I am embarrassed to admit I thought the Pacific garbage island … a supposed mass of refuse in the Pacific Ocean the size of a subcontinent … was a real thing. Nope, it was all dreamed up by a guilt-ridden lefty trustafarian to atone for the oil wealth he inherited and then promoted by the environmental left with the willing cooperation of the political and media lefts.
In early August 1997, Charles Moore found himself floating through the North Pacific in his Tasmanian-built catamaran. Moore, an oil heir, activist, and yachting captain, had just finished up a two-week race and was heading back from Honolulu to Santa Barbara, California, through what’s called a “gyre”—an area of the ocean like the Sargasso Sea, wrapped inside a giant weather spiral, that serves as a reservoir for flotsam. As he described it in a 2003 article for Natural History, the thousand-mile journey took him through an endless field of plastic—3 million tons of it in all, he guessed, in an area about the size of Texas. Everywhere he looked he saw debris: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.
This never happened.
Scientists have known for a long time that there is nothing like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch reported in the media. There is a small amount of noticeable debris in these areas—old plastic bottles and parts of nets—but the vast majority of the plastic consists of very small flakes, much of it microscopic.
I should have known better; the left lies about everything, and they will advance any lie they have to in order to claw their way to power. Everything every leftist ever says should be treated with extreme skepticism always and forever.
You’re not alone.
I accepted it as fact as well.
I corrected an otherwise wonderful sermon by a local pastor on this point: http://religiopoliticaltalk.com/plastic-pastors-critiquing-an-otherwise-great-sermon/
I never really bought it. Every realtime satellite image I have seen of the Pacific, regardless of spectrum or medium, ever showed a Texas-sized island anywhere in the Pacific- not in color photography, no albedo signatures, infrared, heat, nothing. Also, I don’t recall there being “gyre” (which is induced by wind and currents, not weather patterns) between Honolulu and L.A.
Sometimes it pays to be a cynical, “Physical proof or its fantasy/pseudoscience” scientist guy.
The only seaborne plastic trash shibboleth I consider legitimate and valid anymore is cutting-open those plastic beverage can 6-pack ring-things before trashing-them. Lots of landfills still poorly-controlled storm-water runoff, and an alarming-number of municipalities STILL dump trash and partially-composted trash at sea. And considering the current-level of competence in municipal-efficiency, I typically cut them open even if they are going into the recycling bin…or anything similar.
“… and I Fell for it”
The general rule of thumb is that if leftist are saying it, or if it advances leftist agendas, it’s almost certainly not true; and it most certainly is not true as the leftists are saying it.
I believed it also for a while. If you do go scuba diving always take a knife in case you encounter a part of net.
Marxists don’t even believe in the concept of truth. the only thing they believe in is saying whatever will get them their way. true or false doesn’t matter.