There Might Be Less Plastic in the Sea Than We Thought
News Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/climate/plastic-pollution-oceans.html
Scientific study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01216-0
The article I’ve chosen to do this blog post over is titled “There Might Be Less Plastic in the Sea Than We Thought. But Read On.” by Delger Erdenesanaa published by The New York Times on August 7 2023. It talks about the fact that previous estimates and reports over the amount of plastic pollution in the ocean were incorrect, however the rate at which offshore pollution is increasing is alarming. The article pulls its data from a study titled “Global mass of buoyant marine plastics dominated by large long-lived debris” and was published on May 26, 2023 by Mikael Kaandorp et Al. and as its title suggests it focuses on the total mass of long lived floating plastics in the ocean.
Overall the NYT article does a decent job of conveying the main idea of the study by presenting the ideas provided in a very straightforward and digestible manner in comparison to the scientific study. However they do this by leaving out a majority of the actual research and just summarizing the overall points of the Nature Geoscience study. Erdenesanaa opened up and went straight to stating the findings of the study; sharing that the previous estimates on the input of offshore pollution were grossly mistaken and that this new study estimates there is about 1/16 the amount of plastic being input into the ocean yearly than what was previously believed while the actual amount of plastic in the ocean is increasing much faster than we thought. She then moves away from the research presented in the study and begins to talk about the implication of the plastic pollution in the ocean, why the reader should care, and what's next in terms of addressing the issue.
The main focus of the study was to address the discrepancy between the previous estimated amounts of plastic pollution input into the ocean and the actual observable amount of plastic pollution floating in the ocean. Dr. Kaandorp did this through a numerical model in which he input data from different marine reservoirs, including coastlines, the ocean surface, and the deep ocean, totalling over 20,000 sources while also taking size and the amount of pollution lost to sedimentation, fouling-defouling cycles, fragmentation and current clean up acts into consideration.
From the model they were able to estimate an average of 500 kilotonnes of plastic is input into the ocean per year and this number is steadily increasing at 4% every year. These new estimates researchers found are much lower than what was previously reported and more inline with more up to date data and what is actually observed in the ocean. Another key finding was that the majority of this plastic pollution on the surface of the ocean is dominated by large plastics items(>25mm) accounting for 90% of the buoyant plastic pollution, a number much higher than previous estimates. From all of this data they were able to ascertain that that the residence time of plastics in the marine environment is much higher than previously estimated as well as account for the missing marine sink causing discrepancies in the amount of plastic pollution observed and the amount of plastic input every year, two major focuses of oceanic pollution research. Overall the findings from this study give us a more accurate model of the actual amount of plastic pollution in various marine sinks which in turn allows us to better focus our efforts in reducing said pollution.
In the NYT article Erdenesanaa made the choice to briefly mention the methods of the Nature Geoscience study and the model Dr. Kaandorp used to ascertain the data in a very short paragraph and not talk about anything else on the methods of the study or the volume of data that actually went into making the model they used in the study other than her main claim she made at the start of the article. She instead chooses to talk about the implications of plastic pollution and what we can do to stop it. She only mentions Dr. Kaandrop twice in the article with very simple quotations and does not include any of the helpful graphics included in the study. I believe Erdenesanaa only used the scientific study as a springboard in order to present a bigger message on the effects of global plastic pollution and what needs to be done in order to stop it.
Overall I would rate the NYT article a 7/10. I would say it is a pretty good article on its own, however in the context of the assignment it feels a little too oversimplified and does not do a good job of explaining the actual research conveyed in the Nature Geoscience article but rather just the main conclusion rarely mentioning the actual study and its authors. I understand why the author felt the need to only speak on the conclusion of the study as the NYT article is made for the general population's consumption however I feel like if you are going to present new information this is different than what was previously estimated it should be backed up with how said data was obtained and how this was different than before. While there are no major issues with misrepresentation of the science presented in the NYT article, instead I feel there was a bit of underrepresentation.
I think that the limited graphics in the article is a huge deal. Especially with topics like this where theres a comparison of large values that are a bit harder to grasp and looking at changes over time is a focus graphics are critical to conveying an accurate understanding. I also found it interesting to see an article where things don't seem to be as bad as we thought especially given how hopeless this class can feel sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point that the lack of graphics are a major issue with the article. I was going between rating this article a 6 due to the gross lack of information presented in the article in comparison to the scientific study. I also agree its really nice to see a positive perspective for a change. It was actually the article title that caught my attention,Im sure that was authors intention because once she has the readers attention from this positive title she then is able to better share her message on plastic pollution with little help from the scientific study.
DeleteI appreciate that this article works to publicize a new piece of data that makes climate change combatting feel a bit more feasible. That being said, I thinks its a bit weird that they don't show data from the scientific paper considering that this new data does combat what was previously thought to be proven. I think like that they talk about the implications of the new findings, but i feel that the article would be a lot stronger just by providing a bit more scientific information to back up these new claims!
ReplyDeleteI agree this article would be much more stronger if they just included more of the scientific information in order to backup their case however this is all too common for articles like this Erdenessa was too focused on conveying her own point and message that she only used the scientific article as a lifting off point for her own message rather than accurately convey the findings of the scientific article to the reader.
DeleteIt's always nice to see an article that shows promise for an issue! I agree that it is lacking in terms of data and honestly representing the article much at all. As we've seen in many of the articles presented so far, this article only uses a select bit of information as a piece of a story the author is trying to tell. More data would have definitely been nice regardless, though.
ReplyDeleteI agree it is really nice to see a positive article that contrast previously alarming data and that was one of my main reasons for choosing this article. I think the reason the NYT author choses not to include the specifics of the data from the article is because she was trying to convey a bigger picture about plastic pollution in the ocean and only used the scientific article as a starting point.
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ReplyDeleteNormally I wouldn't advocate for an article from a news outlet to be super dense in the methods section, just because for the average reader it makes the article less accessible and harder to understand. However, considering that this article is claiming to have numbers that counter what we currently believe to be true about plastic levels, I absolutely agree that they should have included more of the scientific basis for these results. If you could add some of this information to the article, what do you think would be the most important things to include?
ReplyDeleteI agree, usually i would prefer articles like the NYT's article to not include voluminous amounts of information, in this case the lack thereof of information is more damaging to the authors claim than including too much. I think the most important things to include from the scientific article in the NYT article would've been any or all of the graphics they included in the scientific article. These graphics accurately summed up the information presented in the article in an accurate concise and wholesome way, not leaving out vital pieces of information like the NYT article did.
DeleteI agree with you that the NYT articles does a good job presenting the message that plastics are harmful and tricky to measure and reduce, while it under-represents the research methods and findings of this journal article. I think if the news article chose to highlight the complexity of modeling plastics in the ocean, in addition to the results of a lower estimation of plastics than expected, it could better argue that managing plastics is challenging because they have different sizes (microplastics and large plastics) can be transported in different ways---"sinking via biofouling, beaching, turbulent vertical mixing and fragmentation." To me starting with an statement that implies that there's less plastics than we think weaken the overall argument that plastics pose great threat to marine environment and humans.
ReplyDeleteI definitely see your point that starting the article off with such a bold claim weakens the overall argument that Erdenessa is trying to make and i want to agree however I can see what Erdenssa's reasoning was behind doing this, I feel like for an article of this type that is tailored to the general audience has to have some sort of attention grabber to pull the reader in an as long as it is not completely wrong or misleading, it is an essential literally tool in the news world.
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