fibers. The research into microplastics is very much in its infancy, like early research into disease transmission talking about the deadly "miasma".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Maybe this will help. Consider the first cup of water that Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun drank on his 18th birthday. That water is currently raining down on the Amazon forest. This is not a good argument that we are being overwhelmed by pharaoh water. (Of course, the plastic could be a big problem; this just doesn't show it.)

perfunctory 7y ago
So what in your view would be a better statistic?
- chrisco255 7y ago
  I would assume Parts Per Million via random sampling or some other relative measurement. And looking at whether that quantity is increasing significantly over time.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  The fraction of the snow by weight that is plastic (ppm, or whatever), especially with a comparison to the amounts historically and to levels that are known or reasonably suspected of having bad consequences. This, for instance, is how particulate matter is quantified for assessing air quality in urban areas (one of the more harmful and less appreciated environmental damages).
azinman2 7y ago
It doesn’t. The point is the arctic is far away from humans. Yet our generated plastic is falling out of the sky. The importance of this is an ongoing recognition that our plastic is everywhere... no part of the planet is free from the impact of 20th/21st century humanity, and our imprint is forever lasting.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  Egypt is far away from the Amazon. Yet it's highly misleading (not reasonable) to say "no part of the planet is free from the impacts of Tutankhamun's thirst". Individual atoms of light elements will very often travel around the world on decade-long timescales, regardless of whether they are dangerous or benign.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

This is not an appropriate manner of discourse on HN.

SubiculumCode 7y ago
You can down me, but the parent to whom I was responding has since edited their post to remove the language and attitude to which I had objected.

semi-extrinsic 7y ago

A much better metric would be to classify the plastic found into major types (polyamides, polyesters, polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyurethane, etc) and then to quantify how much (either in mass or weighted also by surface area) there is of each type. All of these factors will have a big impact on how dangerous or safe the microplastics are. In fact, microplastic counts often do not even separate out cellulose based fibers such as Rayon. Then you are talking about a "plastic" which is safe enough to be used for sausage casings, it's just wood pulp which has been broken down and spun into fibers. The research into microplastics is very much in its infancy, like early research into disease transmission talking about the deadly "miasma".