President Trump signs “eco-friendly” Save our Seas Act into law
Meanwhile, a cleanup crew heading to Great Pacific Garbage Patch
President Donald Trump has signed into law an eco-friendly bill that may have been the most bipartisan measure created on Capitol Hill since 2016.
The Ketchikan Daily News reports the Save our Seas Act, which Trump signed Thursday, reauthorizes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program through 2022.
The program works to reduce debris through research, prevention and reduction. The Save our Seas legislation keeps the program going by continuing to authorize $10 million per year for the next five years.
The bill also encourages the executive branch to reach out and engage the leaders of countries — located primarily in Asia — that are responsible for much of the sea pollution found around the planet’s oceans.
The passage is especially timely, as a clean-up crew has completed its first phase of testing pollution containment methods specific to large-scale removal of plastics in the ocean. The unit is now on its way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that assembled its floating plastic-capture system at the former Alameda Naval Air Station, successfully completed two weeks of testing about 350 nautical miles off the coast. On Tuesday, the team was given the go-ahead to head another 1,000 miles to a location halfway between Hawaii and California.
That’s where the world’s largest accumulation of discarded junk lurks — fishing nets, plastic bottles, pieces of plastic containers and bottle caps — drifting across an area estimated to be twice the size of Texas.
When the cleanup crew arrives in about two weeks, the goal is to collect and remove larger pieces of plastic before they are broken down into microplastics.
The new law can aid in supporting and promoting the clean-up efforts internationally. The nonprofit’s test system used a tapered screen drifting about 10 feet underwater that’s attached to floaters in a “Pac-Man” shape to gather debris while allowing marine life to swim safely around the unit.
The goals of the recent trial included confirming that the system could be assembled into the u-shape; move at sufficient speed through the water; and reorient when wind and wave directions change.
The crew also tested the system’s ability to capture floating debris, and marine life observers on board monitored the trial. Only five fish were seen near the system, and quickly moved away, according to The Ocean Cleanup website.
The response for eco-activists have been glowing…when compared to their usual opinions on Trump’s actions.
Good idea! Now what about the rest of the environment!
— Rebecca Taylor (@rsftaylor) October 11, 2018
I FOUND IT!! I FOUND IT!!! The one and only one thing that Trump did that was…..GOOD!!!!
— ACM (@ApathyOver) October 11, 2018
Midterms make good things happen sometimes it’s just a shame that his cold heart is disguised with deception.
— John Taylor (@JBG_Past_Prime) October 11, 2018
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Comments
Also known as the ‘cleaning up other countries shit’ act.
Because 90% of the trash in the ocean comes from a handful of rivers in Africa and India.
China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam dump more plastic into oceans than the rest of the world combined.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahleung/2018/04/21/five-asian-countries-dump-more-plastic-than-anyone-else-combined-how-you-can-help/#129f485e1234
But, nah, it’s (R)s in the U.S. who threaten the earth.
You are correct. And in Hawaii we are a victim of the mess, the absolute irresponsible mess, these nations of pigs create.
Larger trash items are also attributable to Korea and Japan which routinely lose fishing equipment and toss their ships rubbish over board.
But… but… but… I thought it was plastic straws from California that was causing the garbage float.
Good thing. But I’m more concerned about the Japanese nuclear reactor that is leaking contaminated water into the Pacific. I’m afraid to buy any seafood obtained from it.
Well, you shouldn’t be, any more than you should be concerned about this so-called “garbage patch”. The ocean is huge, and the radiation leaking into it is much less than what’s already naturally in it. It’s a non-issue
You’re citing Snopes as authority for anything?
Man, we busted them useful idiots of the left a long time ago.
Snopes is nothing bit a left wing crypto-propaganda site and has been one for years. It has got worse now that the owners, husband and wife, started fighting over it and have hired far left lunatics to do fact checking.
Nevertheless you are correct. The Univ. of Hawaii can detect no more radiation than normal in any region beyond a few miles of the Japanese coast. In fact when debris arrives, and any additional radiation is detected they become interested even though the increase is hardly measurable.
You are also correct on the density of the plastic garbage float. However it is dangerous to our protected species here in that fishing nets, cargo nets, foam, cargo, bottles (glass and plastic. Asians have an irritating practice of sealing these bottles before disposal ). These items do not disintegrate into small particles before they inundate our biosphere. They are injuring our birds, turtles, fish and seals.
if G*d had wanted you to eat seafood, she wouldn’t have made the land animals so easy to catch and/or domesticate.
😎
The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is another green hoax, invented in 1997 by Charles Moore. Not only can it not be seen from space, as I’ve seen some idiots allege, it can’t even be seen from the surface. Whatever’s there is microscopic particles that do nobody any harm. The fact is that plastics degrade.
How the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” was invented
Actually the Great Atlantic Garbage Patch started first: moooochelle odumbo’s White House garden.
Jeez. Even if Trump does something others see as good, he’s bad! Give me a break. Give him a break.
i was at a “green” event here in The Valley, like totally, because it was about native #Failifornia plants, but, unexpectedly, all the usual suspects were there too.
one table was pushing the whole “garbage patch” garbage, complete with “samples” allegedly taken from it, in baby jars.
they were most distressed when i asked how there could possibly be a floating mass, when everything had sunk to the bottom.
if they could have ejected me from the event, they would have. 🙂
In this environment, you were lucky you were not physically attacked.
Coming: leftists who attack political opponents will soon be saying to one another, “You were lucky they didn’t beat you within an inch of your life.”
That’s coming.
1. this was a few years back
2. whilst i am not the lean, mean fighting machine i once was, the Betas in the area can sense an Alpha when then stumble into one.
3. i wear a LOT of 2nd Amendment/Veteran/Conservative t-shirts around town, which throws them off balance, since they are under the impression that theirs is a protected space, with no barbarians allowed. they usually just get the vapors around me…
4.i tell the young, froggy ones that they will be going to jail, that i will press charges, and that i will also sue them in court and take everything their either own or will make for years and years. i can be very convincing. 8)
DJT harkens back to the days when America was the leader of the Free World.
Now, think of the Odumbo years.
OK, so why isn’t this $$ coming from the UN? The majority of this garbage is not from the USA.
This grant and much of the outlays of the NSF are just adding more money to the too numerous to list Govt. funded Leftist Slush Funds allocated with the facade of dubious ‘science’ and good intentions.
Yes, the dumping of biodegradable organic plastic is a problem but anyone looking at the problem knows that the way to deal with the dumping of biodegradable organic plastic in the ocean is to work with the third world and developing world countries that are responsible for dumping almost the entirety of the plastic into the ocean. The 90% of all ocean plastic from third world and developing countries represents just a handful of countries so the lion’s share of the target problem is not actually too hard to focus on unless you are bent on virtue signalling and only interested in funding NGOs and organizations to be slush funds for various far left causes.
I had hoped that Trump would have gotten a better handle on this non-sense and especially had hoped that Trump would have reigned in the NSF. Just this afternoon I read more wasted money being pumped into SJW Far-Left Slush Funds and War Chests.
Feds Give $570,890 Science Grant to ‘Intersectional Feminisms’ Professor
The project will create “educational interventions” into the engineering and computer science culture in order to “both interrupt the reproduction of dominant class rule and to study the beliefs and power relations of computing communities.”
“Not only does this project contribute a novel qualitative theory of cultural change in ECS, it also tests innovative methods to better elucidate who and what counts in the field and why,” the grant states.
Carrigan, the principal investigator on the study, is an assistant professor of Gender, Race, Culture, Science and Technology Studies at Cal Poly’s Women’s and Gender Studies Department.
–Feds Give $570,890 Science Grant to ‘Intersectional Feminisms’ Professor
–https://freebeacon.com/issues/feds-give-570890-science-grant-intersectional-feminisms-professor/
-RETRIEVED-Thu Oct 18 2018 12:43:21 GMT+0200 (Central European Summer Time)
I’d like to see floating extruders that can harvest plastic and then create artificial reefs.
Bottled water is perhaps the biggest gimmick and worst environmental scourge that mankind has ever devised. The idiots who whine about the environment are the same ones who suck down bottled Aquafina and Fiji water like it’s their job. I do not and will not buy bottled water. It all either winds up in the ocean or sits in a landfill for all time.
Trump authorizes theft of other countrie’s recyclables from the high seas!!