re: #280 Altermite

Honestly- I have no problem with this particular bit of plastic, as I don’t know enough about. I simply disagreed with the used of the term biodegradable.

I do know that one of the more common problems with bits of plastic like this isn’t the toxicity that sharmuta was worried about, but more of a choking/clogging/tangling issue, which does hit a few at risk species, but thats something else entirely.

OK good, I see. Maybe I should have used the term “inert” rather than “biodegradable,” which is often used colloquially but which has a more detailed technical meaning as well, which you pointed out.

I agree that choking and entanglement might be a problem for large animals like pelicans/turtles etc., but that’s not the issue the scientists in the article were talking about, and to which I objected; They were instead talking about fish and marine life swallowing small plastic particles and somehow getting poisoned by them — something that didn’t seem very likely to me.

Look: Garbage is bad and ugly. And I HATE litterers and littering. And I’d love to see a garbage-free world. But the people in this expedition to look at the garbage in the Pacific gyre were spouting off a lot of unsupported gobbledygook, and then the commenters started talking about nuking ourselves as the proper solution to this problem — or, alternately engaging in hollow meaningless gestures. I reserve my right to make fun of them.