It’s In The Bag
Searching for truth…
As anyone who owns a dog knows, those plastic bags you get at the store are great for picking up behind your dog.
As it turns out, plastic bags are pretty good at picking up bullshit, too.
Remember how you’ve been hearing how plastic bags kill 100,000 marine mammals and over one million seabirds a year? Turns out these oft-quoted statistics have no basis in fact.
What they do offer is insight into the kind of misinformation and deliberate distortions that characterize the global warming debate.
It seems there was a study done in Canada which was published in 1987 that over a three-year period between 1981-1984 more than 100,000 marine mammals and birds were killed by discarded nets.
Fast forward to 2002. The Australian government commissioned a study on the effects of plastic bags. The authors of that study quoted the Canadian study as saying that plastic bags were responsible for the deaths.
Somehow discarded fishing nets became plastic bags, 100,000 animal deaths over three years became 100,000 marine mammal and 1,000,000 birds a year.
I don’t claim to be an expert on recruiting scientists for government studies but I would think that, at a minimum, you might want to hire a couple of guys who know enough math to know that adding an extra comma and three zeroes changes the meaning of 100,000.
You might even want consider hiring people who, when confronted with evidence, might be willing to admit their mistakes.
The authors of the Australian study left the “typo” uncorrected for four years and, when they finally did issue a correction, they corrected “plastic bags” to “plastic debris” and in a footnote, made mention the Canadian study referred to fishing nets.
Let me make one suggestion to any Australian government officials who are reading this. If you type in “fishing nets” into your computer and it comes out “plastic bags,” it may be time to get a new computer. Or some new researchers.
You know you’re on thin ice when Greenpeace is sprinting away from endorsing your study results. David Santillo, a marine biologist at Greenpeace, noted, “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags. The evidence shows just the opposite.”
The London Times article characterizes the results of the Australian study as “a misinterpretation.”
That famous Londoner, Winston Churchill once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
Six years after this little “misinterpretation,” the truth is still looking for its jeans.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:00 am
The Australian government only has itself to blame for the plastic bag problem.
Having done little else but watch it grow, it now proceeds to inform us all that it is an environmental hazard of epic proportions. The truth of the matter is that the problem was solved many years agao, right here in my present place of residence…DARWIN.
It was solved by the invention of the SOLAR bag….a type of plastic product that actually breaks down to nothing when exposed to sunlight….How this occurs and why, I’m not sure, but it does work.
WHY this invention has not been adopted, I don’t know either, but Solar bags are a fact….
One possible reason could be that most of these bags are actually used for LANDFILL and, therefore, have little or no exposure to the necessary sunlight ot complete the process of decomposition…
So, the story, as usual, has an ending that is niether logical, nor workable. Yet another example of the dysfunctional age we live in….
AND….COULN’T HELP COMMENTING on the photograph to this particular blog….WHAT it has to do with plastic bags is anybody’s guess…..Maybe the women in the photo are “plastic bags”?…If so, they are a little young and firm to be referred to as such, but thats not what caught my eye…It was the CAPTION….”Searching for the truth.”
WHEN we can find the truth by looking at the asses of women, then let me know….and what exactly is the woman on the left doing? Searching with her hands?….this photo and the caption defy description …..I’ve never felt that the “truth” resides up girls asses….they may have a different “spin” on this altogether….
And just WHERE did you get this particular photo from?…Private collection?….IF you know them personally, Mr Divebomber, can you get them to remove their clothes altogether next time so that the “truth” can be revealed for all to see?
Then again, we may lose interest in the “mystery’ of the girls concerned….WHAT A SHAME that would be for their future careers as sex objects….
Bye bye!
December 30th, 2008 at 6:46 am
You disclaim one study on the basis of another?
Chuchill wasn’t a Londoner he was from Oxford.
June 21st, 2009 at 12:36 am
Seek help.
January 13th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
@Alf:
He didn’t disclaim any study. He just said they misquoted/had typos and kept running with it.
@Author:
Post links to the studies and the Australian authors’ names. Just for posterity…
And yeah, the photo of the article was a little strange, but I guess it does garner attention to a subject that purportedly needs it!