Scantlings

Is anyone following the "Ocean Cleanup" project? (https://www.theoceancleanup.com/)

I've been watching this and don't have much good to say about it. I'm curious to hear opinions from the Scantlings crew, since you all seem to be a bit smarter than the average bear. Here's my take, feel free to tell me why I'm wrong:

While I will be happy to be proven wrong, I think this project is doomed to failure in that it will collect and kill much more biological by-catch than plastic. The project literature hand-waves away the by-catch problem by claiming that the marine life will swim away from the nets. Much of the life in the top few meters of the sea is in the form of jellies and other small drifting creatures, which are fragile and cannot just "swim out of the way".

The amount of plastic actually collected will be minuscule, and the project itself is letting people believe that they're "doing something". I suppose it could be useful as a science experiment, but that's not how it is being promoted. Instead, it is being hailed as a solution.


And the use of photos like this one above (probably in some bay near a river outflow in Asia) when discussing the gyres is grossly and I suspect deliberately misleading. When someone sees that photo, they can easily believe that a floating net (the "Ocean Cleanup Project" will work. They also promote hairbrained schemes such as that proposed self-propelled harvester that collects the floating plastic, converts it at sea to a diesel-like fuel used to power itself. These systems could possibly work if you placed them in that floating trash collection, but that's not the proposal.

This is what I've typically seen from the NPAC Gyre:

Yes, there is some plastic here and there, and no doubt more below the surface (much of it tiny bits), but there is also a lot of plant and animal live in the first few meters as well.

This project was conceived by an 18-year old Boyan Slat. Wikipedia says this about him:

a Dutch inventor, entrepreneur and Aerospace Engineering student drop-out

This by no means makes it a bad idea, and even naive ideas can turn out well. But any serious study took place well after the online fundraising (over $20 million as of last year).

And no doubt the by-catch will be minor in the grand scheme of things. But so will be the plastic collection. If this design is scaled up to where it makes a measurable dent in the pollution, then the by-catch will become quite serious.

Again, my opinion is solely based on my time at sea in the gyre region, hanging over the side of my boat and looking into the depths. My crew and I have spend many weeks with NOAA marine debris survey forms in our hands, logging any visible debris as we transited the region. We even carried NOAA debris researchers on one of our passages. But I haven't studied the "Ocean Cleanup" design beyond looking at what they have posted on their website.

So I could be wrong.

But look at how this is being wildly oversold. This is from an investment newsletter, no doubt parroting an Ocean Cleanup press release (https://born2invest.com/articles/oce...ject-tow-test/):

The project will essentially take care of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by using passive floating barriers and the ocean’s natural gyres. The latter will then sweep up the plastic into 2,000-foot long arms of the barriers to help secure the garbage in place. The team behind the project remains confident in its endeavor, and it hopes to clean up half of the pile in about five years.

I suspect that once the project got rolling, had received adoring publicity, and obtained millions of $$$ in donations, even if the founders discovered the truth about the conditions they were actually going to encounter they were in too deep to stop and re-think their approach.

But that's merely my suspicion, knowing how the steamroller-effect works in real life. I could be wrong.

The collection device was towed under the Golden Gate Bridge last week, and is currently parked a few hundred miles offshore for a two-week trial before taking it to the Gyre:

I'm tracking it by satellite AIS reception, through Marinetraffic.com

Crickets...
I guess it's hard to point out where your wrong when a lot of what you say makes a whole lot of sense.
I doesn't seem to make much sense pulling grams of plastic out of the sea when tons is being poured in.

I really wish I knew the answer, But in the meantime, Head in the sand is kind of working, I mean, It' not like I'm eating the plastic yet...

Is it?

Jeroen.

I'm inclined to agree with Paul. I don't think the system will be very effective against the veritable tidal wave of plastics being dumped into the water on a daily basis.
I sincerely hope that the system is so ineffective that it also fails to grab any by-catch.

A recent analysis of the plastics in the gyre indicate that a significant majority of the plastics are from Asian countries. These countries lack the resources and the national will to manage their refuse. Much of the plastic is commercial fishing gear. On top of this, when a tsunami or typhoon hits these nations, it just washes tons of garbage right into the oceans. The only way to eliminate plastics from the oceans is to eliminate nearly all single use plastics. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

My personal opinion is that most single use plastics should be restricted to critical needs such as the medical industry (IV bags, syringes, etc) where sterility is critical. Food and beverage vendors loath the thought of reverting to metal, glass and paper packaging because they are more expensive to purchase and they are heavier which translates into greater shipping costs.

As I made my sandwich for work this morning, I peeled off a slice of swiss cheese from the local deli. I observed that not only was the cheese in a thin, plastic bag, the cheese was also wrapped in a very thin sheet of plastic within the bag. I thought to myself "Really? You guys couldn't wrap this in waxed deli paper?" I'm pretty religious about ensuring that any single use plastics I handle get into a recycling bin or at worst, a trash bin and not just let loose into the environment but I always wonder how much of my plastics actually get recycled and how much gets sorted out and thrown into the landfill.

Avoiding plastics is very difficult. I don't use disposable sandwich bags, I use a reusable...plastic clamshell. I do use Pyrex containers with silicone lids for my leftovers and reheating but even my clothing is plastic. During summers, I prefer to wear Columbia tech shirts and pants that wick sweat away from my skin. Same stuff that's in milk jugs, I think. It's frustrating.

While I agree with Paul that much of the plastic waste at sea is "micro" waste in the water column, folks have done a pretty good job of convincing the general public that there is a huge "garbage patch" of water bottles, milk jugs, etc. floating around. I'm heartened that people will contribute to a possible solution but we have to address the source more than we do the wild idea cleanup but eventually, some innovator will come up with an effective collector.

Rich,

I share your concern about how much actually gets recycled. In St Mary's County, our landfill was closed 20 something years ago so we truck our trash away and pay others to bury it. Recycling subsidizes a considerable share of that disposal cost. IN addition to separating "trash" at the old landfill (tires in one pile, metal in another, green waste in a mulch pile, general garbage in another, we are set up for "single stream" recycling, which simplifies things a lot but we see more and more restrictions on what can be recycled. Plastic bags, film, shrink wrap, etc. for example, can clog the machines the recycler uses to separate the material so they are off the list. I'm concerned that China's recent decision to stop accepting "dirty" mixed waste is going to increase the restrictions and cost, leading to less recycling.

It still drives me crazy to take a bunch of recycling (mostly packaging material) and one bag of trash and see my neighbors dumping multiple cardboard boxes into the "trash" receptacle and not the recycling bin not 5 steps away. One of our commissioners was verbally assaulted and threatened a few moths ago when he pointed out to a "dumper" that the boxes he was putting in the trash instead of recycling them was both bad for the environment and our county taxes. Some folks just don't get it.

I agree with the others. However, publicity about the need to reduce our use of plastics is a good thing. This may be one area where the US is not the worst offender, but this does promote awareness, at least in this country.

Maersk has agreed to supply support ships to haul the plastic so it can be recycled. Who knows, we could all be pleasantly surprised if boat loads of plastic are offloaded in the coming years.

Most Americans are in love with symbolic, feel-good gestures, they are somewhat less enamored of science and engineering based actual solutions which may make economic sense.

For example, most people aren't aware that one, and only one, industrial nation actually met and exceeded it's Kyoto Protocol targets for CO2 emission reductions. To me this is a tremendous, if unsung achievement. The cause was simple - a big increase in availability and drop in price of natural gas caused fuel switching from coal by electric utilities, and since a BTU from gas has 1/2 the CO2 emission as a BTU from coal burning, a major drop in emissions. The reduction was driven by economics, not regulation.

The statements from Obama and Clinton about putting coal out of business with regulations were either amazingly stupid or intentionally aimed at those who love symbolism. There was no need for the statement. Coal simply cannot compete with natural gas economically, there is no need to regulate it out of business, natural gas will win on economics.

Unless, of course, you do something dumb like try to stop pipeline construction, so utilities cannot get gas supplies due to transportation constraints. Then the environmentalists will inadvertently keep coal in business and emissions much higher than the market would otherwise dictate. The law of unintended consequences.

For some, actually reducing emissions is less important than having society make symbolic sacrifices, the equivalent of societal hair shirts for our climate sins. The symbolism of trying to remove the plastics is far more important than whether or not it actually works.

Rob, Yup, we love our symbols and our idols. That's why we pay guys $20mm a year to throw a ball and pay school teachers less than 1% of that. Politicians love taking credit for things they don't control! Its what they do, regardless of party affiliation. The Soviet Union would have failed without Reagan. The examples are endless.

I agree that some actions are symbolic and not effective but these actions shouldn't be confused with actions that are small (individual) and effective.

Rob McAlpine wrote:Most Americans are in love with symbolic, feel-good gestures, they are somewhat less enamored of science and engineering based actual solutions which may make economic sense.

For example, most people aren't aware that one, and only one, industrial nation actually met and exceeded it's Kyoto Protocol targets for CO2 emission reductions. To me this is a tremendous, if unsung achievement. The cause was simple - a big increase in availability and drop in price of natural gas caused fuel switching from coal by electric utilities, and since a BTU from gas has 1/2 the CO2 emission as a BTU from coal burning, a major drop in emissions. The reduction was driven by economics, not regulation.

The statements from Obama and Clinton about putting coal out of business with regulations were either amazingly stupid or intentionally aimed at those who love symbolism. There was no need for the statement. Coal simply cannot compete with natural gas economically, there is no need to regulate it out of business, natural gas will win on economics.

Unless, of course, you do something dumb like try to stop pipeline construction, so utilities cannot get gas supplies due to transportation constraints. Then the environmentalists will inadvertently keep coal in business and emissions much higher than the market would otherwise dictate. The law of unintended consequences.

For some, actually reducing emissions is less important than having society make symbolic sacrifices, the equivalent of societal hair shirts for our climate sins. The symbolism of trying to remove the plastics is far more important than whether or not it actually works.

The market could also solve the problem of plastic if the price of disposal were captured and included up front. However, governments would have to put the squeeze on industries and consumers. In other words, might as well scavenge the oceans and try to feel good about it.

TheOffice wrote:Rob, Yup, we love our symbols and our idols. That's why we pay guys $20mm a year to throw a ball and pay school teachers less than 1% of that. Politicians love taking credit for things they don't control! Its what they do, regardless of party affiliation. The Soviet Union would have failed without Reagan. The examples are endless.

We pay sports players $20m by paying handsomely to watch winning teams. If we were able to characterize "star teachers" as well as "star players" and were happy to pay more in local taxes and tuition it would work with schools too.

I doubt that anything is going to "clean up the gyre". The amount of plastic is huge, but the area is huger. The best approach is to starve it by reducing the accumulation rates of new plastic, as best can. We hear, now and then, of some microorganism evolved to digest plastic. How could anything go wrong there? We see pictures now and then of acres of floating bottles, like the one above, and those are the places to for an active approach.

One of the problems with governmental solutions is they often lack continuity. Administrations come and administrations go. As we have seen. On my local level, the City of Stamford had been sending the collected recycling material to China, but China has stopped buying and we are now more restricted in what we can put in a container to be recycled.

Paul, I think you make sense. Having also sailed around in the Pacific High I agree - there is VERY little to actually see.

My cynical guess is that these folks will go out, try to collect stuff where it isn't, and disappear or repurpose the net to places where it will. Then we'll have fishermen up in arms because the by catch will include things like Salmon trying to get up river to spawn and being caught by the garbage net.

Frankly I'm much more concerned about the amount of agricultural waste and coal waste that was just washed down the E. Coast rivers. It's not like hurricanes are a "new thing" !! What were folks thinking? That all that pig shit would just sit in a pond nice and safe. Hogwash!!!

BeauV wrote:Paul, I think you make sense. Having also sailed around in the Pacific High I agree - there is VERY little to actually see.

My cynical guess is that these folks will go out, try to collect stuff where it isn't, and disappear or repurpose the net to places where it will. Then we'll have fishermen up in arms because the by catch will include things like Salmon trying to get up river to spawn and being caught by the garbage net.

Frankly I'm much more concerned about the amount of agricultural waste and coal waste that was just washed down the E. Coast rivers. It's not like hurricanes are a "new thing" !! What were folks thinking? That all that pig shit would just sit in a pond nice and safe. Hogwash!!!

Beau,

While I share your concern about the NC waste, I'll point out that this was the 4th largest flooding event in recorded history in NC, hardly normal. With good friends and business partners in NC, I actually pay attention to some of this.

More worrisome to me is the rise in large flood events associated with tropical systems and the prospect that this is the "new normal." If that's the case, we have pig shit as well as a lot of other things to worry about.

NC started addressing the coal ash issue aggressively in 2009, sued Duke Energy in 2013 (and won), started formal closure plans and have significantly reduced the risk, albeit not to zero. Similarly, levels in the pig waste retention ponds were lowered prior to the storm to a level reported to be able to deal with something like 24" of rain. They got more than that. Lots of headlines about all of the hogs and chickens killed with scary headlines and supposedly catastrophic numbers. Actual numbers tell a different story a reported 5,500 hogs killed out of a NC Hog farm population of some 9 million Hogs. 3.4M chickens out of an annual production number of some 880 million. Out of some 4,000 hog waste lagoons in NC, the State Dept. of Environment reported this morning that 5 were structurally damaged, 27 had some level of discharge, 15 were flooded to 0 freeboard and 31 had less than 3" of freeboard remaining. Basically about 100 of 4,000 were impacted. Desirable? No but not quite the apocalypse some media have implied.

With friends in North Carolina mucking out their flooded houses or their neighbors flooded houses, I can confidently say that the issues you raise are far down the list of worries for people actually living with the impact of the storm.

Larry, thanks for the facts. You're right. I've been listening to the radio while sailing and hadn't dug into the details. Great news. Thanks again for setting me straight.

BeauV wrote:Larry, thanks for the facts. You're right. I've been listening to the radio while sailing and hadn't dug into the details. Great news. Thanks again for setting me straight.

Beau,

A Pet Peeve of mine is the echo chamber of "New Media" companies that pick up a single wire service report and repeat it over and over again, making it a "crisis" in the eyes of folks reading the multiple reports.

I'd rather they concentrate on places such as DC where every significant rain event casues the combined storm drains and sewers to overflow and bypass the treatment plant, dumping millions of gallons of human waste into the Potomac. Since a large proportion of that waste comes from the political and lobbying classes, it's particularly vile - much worse than pig shit.

LarryHoward wrote:

BeauV wrote:Larry, thanks for the facts. You're right. I've been listening to the radio while sailing and hadn't dug into the details. Great news. Thanks again for setting me straight.

Beau,

A Pet Peeve of mine is the echo chamber of "New Media" companies that pick up a single wire service report and repeat it over and over again, making it a "crisis" in the eyes of folks reading the multiple reports.

I'd rather they concentrate on places such as DC where every significant rain event casues the combined storm drains and sewers to overflow and bypass the treatment plant, dumping millions of gallons of human waste into the Potomac. Since a large proportion of that waste comes from the political and lobbying classes, it's particularly vile - much worse than pig shit.

True, it is said you know you are really a politician when you start to believe your own (bull)shit....

LarryHoward wrote:

BeauV wrote:Larry, thanks for the facts. You're right. I've been listening to the radio while sailing and hadn't dug into the details. Great news. Thanks again for setting me straight.

Beau,

A Pet Peeve of mine is the echo chamber of "New Media" companies that pick up a single wire service report and repeat it over and over again, making it a "crisis" in the eyes of folks reading the multiple reports.

I'd rather they concentrate on places such as DC where every significant rain event casues the combined storm drains and sewers to overflow and bypass the treatment plant, dumping millions of gallons of human waste into the Potomac. Since a large proportion of that waste comes from the political and lobbying classes, it's particularly vile - much worse than pig shit.

Well, I wasn't reading any of the "new media" on this event. Just the BBC, NY Times, and NPR. Of course, even with old media, it is primarily the first wave of "news" that gets out. Which in this case was a list of all the Hog Shit that could dump, not the followup information you've provided on what actually happened.

I think this is a basic issue which is often overlooked. Once one has reported that there are X number of hog shit ponds that are predicted to potentially overflow, you've done the "news" which most people are interested in. I do not think most folks are interested in the valuable data you've provided on what actually happened. I don't think this trait of human nature is related to new or old media as much as it is to our lack of rigor in reviewing results which are boring vs potential disaster which is far more exciting to the general public.

The Ocean Cleanup now has a tracker display on their website: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/system001/
(you have to scroll down to the middle of the page)

They have been performing tests at their intermediate location before they tow it all the way out to the gyre region. Their testing includes pulling the ends of the linear array together to create a "U" shape. It did, and they are very happy about it ("it directly matches the predicted curvature from engineering models"), although unless it kinked or snapped I don't see what other shape it could have taken. Now they will tow it in various directions to simulate wind-over-current conditions. They have two tugs out there with the collector.

As for the outcome of this project, I predict that the results of this in-the-gyre testing will be inconsequential debris capture, and more biologic by-catch they they will want to admit. The system will eventually foul and stop functioning in any usable manner, and possibly break up and/or drift out of the gyre and wash ashore if they don't catch it and tow it back into place. The mystery to me is how they will spin these results, and how they will re-purpose their non-profit organization without losing face.

And in other debris news:



The two efforts seem equally quixotic, though the disparity in budget seems large.

Semi, the space clean up effort has the obvious effect of letting the other side know that we can take down their satellites whenever we wish. Of course they can just blow ours up, but it's nice to take the other guys spook stuff apart to see what it actually does

Well, I call it a failure:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 465082002/

It broke. When it wasn't broken, it didn't capture nearly the trash expected. Trash that it did capture, sometimes escaped.

Maybe the stunt brought some additional attention to the problem.

To Rob’s comment about the switch from coal to natural gas, I found these graphs fascinating. They clearly show that switch in action, except for places where coal is significantly local and cheaper, for example West Virginia

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... state.html

Charlie wrote:To Rob’s comment about the switch from coal to natural gas, I found these graphs fascinating. They clearly show that switch in action, except for places where coal is significantly local and cheaper, for example West Virginia

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... state.html

Agree. The graphs tell a powerful story but the words tell more of a story. Many of the states with high renewable requirements and little coal fired production are significant importers of power, including leaders in renewables such as California. A lot of that imported power comes from coal fired plants in "exporting" states. In Maryland, we import about 1/2 of our power. If you look at the exporters in the mid-atlantic region, you quickly find yourself deep in coal country. Maryland's renewable requirements are for consumption, not generation so we are pushing the supplier states to provide us renewables based power. California has announced it will shift its buying to non coal sources power in the not too distant future. Idaho, for example has essentially no coal generation but their consumption is noted at roughly 1/3 coal sourced based on buying coal based power (about 2/3 of what they buy) from out of state.

I think there is a bit of "chartsmanship" in how the inversion between NG and coal is depicted as the decline in coal has been at a fairly steady pace over the period shown (21% of national generation from 51% to 30%) over 18 years amd NG has grown from 17% to 32% over the same period. It's certainly a clear shift but nowhere near as dramatic as the charts imply.

I can't pass up taking a shot at hydro. Certainly low in emissions but you can't deny the impact of dams on the environment.

As usual, Larry debunks and lays out the facts in a level, unbiased manner.

What you're describing is roughly analogous to a Chevy Volt driver claiming "greenness" while charging his car from a dirty, diesel generator out behind his garage.

The data I'd like to see in an analytical piece is total power generation per year by source. Is coal actually growing but slower than total consumption? If Nuclear is holding steady as a fraction of national generation but total generation has doubled, then we have doubled out consumption of nuclear sourced power. That sort of thing. The article throws out a bunch of pretty graphs and a little bit of info but my analytical side doesn't feel well fed.

You also need to take a look at economic growth / economic cycle. It's no surprise to see energy consumption and emissions down during the recession and shift as energy prices climb and the economy grows again.

Jamie wrote:You also need to take a look at economic growth / economic cycle. It's no surprise to see energy consumption and emissions down during the recession and shift as energy prices climb and the economy grows again.

Yep. That stuff doesn't easily become a 10 second sound bite so few folks care.

LarryHoward wrote:The data I'd like to see in an analytical piece is total power generation per year by source. Is coal actually growing but slower than total consumption? If Nuclear is holding steady as a fraction of national generation but total generation has doubled, then we have doubled out consumption of nuclear sourced power. That sort of thing. The article throws out a bunch of pretty graphs and a little bit of info but my analytical side doesn't feel well fed.

Well here you go, at least some of it.

As of 2017 you get these results for generation:
62.8% fossil fuel of which Nat. Gas is 32.1 pts. and Coal is 20.9 pts.
20% Nuclear
17% Renewable of which Hydro is 7.4 pts., Wind is 6.3 pts., and Solar is 1.3 pts. A surprise, Biomass is 1.6 pts.
(Source)

There is an interesting on-line tool HERE which you can use to look at all sorts of things. Choose production, consumption, source, etc....

The link immediately above shows that total coal, shown in Megawatts of production, peaked in 2007 and has been steadily declining since. Meanwhile Nat. Gas has gone from 50k Megawatts to about 75k Megawatts since 2000. Nuclear and Hydro have been basically flat since 2000.

Interestingly, there is no mention of renewables in this part of the US Energy Information Administration, despite other places on the site showing renewables tied with Hydro and much larger than Nuclear in many parts of the country.

Here's an intestine footnote. Looking at total power generation for the US, there was no change which correlated with the economic cycle, despite the crash of 2008 occurring right in the middle of the data set. From 2000 to 2018 there has been a nice stead growth in power generation that is almost linear, if one removes seasonality.

Thanks Beau. Good info.

As a working stiff trying to get folks restarted after a holiday shutdown, didn't have to time to go look. Between a subcontractor who's development effort is losing about 1 day to schedule every 2 days (But we think we have reached STR peak and are now fixing more than we are generating!) and one of my government customers who let his contract expire and didn't arrange for a formal "authorization to incur costs bitching at my guys for not working on his stuff, it's quite the new year. At least another Navy customer came through with a large 5 year contract and some initial funding between 28 Dec and 2 January so I didn't have to pull every body off of his job as well.

This is why I liked it when Rob dragged me to Bermuda. Once we cleared Cuttyhunk and passed out of range of the last cell tower, things were going to be what they would be without my involvement and only Lynne had the SatPhone number with instructions that it was for family emergencies only. It takes that for me to cut the cord.

Maybe this is how we keep Beau retired. We'll give him research tasks a couple of times per week to keep him busy.