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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 18:43:47 :
In Reply to: They say there is an island of plastic posted by clueless [201.202.22.114] on Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 18:22:26 :
They say it, but it's not true. Reports from people who have actually been there looking for it -- diehard environmentalists -- say that yes there's a lot of trash floating around over a large area, but it by no means covers the surface, much less is 20 feet deep. In many areas within the trash patch, you can't see any trash. I haven't been there so I couldn't say for sure.
Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles. At 20 feet deep, that's 5 million million cubic yards, or enough to bury the entire city of Dallas 14,000 feet deep. I know that people dump a lot of trash into the ocean, but given that most trash rots or sinks fairly quickly, there's no way there's 5*10^12 cu yds of it just floating around out there.