WHAT THE OCEAN PLASTICS MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED NATIONS CLAIMS IS THIS According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme, the estimated cost of ocean plastic pollution on fishing, tourism, and shipping is at least $13 billion annually. YET THESE EXPERTS ADMIT THAT THEY DO NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND THIS POLLUTION ISSUE. Of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic ever produced, approximately only 9 percent has been recycled and an estimated 60 percent has been discarded, with some ending up polluting our rivers and the ocean. The amount of plastic entering the ocean is projected to double in the next five years. The enormity of this problem has led The Pew Charitable Trusts to undertake a two-year initiative to identify the most effective strategies to address the marine plastic problem. Working with the global consulting firm SYSTEMIQ, we are conducting a global analysis that will quantify the ocean plastic pollution between 2016 and 2040 under different scenarios. We are also engaging with Duke University on a global plastics policy analysis that considers the responses to this issue by a range of governments around the world. Separately, Pew is working with a broad range of stakeholders to develop an evidence-based global roadmap for reducing marine plastic pollution. We expect to release that roadmap in mid-2020. CRITICAL COMMENTARY IT DOES NOT APPPEAR THAT THESE UNITED NATIONS "EXPERTS" HAVE ACTUALLY SEEN THE DATA BECAUSE WHAT WE FIND IN THE DATA IS THS: WHAT THE UN SAYS: Plastic pollution is also taking a toll on people and society. According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme, the estimated cost of ocean plastic pollution on fishing, tourism, and shipping is at least $13 billion annually. And experts do not yet fully understand how all of this pollution is affecting—or will affect—human health. Of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic ever produced, approximately only 9 percent has been recycled and an estimated 60 percent has been discarded, with some ending up polluting our rivers and the ocean. The amount of plastic entering the ocean is projected to double in the next five years. The enormity of this problem has led The Pew Charitable Trusts to undertake a two-year initiative to identify the most effective strategies to address the marine plastic problem. Working with the global consulting firm SYSTEMIQ, we are conducting a global analysis that will quantify the ocean plastic pollution between 2016 and 2040 under different scenarios. We are also engaging with Duke University on a global plastics policy analysis that considers the responses to this issue by a range of governments around the world. Separately, Pew is working with a broad range of stakeholders to develop an evidence-based global roadmap for reducing marine plastic pollution. We expect to release that roadmap in mid-2020. WHAT THE DATA SAY In related posts we present the case that although the piles of trash on beaches seem rather large to our visionary judgement, the ocean is relatively MUCH MUCH LARGER and in that context and when the size of the ocean is included in the analysis, the assumed pollution problem does not appear to be as serious an issue as the visual judgement may imply. For example, we show in related post#1 linked below that even if {Every minute day and night, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic waste enters the oceans} {as claimed by ocean pollution activists}, the amount of plastic going into the ocean is 8,000,000 tonnes per year. This may seem like a huge amount of trash and it may lead to conclusions such as {By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans}. Yet, the weight of fish in the ocean is 2E9 tonnes and at 8 million tonnes per year it will take us 2E9/8E6 years or 250 years to break even with the fish without consideration of “the missing plastic” issue in plastic pollution research described in related post #1. Briefly, the missing plastic issue in ocean pollution research is that 99% of the plastic dumped into the ocean simply disappears and can’t be accounted for in the ocean pollution data. Therefore, it will take us 250 years to break even with the fish if we don’t take the missing plastic issue into consideration and 25,000 years to break even wth the fish if we do take the missing plastic issue into consideration. Another way to judge the scale of the ocean pollution issue is the weight of plastic we dump into it as a fraction of the water in the ocean. The weight of the water in the ocean is 1.4E18 tonnes. This rather large number implies that 1% of the ocean weighs 1.4E16 tonnes; and that means that at 8E6 tonnes per year it will take us 1,750 million years of continuous dumping at one garbage truckload per minute every minute of the day and night to get the amount of plastic pollution in the ocean up to 1% of the ocean by weight without consideration of the missing plastic issue. If the missing plastic issue is taken into considration, it will take us 175 billion years of continuous plastic dumping at one garbage truckload per minute every minute of the day and night to reach the goal where 1% of the ocean by weight is plastic. It appears that the humans have overestimated themselves but perhaps they have a right to do so given their technological advances and all the things they have built such as ships, factories, aircraft, spaceships, and things like the Empire State Building. Taking all that into account we find that the weight of the ocean is 1.4E21 kg or 1.4E18 tonnes. The 7.8E9 humans on earth with an average weight of 62.5 kg is 287E6 tonnes. The weight of all the things that humans have built is 1.1E12 tonnes. This means that the weight of the ocean is about billions of times the weight of all the humans on earth and millions of times the combined weight of all the humans and all the things that humans have built. That the ocean is threatened by humans is nonsensical in view of its immense size and complexity and the relative insignificance of humans and their technological and industrial civilization. What makes the ocean worrywartism even more ridiculous is that we don’t really know the ocean. We are now in the year 2021, just beginning to study the ocean at sufficient depth to make the kind of assessments about human impacts on the ocean that has been assumed by the egotistical humans. LINK TO SOURCE OF THIS ANALYSIS https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/03/02/the-ocean-plastics-problem/