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by Patrick Moore,
PhD
November 15,
2021
from
BPR Website
Patrick
Albert Moore
The great
Pacific garbage patch
twice the size
of Texas
is fake...
"A huge, swirling
pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean is growing faster than
expected and is now three times the size of France.
According to a
three-year study published
in Scientific Reports Friday, the mass known as the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about 1.6 million square
kilometers in size - up to 16 times bigger than previous
estimates.
That makes it
more than double the size of Texas."
CNN - March 23, 2018.
Of all the fabricated
narratives about the environment, this one takes the cake...
Yes, there is plastic in
the oceans, mostly discarded fishing gear, but there is no 'island
of plastic waste twice the size of Texas' in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean.
Because the average
person cannot see the middle of the Pacific for themselves
sensationalist activists, media, and politicians just make this up.
In fact, plastic in the
oceans is doing far more good than harm...
Allow me to explain this
bold assertion...
Plastic is made from
several raw materials including oil, coal, natural gas, and
wood.
Plastics are polymers
- long-chain compounds often composed of identical molecules.
Think of a string of
pearls. Nearly all plastics originate from living matter formed
with solar energy by photosynthesis in plants on land and sea.
For example, rayon
and cellophane are made from cellulose which is a polymer of
glucose derived from wood and are therefore plastics.
Cotton is pure
cellulose and is therefore also a plastic.
Natural rubber and
synthetic rubber are polymers and therefore plastics.
Oil, coal, and natural
gas are all products of solar energy that produced forests and sea
life that turned into fossil fuels over the millennia.
Today they are made into
polymers such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyvinyl
chloride, otherwise known as PVC or vinyl.
To begin, despite the
vast amount of propaganda, plastics are not toxic, they are
inert...
This is one of the
reasons we package and wrap much of our food in plastic. It helps
prevent spoilage from bacteria and mold, and protects the food from
contamination by actual toxic substances.
If plastic were
toxic, we would not wrap our food in it.
Plastic does not
miraculously become toxic in the ocean.
There is a big difference
between pollution and litter.
Pollution is either a
toxic substance or one that is harmful to life in other ways.
Plastic litter may
appear unsightly, but like driftwood on a beach it is not toxic
and does not harm life.
Like driftwood in the
ocean, plastic promotes life, as many marine species attach
themselves to it, lay their eggs on it, or eat other species
that are living on it.
Floating pieces of
plastic are like small floating reefs that enhance rather that
harm marine life.
Many plastic objects
are in the form of containers, so unlike most driftwood can be
used as shelter from predators and habitat for breeding.
Perhaps the most unique
benefit of floating bits of plastic in the sea is their use by
seabirds as an alternative for the traditional items used as
digestive aids in their gizzards.
Birds have no teeth,
so they swallow their food whole.
All birds have two
stomachs, one like ours and another that is a muscular organ,
the gizzard, used to grind large hard pieces of food so they can
be digested.
To aid in this
process, birds on the land use pebbles fed to them by their
parents from birth and then they gather pebbles for themselves
all their lives.
There are no pebbles
in the ocean, so seabirds use floating bits of pumice from
undersea volcanoes, bits of hard wood, floating nuts from trees,
and since plastic was introduced to the oceans about 60 years
ago, suitable bits of floating plastic.
Many studies by bird
specialists have found that this has no negative effects on chicks
or adults.
Yet,
...falsely allege that
the parent birds are "feeding" plastic to their chicks "mistaking it
for food" and that this is killing their chicks...
They know what a bird
gizzard is, but they never use
that word.
They know they are
lying for the sake of notoriety and donations...
It would be beneficial to
sea life if the environmental community and the international
fishing industry would work to develop a program to prevent damaged
fishnets from being thrown in the ocean.
Discarded fishnets can
catch fish and other sea life and are nicknamed "ghost nets"...
It should be possible to
incentivize fishers to bring their damaged nets to the dock where
they can be recycled or disposed of in a manner that does no harm.
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