I have seen a few commercials starring Ben Stein that seem to be arguing that the amount of seafood in the world is unbelievably vast and will never run out. I assume this commercial is in response to the recent stories that the world seafood supply will run out by 2048 or so at this rate. I can understand a personality like Stein would want to voice his opinion on a controversial subject if he thinks the argument is partisan crap or otherwise fueled by an agenda, but what possible agenda do people have stating that the seafood supply is running out? In other words, why would people make that particular statement if it was not true? It’s not like a global warming that has political ramifications. What’s the deal exactly?
Or, of course, his argument could be partisan crap fueled by an agenda. Just putting the possibility out there.
I don’t know what the truth is about fishing and the seafood supply. I do know that people who argue there are climate catastrophies ahead tend to be on the left, while Stein is a vocal conservative.
For some people (read: morons), any sort of environmentalist position which threatens bad things if we don’t reduce our consumption is just evil liberal propaganda intended to increase the power of government by trying to convince them to legislate people’s consumption. Just like how for some people (read: morons) anyone who likes guns is an ignorant paleoconservative troglodyte. There is no position that cannot be construed by someone (read: a moron) as a political position. Hell, even geology is eyed by young-earth creationists as liberal atheist propaganda.
Pay someone enough, he’ll say anything you like. Stein is a moron. I can’t believe the man has fans, but I guess if you’re the sort to be a ‘fan’ of Stein, you’ll have the intellectual ability to appreciate his in-depth analysis of the issue.
Maybe they’re sponsored by the “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner so eat it and shut up about how you wanted halibut.” people. Except they aren’t.
The issue ties in with denial of anthrogenic global warming based on a misunderstanding of the effects of scale. An individual looks at how small and insignificant he is and says, “I, by myself, couldn’t cause all that much trouble.” He doesn’t think about how much effect billions of small and insignificant individuals would make, a sort of “death of a thousand cuts.”
Ben Stein is a fool and has been one at least since his days in the Nixon administration. I know that it goes against everything my inner Homer Simpson believes, but being funny in a movie or on TV does not mean that he automatically has credibility in real life. For a liberal equivalent, look at Alec Baldwin. Funny guy, but when he starts talking politics you might want to take it all with a grain of salt. Stein is worse in that, by doing ads like that, he is not just a moron but is also a whore, selling his credibility.
Ben might want to look into the Atlantic Cod for starters.
I can see the point (don’t agree, but I can see the point) if it relates to global warming (Ben say there is no global warming, hence no fish supply running out), but what conservative agenda is being pushed by disagreeing with the fact that overfishing can deplete the fish population, just like overhunting can deplete the bear population? If covered above, I apologize- I am bit confused by the whole thing.
I haven’t seen the commercials, but the over fishing of Atlantic Cod doesn’t have anything to do with global warming. It has to do with over fishing. If he’s making the connection that no global warming = no decline in fish populations, then he needs to explain why there is a cod fishing moritorium in the Atlantic.
I’d have to dig for cites, but I seem to remember similar reductions in the tuna population. If global warming is supposedly the cause for these reductions, and there is no global warming, then there should be no reductions. But there are reductions. I personally don’t think global warming is the cause for the reductions (yet), while not arguing against global warming as a fact.
Another obvious example is the orange roughy. Some stocks have already collapsed despite the fact that they only started fishing them thirty years ago.
I don’t understand why people are conflating fish shortages with global warming. Collapsing fish stocks are collapsing because people have eaten all the fish; it’s a fact beyond any reasonable dispute. Look at the Atlantic cod, or the orange roughy, or the bluefin tuna, or the Atlantic halibut, or any number of grouper and rockfish species.
Or for that matter, go into a damned restaurant and ask what fish they make their fish and chips out of. More and more, it’ll be a really shitty, tasteless fish like pollock.
I’m not conflating reduced stocks with global warming. I’m just saying that the same thought process makes denial of both easy.
A few years back I heard a spokesman for the fishing industry talking about how an industrial catch of the Alaskan pollack was not going to have any effect on stocks. Nope, adding a new predator that takes a billion pounds a year of one species isn’t going to change anything. :rolleyes:
People are painting Stein with an overly broad brush on this issue. He’s simply being a paid spokesman for Alaska Seafood, not an apologist for worldwide overfishing:
http://www.alaskaseafood.org/tv_ad/
Alaska is arguing that they place responsible limits on their catches, making their fishing industry sustainable. (Whether that’s true or not is another issue.)
Here is a link to the site responsible for the commercials where you can view them.
I just watched one so far but, to be fair, it seems that Ben Stein is not peddling so much a political message as just a message encouraging people to eat more Alaskan seafood. There is a message in there about abundance but I don’t think it is the main message…and I would have to know more about the details before taking a strong stand on this. For example, I do know that many of the organizations concerned about overfishing do not argue that people should stay away from eating all seafood but rather that they should choose fish that are fished or farmed most sustainably. And, in that regard, my impression was that, for example, Alaskan wild salmon does get good marks in this regard. In fact, most of these organizations do consider it the better choice than farmed salmon. See, for example, here:
[In preview, it looks like toadspittle gave the same link and makes similar points.]
And, by the way, while I don’t think much if any of the drop in fish stocks up to this point has been attributed to global warming, there is real concern about global warming having a detrimental effect on this in the future.
So are these advertisements for a seafood consortium, or some kind of PSA?
I love seafood, and fish is supposed to be part of a good diet, but lately I feel conflicted about that – should we all stop eating fish for a couple decades? (Actually, it would make more sense to stop having babies for a couple of decades – but don’t hold your breath waiting for Ben Stein to do a PSA advocating the idea.)
I find it odd these pro seafood ads appeared right after the reports that the supply was running out. True or not, if people believe this, they could possibly start cutting back on their intake (in countries besides the US, anyway), and obviously reduce profits for the industry. I could be wrong, but I do believe one ad I saw has Stein pronounce “there’s plenty of it, don’t worry” or something like that. And yes, I have seen pro beef, fish, etc. commercials for years, but never with a “high profile” spokesman. I thought seafood consumption was at an all-time high, thus no adverts needed, unless…
I personally don’t see this as a general ad with a paid spokesman that could be anyone famous- I took it as Stein specifically wanting to be in the ad to let the “ignorant masses” know that a smart guy like him is telling them not to worry.
He’s making a claim about the specific types of seafood he’s talking about, not seafood in general. Indeed, at one point he suggests that one of the Alaskan species is uniquely sustainable (crab, I think), indicating that he awknowledges that this isn’t universally the case for all food species.
I don’t know if his info is accurate or not, but it seems belivable. After all, not all fish stocks are in decline.
Assuming this is correct- and as dropzone noted above, does anyone know how the Alaskan crab is uniquley sustainable, and impervious to being taken by man in such massive quantities? Do fisherman place two baby crab in the water for every one taken out?
Fish are amazing survivors, they survived cataclysms and climate changes far greater than what we’re seeing today. I’m not that worried about the fish, to be honest. Even if many species are fished to extension or killed off by global warming, some will adapt, and a few dozen million years or so and things will be fine.
Yeah, and the ones that didn’t didn’t deserve to survive anyway. To heck with the millions of people that can be fed in later generations, we have hundreds of thousands of hungry fat western mouths to satiate!
I, for one, look forward to an ocean filled with nothing but catfish. The potential for medical and biological research we’d lose by the decline and extinction of hundreds of seafaring species is a small loss to pay for the stark naked beauty of limitless ecological homogeneity.
In the grand scheme of things we’re all corpses anyway. I’m not really sure why medical advancements are being argued about in the first place, there won’t be any humans around to benefit from said advancements in the time frame I’m talking about.
Plus, if commercial fishing becomes unprofitable on a large scale, it will stop, which would happen long before the extinction of all the world’s fish, in any case. And if people really have a taste for a certain type of fish they can be bred and raised without ever involving the oceans.