I’m quite lost at times in dealing with Religious beliefs. Sometimes I struggle to understand things or comment on things. I’m the same way with Politics. I don’t quite possess the ability to manipulate or persuade without transparency. Sometimes I do get too brutally honest, often to my detriment.
Often times, I’ll bite my tongue, holding back an inner thought in order to create peace, but other times, when I feel used or treated unjustly, I’ll speak up – sometimes explode. As I started, in dealing with religious beliefs, I’ve picked and prodded to understand a basis of morality, but what I’m lost at times is the aspect of preaching. Spreading words of Truth? Maybe my upbringing with Thermodynamics has just got too much science in me – but as you can tell, I like to preach about Thermodynamics – Laws of Balance. Maybe I’m religious after all.
Anyways, my sermon; Thermodynamics involves a balancing act. Heat flows towards cool, and finds a balance of temperature. Cooler than hot, but hotter than cool, yes, but in a sense, if anything can be cooled, then a reversible path can be found to rebalance to the original temperature. If heat gains momentum, an acceleration happens where entropy occurs and heat may turn into radiation, or a multitude of other energy streams. Entropy continues to occur until Chaos ensues, returning everything from a maximum to a minimum. It re-balances.
Irreversibility
Its definition by the minds states that irreversibility, in thermodynamic definitions, is due to intermolecular friction. No comment on heat and thermal equilibriums, only stating that irreversibility is caused by two masses causing friction. I still like to think the Laws of Thermodynamics are balanced and equal. Nothing in, nothing out, everything in harmony. To me, irreversibility cannot exist.
Friction
But perhaps friction is the entropy, the greed in my analogies. Friction - something I don’t understand. Mass and friction. Greed and friction. Exploitation and friction. Resources and friction. Oil and Friction. Plastics and Friction.
Irreversible plastics. They hold our things – water, circuit boards, music, comfort, entertainment, zeros and ones, thoughts, bodies and groceries. Irreversible plastics. Produced out of organic molecules we dig, we mine, we drill, we pump, we produce and we fight over. Why do we fight over it? Because it’s precious to us and we want more!
Implants
Synthetic Plastics date back to 1862 – Parkesine was the trademarked name. Parkesine, made from a mixture of chloroform and castor oil, formed a malleable, light weight material, produced in colourful displays without dyes and finished to a gleam and “hard as a horn, but as flexible as leather”, started it all.
Sure Goodyear had discovered natural rubber in 1839, but this was the first synthetic plastic, made out of chlorine, methane and vegetable oil.
Alexander Parkes saw the potential of all the applications of this product. I wonder what he would think now.
Gyrations
The North Pacific Gyre – if I lived in the heydays of the 1950’s I’d probably think this is the latest dance craze. Today, it’s taken on a whole new meaning. The North Pacific Gyre is the natural currents that carry out the Pacific Ocean’s dance. In the gyration, things may eternally float on – like a magical bubble floating with the gentle breeze, or a paper boat, floating off in the ocean’s horizon. If this magic were to happen and flow out to the vastness of the oceans, we can see what the eternal really is – plastics.
The North Pacific Gyre creates a vortex and swirl – concentrating anything that floats eternally into the depths of the oceans. A previously termed; “Plastic Soup” has been cooking, concentrating to twice the size of the continental US and containing over 100 million tons. Every piece of plastic that has drifted into the ocean in the past 50 years is accountable, and in 2008, that number was estimated to be over 100 million tons.
If averaged over 50 years, 2 million tons of plastics are annually dumped up in the ocean. I doubt very much that this amount should be averaged, but perhaps I can trend this to GDP growth over that time span. I’ll use the United States of America’s Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE), a component of calculating a nation’s Gross Domestic Product in this example – perhaps more fitting of projecting plastic accumulation and disposal.
PCE Increase per year = 5% (2000 – 2007)
100 tons projected at 5% growth in 2050 = 815 million tons.
Area of current vortex (Area of U.S. = 9.1 million square kilometres times 2) projected at 5% growth in 2050 = 149 million square kilometres.
Area of the Pacific Ocean: 150 million square kilometres.
Reversibility
Microsoft Thesaurus Check – no results were found.
My definition – to Renew, to Rebalance, to Undo, to Protect.
I don’t know why I can’t find another word for it in my thesaurus checker. I suppose it needs a little defining.
The vortex, alive and well, will continue to collect our trash while we wait for a solution. Any type of solution, but we have very little time. When I work with very little time, I panic. Do we need panic? I sure don’t feel it right now. Maybe I need to. Maybe we all need to. Without panic, it could be deadly.
Decomposition
Plastics float – like a boat, across the sea, because of we. Be specific? our Pacific.
What a mind-blowing thought – if we can’t see it, maybe it’s not there. Dilution is the solution? I’ll keep swinging my arms, and if you get in the way, it’s your own fault?
Let’s chop up our plastic, and then send it into the ocean! There’s the solution!
Will sarcasm get me anywhere?
Probably not, but amazingly, my sarcastic idea is not my own. Ok, maybe it works, and works quite well, but if I do a quick life cycle study on this, I can take data to know that fine particles of plastics, laden with garbage may attract fish, yes even in the depths of the oceans. And well, fish eat these plastics and store them. They store plastics quite well in their fleshy insides. Then, fish eat fish. Then, more fish eat fish. Then a crustacean eats some of the fish leftovers, but then that crustacean is eaten by a fish. Which in turn, will get eaten by more fish. And so on. Eventually, we eat fish.
And I hear Fish Tacos are the latest craze – and boy do I like seafood!
Head in the Toilet
When younger, I got to go out into the ocean. It was a home on the sea. I got seasick the first few days, but eventually, I felt comfortable enough to pee off the bridge deck. It was fun! It was an epiphany. My little presence alone can’t affect this vast world. But what if everyone pissed into the ocean – that’s damn nasty.
And what if we have. What if we are.
Plastics are currently derived from an oil source. They are used for televisions, telephones, brooms, mops, clothes, CDs, DVDs and everything around us. My challenge is this, name three things around you right now that you may keep or pass down that will last for the next 41 years. Are they made of plastic?
And what of everything else that is made of plastic. In the next 41 years, they will have to be thrown out. To the incinerator? Wait… these plastics may burn and kill us in the air. To the garbage dump? Hmm… no more room? We can chop down more trees right? To the ocean? I really don’t think that’s a good idea for the next 41 years.
The Melting Pot
Plastic was initially invented with vision and foresight. Chloroform and castor oil. They have these ingredients. These ingredients were mixed together and caused friction. The friction was caused because masses meeting created an irreversible loss of energy – thermodynamics – everything is accounted for. We have created an irreversible reaction. And we do this because we consume. But to keep consuming unnaturally, we are creating an even more irreversible reaction, we are creating it to ourselves and our health and our environment. We need to balance our consumption – we need to know where it goes, how it’s disposed, and how we can recycle. We need an answer now. We cannot wait.
The Continental Shift
The Atlantic Ocean is expanding, the Pacific Ocean is collapsing – a form of a Universal dance. It may be an eternal dance, perhaps, or it just may take Eons to happen, but someday, somehow, the dance will be over and the North Pacific Gyre will no longer be the latest dance craze. At this far distant point in time, we’ll see the glorious mistakes of our past . I hope to live to 2050 and feed the Generation NEXT…
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