Not So Much (Again)

The Trifecta crew at PJTV had an interesting piece today on plastic "islands" in the world's oceans. Back in the 1970s Professor Andres Cozar, a professor at the University of Cadiz in Spain, projected that there might be as much as 1M tons of plastic debris floating serenely in the oceans in masses as large as small countries. Of course (of course!) marine life would be endangered by this and we had to something - now! And we did. Plastic bags were banned in many areas, we started bring our reusable bags to grocery stores, we cut up the plastic rings stringing six-packs together, etc., etc. Don't it feel righteous! Well, as it turns out, Prof. Cozar recently admitted maybe he was a bit high on his original estimates.

On the basis of a world research cruise monitoring this issue Prof. Cozar now estimates that there might be as much as, well, er, um - only 7,000 to 35,000 tons of plastic in the world's oceans concentrated in about 5 current convergence zones. Let's see, if I am doing my math right, this is about 3.5% of his original estimate. Oopsie!

Just to set the record straight, I am not for carelessly throwing crap in the ocean or on any lake, river, etc., as anybody who has been a passenger in my boat can attest. And it's fine if you want to BYOB to the grocery store - notwithstanding some of the studies showing they can harbor some nasty pathogens. And I am glad that Prof. Cozar had the intellectual honesty to correct his conclusions based on new research. But I do get hacked when blown scientific data is used to promote one more cause to beat us about the head and shoulders for being stupid, careless, Americans slobs for 35 years or so and nobody goes out to actually collect data to verify the original estimates. No, it's much more fun to beat up on Americans for being the slobs we know they are. Why would that be and who is "we"?

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=327060297