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You should ask about the magnetic poles and if increasing/decreasing magnetic fields effect gravity at all? Do they take into account the magnetic fields? And if solar storms impact the larger magnetic field outside the planet... Or are they just detecting mass levels?

GRACE just detects mass; solar storms are a source of noise because they exert non-gravitational forces on the satellites which need to be subtracted to analyze the gravitational forces.

My question is if the melting arctic ice cap will impact the mass up there and will cause a change in the gravity?

Since GRACE only detects mass, it can't tell the difference between floating sea ice and the equivalent amount of water displaced by the floating ice. So GRACE can't see the melting Arctic ice cap, but it can see thinning glaciers and ice sheets when the meltwater flows into the ocean because in that case the mass moves.

Does warmer water in the summer weigh more or take up more volume?

Yes, this is called the thermosteric effect; I mentioned annual variations in paragraph 13 of my 2011 paper. Satellite altimeters like JASON and TOPEX/Poseidon can measure sea level rise due to thermosteric effects, but they also measure the sea level rise due to added water from thinning ice sheets and glaciers. Because GRACE can only measure the mass of the added water, it can't measure sea level rise due to steric effects (temperature and salinity). Ironically, this means we can solve for steric sea level rise by subtracting the GRACE estimate of sea level rise from the altimeter estimates.

If snow is less dense than ice (mostly), can you tell where the glaciers are melting and not recovering after the winter?

Not with GRACE alone, but (as with steric sea level rise) satellite altimetry can provide volume measurements. Of course, if the meltwater drains far away from the glacier, GRACE alone could see this change in mass. And, in fact, GRACE is observing this all over the globe.

may very well

There you go; pure speculation on your part.

Muller says only that hurricane numbers in the US are decreasing. The studies I linked show a trend of increasing observed numbers over the last 150 years, one of which correlates this with AGW, but later studies show that improved observation techniques are more likely the cause of the trend. No definite conclusion can be drawn yet. Thus, "scaremongering" about increased hurricane numbers is premature, and quite possibly misguided.

Muller does not say anything about hurricane intensity, as much as you'd like to think so. Emanuel 2005 shows that hurricane intensity is "highly correlated" with sea surface temperature, which Muller's own work shows is increasing, so he'd need strong evidence to the contrary to believe as you do.

Given that Elsner 2008 also observes that strong hurricanes are getting stronger, there's very good evidence to believe that the frequency of hurricane-related disasters will increase, and nothing Muller has actually said (you know, in words) indicates that he doubts this.

It's amusing, actually, watching people desperately reinterpreting the data or loudly rubbishing the messenger, all the while demonstrating even more strongly the same flaws in method that they're attempting to accuse the scientific community of.

and we've heard nary a peep about the implications.

I don't know why you haven't heard a peep, scientists have taken this quite seriously and have done some research on the topic. The difficulty, of course, is good historical data is hard to find, and frankly, good measurements of the entire ocean are not easy to make even now.

In any case, the latest scientific research suggests little cause for alarm.

Oh fart.

Methane is present in the atmosphere at pretty significant levels. That means it's present in all water.

Endocrine disruption usually occurs at extremely small doses.

Seems to me like more pseudo science going on here.

Yeh, smartfart, summer not hot enough just yet, a little more methane helpful?

http://www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-1.9982
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338505/title/Natural_gas_wells_leakier_than_believed
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-trail-a-detective-story
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/?mobile=nc
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/29/454445/natural-gas-industry-methane-leaks-save-2-billion/
all pseudo...
but once the permafrost opens up more, this won't matter - pseudo too, it's all illusion anyway, stay fresh

For the first of your questions, you have to understand the nature of the experiment. Read the paper. They're using a diamond-anvil press to produce the very high pressures (gigapascals). Once formed, the M-carbon scratched and damaged the polished surface of the diamonds used in the press. It would only do that if it was similar hardness.

I bet they weren't happy that their diamonds got scratched up.

the real possibility to have genetically modified athletes in the future (via the same principle of targeted virus infection) is discussed in Nature (pay per view #@!) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7407/full/487297a.html

Firstly, why is graphene "faster". This is mainly due to the large mobility of electrons and holes in the material. Furthermore, (I'm not sure here) the fact that the channel is only 1 atom thick, means that switching the transistor from one state to the other should be very fast.
With graphene, the problem is the lack of a band gap. This means that there is always a current flowing through the device no matter which state it's in (on or off, corresponding to 1 or 0). This is a major drawback if you want to make digital transistors out of them, because the device will always draw power no matter what. Ideally you would want the device to have zero or close to zero current flowing through it in one state and have current flow in the other state. So in order to make a power efficient "digital" transistor from graphene you would need to somehow induce a band gap in the material. There are various ways to do this but none have provided the "breakthrough" the summary mentions.
In some cases graphene transistors could be used, for example analog devices, where the above mentioned issues are not problems. This is the case of the 100 GHz transistors that the article mentions.
The issue of dissipating heat should be quite different in the case of graphene, because of the materials very good heat transport properties.

No, "Mike's nature trick" refers to a mathematical technique used to plot instrument data along with reconstructed data. It's a trick of the trade. It is explained in Mann's paper. Nothing omitted or obscured.

Rare Earth elements aren't that rare. Not only that, China is the biggest miner, but not the only proven source.

We call Earth a water planet. It seems preposterous that a bunch of rocks could bring in enough water to fill Earth’s lakes, rivers and oceans.

Yet Earth, in terms of its overall mass, is 0.06% water. With about 70% of its surface covered in water, Earth is considerably drier than it appears.

But climate is now demonstrated by data to have been HOTTER in Roman and Medieval times, than now.

This is in the journal, Nature. If you pardon the pun, this isn't a hotbed of "deniers".

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html

"Global Temperatures Were a Falling Trend."

The long term graphs in TFA show a long term decline, but they all still kick up sharply at the end when we get to the industrial age.

Please look at more than one picture before rushing to an uneducated judgement.

The whole article is here: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html

Er, that is the article I'm quoting from. Scroll down to Figure 3 and you'll see precisely what I'm talking about. Please read the whole fucking article before rushing to an uneducated judgement.

"It lacks many Joe-reader explanations. I have to look-up three words in every sentence."
Science, it requires mad skill you don't have.

It YOU that is the problem, not the paper.

I am assuming you mean the actual paper:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html

Not the stupid article in the register.

"Global Temperatures Were a Falling Trend."

The long term graphs in TFA show a long term decline, but they all still kick up sharply at the end when we get to the industrial age.

Please look at more than one picture before rushing to an uneducated judgement.

The whole article is here: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html

No the study did not say this, read the study, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html. The jackass at the Register made that assumption. He's a well known crank.

The cooling trend, representing a 0.34C temperature difference between the first and second millennium AD (0.36C excluding the twentieth century from the second millennium mean), is however not preserved in the TRW data from the same temperature-sensitive trees (Fig. 3). Similarly, no evidence for a long-term cooling trend is observed in a previous Fennoscandian TRW-based temperature reconstruction spanning the past 2,000 years. Such a trend was found in only low-resolution lake sediment and ice-core data of a circum-Arctic proxy network.

The N-Scan data (your link) doesn't agree with the TRW data, and, further, data gleaned from lakes and ice doesn't agree with the data gleaned from trees (lakes and ice show a larger cooling trend than the N-Scan data!). The images below are a better representation of the study's data.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nclimate1589_F3.html

None of this study (or even the register article, as annoying as it is) is directly related to AGW; it only has to do with the uncertainty of the techniques of measuring past temperatures, and it's a very interesting read.

Maybe this paper has nothing to do with AGW?

What are you talking about? From the paper itself:

The forcing is substantial over the past 2,000 years, up to four times as large as the 1.6Wm2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 (ref. 4), but the trend varies considerably over time, space and with season5. Using numerous high-latitude proxy records, slow orbital changes have recently been shown6 to gradually force boreal summer temperature cooling over the common era.

That's the second sentence of the summary. How can it not be about AGW when it talks about this having an effect opposite of "net anthropogenic forcing since 1750"? Did you even read the paper?

Or are you saying AGW is nothing but goalseeking, and any data point that lessons the potential impact, or lessens the fear of a global apocalypse is thus unwelcome?

No, I did not say that. This paper looks legitimate and should be published and was published. It is interesting. My problem was that they seemed to have cherry picked a date range and then The Guardian took that and ran with it. In my opinion they flat out misinterpreted what the paper was saying. And here is the biggest problem I have with the article, the fact that they say "the last 2,000 years" when they really mean the period between 138 BC–AD 1900. I am attacking factual inaccuracies and bad reporting. Oh and you think I brought up AGW? How about this from the article:

Needless to say, prominent alarmist scientists and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have not taken this view ...

And you're attacking me for bringing AGW into this? AGW isn't about goalseeking, it's about getting an accurate estimate on how much effect we are having on our environment. It isn't unwelcome if it's true and this paper is true. Whether this is pro or anti AGW doesn't make factual inaccuracies any less problematic in science reporting!

A team lead by dr Esper of the University of Mainz has researched tree rings and concluded that over the past 2,000 years

That's odd, according to the image from the paper the trend in question is from 138 BC–AD 1900. Of course, after reading the Guardian article, it's clear that the only papers in Nature worth this "reporter's" time are those that confirm his professional opinion on the state of global temperatures. Tell me, why exactly didn't they construct a trend from 138 BC–AD 2012? Was that 1900-2012 range more difficult to acquire for some hilarious reason? I mean, the data is in the graph right there.

You can select special time ranges, you can select windows and you can look at millions of years of data and say that temperatures right now are no big deal. But when you start to look at the rate of change (even in the paper's graph linked above) and you notice recently we're starting to approach rates that are increasingly less frequent in the historical record, I think it's okay to start to talk about what could be causing it. I mean now we're talking about the last two thousand years and yeah, that's an acceptable window but if we never swing back down below to average it out, at what point are you going to admit that the theory of C02 affecting global average temperatures has some weight to it? Trust me, if we increase by 2 degrees Celsius, you can increase this window back five millennium and say "Hey, they used to have temperatures warmer than we do now." It's entirely possible to endlessly play this game by moving the goal posts. But I don't think the Earth is going to be able to adapt as well as humans do to rapid change. I guess the only thing that can convince people is time and repercussions that actually inconvenience humans.

And in the real world, climate has ALWAYS changed. Much more rapidly than the change we've seen over the last 100 years as well.

The Old Egyptian Kingdom fell due to a cold spell that lasted a few decades: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/apocalypse_egypt_01.shtml

If they had had Internet back then, they would also be screaming alarmists statements and blaming the pyramids for redirecting the jet stream. Instead, they blamed the gods being angry with their way of living. Come to think of it, it's not that different from what some are doing now.

"Weird weather" (that is, fully normal) documented over 2000 years: http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf

Oh, and to top it off. The Earth has been cooling since the beginning of the Holocene. As far into the present as we're able to measure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html

This subject was covered most exhaustively earlier in the year by nature: http://www.nature.com/news/anarchists-attack-science-1.10729. I think that both articles miss a point. Although these attacks may seemed linked, or claimed to be linked, I doubt it. This violence may be carried out by as few as two people - a motorcyclist and a gunman, yet both articles paint this as a huge sideswipe by an organised Anarchist (paradox alert) movement. For all we know these attacks may be carried out by a handful disgruntled ex-employees claiming an antiscientist rhetoric to intimidate their former employer, or, in a fit of self-delusion, jump on the anarchist bandwagon to give some sort of paper-thin reasoning for their violence tendencies. "The Olga Cell", "sorcerer of the atom" "LONG LIVE THE CONSPIRACY OF CELLS OF FIRE"? Surely anyone who has a few Anarchist cliches and stereotypes to call upon could write this stuff?

Pigeons are way ahead of them, they follow the highways, much easier than using tiny thingies in their cherry-sized brain.

"Pigeons take the highway
Some birds follow roads instead of flying direct."

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040210/full/news040209-1.html

As I understand it, in this latest experiment, they flew some worms in space, killed them (flash frozen with liquid nitrogen) and compared them with a control group on earth and then
"... identified seven genes, which were down-regulated in space and whose inactivation extended lifespan under laboratory conditions..."

You can read more here.

However, more amazing than worm just living longer, is how worms survived the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster (their progeny were discovered in the wreckage a few weeks later)...

...she apparently published a paper in 2009 talking about how arsenic may have been used in the past and might be used now. Then in 2010 she happens to find an example?

It would have helped if the summary had pointed at the actual Nature article or the ArXiv preprint.

challenge accepted:

Rare Earth Alternatives in Critical Technologies (REACT)
National Lab Developing Alternatives to Rare Earth Materials
Idaho may provide rare earth alternative
Semiconductor nanocrystals as rare-earth alternatives
Rare Earths Fall as Toyota Develops Alternatives: Commodities

About halfway through the article there's a conspicuous link to an abstract of the actual study on Nature Materials. That is the "article, conveniently linked" that I was referring to. (The whole report should be freely available soonish.)

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat3357.html

The process they employed uses a modified RepRap 3D printer to create rather precise 3D networks of sugar filaments.

You can find out where the numbers came from if you read the paper I cited. But maybe it's above your reading level.

Sure ... okay, let's see...

...global coupled climate model simulations...

Our intention here is to relate the rate of future global temperature change from the representative concentration pathway (RCP) mitigation scenarios to possible future sea-level rise...

One will simply be the part due to thermal expansion of sea water computed from a global coupled climate model (CCSM4). The second will use the example in the IPCC AR4

Hmmm... looks like they pulled it only partly out of their ass, and partly out of numbers somebody else pulled out of their ass.

My apologies for jumping to conclusions - I honestly did not realize there were so many asses involved...

You can find out where the numbers came from if you read the paper I cited. But maybe it's above your reading level.

[citation needed]

In other words "Please prove this negative." Truly spoken as someone with no grasp of science.

Don't put words in my mouth or take thoughts out of my head; it belittles only you when you make unfounded assumptions. Unfortunately for you what we're talking about is a peer-reviewed paper, so there is a proper way to rebut it, and that is with science, not Ad Hominem. You may now try again to discredit my statement, but from what I've seen you don't have a fucking hope in hell.

Actually there's some pretty interesting recent work going on that has possible therapeutic implications for Type II, e.g., http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10777.html.

But until there's more specific information, this is "interesting" but not very helpful.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120628/srep00481/full/srep00481.html

There's a direct link to the more specific information linked to in TFA. There's even 7 graphs showing .... something I don't understand.

Also, you understand there is always a gap between laboratory research and industrial application, right? When Smalley and Koto synthesized buckminsterfullerene the practical applications weren't immediately realized, but now we have nanotubes used in microscopes, molecular filters and semi-conductors.

Nature also has a story on the research for those seeking an overview.

I'm anti-GM, and this is apparently just hybridization gone wrong.

Are you now anti-hybrid? Why or why not? And why oppose something based on its creation instead of its properties? The term 'anti-GM' simply does not make sense, because a Bt cotton is not a Round-Up Ready sugarbeet is not a Rainbow papaya is not an Arctic apple is not a Golden Rice is not a Vistive Gold soybean is not a DroughtGard corn is not a Flavr Savr tomato is not an Applause rose. Those are all very different and to oppose them based on their origin is irrational.

If anything, this shows how careful we have to be and not proceed with such a cavalier attitude towards research and implementation.

Strange that no one will suggest that we should not change thousands of genes at once and instead stick with simply moving one or two at a time, hm? And no one is disagreeing with you there either, however, that does not imply that we attempt to prove a negative either.

my biggest gripe with GM is what I see as dangerously performed research (practically no containment of any kind)

Most research does have strict regulations as to pollination barriers. There are mistakes sure (like the Liberty Link rice indecent) but for the most part that is well considered.

dangerous precedents in patent law (owning genetic sequences)

I guess that's more a matter of opinion. I don't really see anything wrong with patenting what one creates. It really isn't much more of an extension fo the plant patent laws we've had for decades (and considering that improved plants benefit everyone, plant breeders and by extension genetic engineers should be the first to get patents). I can certainty see how that would seem to offer potential for abuse, but then again, the slippery slope is a fallacy.

using it as an excuse to saturate farms with pesticides (bad for environment, bad for food, and allows for rapid evolution of countermeasures in affected species)

That's not anti-GM, that's just just downright wrong. Ge crops have reduced pesticide use, perhaps you're thinking herbicides? And if so, not all herbicides are created equal. I'm much rather have glyphosate used than some of the other ones out there. Don't forget, when controlling weeds, you've got about three choices: herbicides, tillage (which results in soil erosion and fertilizer runoff), or an army of people doing the backbreaking task of picking weeds (usually migrant workers who may or may not be working in exploitative conditions). Me, I choose herbicides. And as for rapid evolution of resistances, yet, that happens in insects, weeds, and pathogens even in conventionally bred improvements. Don't confuse the issues of resistance breakdown and resistant weeds for GE exclusive issues, be it late blight strains overcoming resistance genes in tomato or hessian flies overcoming resistance genes in wheat (neither of which are GE). These are problems, but they are arguments for better management of crops, not stopping crop improvements.

and its affect (by use) on seed diversity.

Lets not forget that all improvements come from diversity, and all improvements reduce biodiversity. Biodiversity is extremely important, but biodiversity is represented by many many genes within the species. The reduction of these genes and the insertion of a genes via GE are independent events. Personally, I'd like to see GE be used to improve undercultivated species like sunchoke, jujube, and teff. The current level of research on such species is, quite frankly, dangerous, but again, this has bugger all to do with genetic engineering.

. Monsanto deserves to burn in hell for all the grief they have given farmers simply

Nature

National Academies

And to be balanced:

Guardian UK

(Note that the debate against focused on the logistical causes for food shortages, arguments that ignore current population and climate trends and focus on socio-political conflicts at specific geographic regions)

If trends continue, populations will grow, fresh water supplies will decrease, and deserts will take over a greater percentage of our landmass. While GM won't be the key to solving every problem, I have seen nothing that refutes its worth as a tool. Furthermore, if you look at traditional means of genetic modification, what some refer to as "organic methods", the net result is the same: the genetic code of an organism is altered to achieve specific properties. Current GM techniques simply allow much greater latitude. I suggest that the debate focus not on the means of alteration, but on the risk-reward profile of a given product. Introducing a pesticide into the very structure of a plant may not have been in the best interests of humanity. Engineering drought resistance, on the other hand, will have a much greater benefit with perhaps much less risk.

It's part of us. I would be interested to know if white people's blond hair, blue eyes, and large noses have Neanderthal origins. After all, they lived in cold climates far longer than modern humans.

The issues from TFA shed light on a the ethical complexity of genetics. Personally, I want a copy of my genome. I have some specific health related reasons I want it, but it would be cool to do things with it, like find out roughly what percentage Native American I am (I'm at least 1/32nd Cherokee), if that's even possible. Where have my mitochondria evolved most recently? Do I have the cheating gene?

Hungary has it wrong on two counts. First, they outlawed extracting genetic information except for health reasons. That's got to put a real damper on genetic research, and the Libertarian in me is crying foul. It's my genes, and I should be free to do what I want with them. Second, they're going after the genetics lab over this dumb law, rather than going after the MP for racist behavior. Let's hope we have more success in the US in drafting legislation to protect peoples right to genetic privacy, while giving people full access to data about themselves, and promoting genetic research.

Obviously he had a crude older set that was overdue for an upgrade. The modern ones can not only clearly hear you whisper in the next room, but also see around corners in the pitch dark thanks to the built-in IR laser illumination.

And thanks to the automated computer vision, voice recognition, and behavioral analysis systems that detect any potentially ungood tendencies, it takes only a handful of Party members to continuously protect everyone from their own destructive deviation from orthodoxy. Rejoice citizen, within a few short generations we hope to be able to intercede on behalf of such afflicted individuals, subtly nudging them back toward the path of clean-mindedness long before their deviation leads them to commit a thoughtcrime.

I don't think we have to wait that long. Book burnings are happening both literately and figuratively.

Creationism is based on specific facts,

"My holy book says so" is not fact-based reasoning.

evolved in multiple species using multiple methods happened? ... I'd like to understand how that's possible.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=evolution+sexual+reproduction , Wikipedia: "Sexual reproduction first appeared by 1200 million years ago in the Proterozoic Eon. All sexually reproducing organisms derive from a common ancestor which was a single celled eukaryotic species"

Riddle me this: there are 100,000 known fragments of viruses in the human genome, making up over 8% of our DNA. Virus copies are also found in chimp DNA. Why would a creator insert broken copies of viral DNA into his creations? I've never heard a good creationist explanation for that.

No, scientists have known for a long time that the 14C creation rate isn't quite constant, and have taken this into account in order to do accurate radiocarbon dating. In fact, it was by looking at this carbon-dating calibration curve that they first noticed something unusual in 775.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11123.html

Participants who were unknowingly eating from self-refilling bowls ate more soup than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI.

Your parents likely trained you to "eat everything on your plate" because you probably wanted as a kid to run off and play, and would get hungry and whiny and cranky an hour later. Which is understandable. But the effects seem to stay with you, to where if you're given an unhealthy amount of soda in one container, you have a subtle urge to drink all of it and not be satisfied until you do.

I certainly find that if I get a "Kids-size" soda, I'm satisfied with that. But more and more, you CANNOT buy reasonable sizes of drinks. Try finding a simple 12 oz can of soda at your local gas station. It's becoming a rarity. This doesn't seem to be due to demand, it's pretty clearly companies have realized if they only sell you bigger sizes, you'll give them more money.

This wouldn't be a health problem, except for that childhood training we all receive. If we were just throwing away soda since we couldn't buy exactly how much we wanted, that would be slightly annoying. But we don't throw it away. When nothing save for a "mega-diabetes" size is available, I have to throw the rest of it away. If I try to drink only part of it, and I find myself reaching for it while saying "My precccsiousssssss!"

And it becomes a societal problem when that causes diabetes and higher insurance costs for everyone. Well, that's a theory anyway, not one I'm particularly endorsing, but it's at least plausible. Banning the larger sizes is a bit heavy-handed by the government. I think simply offering smaller sizes would suffice, but I don't know how anyone can encourage that realistically. An awareness campaign to only buy smaller sodas?

Or, you know, none. I counter your "Experts" with the UN "Experts": http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-s-doses-tallied-1.10686

Outside of those directly affected (i.e. evacuated from the area or traumatized by the tsunami), worrying about radiation will carry a higher cancer risk due to stress than the actual radiation.

What makes a black hole dormant? Lack of gamma ray jets... ?

Lack of gas and dust streaming in. The disk + torus the infalling gas produces while accreting produces all the radiation we see from black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Another side effect are the jets that you can see in radio frequencies (although not in all AGN.

There is actually a gas cloud falling in in these decades, so we might see our black hole light up. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7379/abs/nature10652.html

which is easier than it used to be, because author lists are also getting longer; it's not unusual for papers in biology to have ten or more authors listed

So true. Here's a paper with 27 authors listed.... here's another one with a whopping 80 authors!

which is easier than it used to be, because author lists are also getting longer; it's not unusual for papers in biology to have ten or more authors listed

So true. Here's a paper with 27 authors listed.... here's another one with a whopping 80 authors!

I'm not worried about consuming GMO food (like most Americans, I do often). Our digestive system fanatically reduces everything we eat to its constituent parts before suffering them to be used by the body and it's much more sensible to be concerned about, say, high fructose corn syrup.

What I am saying is, look, we know that we have the structures of perhaps 1% of proteins. We know that membrane proteins (in context, probably the most important) are very poorly represented among that 1%. We know that our interaction databases are both incomplete and highly suspect, and that those interactions are observed only indirectly (e.g. yeast two-hybrid assays) rather than in terms of what the molecules are actually doing. We also know that solving a structure or learning that two proteins interact is often insufficient to determine function (hell, we are still finding new uses for myoglobin). Given the state of biochemistry today, it's absolutely true that we don't really know what will happen in response to genetic modifications in general (thus, we have do the experiments).

Roundup Ready crops just have a single enzyme swapped out for an isoform that isn't competitively inhibited by glyphosphate. This type of modification seems unlikely to cause complications, because it actually reduces the selective advantage of the plants (unless you dump glyphosphate on them). But, because the enzyme could participate in other pathways, or the modified binding site might be lead to promiscuous binding (a big problem in drug discovery), exhaustive experiments have to be performed. If you look into of labs which were used by Monsanto to do those experiments, you will find many reasons to doubt their results. Other types of modifications, even without any scientific fraud, could be much more unpredictable - especially if entirely new functions are introduced or if they confer unambiguous selective advantages.

So, to conclude, we know very little about biology and what we do know is insufficient to predict the outcomes of in vivo protein engineering. Furthermore, the history of biochemistry is replete with falsified, reductionist hypotheses. As examples I submit hemoglobin cooperativity, lactate in cellular respiration, biological roles for nitric oxide and carbon monoxide, "junk" DNA, functional roles for unstructured peptides, existence of ribozymes, not to mention enzymological topics (allostery, induced fit vs. lock-and-key, cooperativity) and the central dogma itself.

Simple theories and experiments are attractive, especially to engineers who might not have deep education in the history of biological science. Another view on this issue can be found in pharma, where simplified lead discovery mechanisms may be contributing to the very high attrition rates. Large scale bioengineering is coming, no matter what, and is probably actually necessary if we are to overcome the nearing limits on our civilization's expansion. I just want people to realize that our knowledge is still very severely constrained and that we should try to be as careful as we can when the stakes are high. Sorry for the long post. Also, read this book.

Here's the eight questions used to determine scientific "literacy" and the percent respondents getting the correct. Personally, if this is "scientific literacy" I think we're in deep, deep doodoo.

EARTHOT The center of the Earth is very hot [true/false]. 86%
HUMANRADIO All radioactivity is man-made [true/false]. 84%
LASERS Lasers work by focusing sound waves [true/false]. 68%
ELECATOM Electrons are smaller than atoms [true/false]. 62%
COPERNICUS1 Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 72%
COPERNICUS2 How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun? [one day, one month, one year] 45%
DADGENDER It is the fatherâ(TM)s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl [true/false]. 69%
ANTIBIOTICS Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria [true/false]. 68%
Table S3. Science literacy items. N = 1540. Consistent with the NSF Science Indicators scoring method
      --- from the study supplimental data: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nclimate1547-s1.pdf

The study: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1547.html

Here's the eight questions used to determine scientific "literacy" and the percent respondents getting the correct. Personally, if this is "scientific literacy" I think we're in deep, deep doodoo.

EARTHOT The center of the Earth is very hot [true/false]. 86%
HUMANRADIO All radioactivity is man-made [true/false]. 84%
LASERS Lasers work by focusing sound waves [true/false]. 68%
ELECATOM Electrons are smaller than atoms [true/false]. 62%
COPERNICUS1 Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 72%
COPERNICUS2 How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun? [one day, one month, one year] 45%
DADGENDER It is the fatherâ(TM)s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl [true/false]. 69%
ANTIBIOTICS Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria [true/false]. 68%
Table S3. Science literacy items. N = 1540. Consistent with the NSF Science Indicators scoring method
      --- from the study supplimental data: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nclimate1547-s1.pdf

The study: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1547.html

I wouldn't read too much into this study.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nclimate1547-s1.pdf

EARTHOT
The center of the Earth is very hot [true/false]. 86%
HUMANRADIO
All radioactivity is man-made [true/false]. 84%
LASERS
Lasers work by focusing sound waves [true/false]. 68%
ELECATOM
Electrons are smaller than atoms [true/false]. 62%
COPERNICUS1
Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 72%
COPERNICUS2
How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun? [one day, one month, one year] 45%
DADGENDER
It is the father's gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl [true/false]. 69%
ANTIBIOTICS
Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria [true/false]. 68%

None of these should be difficult if you've gotten through the first year of highschool

If he'd have caught this front page article he'd have saved himself some future embarrassment.

If you think Monsanto is somehow an upstanding corporate citizen then you've completely delusion

I never said that. i just think that if you have to use lies and deceit to make your point against them then maybe they're not the great evil they are often made out to be. Is pointing out falsehoods and mentioning what actually happened bad if the accusations are serious enough? does that mean I support everything they do if I demonstrate that a claim against them is factually false?

Monsanto comes up as 80% of the results. No - that's not proof - but it certainly is a consensus.

That's amazing to me. BP fucks the ocean, and Haliburton makes money disappear for a war, and the guys who sell this are the evil ones.

Monsanto is not a food company, they are a pesticide company that makes seed crops to sell more pesticide.

Ah, that explains why they are selling the insecticide reducing Bt crops in the above link.

Monsanto is potentially creating a host of ecological problem which are much bigger than the original problem of weed and pest management.

How so? Let me guess, 'superweeds' and 'superpests'? Please, resistance breakdown and herbicide resistance are nothing new, are more cultivation issues than crop issues (particularly the resistant pests) and worst case scenario is you lose the benefits already provided.

Monsanto is not one of those companies.

That must be why farmers willingly buy them, why farmers in developing countries wait in lines to get their bag of GE seed.

There are thousands of news articles concerning the twisted nature of Monsanto - go read them.

And there's thousands of articles describing how terrible Merck and Pfizer are for causing autism with their horrible horrible vaccines. So what? The vast majority of those articles turn out to be bullshit. Look at the cases above, and dig deeper.

Bottom line: no one is saying Monsanto is perfect. They are a profit driven company with too little competition and a bit of a problem with revolving doors. But most of the things said about them are lies and deceptions, and that is never a good way to make an argument. That's what gets me the most, all these anti-GMO groups out there who publish the stuff about GMOs and Monsanto. They lie (go to 42:25 to see the biggest most trusted most frequently cited name in the anti-GMO movement lie about something in the very abstract of the paper he's citing for a good example).. I used to think they were outright assholes, but the more misinformation and falsehoods I see about them the more sympathetic I feel toward them (maybe that's part of their grand conspiracy half the GMO denialists out there think they're conducting. You want to be against Monsanto? Fair enough, but you shouldn't do so because some blogger who wouldn't know a corncob from his asshole said their CEO eats a bowl of kittens everyday fro breakfast, and you certainly shouldn't reject the science of the things they sell over it.

Personally, I think the whole Monsanto thing is pretty clever. If you can;t win in the court of science, demonize the one associated with the science and try to hit the science through guilt by association and win in the court of public opinion. Bonus is that anyone who does fact checking is clearly in on it and thinks they are an upstanding corporate citizen and therefore probably should not be trusted.