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Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

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Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#181

Post by Gordonjcp »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #163
paulcole wrote: post #101

So today the wheel of who-do-we-blame-for-fucking-the-earth settles on commercial fishermen. The reality is that the actual wheel points at me and you and everyone we know (and everyone we don’t). If you’re reading this, the lifestyle you’re living is very likely incompatible with a planet that isn’t ravaged by climate change. You’ve got to make drastic changes to how you choose to live and do everything you can to g…

One of the most dramatic changes an individual can make is switching to a plant based diet. Don’t support fishing, don’t support animal agriculture, and you’re way ahead. Not only in energy expenditure but resource utilization as well. It’s a stunning difference.

Doesn't shipping plant-based food around the planet cause massive climate change?

PLant-based diets only make sense if you live somewhere where it's ecologically cheaper to eat plants than animals. This doesn't work, for most of the world.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#182

Post by pas »

Alupis wrote: post #32
pas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if there were a post with "Single use plastics account for an alarming amount of plastics in the oceans" would you think otherwise? both are a problem. the industrial fishing nets degrade slower, the microplastics (that then likely bioaccumulates) comes from all sources.

The data the plastic straw bans were based on was entirely made up by a 9 year old[1][2][3] for a school report. Entirely made up, based on nothing. Yet... here we are with plastic straw and bag bans... Let's think about that for a minute while we contemplate all of the similar "data driven" bans we endure. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-mo... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/busi…

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/plastics/single-use-...

https://ec.europa.eu/environment/pdf/circular-economy/single...

page 4, they name fishing gear and single use plastics. the footnote says "Based on JRC analysis and further data analysis provided by Eunomia"

JRC is joint research centre

the initial data is composed by a kid? sure, why not. is the whole ban based on that report? uh, no

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#183

Post by DocTomoe »

williamscales wrote: post #143
dahdum wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles. I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.

No, not at all. There's just no need whatsoever for trucks. We could simply use rail. The idea that folks on bicycles should be subject to gigantic, badly designed commercial vehicles while going about their business is absurd and a product of decades upon decades of lobbying.

The one thing trucks have that rail doesn't: flexibility. You need to lay a lot of track - and have lots of small trains, often only pulling a single container, to get to even approach the same flexibility trucks have, in speed, in location, and in routing.

Sure, Just In Time is partly to blame for this. But if your stock intake deliveries now become a monthly event, you need to build a warehouse that holds about six weeks worth of raw material. That's cost.

And unless these folks on bicycles delved for and forged the metal for the bikes themselves, assembled the self-made parts and walked all the way to the Caribbean to get the tree juice for rubber tyres, chances are, a truck brought the bikes to them.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#184

Post by Grimburger »

causality0 wrote: post #55
epistasis wrote: post #24

To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…

It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.

> If tire wear is proportional to road wear

It's not though, rendering the point moot. They are two vastly different materials with different models of wear.

A quick thought experiment would make this very apparent: Do trucks need to replace tires at magnitudes less distance travelled than cars? Do cars tires last 100x longer than motorbike tires?

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#185

Post by pibechorro »

epistasis wrote: post #24

To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…

This is also an issue with EVs, they are much heavier and thus create ALOT more tire wear.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#186

Post by belorn »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #156
jandrese wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy part about this is how this is the fishermen shitting where they are eating. All of the ocean pollution contributes directly to collapsing fish populations, which puts them right out of a job. Why doesn't the appeal of "if you keep doing what you're doing you won't be able to keep fishing, and your children definitely won't be fishermen" work? I get that they are trapped in the cycle of overfishing, but it…

A lot of fishers where I live blame the damage on previous generations. They aren’t the problem, it was the people before them. They talk about how sustainable their practices are (despite stocks decreasing every year). We had massive glass sponge reefs. They were destroyed by trawlers. That’s prohibited now. I suppose we’re expected to believe the industry wouldn’t be trawling today if they were allowed to, but I do…

In many places trawlers are to fishers what trucks are to cyclists, so there is some truth when people blame trawlers for destroyed reefs. Bottom trawlers in particular bulldoze the ocean floor, and trawler fleet are basically floating factories that operate by moving to new locations once a current location is dried up and destroyed. Trawler fleet also tend to focus on creating oil and animal feed, which mean they don't really care what they catch.

Once an area is destroyed in this fashion there isn't much future for fish or fishermen. Fishermen can continue to fish or not, but without a healthy ocean floor the fish won't reproduce, the nurseries won't be there, and parasites/diseases will wreck the remaining population for decades. The best society can do is to help fishermen to move to a different profession and turn the harbor into apartments.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#187

Post by sorenbs »

epistasis wrote: post #24

To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…

The big concern around fishing gear is that it is specifically designed to catch marine life, so when it is lost or deliberately discarded in the ocean, it continues to kill for years for no reason at all.

The movie Seaspiracy makes this point in a very graphic way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q5CXN7soQg

This fact-check runs through all the points of the video in 15 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7QRLZp63Eo

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#188

Post by MrRiddle »

ericd wrote: post #74
formvoltron wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. You are right and I had not thought about tires as an obvious source of microplastics. What's the solution though?

Probably lighter vehicles? Wear is superlinear with weight. Unfortunately, EVs aren't great on this axis.

Let’s not forget brake dust which is a lot worse than microplastics, EVs create a ton of that.

I bet all things considered, ICE Toyota Yaris is less bad for the environment than some Tesla.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#189

Post by neuronic »

maxerickson wrote: post #113
airstrike wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%

What is freshwater usage? My water comes out of a Great Lake and substantially ends up back in it, about as clean as it came out. It's not used up. Some energy is consumed making it potable and pumping it around, and then treating it. Farms in the Midwest happen to catch a lot of rain, are they using freshwater in a different way than an almond orchard in California, or is it the same (my expectation is that the almo…

Don't make the mistake and rely on current rain. It's not funny how quickly moist regions can turn arid as a result of climate change.

We have currently seen major droughts in Europe and it severely affects the ongoing energy crisis. A lot of power plants, nuclear and others, are in direct danger of not being able to be cooled anymore because you need RIVERS for that. And they need to be cool.

Germany is currently experiencing issues with low water levels in some of its major waterways, such as the Rhine. When they dry up to low levels periodically, and they evidently do nowadays, then you have to shut down the plants accordingly.

In France, rivers are too warm to cool plants [1]. There needs to be water AND it needs to be cool. There is no nuclear power without water cooling.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threa...

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#190

Post by franga2000 »

gruez wrote: post #109
airstrike wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%

> The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce I agree with internalizing externalities, but let's not pretend that isn't part of individual behavior (consumer demand drives industry), or that individuals don't benefit from them in some way.

The fact that people benefit from something is not enough to assign any blame to them. Even if alternatives exist (they often don't), if they require a significant trade-off, blame is minimal.

Even when it comes to buying products it's a tough sell - I know my phone battery is made with slave labor, but it's not like I can choose to buy the one that isn't. So when it comes to industry, we share exactly 0% of the blame - not just as individuals, but consumers as a group[]. The problem is two-fold: industry leaders are greedy and politicians aren't working in our best interests. If either of those went away, the problem would be solved. Unless you're in one if those two groups, none of it is your fault.

[] In democratic countries, it can be argued that the voter base is at fault for electing these corrupt politicians. I largely agree with this, but it's a pretty complex topic.

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