Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Overblown Giant Pacific Garbage Patch

As I said recently, attempted expeditions to the supposed "Giant Pacific Garbage Patch" or "Plastic Vortex" have been disappointing to environmental alarmists. National Geographic is promoting the latest such voyage with a hype that strikes me as downright nutty. Take this photo:

Yes, there are plastic bottles in the ocean. But look at the water in the background!

Or this, which they use as their lead:

Is that a giant Pacific garbage patch, or just a lost fishing net with some other stuff caught up in it?

Pollution of the oceans is a major problem, but creating this image of a giant garbage vortex that looks to the rest of us like, well, an ocean, is going to backfire and make environmentalists look like liars.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I got an impression from recent news stories that plastic bottles etc. do not in fact survive indefinitely in ocean water, but break up rapidly into tiny fragments--which is in fact much worse for the environment.

John said...

Right, I blogged about that. I am simply annoyed/amused by this "great trash vortex" stuff, which I think only makes environmentalists and the National Geographic Society look silly.

Unknown said...

The idea IS kind of cool though. It's like the Sargasso Sea--this giant floating world in the middle of the ocean.