Gerry Maxey's Plan to Save the Oceans from Plastic Garbage Patches

In recent weeks the Liberal Media and the Liberal Elite have been consumed with the obsession:Did President Trump pay a woman to turn a one night stand indiscretion into a discreet omission from history?

This Blogger hates to disillusion the crusading Liberals and their Savonarola madness but whether President Trump did or did not is not important in the Grand Scheme of things, about continued Life on the Planet Earth.  What is important is that while Liberals were indulging in a St. Vitus Dance of hypocrisy, something IMPORTANT was discovered in the Pacific Ocean, important to the continuance of Life on the Planet Earth, a  vast and exponentially growing garbage patch of mostly plastic discards.

“A collection of plastic afloat in the Pacific Ocean is growing rapidly, according to a new scientific estimate.

Predictions suggest a build-up of about 80,000 tonnes of plastic in the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" between California and Hawaii.

This figure is up to sixteen times higher than previously reported, say international researchers.

One trawl in the centre of the patch had the highest concentration of plastic ever recorded.

"Plastic concentration is increasing - I think the situation is getting worse," said Laurent Lebreton of The Ocean Cleanup Foundation in Delft, Netherlands, which led the study.

…..Waste accumulates in five ocean areas, the largest being the patch located between Hawaii and California…..The researchers used boats and planes to map this area of the North Pacific, where rotating currents and winds cause marine debris, including plastic, seaweed and plankton, to converge.

The three-year mapping effort showed that plastic pollution is "increasing exponentially and at a faster rate than in the surrounding water", said the international team.

Microplastics accounted for 8% of the total mass of plastic afloat within an area of 1.6 million square km.

Of the estimated 1.8 trillions bits of plastic, some were larger than microplastics, including fishing nets, toys, and even a toilet seat.

Erik van Sebille of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who is not connected with the study, said the amount of plastic discovered was "staggering".

….What the study found

§  Plastics made up 99.9% of all debris in this part of the ocean….BBC.”

The Pacific Garbage Patch is big, really big, so BIG it should focus our attention on its danger.

How big is it?

TWICE the size of TEXAS.

“World's largest collection of ocean garbage is twice the size of Texas...US ATODAY

A giant island of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean holds as much as 16 times more debris than was previously thought, posing a significant threat to the food chain, according to an international team of scientists.

The world's largest collection of ocean garbage is growing.The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic, floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles, …. That's twice the size of Texas.

Winds and converging ocean currents funnel the garbage into a central location, said study lead author Laurent Lebreton of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a non-profit organization that spearheaded the research.

First discovered in the early 1990s, the trash in the patch comes from around the Pacific Rim, including nations in Asia and North and South America, Lebreton said.

The patch is not a solid mass of plastic. It includes about 1.8 trillion pieces and weighs 88,000 tons — the equivalent of 500 jumbo jets. The new figures are as much as 16 times higher than previous estimates…..No governments have stepped up to clean the trash, which is in international waters, so it's up to privately funded groups such as the Ocean Cleanup Foundation to take the lead in getting rid of the garbage…..There's a sense of urgency, said Joost Dubois, a spokesman with the foundation.

"It's a ticking time bomb of larger material," Dubois said. "We've got to get it before it breaks down into a size that's too small to collect and also dangerous for marine life."

Since plastic has been around only since the 1950s, there's no way of knowing exactly how long it will last in the ocean. If left alone, the plastic could remain there for decades, centuries or even longer. "Unless we begin to remove it, some would say it may remain there forever," Lebreton said.”

All life on Earth, even Beyonce, even Zuckerberg, depends on Water; all of Earth’s water is recycled…no new water is being created, it is just  being recycled.

The earth is 4.5 billion years old; as the Earth cooled, clouds formed; it began to rain, torrential rain…..for an eon perhaps. Rain formed the oceans. All the water we drink or swim in is that ancient water recycled. Nothing new.

If the plastic in the ocean destroys the ability of water to recycle into rain, all is lost.

For the sake of Mankind, for Life itself, that Plastic residue MUST BE DESTROYED, and there is the rub-HOW?

If we burn it, the smoke itself may become toxic.

If we bomb it, the plastic will break down into small, minute pieces of plastic which will be deadly to marine life, and deadly as it becomes part of recycled rain.

If we collect the plastic garbage, where will we put it? In the Sahara?

Mankind knows where the plastic is; currents bring it to these patches. Mankind has most of the deadly plastic in one place, thanks to Mother Nature.

Now Mankind must destroy.

How?

Vaporize it.

And how can Mankind do that?

This Blogger believes it can be done by use of SOLAR FURNACES.

“A solar furnace is a structure that uses concentrated solar power to produce high temperatures,…. Parabolic mirrors or heliostats concentrate light(insolation)) onto a focal point.The temperature at the focal point may reach 3,500 °C (6,330 °F).”

Mankind has built solar furnaces before; a small one in California; the French built one in the early 1970s, and the Russians built a massive one in Uzbekistan in 1987.

The United States Government has expertise in building Solar Furnaces at its National Renewal Energy Laboratory in Florida.

NREL's High-Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) is a 10-kW optical furnace for testing high-temperature processes or applications requiring high heating rates or solar concentration. The unique capability of the HFSF is that it can produce peak solar flux of 250 W/cm² or 2,500 suns with primary concentrator and higher fluxes with secondary concentrators.

…..The primary concentrator consists of 25 hexagonal facets, 12.5 m² (135 ft²) overall. The mirrors are spherical mirrors ground to a 14.6 m (47.8 ft) radius of curvature. They are front-surface ultraviolet-enhanced aluminum with 84% solar-weighted reflectivity. The primary concentrator delivers power to the target (at the focal point) of about 10 kW at 1,000 W/m² direct normal irradiance. The target concentration point is located 7.01 m (23.0 ft) from the center facet.

Several secondary concentrators are available to modify the focal point if the standard peak flux needs to be modified or spread out…NREL.”

Mankind also knows that solar furnaces can vaporize things….6,000 birds were killed,  vaporized at  the California solar furnace…turned into wisps of white smoke, the wisps of white smoke being the only memory of their physicality….STREAMERS to the local workers.

Mankind wants to turn the plastic garbage into  harmless streamers, with white wisps of smoke as the only memory of the plastic garbage threatening Mankind.

This Blogger humbly suggest that America take the lead in developing floating solar furnaces, massive solar furnaces; the solar furnaces should be  fitted onto a floating platform, much like an oil rig.

The floating solar furnaces should be towed out to the  Oceanic Garbage Patch, and anchored, permanently.

Then the power of the floating solar furnace to vaporize should be unleashed on the plastic threatening Mankind.

The solar furnace should be working every moment there is sunshine, vaporizing the old garbage and the new garbage which the ocean currents will  bring to the patch.

This Blogger has spoken to engineers and scientists; his plan is more than doable; it is feasible.

Let us come together, and get our priorities right. The enemy is plastic garbage. Regardless of the cost,  the plastic garbage which imperils everything, must be vaporized post haste.

The plastic garbage patch in the Pacific