Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Frightened of plastic? Of course not; barring the occasional unsightly pile of junk, plastic is harmless. But the plastic pollution scare just might have what it takes, to serve as the new focus of green conscience.
A seabird common to Australia is being killed by marine plastic pollution at the alarming rate of one in 10, a Senate inquiry has been told.
A study found 11 per cent of young flesh-footed shearwater birds – common visitors to Australian coasts – were dying from ingesting plastic or from plastic chemical contamination, the inquiry into the threat of marine plastic pollution heard.
“This would be happening in other species as well,” the study’s author, marine biologist Dr Jennifer Lavers, told a public hearing in Sydney on Thursday.
The inquiry, called for by Tasmanian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, is investigating the impacts of marine plastic pollution on animals and ecosystems, fisheries, small business and human health.
Dr Lavers’ research partner Ian Hutton said one bird was found with 274 pieces of plastic in its stomach – 14 per cent of its body weight.
“That’s the equivalent of a human carrying a pillowcase full of plastic in his stomach,” he said.
Dr Lavers said although the scale of the marine pollution problem was on par with major challenges such as global warming and sea level rise, research was chronically underfunded.
Read more: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/02/18/plastic-pollution-threat-par-global-warming
Back in 2010, Marc Morano of ClimateDepot wrote a hilarious article about the desperate search for a new “crisis”.
Now that Paris COP21 has “solved” the climate crisis, the search for new scare stories appears to have intensified. The plastics scare may be starting to pull ahead of the field of implausibly ridiculous alternatives.
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http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2009/5131/
The Laysan albatross population increased from an estimated 18,000 pairs in 1923 to 590,000 pairs in 2005. The large population increase during the past 83 years is likely a response to the end of persecution by feather hunters, decrease in conflicts with military activities, and an increase in nesting areas at some colonies. Analysis of linear trends in the population showed a positive change over 1923 to 2005 and 1957 to 2005 and a stable size from 1992 to 2005. PVA results for the Laysan albatross colony on French Frigate Shoals indicate that this colony is currently stable, but there is a 28-percent probability of the population decreasing by 24 percent over the next 60 years. PVA results for the Laysan Island colony indicate that the colony is most likely to increase in size over the next 60 years, but there also is a 45-percent probability of the colony decreasing in size. PVA was not conducted for Midway Atoll due to the small sample size. Matrix modeling results indicate that the Laysan albatross population, summed across all three colonies (Midway Atoll, Laysan Island, and French Frigate Shoals), increased 6.7 percent per year from 1992 to 2005, and the estimated bycatch of 2,500 birds per year is less than the estimated Potential Biological Removal (PBR—the maximum number of mortalities, not including natural deaths, while maintaining an optimum sustainable population).
Then there is this from WWI and WWII governments using the ocean as a dump site:
“The best guess is that at least 31 million pounds of bombs were dumped, but that could be a very conservative estimate. “These were all kinds of bombs, from land mines to the standard military bombs, also several types of chemical weapons,”
“in 2010, commercial fishermen pulled munitions from the Atlantic while dredging for clams off Long Island, New York. Two crew members were hospitalized after a black tarry substance oozed from the weapons. In 2012, workers found a 75 millimeter artillery shell at a clam processing plant in Delaware. A munitions disposal team identified mustard agent in the armament. No one received injuries in the incident. When an artillery shell turned up in a Delaware driveway paved with crushed clamshells, two members of a U.S. Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal team received chemical burns. One serviceman was hospitalized with large, pus-filled blisters on his hands and arms. Analysis of the shells identified the chemical
culprit as sulfur mustard. In Italy, more than 200 fishermen were hospitalized between 1946 and 1966 after catching chemical-weapons agents in their nets.”
While sea life no doubt does well on the not leaking containers, any sea life at all including swimmers would be quite surprised when near a leaking one. Of course I’m sure that many would consider any investigations in this area would be a waste of time and money also.
BBC World Service Radio is running the following multiple times at present:
15 Feb: BBC “More or Less”: Leo Hornak: Will there be more fish or plastic in the sea in 2050?
The prediction was made by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum, in a report called The New Plastics Economy, which looks at the amount of plastic that ends up in the sea.
It got a lot of coverage in the press, including the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph, among others…
The report acknowledges that it is difficult to be precise. For the plastics, it refers back to a study led by Prof Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia, published last year…
But to estimate how much of this plastic then ends up in the sea, the study examines just one area – San Francisco Bay. “If that’s not representative of the rest of the globe then you can see the potential for large deviations in this calculation,” says Prof Callum Roberts from the University of York…
When asked by the BBC about its numbers the Ellen MacArthur foundation sent a document titled Background To Key Statistics, and issued a new version of the report – published on 29 January – both of which contain new figures (none of the authors of the report were available for interview for this story). The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s updated figure for fish in the sea in 2050 is roughly 899 million tonnes.
But it also increases its estimate for the amount of plastic in the ocean in 2050 to between 850 million and 950 million tonnes, or about 25% more than originally predicted…
But here is the real problem. Counting fish is a tricky business – they are slippery blighters…
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35562253
15 Feb: WSMoreOrLess: Fishy numbers?
There were reports recently that there will more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. The report comes from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. But as we discover there’s something fishy about these figures.
LINKS TO AUDIO, FIRST 4mins20secs ON THIS TOPIC:
(at 3.30 IN, BBC PRESENTER: LEO, ISNT THIS ENTIRE NUMBER ARBITRARY… THIS IS A SOUNDBITE, NOT A SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. “I THINK IT IS A SOUNDBITE” SAYS LEO HORNAK)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads.rss
The money quote, literally: “research was chronically underfunded”.
I cut any and all possible loops out of my 6-pack plastic beverage rings before discarding them.
Ain’t no critters wearing my plastic.
A simple design change would suffice: make the rings so they have to be broken to get the cans out.
WSJ had a graphic one time showing source of ocean plastic. U.S. contributed around 1%. This is a 3rd world problem.
Here is the link. U.S. contributes 0.3%.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/which-countries-create-the-most-ocean-trash-1423767676
Back when I was in the Navy stationed on the USS John F Kennedy, we would dump trash at sea off the port quarter. After a while of trash dumping, one could see a trail of garbage floating on the sea to the horizon. Sometimes if a Soviet ship was tailing us they would collect some for intelligence purposes. I often wonder if it was greenpeace in disguise trying saving the world, don’t greenpeace ships have a sickle and hammer on the ship’s stack? I enjoyed watching the F-14s strafe the trash. Hearing the Vulcan roar was awesome. What better way to ensure the trash would sink?
I thought from what I read in the 1980s (maybe 1990s?) was that floating trash (such as unbroken light bulbs) should not be dumped into the sea from US Navy warships, because such jetsam could help enemies find the ships that dumped it. Or as I think, also to determine roughly where the ships recently were.
This was back in the late 70s. I don’t know how the Navy handles its trash today.
The photo of plastic is river and coastal plastic washed out of towns in rain, I believe, in Philippines. The Third World needs help and awareness to resolve their waste management problems. This photo gets trotted regularly with this kind of story – dishonesty among greens is pandemic. The legendary big patch of ocean plastic is largely invisible because it reduces down to ~1mm or so in size naturally. Ultimately all plastic is biodegradable.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/17/an-ocean-of-plastic/
Okay, I got that out of the way. Now I can say that no informed considerate person would condone chucking waste into the ocean or anywhere not designed for receiving waste. I’d venture to say that not one of the responders on this site, catastrophist or realist, are happy with this state of affairs. In this problem, we spend all our time shouting at the wrong people.
I think this is one of the issues that is getting thrown under the bus for the AGW hysteria.
Obvious solution.
Go and scoop the stuff up, and make wind turbine blades or solar panels out of it !
I love the line from Laurie David in the Morano link:
“Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath.”
Wowee, this guy is good!
The other reference worthy of note is this: “It now has the attention of the beleaguered head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.”
He was beleaguered then because of the Himalayan Glaciers, he is beleaguered again now because Himalayan where he didn’t ought to, or certainly tried to. He is facing charges of sexual harassment and the charge sheet runs to 500 pages.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/if-you-get-a-boyfriend-i-will-castrate-him-pachauri-told-complainant/1/599256.html
What did the White man ever do for us?
i honestly would find it better to see all the money spent in climate change to be shifted to clean up the plastics out of the oceans.
the first is a research to nothing, the second will give us at least a cleaner ocean, which is a REAL and beneficial result.
i’ve always given more importance to real pollution and plastics are real pollution. i always say “if the money spent into the IPCC would be spent to clean up the oceans, they would have been cleaned up 20 times by now, which would have contributed to a cleaner environment.