Sea Level Rise and Ocean Garbage Patches

[repoman]

I wonder just how bad it will get in the future when the seas rise and float away junk (plastic and even chemicals) left in abandoned cities. It seems to one aspect of Climate Change that is never addressed.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Hopefully, by then my children will be living in the Rockies, hunting Elk for food with makeshift crossbows.

 

[repoman]

Here is one particular problem also:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill into the ocean

 

[fromderinside]

Here is one particular problem also:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill into the ocean

I'm thinking it won't be a problem.

The World ocean has an area of about 361 million sq km (139,400,000 sq mi), an average depth of about 3,730 m (12,230) ft, and a total volume of about 1,347,000,000cu km (322,280,000 cu mi)."

Seems the waste will be diluted about by a factor of 10 million or more. Calculate for yourself.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Here is one particular problem also:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

I'm thinking it won't be a problem.

The World ocean has an area of about 361 million sq km (139,400,000 sq mi), an average depth of about 3,730 m (12,230) ft, and a total volume of about 1,347,000,000cu km (322,280,000 cu mi)."

Seems the waste will be diluted about by a factor of 10 million or more. Calculate for yourself.

Are you assuming the waste will be distributed evenly throughout the whole ocean?

 

[bilby]

I'm thinking it won't be a problem.

The World ocean has an area of about 361 million sq km (139,400,000 sq mi), an average depth of about 3,730 m (12,230) ft, and a total volume of about 1,347,000,000cu km (322,280,000 cu mi)."

Seems the waste will be diluted about by a factor of 10 million or more. Calculate for yourself.

Are you assuming the waste will be distributed evenly throughout the whole ocean?

Given that the only land within 500km of Enewetak Atoll is Bikini Atoll (which was also used as a nuclear weapons testing site), the dilution by the time it gets anywhere inhabited will be sufficient to render it a non-issue. those 10⁵ cubic yards of debris - if it all dissolved or dispersed in the ocean (which it couldn't, as most of it is insoluble and the most active bits are very dense indeed), will have been diluted by 4x10¹⁵ cubic yards of seawater - a ten billionfold reduction in concentration - by the time it reaches the nearest inhabited location. Most of this stuff is well over fifty years old anyway - the active stuff is long decayed, and the long-lived stuff is (by definition) not very active.

There are a shitload of problems that will be caused by sea level rise that are massively more important than this. The only reason it's even on anyone's radar is that it has the N-word attached to it. The chemicals and fuel stored by the US Navy at Guam is a massively bigger concern - and that isn't much of a concern at all.

Nobody is going to be worrying about some trivial amounts of contaminated rubble in the middle of the Pacific Ocean while there are thousands of refuges wading through the neck-deep seawater in Central Park, New York City, desperately seeking higher ground.

 

[Underseer]

I'm thinking it won't be a problem.

The World ocean has an area of about 361 million sq km (139,400,000 sq mi), an average depth of about 3,730 m (12,230) ft, and a total volume of about 1,347,000,000cu km (322,280,000 cu mi)."

Seems the waste will be diluted about by a factor of 10 million or more. Calculate for yourself.

Are you assuming the waste will be distributed evenly throughout the whole ocean?

Unfortunately, that's not what happens. Floating garbage tends to congeal into giant floating islands.

 

[bilby]

I'm thinking it won't be a problem.

The World ocean has an area of about 361 million sq km (139,400,000 sq mi), an average depth of about 3,730 m (12,230) ft, and a total volume of about 1,347,000,000cu km (322,280,000 cu mi)."

Seems the waste will be diluted about by a factor of 10 million or more. Calculate for yourself.

Are you assuming the waste will be distributed evenly throughout the whole ocean?

Unfortunately, that's not what happens. Floating garbage tends to congeal into giant floating islands.

Yeah, but the comment to which you replied was not about garbage; it was about rubble and scrap metal left over at Enewetak Atoll (specifically Runit Island) from 1950s and '60s nuclear bomb tests. It's mostly rock and metal; and most of it will stay where it is, or move a few hundred metres on the seabed, if the site is flooded. The tiny fraction that will become suspended or dissolved in the ocean will cause no problems, because nobody lives within hundreds of km; indeed the only other land within 500km is Bikini Atoll, which is already host to its own US nuclear bomb testing sites.

The floating garbage is a different issue - although again, it is not high on the list of problems in the event of large scale inundation of cities by rising oceans. Floating garbage in the ocean is one of those problems that is worth addressing when there isn't something more pressing to deal with; But if London, New York and Sydney (plus hundreds of other major cities) are underwater, worrying about the garbage that is washed into the ocean as a result is like worrying about the scratches on your car's bodywork when it just got crushed by a semi-trailer. Scratched bodywork is a problem when it is all that has happened, but when your family are lying injured in the wreckage, buffing out the scratches is not an important part of your 'things to do' list.

The OP is an odd mix of alarm at the severity of the problem we face (rising oceans) with a failure to grasp just how severe this problem is (a lot more serious than a bit of pollution).

 

[Underseer]

Thanks for the correction, Bilby.