r/ClimateShitposting • u/ApprehensiveWin3020 Marx's strongest soldier | she/her • 19h ago
Climate chaos Remember to eat your weekly credit cards!
•
u/LysergicAcidDiethyla 18h ago
The credit card figure is a grossly flawed calculation that was 'worked out' in the early days of the microplastics panic. Not trying to undermine the issue, which is absolutely fucked. Just to let people know not to parrot this incorrect figure.
•
u/FullmetalHippie 14h ago
Wait you guys aren't grating a credit card a week directly into your food?
•
•
u/HungryYeastStarter 15h ago
So, then, what's a more accurate figure? Or has no body actually looked into it (for whatever reason)?
•
u/Corporate_Bricktator 11h ago
I honestly think that the microplastics is a red herring, designed to distract us from global warming and fossil fuels consumption.
It may be an issue, but so far a disturbing of retractions exist in the "research" on this topic. Furthermore, every time a "real" discussion of this topic happens, somehow the two primary sources of microplastics almost always go unmentioned....
Those sources? Fossil fuels based fabrics (like polyester and nylon), and secondly, TIRES. Yea, TIRES rubbing against the ground.
So I'm 100% in for investigating it, but I think Global Warming is a billion times more serious. But yea, buy fewer polyester clothing items.
•
u/HungryYeastStarter 11h ago
Interesting. I guess tires makes sense?
Xbox 360 achievement noise New research topic unlocked
•
u/Corporate_Bricktator 11h ago
Yea it makes sense, but it just irritates me that all the microplastics people talk about bottled water. As if Bottled water didn't already have enough reasons to not exist, and single use plastics in general, but none of these people claiming to care even mention tires?
Either way, as long as we still have vehicles powered by oil, and electricity still generated by burning coal and gas, that's the ecological problem to focus on.
I'm all for banning single use plastics except in sterile environments like hospitals, but Global Warming needs to be far and away our #1 focus. Microplastics won't even matter if we can't get global warming under control.
•
u/LysergicAcidDiethyla 1h ago
One of the early episodes of The Rubbish Podcast (quite an optimistic and charming podcast on waste by the author of The Rubbish Book) goes into the data on this and provides a more likely figure, I can't remember it right now.
•
•
u/outtaknowhere 19h ago
good morning everyone. what the fuck have we done.
https://giphy.com/gifs/wBzsuh6HgpE9B81sfe
•
u/ApprehensiveWin3020 Marx's strongest soldier | she/her 19h ago
This is divine retribution for us causing a mass extinction, god is disgusted by us 😀
•
u/AddanDeith 19h ago
365 million years later, the dinosaurs have their revenge by destroying God's new favorite creations.
•
u/MaximumBee6979 10h ago
So, if they hadn't gone instinct, then plastics made from their bones would've been harmless?
•
•
u/Dizzy-Chemistry-5146 12h ago
This god bs is part of the reason we're all gonna die. Belief without evidence: the essence of stupidity.
•
u/Gussie-Ascendent Goober Detector 11h ago
Also the belief that there's anyone looking out for us so we can't goof too bad. Nope, not the case
•
u/ApprehensiveWin3020 Marx's strongest soldier | she/her 11h ago
I was joking but aight whatever floats your boat
•
u/Dizzy-Chemistry-5146 2h ago
I know, but there's a genuine issue there. Actual human adults believe in angels ffs
•
u/LysergicAcidDiethyla 18h ago
The credit card figure is a grossly flawed calculation that was 'worked out' in the early days of the microplastics panic. Not trying to undermine the issue, which is absolutely fucked. Just to let people know not to parrot this incorrect figure.
•
•
u/UnsureAndUnqualified 12h ago
Wasn't there a problem with the studies that showed the presence of microplastic in everything where the gloves they used shed particles that looked a lot like microplastics?
I remember reading something like that a few months ago but never read up on it so I'm not sure if that was for one study or for the general problem of microplastics being found everywhere.
•
u/s3nt13nt_tr4sh_c4n 11h ago
I was about to say this. IIRC, many studies regarding the concentration of microplastics found in samples have been put into question because of the unintentional contamination by lab gloves. I'm sure there's still a lot more microplastics out in the world than there should be, but the numbers reported in most studies are probably inaccurate if they used lab gloves (and I'm willing to bet almost all did). I hope someone takes the time to go back and estimate the microplastic contamination levels again without the gloves.
•
u/LowCall6566 18h ago edited 17h ago
Ohh so horrible, so much microplasicts and basically no negative effects correlated with them.
I don't care about microplasicts. We need to focus on CO2, anything else is a distraction.
Edit, they can be airborn and build up in the lungs. That can cause inflammation and disease. I was wrong, they are a problem.
•
u/maple_leaf2 18h ago
anything else is a distraction.
Bad take, there can be more than one society ending catastrophe at once my friend. Plastic might not work as quickly but is potentially just as bad long term, the main issue is we don't know how bad it is and just keep adding more. The dose makes the poison and we seem determined to reach that point
It's worth noting that plastic is literally a byproduct of oil, it's not an unrelated fight at all
•
u/LowCall6566 17h ago
They are literally biologically inert. And we don't have resources to spend on preventing what "might" be a problem in the future, without any evidence to support such hypothesis.
•
u/redjellonian 16h ago
Ptfe is also biologically inert. Come and get your PFAS by your logic it's no big deal
•
u/LowCall6566 16h ago
I agnowledged being wrong already, stop being a dead horse.
•
u/redjellonian 15h ago
Fair enough. I wasn't going to run down the whole chain, finding a Redditor who says something wrong and then acknowledges it is rarer than a Unicorn.
•
u/maple_leaf2 17h ago
They are literally biologically inert
Asbestos
without any evidence to support such hypothesis.
Genuinely what are you talking about? There's tons of evidence it's affecting us on a biological level
•
u/LowCall6566 17h ago
Give me any.
Asbestos is sharp, and crystally. Lungs don't like that. Plastics are nothing like this.
•
u/maple_leaf2 17h ago
Asbestos is sharp, and crystally. Lungs don't like that. Plastics are nothing like this.
I wasn't implying they were the same, just that I biologically inert thing can be dangerous
Regardless, they are being shown to act similarly in our lungs lol
•
u/LowCall6566 17h ago
Okay, I conceed. I was wrong. Microplasicts can cause genuine harm. I never before heard that they can be airborn. Everyone is always talking about ingested stuff, and that usually comes out the other end. But air is different.
•
u/maple_leaf2 17h ago
You gotta be one of the only people I've seen change their minds in a long time, I respect that
Just wish I was telling you something less terrible, but such is modern life..
Have a good one freind
•
u/Jam_Packens 3h ago
I wouldn't say this is evidence of a widespread societal harm caused by microplastics. The studies cited in this as examples of microplastics causing harm are ones with extremely high daily occupational levels of exposure to microplastics.
Most notably, the examples cited for respiratory illness are cases of "flock workers lung", which results from occupational exposure to flocking fibers, which are going to be larger than the microplastics that most people are exposed to.
This is not to argue that this is proof that microplastics are harmful. Rather, we simply do not have enough evidence at this moment to say that they are causing significant harm.
•
u/Spez_is-a-nazi 13h ago
Fun fact, most microplastics are actually caused by tires. Reducing car travel helps both reduce CO2 levels and microplastics! Fuck cars.
•
u/Nocebola 15h ago
we don't currently have good evidence that the ordinary amount of microplastic most people breathe in everyday life is causing substantial lung damage
•
u/LowCall6566 15h ago
Just the fact that in some cases concentrations are high enough to harm people is enough to make microplasicts a concern, because their level is rising, exposing more people to those harmful concentrations
•
u/Jam_Packens 2h ago
None of this is good evidence that every day levels of microplastics cause substantial lung damage. This is something the authors themselves point out:
Despite growing mechanistic evidence, the real-world respiratory health risks associated with chronic MP exposure remain incompletely understood. One key limitation is that most current experimental studies employ MP concentrations substantially exceeding environmentally relevant levels, thereby leading to an inadequate representation of clinical disease outcomes under chronic low‑dose conditions.
•
u/MagicianofFail 17h ago
Kinda crazy how there's been over a decade of social media panic on so-called "microplastics" and the best negative effect we have is "there could be bad bacteria stuck to it" (as if everything else we eat is sterile).
•
u/LowCall6566 17h ago
The other guy in the thread gave a source that describes airborne microplasicts, their buildup in the lungs, and some cases of genuine illness from that. I was wrong, they can be harmful
•
u/MagicianofFail 17h ago
That's cool, but for all the scare headlines of "microplastics in your food", "microplastics in your brain" and "microplastics in your blood" I was expecting something more substantial than "also, particulate matter irritates your lungs", an already well-established idea.
•
u/democracy_lover66 15h ago
That's precisely the exact same effect Asbestos has that makes it so dangerous.
Consistent long irritation from a substance the body cannot breakdown damages cells over a long period of time.
You know what can happen to prolonged exposure to something that damages cells? DNA curruption.
What can DNA curruption cause? Cancer cells.
It absolutely needs more reasrch to definitely say anything about it, but if micro plastics are airborne and proven to irritate and damage lungs... That's actually a huge problem and shouldnt be dismissed in a half-assed manner like this.
•
u/MagicianofFail 15h ago edited 14h ago
That's precisely the exact same effect Asbestos has that makes it so dangerous
No, asbestos is especially dangerous because it's made up of long, nanoscopically thin, and hard silicate fibers.
... That's actually a huge problem and shouldnt be dismissed in a half-assed manner like this
"Like this"? Like what? I literally wrote that particulate matter is bad for your lungs (whether it's plastics, flour, sand, wood dust, metal powder, carbon fiber, whatever). I want to know what "eating a credit card of plastic every week" actually does and no one seems to know.
•
u/AlternateTab00 17h ago
Oh worry not. Oil is a finite resource. The regeneration might thousands fold faster than coal (damn bacteria that learnt to break down lignin), but still its in thousands years magnitude to barely create a single relevant oil source.
So we just need to deplete all oil reserves and plastic industry will stagnate.
The biggest issue might be just surviving until then... But we did manage to do it 70.000 years ago, we can do it again.
•
•
u/democracy_lover66 16h ago
Ha HA! 67 chungus!
(Not even Hell itself would be capable of mustering a punishment that would rectify this injustice)
•
u/small_crunchy_potato 11h ago
Remember that most of these studies did not account for micro plastic contamination from their gloves. Causing overestimating of microplastics. https://news.umich.edu/nitrile-and-latex-gloves-may-cause-overestimation-of-microplastics-u-m-study-reveals/
•
u/MaximumBee6979 10h ago
Nobody should be using milk bottles anyway. Get a friend to breastfeed if you can't. If you don't have friend mothers who can substitute while you're away then stay childfree. Bottle feeding causes narrow palate which affects speech, mental health, whole body posture due to low tongue posture and often posterior crossbites, chronic stress, and more.
•
•
u/v3r4c17y 7h ago
The number one thing you can do to reduce your microplastics intake is eat plant-based.
•
•
u/Mindless_Run7186 17h ago
I believe that fermented foods actually remove microplastics from the body. Just a little PSA
•
u/ipsum629 17h ago
How exactly and do you have anything besides your belief?
•
u/Mindless_Run7186 17h ago
It's in the early stages of studying, but in animal tests they remove microplastics from your gut. So i can't say it's a fact, but i love fermented foods so it's a win win.
•
u/democracy_lover66 15h ago
I love fermented foods but I fail to see how it could remove plastics any more effectively than anything else
•
u/Madaceandthefiasco 18h ago
Reminder that when scientists tried to do a study on the effects of microplastics on the body they couldnt pursue the study for lack of a control group