With apologies to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” I can’t wait to hear the fish stories that will be told to the EU trying to scam money from this latest idea:
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Anyone want to place bets now on how quickly we’ll see abuse of this?
The new trend in fishing: raiding garbage cans at night. h/t to WUWT reader AnonyMoose
You’re right, there’s something fishy about this.
In either a free or black market, you alway get more of something when you raise the price.
“Stocking the Pond” will become “Dumping at sea.”
Reminds me of a segment of a Terry Pratchett book – residents were paid to catch rats & given their money on production of rat tails. The rat population didn’t seem to be reducing at all but large amounts of cash was changing hands. On application to the Patrician of the city regarding this problem he said ‘tax the rat farms’.
I’m already working on a plan! How much per ton is plastic worth to any fisherman?
And people wonder how Greece went broke.
OH give me a break. Better not let Jane Lubecenko of NOAA hear about this…
Exactly how is this supposed to work ?
With apologies to “Ghost” I can only say: “Ditto” . . . and Ms. Browning . . . How do I scam thee . . . “Let me count the ways”!!!
And maybe they should apologize to Rosanna Rosanna Danna . . . and say: “Never-mind”!!
So many fish just thrown away . . . they used to make and still do make fish fertilizer!
So they are going to catch garbage and fish wonder how hygienic that is, although in Scotland we eat battered deep fried mars bars so they might have a Market, eh, yum!
P Walker says: “Exactly how is this supposed to work ?”
(1) Fishing boats rendezvous at sea, meeting a container ship full of plastic headed for recycling in third world countries. (2) They send up a few dollars, and the crew opens the doors of several containers, dumping the contents directly onto the boats. (3) The boats take the plastic back to port and get paid. (4) The authorities give the plastic to recyclers. (5) Recyclers put the plastic into containers that are loaded onto ships. (6) Repeat until sanity is restored.
I can’t imagine how this is supposed to work. They would have to pay a very high price for the plastic to cover a ship’s operating costs. The ships would require special processing equipment as the majority of the plastics in the different gyres are small plastic particles suspended near the surface. The boats would need to suction and filter enormous amounts of sea water for a small amount of plastic. Adding to the cost, most of the gyres are further from port than traditional fishing grounds.
Here’s how it works (first draft):
1) Plastic bags are separated from trash in Beijing by the impoverished workers of a socialist super state and flown to Europe
2) The recycled bags are sold to fishermen
3) Fishermen dunk bales of these bags in the ocean close to the harbor
4) Fishermen collect their EU payments
5) European bureaucrats hand the slightly moist plastic bags to green recyclers
6) … who ship them to fishermen in Europe via Albania
7) Taxes are increased in Europe
PS. Has anyone seen a photograph of the ‘trash island the size of Texas’ in the Pacific yet?
Well if any contributors are interested in forming a fishing company with me, let’s call it, say, Clear up redundant plastics or CRAP for short I would like to hear from them. Some of the donkey work involved includes raiding the neighbours recycling bins and stashing them into a transit van destined for Felixstow. I could hire a boat for the day and hey presto we’ve got a reasonably lucrative catch. And it saves the planet, which is nice.
Oops. Forgot the /sarc. Sorry.
Does this remind anyone of the photovoltaic plants in Spain using spotlights to generate electricity?
Stephen Rasey says “Stocking the Pond” will become “Dumping at sea.”
You couldn’t be more correct -early private fire companies were paid by the fire—- guess what happened.
Additionally, the reason we have more boats than fish is every nation subsidizes its fishing industry- the above is just another subsidy that will exacerbate the problem- and ultimately result in another subsidy.
Bob Dylan eerily foresaw this nutjobbery four decades ago:
The beauty parlour’s filled with sailors/
The circus is in town/
Here comes the blind Commissioner/
They’ve got him in a trance/
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker/
The other’s in his pants/
How many April 1st’s can there be in one year??
I can’t imagine that fisherman could subsist on a normal catch of plastic so they would probably have to pay a premium for “caught plastic” and this is where the scamming starts in earnest.
“The move is intended as a sweetener to fishermen who have bitterly opposed the European commission’s plans to ban the wasteful practice of discarding edible fish at sea.”
Well, they have recognized a problem. Good Start!
“Bold new plan”: Bad idea
Does anyone have a good idea for the solution to the problem?
People made money on the green economics nonsense by shining lights on their solar panels at night to profit from the price differential between the cost of electricity and the generous government subsidies from feed-in tarriffs. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that some enterprising Greek fishermen (love the hats) will make deals with trash collectors to obtain the plastic from the garbage they collect and then stealthily deliver it to a predetermined location so that later they can fish there to make it look like they caught the plastic from the sea.
P.S. Now we will soon all be able to proudly display on our walls at home, the 2 liter bottle we battled in the Mediterranean Sea on our last fishing trip in Greece.
I guess they’re planning to fish that giant floating island of plastic. Surely you’ve heard of it! It’s floating in Pacific Ocean and is at least the size of Texas. Despite that, no one has ever seen this island, but many are convinced it’s out there! ;->
The law of unintended consequences always comes to mind whenever the EU dreams up another scheme involving taxpayers handing subsidies over.
Raiding measly garbage cans? I don’t think so. This scheme will involve thousands of vessels, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of “marine plastics” over huge “fishing” grounds. And, after all, this is Europe, so my bet is that months, if not years before the scheme was announced to the public, cronies and families of clever bureaucrats secured supply sources and delivery routes of this new polypropylene contraband. Soon enough, China will jump in by manufacturing sophisticated garbage “knock-offs,” because it’s cheaper to manufacture than to collect…as is the case in the real world.
Of course, such chilling crimes against The Environment will require a lots of policing, with new agencies and even cash-strapped EU navies. And, all the fish that’s being ignored will wind up in the bellies of unscrupulous factory ships anyway.
No wonder there’s so few good parodies in comedy these days, they’ve been shifted to the ‘news’ segment.