The federal environmental agency, back about 2005, used to quote a Canadian study of "plastic shopping bag" waste in Newfoundland, which was said to kill "one million sea birds and animals a year".

Except it didn't. They were merely giving credence to a Greenpeace propaganda exercise which made the claim.

The actual study said that "plastic nets and fishing lines" were estimated to have killed "up to 100,000 sea birds and animals over a five year period". Plastic shopping bags were neither mentioned nor implicated. And the estimated kill rate was way short of the one million a year claimed by Greenpeace.

Did the Australian environment agency remove the claim? Of course not. They had been captured by Greenpeace.

So called public servants were running Greenpeace propaganda from within the commonwealth public service environment agency. With impunity.

When the Productivity Commission challenged the commonwealth environment bureaucracy about this claim, the public servants claimed the allegation was in a different journal by the same author. Which the author denied when asked by the Productivity Commission. Liars and scoundrels had infiltrated the environment agency as part of the long march of the Left through the institutions. It was all described in the Productivity Commission report on waste management at that time.

Calwest: Oh so clever?

Even so, it's hard not to see how less intelligent species like turtles, could mistake floating plastic for their favorite food? Jellyfish?

As ever, casting pearls before swine, is countenanced as unwise! As these omnivores might mistake them for something of nutritional worth?

As it would seem, equally applicable to turtles, in regard to floating plastic?
You'll have a nice day now Y'hear. Alan B.

calwest

Google [ turtle plastic] and see the pictures, read the words:

Global Change Biology, involved UQ’s Dr Kathy Townsend and researchers at CSIRO Hobart, Texas A&M University, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu, University of NSW, and Imperial College London, UK.
It was part of an Australian Research Council Linkage project supported by Earthwatch Australia, CSIRO, and Tsar Putin , Chairman Mao and the Sicily Mafia.

nicknamenick,

Google "turtle plastic" and the first image you get is one of a turtle with a piece - NOTE, a piece - of plastic bag in its mouth. The pic has been around since at least the mid-1990s. It was set up at Melbourne Zoo, which is why the turtle has only a piece of bag, not the whole bag.

Given the lies Greenpeace - and our federal environment agency - told about the Newfoundland research, there is no reason to believe that every photograph - or any photograph - of turtles and plastic are legitimate without a lot more verification. The Green Left of politics floats on a sea of lies.

As we know, you have a history of quoting selected authorities - such as National Geographic - without actually having any means of validating their claims. In this case, you quote as authorities a bunch of academics and government agencies. So what? Are you suggesting academics and government agencies are never to be doubted? How very religious of you.

Alan B.,

You're letting your fantasy get in the way of reason. Just because you THINK a turtle MIGHT mistake a plastic bag for food doesn't make it so.

There is no evidence whatsoever to support that contention, which has been promoted by the Left for a couple of decades.

calwest
"Are you suggesting academics and government agencies are never to be doubted"
No but taken at random from any site on [plastic turtle] with multiple pics and TV docos on sea-life the evidence is more convincing than your weak declarations . If the first pic was faked , you are implying other pics are shown. All fakes? So thousands of technicians faked the moon landing? " Fake" , shout it louder.

I usually take a backpack when I do my shopping, because it's more practical to carry a large load that way than in flimsy plastic bags. I also shop at Aldi a lot, where they're too tight to give away free bags and I'm too tight to buy them. So mostly for reasons of practicality, I don't end up with that many plastic bags. I don't find that my life suffers greatly as a result.

calwest,

Greenpeace are complete dicks, that I will grant you. They're still arguing that GM foods are dangerous, for heaven's sake... and yet they claim that climate change deniers are anti-science! Talk about the pot calling the kettle an excellent absorber of visible wavelengths of EM radiation.

But to argue along the lines that 'Greenpeace said it therefore it's crap' is fallacious; specifically it commits the ad hominem fallacy. Arguments stand or fall on their own merits, not the failings of the people advancing them. And the argument that polymer pollution in marine environments is a problem is not a crap argument.