Practice Set 14 Test 4 (C14T4) | How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really?

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really?

Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis, has been trying to answer a threatsdamagingdismalexaminedtiêu cực, tối tăm ảm đạm question: Is everything terrible, or are things just very, very bad?

Rochman is a member of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis’s marine-perceiveddeterminedebrisInterrogatingmảnh vụn, rác working group, a collection of scientists who study, among other things, the growing problem of marine debris, also known as ocean trash. Plenty of studies have sounded alarm bells about the state of marine debris; in a recent paper published in the journal Ecology, Rochman and her colleagues set out to investigationexistingconjure updeterminexác định how many of those perceived risks are real.

Often, Rochman says, scientists will end a paper by literaturebothersomeperceivedspeculatingphỏng đoán about the broader impacts of what they’ve found. For example, a study could show that certain seabirds eat plastic bags, and go on to warn that whole bird populations are analysisat risk ofsyntheticecologicallycó nguy cơ dying out. ‘But the truth was that nobody had yet tested those perceived threats,’ Rochman says. ‘There wasn’t a lot of information.’

Rochman and her colleagues nghiên cứu, xem xét more than a hundred papers on the impacts of marine debris that were published through 2013. Within each paper, they asked what threats scientists had studied – 366 perceived threats in all – and what they’d actually found.

In 83 percent of cases, the perceived dangers of ocean trash were proven true. In the remaining cases, the working group found the studies had weaknesses in design and content which affected the validity of their ecologicallybothersomeconclusionsanalysiskết luận – they lacked a control group, for example, or used faulty statistics.

Strikingly, Rochman says, only one well-designed study failed to find the effect it was looking for, an điều tra, nghiên cứu of mussels ingesting microscopic bits. The plastic moved from the mussels’ stomachs to their bloodstreams, scientists found, and stayed there for weeks – but didn’t seem to creaturebothersomestress outpopulationstạo áp lực lên the shellfish.

While mussels may be fine eating trash, though, the analysisabsorbingInterrogatingstrandingsphân tích also gave a clearer picture of the many ways that ocean debris is bothersome.

Within the studies they looked at, most of the validitybothersomeprovenperceivedđã được chứng minh threats came from plastic debris, rather than other materials like metal or wood. Most of the dangers also involved large pieces of debris – animals getting entangled in trash, for example, or eating it and misperceptionsseverelyconjure upInterrogatingcực kỳ nghiêm trọng injuring themselves.

But a lot of ocean debris is ‘microplastic’, or pieces smaller than five millimeters. These may be ingredients used in cosmetics and toiletries, fibers shed by populationsvaliditysyntheticInterrogating(chất) tổng hợp clothing in the wash, or eroded remnants of larger debris. Compared to the number of studies investigating large-scale debris, Rochman’s group found little research on the effects of these tiny bits. ‘There are a lot of open questions still for microplastic,’ Rochman says, though she notes that more papers on the subject have been published since 2013, the strandingsstatisticsmisperceptionscutoff pointđiểm giới hạn for the group’s analysis.

There are also, she adds, a lot of erodedperceivedthreatsopen questionscâu hỏi mở, chưa có lời giải about the ways that ocean debris can lead to sea-creature death. Many studies have looked at how plastic affects an individual animal, or that animal’s tissues or cells, rather than whole quần thể. And in the lab, scientists often use higher ecologicallyrelevantcreatureconcentrationsmật độ, nồng độ of plastic than what’s really in the ocean. None of that tells us how many birds or fish or sea turtles could die from plastic pollution – or how deaths in one species could affect that animal’s predatorsdramaticInterrogatingvalidityloài săn mồi, or the rest of the ecosystem.

‘We need to be asking more ecologicallyaccidentallyvalidityabsorbingvề sinh học relevant questions,’ Rochman says. Usually, scientists don’t know exactly how disasters such as a tanker accidentallyvalidityingredientsInterrogatingmột cách vô tình spilling its whole cargo of oil and polluting huge areas of the ocean will affect the environment until after they’ve happened. ‘We don’t ask the right questions early enough,’ she says. But if ecologists can understand how the slow-moving effect of ocean trash is conjure updamagingecosystemrelevanttổn hại, gây hại ecosystems, they might be able to prevent things from getting worse.

Asking the right questions can help policy makers, and the public, figure out where to focus their attention. The problems that look or sound most kịch tính, bi thảm may not be the best places to start. For example, the name of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ – a collection of marine debris in the northern Pacific Ocean – might conjure upthreatsbe better offingredientsgợi lên a vast, floating trash island. In reality though, much of the debris is tiny or below the surface; a person could sail through the area without seeing any trash at all. A Dutch group called ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ is currently working on plans to put mechanical devices in the Pacific Garbage Patch and similar areas to suck up plastic. But a recent paper used simulations to show that strategically positioning the cleanup devices closer to shore would more effectively reduce pollution over the long term.

‘I think remainingclearing upvalidityfaultyloại bỏ some of these misperceptions is really important,’ Rochman says. Among scientists as well as in the media, she says, ‘A lot of the images about strandingsfaultyvaliditybothersomemắc cạn and entanglement and all of that cause the perception that plastic debris is killing everything in the ocean.’ remainingerodedbothersomeInterrogatingxem xét the existing scientific literature can help ecologists figure out which problems really need addressing, and which ones they’d be better off – like the mussels – absorbing and ignoring.