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
re: Sundance’s fishing trip to Greece…
I once caught a lovely 2 L plastic bottle…well actually, it got away…
Oh FFS! – are these people deranged?
Do they know how much it costs in fuel alone to send a trawler to sea? Do you think any fisherman is gonna agree to this? They want fisherment to actually work to catch plastic? Mad, madder and maddest…………
and this on top of paying for wind trubines NOT to generate electricity……..
crazeeee……………
Jorgekafkazar – Thanks , it all makes sense now . BTW , sarc noted but not necessary .
jorgekafkazar says:
May 5, 2011 at 9:21 am
exactly!
reminds me of the clever scam on the Eire/Northen Ireland border some years ago (could still be going for all I know!). The EU paid a subsidy for every sheep transported across the border – so some wise guys dug a tunnel and a few hunderd sheep were in permanent circulation! (or something like that) – with lots of wonga all round being used to support the various paramilitaries, etc…….
Notice that the article doesn’t mention anyone having actually trying to fish for plastic, what kind of equipment is needed, nor how much plastic is available to be caught. Maybe someone has a computer model, but not even that has been mentioned.
For that matter, they’re concerned about dead fish in the water, but there’s no mention of whether there are crab fishermen nor how they’d be affected by less feeding of the crabs. Also no mention of how the amount of dead fish due to fishing compares to the natural amount of dead fish.
I’m ready to scam it right now – walk around Chico, there’s plastic gold blowing down the streets, hanging in the hedgerows, skittering up the alleyways. I can just see myself wandering the neighborhood with my pokey stick, gathering my retirement funds. I live in the Gold Mine – right behind Safeway and Mickey D’s!
Anthony, you always get me with those catch lines from my favorite movies! Coo-coo-ka-choo!
You may have thought it needed a /sarc tag, personally, I think that’s how it’ll work! 😉
DaveE.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/05/one-word-plastics/#comment-653743
Mmm. The [a] bit didn’t work. Usually does.
DaveE.
@John F. Hultquist says: May 5, 2011 at 9:44 am
“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?”
Certainly. Send the incompetent, unelected and unaccountable EU Commissioners to sleep with the fishes!
Double pay for plastic fish?
This reminds me of the waste disposal systems in use in the UK. I have heard — not seen it in practice — that after we sort our rubbish into our colour-coded dustbins the recycleable waste is baled and exported to China where the actual recycling takes place. I have also heard that the price of waste is so low that this is no longer profitable, but the contracts are let so the shippers have no choice but to take the stuff.
Now, call me a cynic… Let’s say you have a contract for recycling waste which you are transporting across the Pacific, you will have to pay for disposal at the destination but there’s a lot of water around you. What’s a thrusting entrepreneur to do? The UK meets its EU obligation, no-one sees the splash, who’s to know? Everyone gains. Except turtles and seabirds, and who cares about them….
Incidentally, there was some discussion about plastic bags and how they use only a tiny bit of plastic. That’s true, but because they are so light they spread around in every breeze. Disposing of them really is difficult. Maybe they should have a deposit of about ten p a time — they’d end up back at Tesco’s PDQ.
JF
Your apology to Dustin H. is misdirected. The “word” was given TO him by his future father-in-law advising him on a career path.
REPLY: Thanks for whining, whatever. People wouldn’t get it if I named the other actor. -A
Of course that’s the answer to global warming. All the plastic in the oceans is insulating the sea making it warm up.
Imbeciles. I am sorry, I have no better word than that. They are pure, 100%, unadulterated, imbeciles.
‘Could be the answer to our age old question: Why are we here ? ….. Plastic !’
This rubbish [no pun intended] will be abused to the hilt. This is just another green plan that the Mafia will get involved in – again.
This will take care of itself as soon as the dolphin protection people hear about it.
“oh man, my trash nets keep getting fouled with these stupid tuna. I’m not having any luck today at all”
I think they need an environmental impact study to look at the oil and other pollutants that leak from fishing boats too. lol.
If Johnathon Swift were alive today, he wouldn’t be able to make a living writing parodies. Lampoonery? We are drowning in it.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all a new madness emerges.
I’ve sailed in and out of Fiskardo in the Ionian many times.
The islands are steep to the sea, Homer’s wine-dark sea.
The water is clear due to lack of nutrient so you can see down a long way.
The roads on the islands are local, all supplies come in and out by daily ferry.
There is very little flotsam on the beaches and the chances of finding much in the way of floating plastic is low.
There isn’t much in the way of tides or currents at this eastern edge of the Med.
Its a beautiful place Kefalonia and just across the channel from Ithaca but floating plastics?
No.
But given the perilous state of the economy, an invitation to abuse.
This is EU’s way of trying to pacify the recent “onslaught” of retired communist terrorists. Apparently there’s a lot of them in Greece, and apparently it could have had something to do with Greeks, being prone to communism, retiring at 45. :p
Ironic as it has become, EU, especially UK, spent billions on hunting international islamic terrorist, when the stats says the majority of the terrorist crimes in EU was committed by communists and other militant socialist groups. It’s ironic because it is a serious crime/offense in EU to discriminate. :p
The reason that fisherman throw perfectly good fish overboard is because of unintended consequences from current regulations. How about admitting failure and removing the legislation that’s not wlorking? Oh, this is the EU and any failed regulation is complemented with two more that works neither.
Fishing subsidies have been around for a long time. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) pointed out that the Scottish industry wasn’t about fishing for fish, but fishing for subsidies.
What no one’s siad so far is that EU Commissioners aren’t appointed to solve problems but to create new ones. In fact they breed problems in Brussels, even encouraging interbreeding between different species.
That was my first thought. What is to stop these fishermen from collecting a bunch of plastic bags, dump them in the ocean, and then turn them in to make money? Seriously, do these unelected bureaucrats do any forward thinking at all?
No one yet has asked the all important question –
If these fishers of plastic exceed their quotas, will they have to throw it all back overboard again?
We need to know this, in order to develop a profitable business plan.
Jesus Christ: I will make you fishers of men.
EU: I will make you fishers of rubbish.