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Comment by surgical_fire | Hacker News Reader

There's some beauty on it. Nature incorporates our garbage, and it becomes part of nature.

It might kill us, but then new creatures will evolve and grow, with plastic being part of their ecosystem, perhaps even desirable. In million years the future civilization of these creatures might have "plastic preservation programs" because the old plastic rocks are a finite resource upon witch their culture was built.

They might even gaze upon their plastic-filled oceans in awe, with some quasi-religious gratitude for the ancient race that gracefully filled the world with plastic that they might thrive.

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We are not the first species to trash the biosphere. When trees came up with lignin it took Earth life some millions of years to adapt to this new invention and still it was left with a layer of biological trash currently known as coal.

Another example is oxygen. Highly corrosive gas that early on in Earth's existance was rare, but some organisms excreted it as a wastproduct of their metabolism. It got so bad that high concentration of oxygen in atmosphere wiped nearly all life on earth until the life adapted.

And now came humans, who utilize the heaps and volumes of trash and waste left by other species. And produce their own that will stay on Earth for many millenia, long after humans in modern sense are gone.

I agree with the oxygen example, but for lignin that has been debunked in a 2016 paper, see my earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34654837

Is the paper you cite current scientific consensus or just one voice in ongoing scientific discusion on the subject?

Coral reefs.

Edit: Those are homes for the animals while they're alive, of course, but after the animal dies you could view the remaining coral as a form of waste. Certainly that's how we'd view a big pile of abandoned mobile homes.

Wow, now I want to gather bottles and throw them in the ocean. I kid of course, but that’s sorta beautiful.

I always knew someone would see me as a god despite what my wife says.

Now, if I could just get her to call me Lord.

Everyone gets quite excited about collecting sea glass, depending about what kinds of bottles you're going to drop

Then again, they might not.

Yup, good old George Carlin thought that way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vGE73tTSVU

"might kill us, but then new creatures will evolve and grow, with plastic being part of their ecosystem, perhaps even desirable."

Is that possible? As far as I know nothing consumes rocks and they've been around forever.

> Is that possible? As far as I know nothing consumes rocks and they've been around forever.

Can you burn rocks? No. Can you burn plastics? Generally yes. Therefor there is useful energy to be extracted from plastics.

NB, the quote was " part of their ecosystem" not "consumes". Molluscs, corals and diatoms construct out of rock-like materials, so making minerals part of their ecosystem is a thing.

Unlike rocks, plastic is high in energy (as evidenced by the fact that you can put it on fire).

Sure, but petroleum is also high in energy. There are even some bacteria that consume it. Yet petroleum is still available in huge deposits.

Deposits are the key, it generally isn't readily available on the surface where most of the living organisms are

I think lichens break down rocks. I know there are some microbes that do it.

There are already bacteria that eat (some) plastics. Plastics, unlike rocks, are basically just hydrocarbons, not that different from sugars and starches and quite digestible if you have the right enzymes. Whether or not animals could evolve to do it is another story, though.

I've been in a huge magnesite mine, tens of km of underground corridors, with big cathedral like spaces bored in a mountain. The biggest use for all this rocks is feeding meat producing cows with supplement minerals. So, yes, we all eat rocks.

> As far as I know nothing consumes rocks

Rocks do turn into soil which is then the basis for stuff to grow on it.

Through acidic chemicals released by plants they are not consumed

Consumed for minerals, not for consuming high energy chemical bonds.

Already happening. See https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359

For something to be consumed it needs to have energy surplus. Plastics have plenty, you could just set fire to them to combine them with oxygen to get it.

They only obstacle is to figure out set of enzymes that can do the burning in controleed manners. Life is very good at figuring that stuff out, it just takes time.

Rocks pretty much don't burn. Although I wouldn't be surprised if in water environments there are some organisms that can utilize some rocks in their metabolism. It's just that rocks are pretty much useless on the surface that's why nothing eats them here.

Similarly with coal underground. In airless environment coal is just rock. If there was plenty of it on the surface something would metabolise it for energy. I think coal from burnt forest doesn't just remain on the ground. Something probably eats it.

Terrible take.

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