3 ms·
Feels truly irreversible, save moving to a new earth.
by stevenpetryk 3y ago
Feels truly irreversible, save moving to a new earth.
- seydor 3y agolife adapts to plastic
- riku_iki 3y agoor maybe all species will start getting sick and die one day because of microplastics contamination. Some bacteria will survive.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI think the idea we have this highly dense energy source pervasively available across the earth in all biomes with an exposed surface area that is unfathomable, life will adapt to consume that source of carbon rich energy. I suspect we may be bringing the end of the age of plastics rapidly.
- SteveNuts 3y agoAnd the lifecycle of the likely consumers of this energy source have much faster reproduction cycles, therefore faster ability to evolve to use this energy source. I'm very curious how we will protect against this, otherwise bacteria will eat away at our car dashboards and such.
- gigglesupstairs 3y agoIs there any research being done on how our bodies are “hopefully” learning to adapt to this omnipresence of plastics everywhere in and around us?
- ethanbond 3y agoPeople tend to care disproportionately about human life. We don’t actually know whether we’ll adapt at the pace required to overcome widespread plastic contamination (or really whether we even need to adapt). Policy-by-platitude is a bad strategy.
- philipkglass 3y agoPlastic gets consumed by oceanic microorganisms, though slowly. Take a look at the fascinating microscopic images of plastic partially eaten by microorganisms in this 2013 research article, "Life in the Plastisphere: Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris": http://onemoregeneration.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Life-in-the-%E2%80%9CPlastisphere%E2%80%9D-Microbial-Communities-on-Plastic-Marine-Debris.pdf http://onemoregeneration.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Life... Plastics also break down to simpler hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide with prolonged exposure to sunlight. Unfortunately, these gaseous small molecules are greenhouse gases, but they don't persist for as long. "Production of methane and ethylene from plastic in the environment" https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0200574 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- tatjam 3y agoIt's absolutely insane how, if humanity disappeared today, we would become really hard to detect in pretty short time scales.