"There is now a floating plastic island in the Pacific the size of Europe."

Definitely have to call BS on that one.

Given totobe floating the plastics obviously have to have a density lower than sea water so given that a solid sheet of plastic with a average density of say .95 weighing ~8.8 million tons would be,

1 foot thick ~12 square miles.

1 inch thick ~144 square miles.

.1 inch thick ~1440 square miles.

Common kitchen plastic wrap @ .005"~ 28,800 Square miles.

Europe how ever has a area of ~ 3,910,000 square miles or about 136 times larger.

And this is prime example of why I don't take environmentalisms statistical claims serious.

You can call BS all you want. That won't make the actual problem of plastic pollution go away.

You know it, and I know it.

Just trying to put things into a realistic comparative context.

"Floating island the size of Europe" Vs some thousand square miles of fine particulate matter seems like a pretty substantial exaggeration worth noting for credibility of concern to me.

Decapitation Vs torn fingernail so to speak. Bit of a difference for concern in my books.

Thing to make clear is that the report says that is what is ADDED annually. Now that is a matter for concern.

It didn't delve into the calculation methods, so it's had to verify the accuracy of these numbers but I don't doubt the numbers are staggering no matter what. I did note that the chart in it does not make sense, as it would appear that China alone is dumping around 10 million tons annually and it lists the #10 contributor (Bangladesh) as being almost 900,000 tons annually. Huhh?? This doesn't add up.

The sad thing is, it seems most of this comes from the Asian area where pollution control seems to be about where North America in general was fifty years ago (incidentally, note that the US is #20 of the top 20 contributors), so it seems that the ones that are most concerned about the problem are the ones that are less responsible for it.

Here's what NOAA has to say about it, from here. http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/how-big-great-pacific-garbage-patch-science-vs-myth.html

1:

1. There is no "garbage patch," a name which conjures images of a floating landfill in the middle of the ocean, with miles of bobbing plastic bottles and rogue yogurt cups. Morishige explains this misnomer:

While it's true that these areas have a higher concentration of plastic than other parts of the ocean, much of the debris found in these areas are small bits of plastic (microplastics) that are suspended throughout the water column. A comparison I like to use is that the debris is more like flecks of pepper floating throughout a bowl of soup, rather than a skim of fat that accumulates (or sits) on the surface.

2:

1. There are many "garbage patches," and by that, we mean that trash congregates to various degrees in numerous parts of the Pacific and the rest of the ocean. These natural gathering points appear where rotating currents, winds, and other ocean features converge to accumulate marine debris, as well as plankton, seaweed, and other sea life. (Find out more about these"convergence zones" in the ocean and a NOAA study of the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone [PDF].)

BTW the picture of an ocean of plastic bottles is actually a sort of "photoshop job" art piece done by Artist Chris Jordan.
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#plastic-bottles

The other common pictures used are believed to be those of garbage dumps and slums located near bodies of water in China, India, Haiti and elsewhere and are not accurate or honest representations of the Garbage Gyres.

I'm not saying plastics and garbage are not a problem in the oceans. What I am saying is the standard issue internet pictures representing them are largely outrightly false and highly distorted/exaggerated representations (often taken out of the actual context of the real pictures from unrelated artwork, AKA photoshop jobs, and or remote extreme examples) of the physical attributes of the real situations.

As for what the garbage gyres really look like the best example I have found say that if you took a pepper shaker full of fine ground pepper and dumped it in a average sized swimming pool and stirred it up that's about what the real gyres would look like.

Those are photographic representations of the amount of plastic dumped in the oceans annually....most of it ends up on the floor of the oceans...there are patches of floating debris located in the oceans various gyres...As a dedicated beachcomber from the west coast of Washington, I used to collect Japanese glass floats that would come ashore during storms that would break parts of the debris field loose and send them to shore...I have found everything listed and more washed up....We get mostly seaweed and various sea creatures where I live now, on the east coast....not nearly as exciting....although there does exist the possibility of the occasional bale of pot...

http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2013/deep-debris/deep-debris-release.html

http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2014/07/17/the-five-myths-and-truths-about-plastic-pollution-in-our-ocean/

We can debate the magnitude of the problem all day.

The fact is that there are millions of ton of plastic pollution in the oceans of the world and it is killing plant ans sea life and will not stop for many hundreds of years.

Great Pacific garbage patch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now see had this blog been presented like this I wouldn't have went all snarky and critical on it's ass.

What you show here is what I would consider to be reasonable scientific study and analysis with reasonable real world quantification of the subjects at hand.

You get a rare GA from me!

You have to have it spoon fed to you, before you get it?

The same site was presented to you earlier and you had nothing good to say.

Which is worse?

"Boy that cried wolf scenarios"

OR

Sticking your head in the sand and saying "We don't have a problem"?

I would say both.

Too much of the first one ultimately leading the majority to the second one.

In a way we are already seeing the ramifications of this effect in our society. Too many times has our government and big business outrightly exaggerated and lied to us for their short term gains relating to topics that should be taken more seriously now but aren't.

Global cooling fell on its face then changed to global warming which has fallen on it's face and is now called climate change which is what has been happening since the day this planet formed billions of years ago.

The ozone hole has turned out to be a seasonal phenomenon that comes and goes every year suggesting it's likely a natural process and not a man made one.

The giant plastic garbage island the size of a contente is actually mostly just microparticles of plastics in their natural process of breaking down and being disposed of by nature as nature had deemed practical.

I for one do not have the answer to any of these things but I do know that when I hear about some new life threatening world ending man made catastrophe that is just around the corner I now tend to have serious doubts simply do to the now long and dismal track record of such things having been over blown over exaggerated and or out right lies perpetrated primarily to make a few people rich and get them more power.

This is the most I've ever seen you write on any subject.

AS long as we all agree that there is way too much pollution in the air and on land and sea, we should also be able to agree to work to reduce the mess.

Our grand children and great grandchildren will thank us, hopefully.

Oh heavens hardly.

It's just been a while since anyone posted a bonehead comment I could sink my teeth into.

You are correct with your premise. However, the only real way the pollution of this rock we live on to be eradicated, will be a concerted effort the whole world need to work towards. Our efforts won't do much if places like china pollute more than we can remove.

I've been saying for many years that plastic is a good fuel. If we had made it easy and legal to burn plastic for Btu value, we wouldn't be having nearly such a big problem.

....Okay, here come the GHG/Global Warming/Climate Change nuts......But, in the end, the same amount of hydrocarbons would have been burned for energy, and less problems with landfills and sea trash would exist today.

If we had been smart, by developing clean burning technology for plastics, it would then allow the use of petrochemicals temporarily for packaging, then completing the usefullness cycle by destroying the packaging by conversion to fuel use.

Same with paperboard packaging. And tires.

Our landfills would be much less stuffed with materials that future generations are still going to have to deal with.

That does sound logical, but unfortunately there are a few details that complicate this, just the same as they complicate plastic recycling.

Different plastics burn differently; polystyrene, nylons and polyesters can create a problem with dioxins, furans and other such goodies that actually are a significant health issue, while thiols, PVC and other halogenated plastics will create acids that can eat right through things if they aren't specifically designed to handle them. Often, the wide variety and uncontrollable nature of the feedstream tends to make it somewhat impractical to do this cost effectively. If you can control the feedstream (a steady supply of used PP and PE oil bottles would be a gold mine!) it would be possible to do this on the residential/ small commercial scale with reasonable pollution controls.

Note- I believe there has been a fair bit of work recently into pyrolizing plastics, to create a form of crude oil that is easier to use for fuel value. The recent drop in oil prices probably hasn't helped that.

Where there is the will, there is a way. No will. Short-sided thinking by all the environmentalists......while they enjoy driving their SUVs.