From Oregon State University:
Oceanic “garbage patch” not nearly as big as portrayed in media
CORVALLIS, Ore. – There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims that the “Great Garbage Patch” between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to an analysis by an Oregon State University scientist.
Further claims that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, pointed out Angelicque “Angel” White, an assistant professor of oceanography at Oregon State.
“There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don’t need the hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic.”
White has pored over published literature and participated in one of the few expeditions solely aimed at understanding the abundance of plastic debris and the associated impact of plastic on microbial communities. That expedition was part of research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education.
The studies have shown is that if you look at the actual area of the plastic itself, rather than the entire North Pacific subtropical gyre, the hypothetically “cohesive” plastic patch is actually less than 1 percent of the geographic size of Texas.
“The amount of plastic out there isn’t trivial,” White said. “But using the highest concentrations ever reported by scientists produces a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size.”
Another way to look at it, White said, is to compare the amount of plastic found to the amount of water in which it was found. “If we were to filter the surface area of the ocean equivalent to a football field in waters having the highest concentration (of plastic) ever recorded,” she said, “the amount of plastic recovered would not even extend to the 1-inch line.”
Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn’t increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out.
“Are we doing a better job of preventing plastics from getting into the ocean?” White said. “Is more plastic sinking out of the surface waters? Or is it being more efficiently broken down? We just don’t know. But the data on hand simply do not suggest that ‘plastic patches’ have increased in size. This is certainly an unexpected conclusion, but it may in part reflect the high spatial and temporal variability of plastic concentrations in the ocean and the limited number of samples that have been collected.”
The hyperbole about plastic patches saturating the media rankles White, who says such exaggeration can drive a wedge between the public and the scientific community. One recent claim that the garbage patch is as deep as the Golden Gate Bridge is tall is completely unfounded, she said.
“Most plastics either sink or float,” White pointed out. “Plastic isn’t likely to be evenly distributed through the top 100 feet of the water column.”
White says there is growing interest in removing plastic from the ocean, but such efforts will be costly, inefficient, and may have unforeseen consequences. It would be difficult, for example, to “corral” and remove plastic particles from ocean waters without inadvertently removing phytoplankton, zooplankton, and small surface-dwelling aquatic creatures.
“These small organisms are the heartbeat of the ocean,” she said. “They are the foundation of healthy ocean food chains and immensely more abundant than plastic debris.”
The relationship between microbes and plastic is what drew White and her C-MORE colleagues to their analysis in the first place. During a recent expedition, they discovered that photosynthetic microbes were thriving on many plastic particles, in essence confirming that plastic is prime real estate for certain microbes.
White also noted that while plastic may be beneficial to some organisms, it can also be toxic. Specifically, it is well-known that plastic debris can adsorb toxins such as PCB.
“On one hand, these plastics may help remove toxins from the water,” she said. “On the other hand, these same toxin-laden particles may be ingested by fish and seabirds. Plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean.”
Among other findings, which White believes should be part of the public dialogue on ocean trash:
- Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;
- Plastic also covers the ocean floor, particularly offshore of large population centers. A recent survey from the state of California found that 3 percent of the southern California Bight’s ocean floor was covered with plastic – roughly half the amount of ocean floor covered by lost fishing gear in the same location. But little, overall, is known about how much plastic has accumulated at the bottom of the ocean, and how far offshore this debris field extends;
- It is a common misperception that you can see or quantify plastic from space. There are no tropical plastic islands out there and, in fact, most of the plastic isn’t even visible from the deck of a boat;
- There are areas of the ocean largely unpolluted by plastic. A recent trawl White conducted in a remote section of water between Easter Island and Chile pulled in no plastic at all.
There are other issues with plastic, White said, including the possibility that floating debris may act as a vector for introducing invasive species into sensitive habitats.
“If there is a takeaway message, it’s that we should consider it good news that the ‘garbage patch’ doesn’t seem to be as bad as advertised,” White said, “but since it would be prohibitively costly to remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from fouling our oceans in the first place.”
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What’s that in elephants….?
This story and others often spanned by advocacy groups or researchers desperate to keep the grants coming are little more then urban myths. Unfortunately urban myths and science myths all have the same general characteristics. Fortunately many urban myths do not cause harm but science myths can and do and have caused great harm.
So I gather that Time is proportional to the Logarithm of the Pacific Plastic; and that the best experimental value for the Plastic Sensitivity, is about 3 years per doubling (almost exackly); somehow I seem to recall that Log (2) is 0.3010600; but maybe I just misremembered, and I don’t know where my seven figure log tables went.
But that is almost good enough to use plastic as a clock proxy.
In keeping with IPCC protocol and standard Climatism doctrine, I should state that Plastic Sensitivity, is 3.0 +/-50% years per doubling. There that about does it !
Lank in the South
The story appeared in the Guardian so a grain of salt will have to go with it. They are hardly a reliable source of enviro-commentary. They don’t know, apparently, that the Maldives are rising, not sinking, for example.
It seems from the pictures there is a huge amount of plastic that could be recycled, probably to Dubai. Dubai produces very large amounts of ‘preforms’ which are exported and fed into blow moulding machines closer to market to make bottles.
The Maldives have a huge amount of material that could be turned into ocean-proof plastic furniture, docks, boardwalks and so on. Very low tech involved.
What a waste of waste.
Piers Corbyn on infowars. Well he just lost my respect.
How is that near everything gets exaggerated? Did they learn from someone?
° Democrat
° Republican
√ Educated
The same is true with the studies often pointed to when cities decide to ban plastic bags. There just haven’t been any recorded cases of plastic bags killing wildlife on land or in the sea. The plastic debris most often responsible for killing anything is lost fishing gear.
This article from 2008:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece
And yet we STILL have cities citing a mistaken quotation as justification for plastic bag bans (or surcharges).
The people who make these so obviously fantastical claims are the same nut-cases who believe we’re fast running out of landfill space to put our rubbish – and hence must recycle all manner of junk lest we end up turning Gaiya into one big colossal rubbish tip (aka garbage dump). Of course we know that the total area of landfill in the world is a fraction of a per cent, and also that unnecessary recycling is a complete waste of energy, money and manpower – but when did these clowns ever let the truth cloud their judgement?
And as for plastic being a “serious and well-evidenced problem” (as Paul_K said) – well, I suppose it’s potentially pretty serious for the bird or fish that unwittingly eats it. But unless someone can show that a few bits (relatively speaking) of plastic floating around the vast seas have any measurable threat to any species, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
I do, however, lose sleep over what these mindless idiots are doing to the supposedly-free world.
OMG, another genuine scientist. The shapeliness of her humility is exceeded only by the sweetness of her rational thought. (Hansen will most likely blacklist her.)
The most successful animal species, in terms of biomass, is probably Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, with a fresh biomass somewhat under 500 million tonnes.[10][22][23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)#cite_note-Ossietzky-23
Current annual global production is estimated at over 80 million tonnes and is expected to increase by 3 per cent a year.
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20100505063554/Global%20plastic%20production%20grew%20over%20500%20per%20cent%20over%20the%20past%2030%20years
So one type of plankton far exceeds the world’s total plastic production by a factor of 6 times. Even if all the plastic produced by man wound up in the ocean, it still would not match the biomass of the plankton.
Also, how much carbon would be produced gathering all this plastic together?
GIGO? (Garbage imagined; grant opportunity)
There is no pollution just redistribution and recycling of left over wealth.
It’s just that some stuff takes a bit longer to recycle than other stuff. :p
You might joke about it.I think it is sad that we have such a garbage patch in the first place.
What does this mean? I know mass and energy are interconvertible by the formula E=mc^2, and I see there is no estimate of the mass of plastic mentioned in the article. But a small amount of matter has enough energy to power a hydrogen bomb, which still only converts a tiny amount of the mass into energy; so I think I am likely correct that if all the plastic in the Pacific Ocean were converted into energy it could cause an explosion sufficient to fracture the planet. Does it really take 250 times that amount of energy to clean up the plastic? If not, what on Earth is this passage really trying to tell us?
James Sexton,
“The earth is running out of water and we should feel guilt every time with take a shower.”
As PlainJane mentioned, this is already in action! In Sweden, the “green people” have been telling us during several decades, that we shouldn’t waste fresh water, as there are several places around the world lacking the very same. (As we use fresh water for different reasons like toilets, lawns a.s.o.) In other words, they do try to make all others feel guilt about it, but as known: “empty cans make the most noise“.
The problem with the “shortage in other places” argument is that the natural water cycle are giving us plenty amount of fresh water, both in Sweden and in Norway. And this this nothing we can do anything about, fortunally … How to solve the “problem” then? Well, exporting fresh water makes no sence, and the “green people” knows this, so they avoid this fact.
Some years ago, they made alot of noise about toilets consuming huge amounts of fresh water, so there had to be something done (trad. a flush comsume 5-10 liter). There has be some low/none consuming alternatives on the market for some years, but these are still not common …
DirkH/sarc,
Get an education and learn how to avoid both economic and political myths!
(Common sense will do magic …)
“There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don’t need the hyperbole.
=======================================
I like this guy. Time for reason and sound decisions based upon TRUTH not hype.
And similarly just like in the CAGW scam, their hype used ends up undermining the cause.
Stupid hypsters.
They ruin it for everyone.
By lying, they UNDERMINE their cause, and piss off the others who don’t agree with them…to the effect they will ever ever be taken seriously or believed again.
In a similar vein….there is the side of me…as there is a side of most of us (hence my screen name)….that wants to help preserve and protect nature.
But Greenpeace’s horrifically radical POLITICAL agenda…undermines their cause at the starting gate.
Which makes it completely clear that Greenpeace…which maybe started with good intentions…just ended up like any other totalitarian Orwellian failure of logic and reason.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Dear Mr. Mod,
Please check spam again….wow the system does not like me tonite. LOL
Thanks as always…
Chris
[Found/posted. ~dbs]
Watch, this professor is going to lose his (her?-I can’t tell w/a french name) job. The last Oregon government employee who failed to toe the party line-the state climatologist based at Oregon State-lost his job because he did not believe in anthropogenic causes of global warming. Professor White’s statements come just as the ‘greenies’ have introduced legislation to make Oregon the first state to ban plastic bags at the retail level.
Another instance where media hype does not match the facts. Scientists, you should beware the media attention, because your credibility is undermined when you allow your work to be used by the MSM, and the fanatical environmental ideologues, in nefarious ways.
Hey Michael, here’s Alex Jones, if you’re interested.
http://2012forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=13492
Ed
“Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;”
This is sloppy.
The mass-energy equivalence is E=mc^2 and that isn’t what is being discussed here.
What did the author mean?
Cassandra King says;-
“Who can forget the claims of a plastic disaster touted by green groups forcing reactions that led to knee jerk attacks on the plastics industry? So massive changes are enacted by law to address problems that turn out to have little basis in fact, wholesale changes and expensive changes made have no effect and who can forget that the reusable bags forced on people harbour more germs than your average toilet bowl?”
Absolutely, just like the low voltage light bulb fiasco which has closed industries and which subsequently has proven to be an environmental and a health danger attached to their disposal, and which takes our quality of lighting for every purpose in life back decades.
The people who make these far reaching and injurious laws without serious and unbiased analysis of the often falsified findings of well funded pseudo scientists should be retrospectively made to answer for how they came to their conclusions in the first place.
crosspatch says:
January 6, 2011 at 2:50 pm
The same is true with the studies often pointed to when cities decide to ban plastic bags. There just haven’t been any recorded cases of plastic bags killing wildlife on land or in the sea. The plastic debris most often responsible for killing anything is lost fishing gear.
Wrong.
http://www.reefed.edu.au/home/explorer/hot_topics/marine_debris/marine_debris_on_the_great_barrier_reef
And here is a video.
And another :
It took all of 10 seconds to find that on Google.
There’s another 450,000 search results: have fun.
This is sloppy.
The mass-energy equivalence is E=mc^2 and that isn’t what is being discussed here.
What did the author mean?
Yes it is sloppy. Lets assume that they mean you would need 250 times the fuel burned to recover the equivalent mass of plastic.
This tells us nothing about cost/benefit ratio. The researchers seem to have pushed their study beyond it’s biological assessments. I think the point they are making is that mitigation is more cost effective that reactive control.
Where the species are localized such as harbours and reefs then these areas need too be assessed on their own merit. In developed counties we already are coming grips with sewage outlets and I think this could be extended to city runoff.
If you can deal with the local conditions this would have a flow on effect too the wider environment. Not much can be done with third world countries or shipping, none the less we need engineering solutions plus education in order to ensure there are no unintended consequences from our utilization of plastic products.
Crosspatch.
Here’s another one, just in case you missed it.
http://plasticisrubbish.wordpress.com/category/04-plastic-the-problems/killer-plastic/
Cheers.
“Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;”
Presumably, it is supposed to read:
“Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the energy used to produce the plastic itself;”
At least that’s how I read it. Incredibly poorly put, if that interpretation is correct. And I’d like to see some figures if even if it is. For every piece of hyperbole, there is an equal and opposite piece of hyperbole 🙂