Latest Euro Delusion: EU Wants Us To Believe It Can Rescue Oceans By Removing Less Than 0.01% Of The Plastic!

Since environmental elitists have taken the helm in Europe, they like to fancy themselves and pose as rescuers of the planet.

The climate rescue delusion

One example is Europe’s claim to being the global leader in climate protection. Leaders like having everyone believe that Europe reducing CO2 emissions 80% by 2050 will to save the climate and bring back the glorious stable weather of 150 years years.

Of course this is pure delusion.

While the planet emits some some 37 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases annually, Europe’s share is a meager 4.5 billion tonnes, or roughly 12% of global output. Cutting that small fraction 80% by 2050 will certainly and rapidly be offset by growth in developing countries. Europe’s effort is not going to make any real difference. Moreover it’s still doubtful that CO2 causes substantial climate change.

Now it’s the ocean plastic rescue delusion

Europe’s latest delusion pertains to plastic in the ocean, which in fact is a real problem. To curb plastic in the ocean, Europe just announced it is proposing a ban on single-use plastics to “help protect marine life”.

The proposals will target the elimination of plastic items like straws, cotton buds, cutlery, balloon sticks and drink stirrers. That may sound all sound good and noble, but it’s not going to make a dent at all because the real source of the ocean plastic problem is not Europe at all.

In reality the continent’s share of ocean plastic pollution is so tiny that even if it did manage to eliminate all of it, the globe’s oceans would never notice it.

A recent study published by Christian Schmidt, hydrogeologist and author of the report, says that 90% of the plastic that gets dumped into the oceans annually come from only 10 rivers. Eight of these rivers are in Asia and the other two are located in Africa.

Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: “Export of Plastic Debris by Rivers into the Sea,” by Christian Schmidt et al., in Environmental Science & Technology, Vol. 51, No. 21; November 7, 2017. Cropped from Scientific American here.

Yangtze 80,000 times more plastic than European river

According to Scientific American here, the Yangtze alone dumps up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste into the Yellow Sea every year. By comparison, the Thames dumps a puny 18 tonnes of plastic into the sea annually. In the above chart, the Thames River would be represented by a tiny dot.

What takes the Thames River an entire year to dump plastic into the ocean, gets done by the Yangtze in just 7 minutes! In other words, the Yangtze out-pollutes the Thames in terms of plastic 80,000 to 1. The relationship for other European rivers is similar.

What follows is a chart of the 10 rivers (hat-tip Andy 565):

Asia is treating the oceans as an open sewer. )Note that the figures are very rough estimates, with total plastic discharge into oceans ranging from 500,000 to 13 million tonnes annually). 

Billions for clean up, not for fake problem climate change

In summary, Europe dumps only a very tiny fraction of a percent of the world’s ocean plastic. If Europe’s leaders were really serious about tackling the ocean plastic problem, they would find a way to stem the ocean plastic at its real source, and not harass its citizens with more useless regulations.

What’s infuriating is that the globe could accomplish much more with the environment if it spent the hundreds of billions it wastes on the fake problem of climate change.

Europe’s approach a joke, a display of spinelessness

Though a crackdown on plastic and our single-use throw-away society is a good first step, if Europe really wanted to do something meaningful, it would get seriously tough with Asia and its practice of dumping waste plastic into rivers and oceans. This could come in the form of trade tariffs and sanctions with real teeth.

Europe could also reconsider its practice of shipping its garbage to third-world countries for “recycling”.

Like climate change, the latest announcement of banning straws and drink stirrers is nothing but pure inconsequential, environmental grandstanding. It isn’t going to accomplish a damn thing accept make green morons irrationally feel better about themselves.

It may look like Europe’s leaders are doing something, but in reality they are shirking their real international responsibilities by turning a blind eye to Asia and Africa.

Recommended video: Plastic Tide.

54 responses to “Latest Euro Delusion: EU Wants Us To Believe It Can Rescue Oceans By Removing Less Than 0.0154 Of The Plastic!”

  1. Bitter&twisted

    This is called “showing leadership” to the world.
    And just like our “leadership” on reducing fossil fuel use, will achieve F.A.
    Meanwhile China will continue to build coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week and dump all it’s waste.
    That is how they have been and will continue to erode what industry we have left.

    1. Yonason

      SAVIORS OF THE EU-NIVERSE!

      Their super powers are the result of selflessly devoting themselves to the finest comic book science that their hapless citizens can afford.

      Looks like their in good hands, …or not.
      http://www.captaineuro.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/NEWS-02.png

      My deepest sympathies, Europe. I wish we could help, but we’re a little busy trying to save our own country at the moment.
      http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/23/robert-mueller-is-creature-from-black-lagoon/

  2. AndyG55

    I wonder how much ocean plastic could have been cleaned up with the money wasted on wind and solar non-energy.

    Obviously, in the mind of the green zealot, the feel-good of building wind and solar and not cutting CO2 emissions at all, (just pretending to do so) FAR outweighs the need to clean up the oceans of plastics generated in the third world countries.

    1. Yonason
  3. Georg Thomas

    Pierre, Thanks for yet another excellent post and a great analysis. I would add that the ban is extremely important and very effective in terms of manipulative signalling.

    Sensible or not, it signals man is evil, man is hell-bent to destroy nature.

    This is the core faith and subliminal trigger of popular compliance with green totalitarianism.

    Only if this post-hypnotic suggestion is removed from the minds of the people will they wake up from green inebriation and return to a mentally normal state of appropriate skepticism and vigilance.

    If ideologues succeed in implanting this core faith in your mind (and they have been successful at it in Germany in a big way), your mind will inevitably be looking for indications that support the creed’s presumption. This is the psychological mechanism by which the greens keep the Germans in a religious trap, from which they find no escape.

    It is this false faith in man’s natural enmity and destructiveness vis-à-vis “nature” that explains why Germans irrespective of their level of education and pertinent expertise are ready to buy into almost any rubbish about purported Umweltzerstörung (destruction of the environment). Any verbiage and any acts (like dramatising prohibitions) that reinforce this misanthropic conceit are a gain for the greens and a loss for reason, humanism and mankind.

    Underlying this is a false juxtaposition of man and nature and the accompanying eco-religious conception of nature as a subject, a person confronting us — an article of faith heavily promoted by dignitaries like Bundespräsident von Weizsäcker who demanded at the height of the acid rain mania (another green deception) that “we need to protect nature for its own sake”). Here: sinful man, there: godlike nature, man’s arbiter and moral superior. The cultural dominance of green nonsense depends entirely on people internalising this faith built on the deification of nature and the debasement of one’s own species.

    1. SebastianH

      Is this what you need to tell yourself to justify your belief system? Imagining that you are “woken up” and not following a pretty blind faith?

      Green thoughts certainly don’t dominate, but then again everything must look greenish to a true pseudoskeptic…

      1. tom0mason

        And you seb,
        Is this what you need to tell yourself to justify your kowtow to the EU elites? Imagining that you are “woken up” and actually think that banning will be effective action?

        Ecologically friendly thoughts certainly don’t dominate, but then again everything must look greenwashed to a true pompous EU advocate …

      2. AndyG55

        “Imagining that you are “woken up” and not following a pretty blind faith?”

        You will NEVER wake up seb.

        You have had too many doses of the AGW brain-hosing.

  4. Douglas Proctor

    I don’t believe our elite think things like this are material. They are ideologues but not stupid or blind. The rationale isn’t even Stalinist contempt for the present as they strive for a utopian future. It is something else, something pathological.

    All the current global problems of climate, resource stripping and management, over-population, drug growing, kleptocracies and tribal/theological violence is dominately in the non-1st world. The 1st world governors are unable to admit this without feeling they are racist and part of an oppressor class.

    There is no space for pragmatism or even realism in their group-think. That is the basis of the pathology.

    The other view, also pathological, is that they actually dislike the non-elite. They understand but are contemptuous. In fact, discord in the masses is to their benefit as they accrue power – and justify living in gated communities.

  5. Gerard

    The next scam aimed at destroyING western economies.

    1. SebastianH

      Are you serious? Reducing unnecessary plastic garbage will certainly destroy western economies, damn right it will!

  6. Jiri Moudry

    They ban things because they can. Good for their self-esteem.

  7. Martin

    The greens have lost the plot, did they save the planet when they ban light bulbs? After a 10 years campaign they ban plastic grocery bags, witch just push people to buy garbage bag incited of reusing those ‘single use bag’.
    Making our lives less convenient and expensive wont magically make those who use their rivers has dump having proper waste disposal system (like in developed nations).

  8. WAM

    Pierre, you write: “Europe could also reconsider its practice of shipping its garbage to third-world countries for “recycling”.”
    I would like to ask, why environmental groups and G-Peacedo not ask the governments, why such practices are allowed? Until recently I was quite convinced that the money I pay for garbage (including plastics) disposal is used for disposal here, in-place. I assumed some “trading”, i.e., ripping the profits. Then the message from China opened my eyes. It looks like many of these companies do “business” in this way – cash here and pay peanuts there, the rest is pure profit. Someone has to permit this, someone has to check what goes abroad (you can imagine many kind of trafficking could take place). So everyone (important) knows, no one speaks, until now. I can assume that a lot of this “exported” stuff finished in the oceans – Europe did in in North Sea in 70-ties, why not now (I mean the innovative companies).
    Somehow I hypothesize – there are green companies that issue certificates that the garbage is handled properly – if this comes out with suitable narrative, they could be quite damaged. Also, we are trained to separate the stuff and to pay for recycling, and we accept that we do this for the good of global environment – if this scam loudly goes out then it would further made the media and politicians grind their teeth.

    But, with this plastic law there may be also some other thing. China closed. Now in Poland there are number of waste sites burning – apparently large import of trash (plastics and paper) happened in 2016 and 2017 – smart guys find out new business to replace Chinese dumps; of course they burn, never intended to recycle (think same happened in China).
    So the companies here from 1-2 years before face situation that they will have to do something with the garbage they collect – and in-place, without “export”. Solution for me is obvious – increase the price of collection/disposal and limit the volume disposed. I think some ban will occur, but we will face sharp increase of price of disposals – business must be profitable, ultimately, and there is no business like a trash business. So assess are covered, everyone is quiet, stupid public pays and even accuses itself of being “too consumerism-driven” and “insensitive for the life of oceans”. From 1-2 weeks there is a hysteria in The Netherlands about “plastic soup”. No one asked question during the media talks how much garbage gets from Dutch rivers to the ocean…. Only river of self-inflicted guilt….

  9. AndyG55
  10. Kurt in Switzerland

    Correction:

    The article makes this claim: “…the planet emits some some 37 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.”

    That should read, “Human civilization emits some 37 billion tonnes [of CO2 equivalent GHGs] annually…”

    The planet [sans Homo Erectus] emits something like 25 x that figure.

    And growth in Asia will not only negate any reductions in the W. World, it will exceed it severalfold! Look at the EU’s EDGAR CO2 reports calculating global CO2 emissions since 1990.

    http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=CO2andGHG1970-2016

    China’s growth in annual emissions from 1990-2016 not only negates the EU’s CO2 reduction, it eclipses it by a factor of nine (+8.1 Gton vs. -0.9 Gton). More importantly, net growth in human CO2 emissions worldwide over that period was up 13.2 Gton annually (35.8 Gton in 2016 vs. 22.5 Gton in 1990), or an increase of 59%.

    So the EU’s virtue-signaling about plastic is about as useful as its claims of “Climate Protection”.

    1. SebastianH

      The planet [sans Homo Erectus] emits something like 25 x that figure.

      And absorbs 25.5 times that figure.

      Interesting that it’s possible to look at nature’s emission and also at cloud forcings separately, but it’s not possible to distinguish between upwelling and downwelling LW radiation 😉

      And growth in Asia will not only negate any reductions in the W. World, it will exceed it severalfold!

      What will the worldwide growth in emissions look like if the western world doesn’t reduce its emissions? If relatively power/energy hungry (per person) countries can do it, they’ll set an example for everyone else and make the path for others more affordable. At some point, it will make no economic sense anymore to continue emitting CO2.

      What are you really suggesting here? That it is pointless to take action when you are just a little cog in the system? That it makes no difference what you or a small country does?

      1. AndyG55

        “What will the worldwide growth in emissions look like if the western world doesn’t reduce its emissions?”

        Almost exactly the same as if they do, except the place won’t be littered with useless environment destroying wind turbines and toxic solar panels.

        NOTHING the developed countries do will have any real effect whatsoever on the world wide CO2 emissions.

        It makes ZERO economic sense NOT to emit CO2 or to try to curtail it.

        A trace gas that FEEDS THE WORLD, and does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to affect climate or anything else.

        Purely and absolutely BENEFICIAL.

        The real economic IDIOCY is trying to stop or reduce the emissions of CO2 at great cost to the world and society in general.

        “If relatively power/energy hungry (per person) countries can do it”

        BUT THEY CAN’T !! Not with ploughing HUGE amounts of wasted money into the farce. That is unsustainable, as they are starting to find out.

        (except the US that has reduce its CO2 emissions because flacking made gas cheaper for a while)

        Live in your mindless brain-hosed FANTASY world, seb..

        .. its all your feeble green-sludge mind can cope with.

        1. SebastianH

          Is this another of those instances where you claim that wind and solar do not reduce CO2 emissions?

          1. AndyG55

            Has Germany reduced CO2 emission over the last decade or so? NOPE

            Has world emissions reduced at all from the use of wind and solar? NOPE

            Did you know that having fossil fuel on spinning reserve emits almost as much CO2 as when operating on full efficiency.. and that spinning reserve HAS to be there.. 95% of the amount of wind and solar being used.

            Weird how little you have actually been able to comprehend and learn.

          2. AndyG55

            “Weird how little you have actually been able to comprehend and learn.”

            Could it be that you have some sort of ideological mental block against actual facts? 😉

  11. Greg

    I suspected something like this, but not to this extent. Incredible. Our ‘betters’ are incredibly stupid.

  12. tom0mason

    A good post Pierre. It is something that has annoyed me so much over the years.

    In my younger days when I was more mobile, I would often join in with many local campaigns cleaning up the beachfront by collecting the waste. After a good spring tide we would be out collecting sacks of junk deposited on the beach. Sometimes we’d find jewelry and coins among the torn fishing nets and other rubbish. Most of the junk came from the many foreign ships that navigate the English Channel, we could tell this by the many non-English logos and the writing on the many recovered containers and item of flotsam and jetsam Even back then (1970s-1990s) I felt there was too much plastic waste in the sea.

    I note that all through the years plastic waste is still the obvious pollution in the seas, however I have never seen much research done on what eventually happens to this material.
    Many people feel that plastic pollution is detrimental to marine life, apart from marine animals (mostly cute dolphins and turtles) deleteriously eating plastic bags. I see little other research conclusively showing that eroded beads, small particles, micro-particles, and micro-fibers of plastic harms the marine biota. Sure plastic should not be there but we need better information in order to judge the damage done (if any), and to formulate the correct action plan. Merely banning something because as waste it is often dumped in the sea but perhaps doesn’t do much harm, is foolish at best.

    As for this European initiative, it appears to be little more than virtue signaling. Lots of expensive bureaucratic effort for little, if any, effect on plastic waste in the oceans. Maybe the mendacity of the European so called ‘recycling’ of household waste, when in actuality much of your carefully sorted waste is dumped into landfill locally or abroad would be exposed. Without a thorough investigation of who, where, when, and why this stuff gets into the oceans can we ever construct the best methods to prevent it.

    Lastly…
    Do you know were your carefully sorted waste goes, and how the recycling and waste operators are managed and audited? No neither do I. I’ve tried (back in 2015 in the UK) but this industry in the UK, appears to be a less than cooperative closed-shop that offers only partial answers. And where do all those broken (and toxic) solar cells go?

    1. Georg Thomas

      tom0mason, Thank you for these excellent observations. You write:

      “Sure plastic should not be there but we need better information in order to judge the damage done (if any), and to formulate the correct action plan. Merely banning something because as waste it is often dumped in the sea but perhaps doesn’t do much harm, is foolish at best.”

      You are putting your finger on it. This is what I mean, when I speak of the dumbing down of the population by green mythology (“Ökoverblödung”), a process by which genuine interest in nature is crowded out by the habit of turning the prayer wheels of political correctness, a more convenient but less sincere activity.

  13. Nigel S

    The local pub has a notice saying the straws are now biodegradeable and only supplied on request. I’m sure that will help.

  14. SebastianH

    Merely banning something because as waste it is often dumped in the sea but perhaps doesn’t do much harm, is foolish at best.

    Just wow. Exactly the same defense the tobacco industry used to defend smoking: “Need more research, because perhaps smoke doesn’t do much harm”.

    Just prevent/reduce plastic waste and be better off. Easy! Waste is never good.

    Europe’s plastic waste per year is supposed to be 25.8 million tonnes. Reducing it by just 1% means 258 thousand tonnes less waste. Last year Kenneth posted about the “unsustainable waste” from wind turbine blades. Remember? This waste is supposed to be 10.75 million tonnes accumulated until 2050 or 326 thousand tonnes per year until then. How can 326 thousand tonnes per year be unsustainable and nightmare, but reducing plastic waste by 258 thousand tonnes per year doesn’t matter?!

    1. tom0mason

      So seb,
      Obviously you consider banning plastic straws and the like as a valid method of reducing that 25.8 million ton mountain of waste.
      Laughably, you are defending that ban on plastic items like straws, cotton buds, cutlery, balloon sticks and drink stirrers believing it will achieve a great and lasting reduction in ocean pollution.

      IMO It will not and only a fool would advocate or defend such stupid actions.

      To put in tobacco defense speak (that you like so much) it’s akin to the EU elites saying “We’ll ban ashtrays and flints for lighters because people elsewhere smoke tobacco products manufactured in Europe.”

      “Just prevent/reduce plastic waste and be better off. Easy! Waste is never good.” I agree.

      However this banning idea is nothing but virtue signaling — it is not a real practical solution. It is a good example of how the EU elite elicit control over the unthinking by restrictive and ineffective measures; it reinforce the meme to everyone just who is in charge.

      1. SebastianH

        Obviously you consider …

        No, not obvious at all. Stop making up what you think others are saying/thinking. I am saying that eliminating 1% of Europe’s plastic waste is in the same ballbark as the increase in waste from wind turbines blades that Kenneth called “a nightmare”. So why isn’t it good to reduce waste by the same “nightmarish” amount? Why doesn’t that matter, but wind blade waste does?

        It is a good example of how the EU elite elicit control over the unthinking

        So conspiracy talk … great :/

        1. tom0mason

          Yes you do, as you keep defending them and just come out with empty statements like “Just prevent/reduce plastic waste and be better off. Easy! Waste is never good.” but offer nothing practical.

          I say we need more research on the matter — you criticize that and defend the EU banning order, that does nothing.
          Typical backward thinking from seb — working from next to no information, your defense is to cripple industry and inconvenience the consume for no good effect.

    2. Martin

      Problem: A number of underdeveloped nations use their rivers as bump (in Africa and Asia)

      Green solution:
      Ban straws, cotton buds, cutlery, balloon sticks and drink stirrers.
      How much of those item DO end up in the oceans (from Europe)?
      I bet its illegal to dump garbage in the ocean (in Europe).

      1. SebastianH

        What kind of argument is this? Others are worse, so let’s do nothing to reduce our own waste?

        I bet its illegal to dump garbage in the ocean (in Europe).

        I bet it is illegal to shot someone in the US? Same as in the EU. And yet it happenes far more often in the US than in the EU. One wonders why? Gun regulation! Regulating single use plastics will certainly reduce waste from them, even though it is not legal to just dump your garbage anywhere.

        1. tom0mason

          But you offer nothing, just keep defending the EU dumb banning orders.

          As I have already said —

          “It will not and only a fool would advocate or defend such stupid actions.

          To put in tobacco defense speak (that you like so much) it’s akin to the EU elites saying “We’ll ban ashtrays and flints for lighters because people elsewhere smoke tobacco products manufactured in Europe.”
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

          But you seb, carry on defending the EU’s inaction. You care not you wish only to virtue signal.

    3. AndyG55

      You can bet seb is heavily into the use of plastics.

      No virtue signalling from him, just yapping about it.

      “Waste is never good.”

      Yet you keep posting.

      Think if the hours/days years you have WASTED with your little anti-science, anti-CO2 fantasy crusade.. and all you have done is go backwards or land flat on your face.

      I have still to figure out your purpose here..

      Do you even know ????

      Because apart from mindless attention-seeking trolling..

      .. you have achieved absolutely nothing.

      1. SebastianH

        What is your purpose here? To provoke anyone who you consider an opponent in the hopes to annoy them enough so they’ll leave? Saving the integrity of your echo chamber?

        1. Bitter&twisted

          DNFTT

        2. AndyG55

          Poor Empty seb

          He can’t even be truthful to himself.

          Attention-seeking trolling… his ONLY purpose.

          You have NO integrity and NO self-worth , seb

          Just a vain attempt to boost your empty ego.

          So sad.

        3. AndyG55

          “Because apart from mindless attention-seeking trolling..

          .. you have achieved absolutely nothing.”

          Another empty troll post from seb..

          I rest my case.

          ZERO-science.

          ZERO-purpose. except attention-seeking.

          that is all seb stands for.

          And no, I do not consider you an opponent.

          You put forward NOTHING to oppose.

          You can’t even put forward any real science to support the very basis of your AGW cultism.

          You are EMPTY waste of space..

          and “WASTE is never good.”

        4. tom0mason

          It is obvious your here to defend the EU elites and their indefensible banning order.
          You provoke anyone who you consider an opponent in the hopes to annoy enough with your advocacy of the nanny state, and big ego insults to anyone who criticizes you. You try to railroad people from this site.

          Just who do you think you are seb?
          Casting judgment on everyone like some failed small town school bully.
          Your judgment of others is as faulty as your knowledge of science.

          1. tom0mason

            So seb the only research I find on the detrimental effects of plastics on marine life was retracted.
            http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/08/delingpole-fish-prefer-plastic-to-food-study-was-fakenews-science-misconduct-committee-finds/
            This of course does not mean I believe plastic in the seas, what i does show is that we are ignorant of it’s effects.

            Without knowing the full effect of this potential hazard on marine life we have no way of calibrating a response.

            Your continued defense of the EU’s inappropriate banning action is as loathsome as it is illogical. 😉

  15. Penelope

    “It may look like Europe’s leaders are doing something, but in reality they are shirking their real international responsibilities by turning a blind eye to Asia and Africa.”

    Why would they DO that? What do politicians like better than heaping blame on other countries & threatening them with sanctions? Banning these plastic items won’t accomplish the pretend purpose, so what’s the real purpose? What does it accomplish?

    Excellent propaganda: Mankind is a threat to the planet and the remedy is law. Just like AGW. The plastic banning is a further precedent– actual banning of legitimate products.

    Sounds like these excerpts from Agenda 2030: (and such a nice motive)

    From the Agenda 2030 document:
    “All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. . . . “free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and heal Mother Earth. . . . “By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources.” [In every country where a command economy has existed the results are like USSR, Cuba & N Korea– poverty] “We commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services.”

    Ban Ki-moon: “It is a universal, integrated and transformative vision for a better world. . . . We need action from everyone, everywhere.”

    Please understand that the levelling of economic standards will not affect the oligarchs who control banking, energy, media, much scientific research, and the transnational megacorps. Elites from this class control the UN & it is on their behalf that Agenda 2030 has been crafted.

    But the beauty of it– ah, the beauty of it is that those who believe AGW, etc may also believe global transformation is necessary. And those who DON’T believe the AGW hoax will blame those who DO. Beautiful. Blame the propagandee, not those who pay for the propaganda.

    1. tom0mason

      +1 😀 well said.

      OK seb, lets see what arrogant blather and nonsense you can concoct now.

  16. John F. Hultquist

    Locally (central Washington State) most waste is bundled and compressed into large bales, then stacked like a pile of bricks, then buried. Plastic bags, other plastic and glass containers, and odd other things do end up loose in the landscape. There are “Adopt a Road” programs that intercept much of the loose things. I did that a few times, but switched my volunteer work to building and maintaining hiking trails – a better use of my knowledge and skills.
    You can stand along a small stream or great river for hours and not see anything floating past. Still, a plastic bag stuck to a fence makes a big visual impression. We found a Mylar (Happy Birthday) deflated balloon in a wilderness area lake this past weekend. Again, a very visual eyesore in a pristine environment.
    Seems in Europe and North America the issue is more visual than a serious threat to the environment.
    All outdoors folks are familiar with this:
    http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/11893209.jpg

  17. Björn

    And actually the only serious attepemt so far to quantify ( i.e systematically measure ) the amount of plastic pollution in the world oceans is was conducted in the period 2007-2013 and the result was published in december 2014.
    It found that a total of little under 270 thousand metric tons of plastic mostly micro sized was the whole total that could be found floating in all the earth oceans combined. Before the that project was launched some people were throwing guesses about that the amount might be somwhere between 5 and 30 million tons, mostly from the equally guessed estimate that 5% of the annually produced plastic ended up in the ocean. The current annual production was c.a 300 million tons in the year 2013 and growing by around 8 to 10 million tons/year, and the total accumulated production since 1950 was something like 7 to 8 billion tons in total, so the 30 million tons thought to be found in the oceans was considered a rather conservative guess. So the result of the sampling expeditions with if i remember correcty more than one million sample points was of course a huge disappointment to gang-green. Or in the the words of on of the scientist tha lead the project. ” We found less than one percent of what we expected to find”.
    Below is a link to report paper from the project.
    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913

    1. SebastianH

      You mean something like this?
      http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/124006

      Our estimates show that the accumulated number of microplastic particles in 2014 ranges from 15 to 51 trillion particles, weighing between 93 and 236 thousand metric tons, which is only approximately 1% of global plastic waste estimated to enter the ocean in the year 2010. These estimates are larger than previous global estimates, but vary widely because the scarcity of data in most of the world ocean, differences in model formulations, and fundamental knowledge gaps in the sources, transformations and fates of microplastics in the ocean.

      1. tom0mason

        And research on what those plastic particles do to marine biota is missing, but you still defend banning drinking straws and the like as a worthy method of tackling what maybe a non-problem.

        Typical green party thinking — don’t know what is wrong so lets inconvenience the poor consumer with empty virtue signaling gesture. That is SebastianH deranged idea of logical thinking.

        Pompous and empty virtue signaling SebastianH! 😉

        Just like SebastianH attitude on CO2, no evidence of a problem, but inconvenience the poor consumers for a non-problem.

  18. John F. Hultquist

    Perhaps they should have looked in places other than the ocean:
    photo link

  19. John F. Hultquist
  20. Lars P.

    Thank you Pierre for this very good post.
    It points to several of the ugly ulcers that grow on the façade. No amount of lipstick is going to hide this.

    In a concise manner you have exposed the hypocrisy and futility of the current EU politic. Virtue signalling instead of efficient real pollution fight. Exporting garbage not clean-up and recycling.
    All that money wasted combating ‘climate change’ instead of being used to combat pollution.
    I think in the future ‘combating climate change’ will get the symbolism that currently Don Quichote combating the windmills has, but with the additional undertone of money scam.
    Ocean pollution is real and addressing these 10 main river polluters is not an impossible task, but obviously not something that our virtue signalling eurocrats want to address…

  21. AndyG55

    Like Germany’s feel-good stupidity with wind and solar having basically zero effect on either their own or world-wide CO2 emissions..

    .. this ban will have little to no effect on the plastic pollution problem.

    But at least this problem is REAL !!

    They just need to figure out how to use this plastic pollution in their agenda for totalitarian one-world government dictatorship.

    That’ll fix it !

  22. AndyG55

    I wonder how many floatation capture systems along these rivers could have been purchased with the money wasted combatting the non-existent non-problem of enhanced atmospheric CO2 ?

    Its just that without governments paying for all of it..

    …. there is probably not much money to be made by the banks or the greenie “entrepreneurs”

  23. tom0mason

    Slightly Off Topic …
    This is news you will not see on the major news reporting services, as it’s not the right kind of message, eh?

    Some big buck environment movements are fraudsters as reported here —

    http://joannenova.com.au/2018/05/chevron-wins-38m-from-environmentalists-behaving-badly-extortion-fraud-witness-tampering-corrupt-practices/

    The court awarded Chevron Corporation $38 million in damages and interest and issued a permanent injunction against the defendants, preventing them from assisting or supporting the case against Chevron in any way.

    Well done Cheveron! 🙂

    How many other so called environmental groups are little more than gangsters extorting money from governments (taxpayers), companies and individuals?

    1. Yonason

      They indulge in that type of crime because it is safer and a lot more lucrative than robbing banks.

  24. AKM

    How exactly is the data regarding river input of plastic pollution arrived at? The reason for my scepticism is that I’ve just been looking at some information in the region of the Amur river which flows into the Sea of Okhkotsh, near Sakhalin Island, east Russia. It has a huge drainage basin, but the whole area is very sparsely populated (bit of northern Mongolia, northeastern China and Russia) – all very cold under-inhabited areas.How does that region generate plastic pollution?

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