[superchroma]

Yeah so this really took the shine off of my morning too, BUT apparently it's a crappy study without good backing for its claims. Some guy on reddit remarked that the plankton are still clearly visible from space in huge amounts. THAT SAID, we don't need to wait around for this headline except for real before we take action, and countries really need to get their stuff in gear.

There's no good reason for plastic to be leaving waterways and entering the ocean, and farmers need to be strongly pushed and supported to look at ways to farm without leaching fertilizer.

And yes, all your ideas are good ones. We need to try a bunch of these things.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

"Some guy on reddit"? That's enough to ignore the warning of a research team that spent "two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic" (per the article above)? Sorry but I don't think so.

For example: how much of the plankton in the Atlanic is visible from space? 1%? 100%? Does "some guy on reddit" have any clue whether it's possible to estimate the quantity of plankton just from satellite images? I honestly don't.

[alophawen]

Seriously?

You try to discredit a serious article about a subject you should be well aware is 100% true by now even if you were in fact living under a rock.-- by siding with random anon redditor that had a take more suitable for your world view.

It is not surprising the least why we are in this rut.

[brutusborn]

Yes, a lot of people (including myself) like to be skeptical of extreme claims.

Environmentalists making sensational claims from single studies tends to be counterproductive because if they are found to be wrong, they are used as ammo by climate skeptics. If they are right, then they will be backed up by other studies; so it is better to wait until certain before publishing things like "all but gone."

I

[YeGoblynQueenne]

The article says the researcerhs spent "two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic". Assuming they didn't completely mess up their sampling or simply fabricated their data, that should be enough time to wait, I think.

[brutusborn]

It's not about how long it takes to get one result, but how many other studies agree with that result. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just saying their extreme rhetoric isn't useful at convincing people who aren't already agreeing with them.

[fnordpiglet]

Don’t look up!