It may be a bit unkind to crush the ambitions of a 19 year old, but Boyan Slat seems to mainly excel at self-promotion. He’s come up with a scheme to clean up the oceans of debris with anchored, floating booms and short suspended nets (or something — it’s totally unclear) that are laid out over ocean currents that bring the garbage to it. Did I mention that he’s 19? And not an oceanographer? And that his scheme hasn’t really been tested on any significant scale? But it’s still bringing in millions of dollars in donations.
Why, this sounds like a case where real ocean scientists might have some input. Kim Martini and Miriam Goldstein have a few words about it — it’s unrealistic and poorly described.
One thing they don’t mention: cleaning up the wretched mess we’ve made sounds like a good idea, but this isn’t like setting aside some time on Sunday morning to tidy up after the wild weekend party. This party is still ongoing — we continue to dump massive quantities of non-biodegradable plastics and generic garbage int the ocean. Shouldn’t the first effort at reducing the problem be focused on ending the permanent state of pollution production? Boyan’s plan is too much like slapping a band-aid on a spurting wound.
Also, I thought it was a joke: Martini makes a brief note about “Zero bycatch by net avoidance”. But it turns out that’s actually on Boyan’s web site — he punts on the issue of whether their massive booms straddling major ocean currents might have a detrimental effect on ocean life by simply declaring that marine organisms will avoid it. Really?
It just goes to show that easy hypothetical technological fixes will always appeal more than difficult social changes — changes that will affect major companies short-term bottom line.
(By the way, I haven’t tested whether space-based lasers are an effective way of destroying marine garbage, but I’d like a few million dollars to test the idea.)
Well, PZ, you are a scientist … so I’d agree to your laser scheme.
PZ – your comments do come off rather negatively since I haven’t seen anybody else trying to fix the problem. The website does talk about prevention.
“By the way, I haven’t tested whether space-based lasers are an effective way of destroying marine garbage”
Of course they are. Also, sharks.
#2: So you will support my laser scheme with a donation?
It’s not enough to propose a positive solution. It has to be a positive solution that a) works and b) doesn’t cause more problems.
Is he 19? Or is he 9?
Ooh! Space based lasers to slice the fins off sharks and nets to scoop them up! It’s a win-win-win!
Space-based is the wrong place for the friggin’ lasers; they’re supposed to be mounted on the sharks’ heads.
Note that the link above to Martini and Goldstein is to their initial report. Slat has since published a feasibility study, which Martini and Goldstein also reviewed here.
If you thought PZ was mean, don’t read that review. Ouch.
Space-based lasers won’t be able to destroy marine rubbish because they wouldn’t have enough power to torch plastic through a hundred miles of atmosphere. What you need is a kinetic energy weapon powered by Earth’s gravity, Basically, you take off and drop something from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
RE #7: Did we forget to mention the space-based sharks? We’ll another couple million for that.
“Something.” Don’t be coy. You’re talking about sharks, aren’t you?
This is strongly reminiscent of Patri Friedman’s “Seasteading Institute”, another grift by a landlubber with big-time funding and nice graphics which is ignominiously sinking into irrelevance.
Or maybe we should compare it to the old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies where the solution was always “let’s put on a show”.
What, TED
SquawksTalks pushing impracticable futurism schemes that chiefly exist to procure celebrity for their techbro creators and to glorify the neoliberal status quo? Tell me it ain’t so!…OFFS, it’s a TEDx talk. *facepalm*
What’s with all the sharks, people?
We all know that around here, the lasers will be mounted on giant squid.
Yes, space-based lasers are for eliminating SPACE junk. Which is also a problem, and one we are also continuing to contribute to.
chrispollard @2:
You see it as negativity. I see it as PZ being sensible. And while you might not have seen anyone trying to fix the problem does that mean no one is trying?
“I haven’t seen anybody else trying to fix the problem.” Have you been looking? Or were you just following stuff that appears in your newsfeed like the rest of us? That has a lot to do with what you end up seeing.
The reason this particular idea is getting slagged is because it it obvious, and is obviously unworkable. Everybody who even thinks about picking up the garbage immediately thinks of nets. But anyone who gives it any more realistic thought realizes that nets aren’t going to work.
Giving this idea money because nobody else has proposed anything is just silly. No other remediation idea is going to work, at our present level of technology. Prevention is our best bet, and bogus cleanup schemes distract from prevention efforts.
I retract this and defer entirely to the serious review of the current version. Contrary to what’s said in comment 8, it’s not mean at all; it’s a textbook example of what the review of such a thing should look like in terms of (among other things) tone or rather lack thereof.
The part I find most striking is this:
(Also, Turtles Excluder Device is my new favorite word.)
Why not send a US navy carrier task force group down there to collect garbage? The war on garbage needs pawns!
how entrepreneurial, it is “the market” that will solve our problems.
why are these efforts being criticized? Of course they should make a lot of money off of their ideas! Why are you against profit are you some kind of moral absolutist?
sorry I do not know what to say.
As far as I know there is not much of an effort to clean up the crap we let get into the sea nor very much is a serious effort to curb the flow.
So much of the waste we create in the process of our activities is never considered unless by force of law even after we learn that the waste is causing health problems to ourselves regardless of the damage it may cause to any other part of the environment.
we are probably the filthiest creature on earth and the most destructive.
If this guy is serious then the money will find a way to make a positive effect on the problem if not he is just another con-man taking advantage of a situation/opportunity to enrich himself time will tell.
uncle frogy
…actually… the current version appears to be this, which is too long for me to watch now. Maybe on the weekend. However, at least one of the reviewers is not impressed at all by this response to the review.
Also: “The scariest inhabitant of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not what you think“
In response to 18 – I follow what is happening with regard to marine engineering in general and plastics disposal. The problem is that the plastic disintegrates into small pieces. The evidence for this comes from bird stomachs, fish and other sources.
I have seen engineering proposals galore for extracting energy from waves and the sea but have never seen a proposal in the international engineering press for plastics removal.
@ Reginald,
Don’t be silly. Everyone knows that the proper delivery mechanism for shark is by ‘nado.
@24
Thats because there isn’t one. The size of the Pacific is so huge, and the size of the plastic that needs to be removed is so small, that trying to clean up the mess is a pipe dream with todays technology. It simply doesn’t exist, and wishful thinking isn’t going to make it better.
A much better approach is to try and limit the 4-12,000 metric tons of plastic that enter the ocean each year. Until you turn off the tap, trying to empty the Pacific of trash is just silly.
Back in the early 20th century there were people talking about airfields floating in the middle of the oceans so that airplanes could land and refuel during long distance flights. And then somebody figured out that all you needed was greater fuel efficiency and the problem was solved. All the investor’s money went down the drain.
I wonder what simple solution will send this current mob broke.
chrispollard @2
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” –H. L. Mencken
And besides…burning it up with a space based laser (even if that could work) will leave behind the smoldering byproducts. How much do you want to bet that those would be worse than the original garbage?
It’s been said before but needs repeating: The only solution open to our current tech is to stop throwing garbage into the Oceans.
This is a kind of GIGO scheme. Stopping the GI is tons more effective than GO.
@21:
You know Navy ships actually dump their trash into the ocean, right?
Plastic junk wouldn’t be able to get into the ocean in the first place if we just covered the surface with cling-film.
… but this isn’t like setting aside some time on Sunday morning to tidy up after the wild weekend party.
No true wild weekend parties stop by Sunday morning.
Jafafa Hots @32:
I think scientists were working on that, but were having trouble covering a dinner plate with cling-film, as the stuff sticks to itself, so I think they gave up.
About the only good I’ve seen for cling film is that goods “falling off the truck” are way down. Every pallet of product leaving my company is cocooned in plastic film. And for some reason, all the containers make it to the receiving dock intact.
The problem with space, or even ship lasers, is that they are trying to vaporize oceanic plastic debris while the plastic is surrounded by the most common cooling medium on Earth. Water…
*there goes my sycophant grade ;)*
I don’t need to know how to fix your car in order to point out that your plan to fix your car by sprinkling pixie dust on it isn’t going to work.
I’ve read that review of the feasibility study, linked to be Johnny Vector in comment #8.
If the whole project is as sloppy as that study, it would be doomed to fail even if the idea was workable.
Barnacle guts for instance (article on the Deep Sea News blog somewhere).
Is it wrong of me to think that those plastic garbage islands are actually a great place to study bacteria which are busily learning to digest all that crap we have produced? I imagine they have come up with some seriously fascinating stuff. Possibly also dangerous to our heavily plasticised consumer society, which might not be a bad thing either.
The idea is so preposterous it doesn’t deserve the slightest ping of possibility. Its crap. The only solution to the problem is to stop producing plastic articles as if its ok to think it won’t hurt anything. The only sure way to do that is to reduce the human population on this world, but ‘experts’ continue to assure everyone that isn’t an ‘economically sound’ solution. They think it contrary to economic growth.
So, evidently, expertise imagines a future where the effluent of over 7 billion human beings can be mitigated economically whilst the population continues to grow…so that our descendants can continue to enjoy the right to buy their kids cute little plastic baubles and jewelry and idiotic toys and adult thingamajigs and otherwise engorge themselves with the profound insight that only a Lego set can instill in young minds eager to learn how to fashion conceptual models of a ‘real world’ that no longer contains such unessentials as sea gulls or monarch butterflies or giraffes or rhinos or taiga antelope or whales or anything else ‘civilized humanity’ is hell-bent on divorcing itself from.
Because everything revolves around the ability of (wealthy) humans to enjoy economic prosperity.
Some are panicking about rising CO2 emissions now…just wait until global OXYGEN levels start to measurably decline. To those vocal ‘experts’: take that inevitability and plug that into your economic scenarios and see just how expensive your preservation of ‘economic health’ will get. Just watch.
Another problem with just passively seining the plastic out of the ocean is that many sea creatures are the same size and shape as scraps of plastic. That’s part of the danger of the plastic to the environment, that big animals think that it looks like food. If a sea turtle can’t tell the difference between a sandwich bag and a jellyfish, a net won’t be able to.
Menyambal: exactly
You’re free to go PZ. The Outer Space Treaty that prohibits WMD in space seems to place lasers in the category of conventional weapons, which are okey-dokey in space. You can’t nuke anything up there, but its okay to splat them with small arms and light weapons, sea and land mines, bombs, shells, rockets, missiles, and cluster munitions. Isn’t the UN great?
Gulls? Gulls are already common in cities close to major bodies of water. They’re good at eating trash.
Saiga antelopes don’t live in the taiga, but in the steppe south of it.
How exactly would that happen? Set literally everything combustible on fire at the same time? Doing that with just all the oil that’s left would not be enough.