Slashdot Mirror

It's probably a waste of my time to write this, but you need to understand that there are dozens, maybe hundreds, or independent sources of data supporting the general consensus that we're getting dangerously warm (for humans).

In order for you to be correct, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people involved in research and analysis of data would have to be 100% compliant with a gigantic conspiracy. And that's just batshit crazy.

But then, that's too much for your simple-minded brain. You might have enough intelligence to understand this: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/...

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/...

Umm did you forget all the Clinton dead bodies (all rationalized though the sum total is nigh unto impossible to have been as the were explained away).

Ah, you mean the ever-growing list of assorted people whose "mysterious" deaths have no particular connection to the Clintons that the right-wing keeps pretending has some legitimacy?

Or did you miss how discredited and uninformed that list was? Just tell the truth, did you ever look into its veracity or not? It's what you chose to start off with, but that alone, destroys your credibility.

Some analysis says that it would cause less than 40k casualties, potentially as few as 1000. Still lots of human lives lost, but not as bad as NK wants to paint it.

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

https://skeptoid.com/blog/2013...

There are more in-depth articles I'm unable to find at the moment. Gist of it is: Not much of their artillery has the range to would reach Seoul, it's probably in bad maintenance or would break down soon, and NK would not be able to supply it with enough munitions or spare parts for sustained barrage, they would not reach Seoul center but less densely populated northern suburbs, there are plenty of shelters and after initial shock people would take cover. Not to mention counterbattery and airstrikes to take it out which would start immediately. --Coder

Parent did NOT deserve 'Troll'. The study mentioned in TA is controversial. People are moderating with their balls not their brains, and their balls shrivel up when anyone suggests there may not be some dire emergency at Fukushima related to killer radiation. But even so,

We've seen this hoax before, why am I not surprised there are people still pushing it? The only difference with this one is how poorly written it is. Cancer rates are actually lower than expected/normal around Fukushima.

Calling it a 'hoax' is going way too far, you should calm down too. It's still early to make definitive statements about cancers, but there is certainly no 'spike'. One of the main reasons the government took the (courageous) position that the thyroid abnormalities were unlikely to be associated with the disaster was, abnormal nodules were detected 'too soon' after the disaster when screening began, and their own health professionals assured them that these conditions take years to develop and were more likely the result of some pre-existing condition. And the last in-depth study was some 10 years prior, so when Fukushima occurred there was a lack of recent baseline. A cause for concern surely but not

The same old deception. Use data from ultrsensitive tests that detect more pre-cancerous cells than what is found under normal testing, then claim that is an increase. But when these same tests are performed on control groups anywhere, they find similar increases in detection of pre-cancerous cells. A simple read of these claims show they completely lack any reasonable baseline or control group methods. Add it to the list of deceptions that keep being debunked but keep showing up.

I'm upset at Fukushima disinfo too, but what can you do about it, especially when the AP is clearly in the market for scare stories, and the usual journalistic burden of proof and balance that applies in other things is relaxed. If your own child was given ultrasound and a 'nodule' showed up, you would not be subject to a hysterical reaction. The doctor would assure you that it should be monitored, but they do form and dissolve naturally. You'd be given nutritional supplements. Yet researchers feel free to insinuate a cause when it suits them. And even if they don't, journalists feel free to insinuate on their behalf by offering side-stories that make a 'connection'. To the slashdotter who ejaculated

It's their fault for not being born in the great state of AMERIKA!

and was also modded Troll... you're not far off the mark. The United States and others have added potassium iodide (for iodine) to its table salt for some 80 years now to counter endemic Goitre. Traditionally Japan has not iodized its salt because the national diet has been heavy with seaweed, a natural source, and there were were concerns that fortified salt plus seaweed might supply an over-abundance of iodine, which is also harmful. Perhaps some Japanese children have been starting to prefer Western diets and should, as are other rural populations, consider the benefits of iodization.

http://educate-yourself.org/cn...
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/...
http://www.aljazeera.com/indep...

all good sources for learning about the hysterical Fukushima over reaction that pull no punches. A lot of what has passed for 'news' has been crap. Look out for closet anti-Islam liberal bias though. Linking to the Christian Science Monitor is OK but l

We've seen this hoax before, why am I not surprised there are people still pushing it? The only difference with this one is how poorly written it is. Cancer rates are actually lower than expected/normal around Fukushima.

The same old deception. Use data from ultrsensitive tests that detect more pre-cancerous cells than what is found under normal testing, then claim that is an increase. But when these same tests are performed on control groups anywhere, they find similar increases in detection of pre-cancerous cells. A simple read of these claims show they completely lack any reasonable baseline or control group methods. Add it to the list of deceptions that keep being debunked but keep showing up.

http://educate-yourself.org/cn...

http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/...

http://www.aljazeera.com/indep...

And, of course, the article linked in the submission doesn't actually even present a real case of cancer, just hints there may be, and twists quotes from random sources, not showing the context in which they were stated. They reference the data is from a university study, but do not supply the conclusions of that study nor write the article with input from anyone involved in that study.

Even if we were to ignore the electricity aspect, accupuncture ITSELF is not even ancient. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4...

It's actually a lot more subtle and complex than either of us has said so far.

For instance, the Arabic sounding names of some of the notables of the Islamic Golden Age were just "noms de plume": they actually were not Muslims, but found it easier to work under an Arab-sounding pseudonym. But this only applied to some of them - there were plenty of actual Muslim scholars in that era. The initial focal points of learning were Hellenistic, but I was oversimplifying things when I said that the science of the era was only Hellenistic, and did not carry over to the actual Muslim part of the population.

However, two things seem to be noticeable even so: first, the Arab-Muslim world did not succeed in developing systematic institutions of higher learning. Those universities that were founded dealt mostly with theology, and not so much with actual science. The brilliant scientists of the Golden Age were, by and large, not associated with them, and worked independently. And second, Islam itself changed at some point, and took the Golden Age with it: while in the beginning it was more tolerant of critical thinking, it somehow warped to turn its back on science:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4...

The effect of the colonial rule of the Ottomans is a difficult point: technically, they saw themselves as the successors of the caliphs, and as the centre of the Muslim world. So they tried to continue this tradition, but how and why this did not have the desired effect is a long story in itself.

North Korea has thousands of guns pointed at Seoul, within 5 minutes of a true engagement, they would let loose and while it won't level the city, it would still be a major disaster. http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/... http://www.popularmechanics.co...

I don't usually respond to ACs but cause you're dead wrong and call me a liar, here's both barrels..

From the first link

We found that extracellular fields induced ephaptically mediated changes in the somatic membrane potential that were less than 0.5 mV under subthreshold conditions. Despite their small size, these fields could strongly entrain action potentials, particularly for slow (~8 Hz) fluctuations of the extracellular field. Finally, we simultaneously measured from up to four patched neurons located proximally to each other. Our findings indicate that endogenous brain activity can causally affect neural function through field effects under physiological conditions.

As to the 8 Hz magnetic resonance, see http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4..., which is the most nearly objective overview of this subject I can find right now. Wikipedia also has an article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This article neatly describes why there are "unsafe" ingredients in vaccines:

Skeptoid.com: Vaccine ingredients

"Consumption" was an old name for tuberculosis. TB is normally transferred through the air, not food contamination.

Raw milk is not generally available to poor urban people today, because farms are no longer near cities. It's mostly consumed in rural or suburban areas, near the source farms. There is no need to ban raw milk with the incredibly small risks associated, compared to the carcinogens in city water, for example. So banning raw milk is essentially an attack on poor and middle class rural people, which is fashionable today.

You only named one risk to raw milk, not the many that exist. Remember, it takes only one sick cow out of a hundred to pass on harmful bacteria. Grass fed cows do not have some magical quality that works as an antibiotic in milk. City water is in fact safer because it is subjected to a similar treatment as pasteurization (Chlorination, Ozone etc). I am not aware of any "carcinogens in city water" or their relative rate of harm compared to unpasteurized milk, so I suspect that is just conjecture.

An example of the bacteria that can be found in cows milk: Brucella, Camplyobacter, Listeria, Mycobacterium bovis, Salmonella and shiga toxin producing E. coli., parasites such as Giardia and viruses such as the norovirus.

For more reading:
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2011/...

True story: I was gifted with a genetically pretty good body. A couple things during gestation, prenatal development and delivery went just slightly wrong. (I was born breach, with I suspect near hypoxia and to a second-hand smoker, see: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4310.) Nothing huge, but I do suspect some of my struggles wouldn't have been necessary in ideal circumstances. Despite this, I excelled at academic pursuits in my early years and had a pretty high athletic prowess as well. I had a good home, social and educational environment, but of course none were exactly ideal. I've done well enough, but if my history were ideal, I might have contributed much more to society than I've managed thus far. With only very slightly improved early circumstances, I can imagine my life and choices might have been dramatically different. (I won't say better because I recognize the hubris in guessing how someone who developed differently and in a different would have reacted.)

Now, I'm not unhappy to be where I am and accept that my choices are primarily the reasons for my failings and successes. Normally that would be the end of the discussion and I'm comfortable with that. Now it isn't then end of the discussion anymore. If I were tremendously wealthy and had different drives and morals and the same analysis of my past, with this news comes the idea that I could possibly raise or direct the raising of an idealized version of what I could have been given an "improved" history.

Maybe there is a billionaire right now planning to give to the world a version of himself that he thinks would be an ideal version of himself. I don't have the desire myself, but can easily imagine someone like myself having that desire.

The more likely questions to ask are: What if that cloned "ideal self" happens and is successful. What if we're talking about a secret clone who wins multiple Nobel prizes and olympic medals but is found out later? That would surely raise the temptation for later imitators of the process and potentially raise a huge backlash against people who happen to be clones and through no fault, are suddenly feared, hated or detested by society. And then, what if it becomes cheap, accepted and common in a hundred years, wouldn't that mean a shrinking gene pool and at the same time a "superior" race? What does mankind face with a society that is comfortable with a "superior" race? What does mankind face with a society backlash where every high achiever is viewed with suspicion of being "unnatural"?

Skeptoid covered this: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4108

He usually does a good job at covering the evidence and aht it means for the different theories.

in the United States. Large swaths of the country are deeply religious, by which I mean some stripe of Christianity.

Which is completely different from Islam.

They have grown increasingly suspicious (if not downright scornful) of scientists and educators who challenge their views and threaten to corrupt the views of their children. I suspect that many of these folks sincerely see unrestricted search engines and an uncensored internet as tools of the devil. How far would public opinion have to tip before *all* searches are "safe" searches, and the "sanitized" web becomes the norm?

Oh please. No respected Christian opposes freedom of expression for scientific, religious, philosophical, or political ideas. At most, a few of them oppose hardcore pornography (which is not ideological or political censorship).

It seems unthinkable. But when 46% of the U.S. population earnestly believes that humans were created in their present form within the last 10,000 years, you have to be open to what happens if that number goes to 56%, or 96%.

The argument you are implying is a huge non sequitur. Believing that humans were created by God (which by the way is different from young-Earth creationism) has nothing to do with supporting censorship.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html

Please don't cite Huffington post. Not only they promote ridiculous pseudoscience (homeopathy, detoxification and vaccine-causes-autism)*, but their political views make Michael Moore and Oliver Stone look like reasonable thinkers.

* http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4283

I believe that is wrong. I will cite [1] http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4303 and [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_record#Vinyl_quality as sources. 1. "It's a hard science fact that digital is capable of reproducing higher frequencies than vinyl, above the range of what most people can hear. " [1] 2. "CD-4 LPs contain two sub-carriers, one in the left groove wall and one in the right groove wall. These sub-carriers use special FM-PM-SSBFM (Frequency Modulation-Phase Modulation-Single Sideband Frequency Modulation) and have signal frequencies that extend to 45 kHz. " According to the information I have, it captures no more sound than the studio recording. The masters used for CD and Vinyl are different (thus you cannot compare directly). There is no point in capturing what we cannot hear.

With humility, you might benefit from this: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4019

See:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4283

Huffington Post has been classified as the n. 10 worst anti-science website due to its promotion of crack-pot medicine, including the alleged vaccine-autism link.

For being false, first of all. "Atheistic Marxism" has been in decline for decades

Apparently you have not heard of China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Equador and Bolivia.
And you have not heard of the latest developments in Marxism, created by Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno.
Cultural Marxism is alive and kicking in the West. Just go to an average university and see what books the philosophy/geography
students read.

it is an unworkable social construct which failed in competition with moderate Socialism

Check out what "moderate socialism" did to the economy of Europe.

Furthermore, defending against authoritarian dictatorship by embracing authoritarian dictatorship is stupid

The Bible says "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
What happened in the Middle Ages was a perversion of Christianity. AND IT HAPPENED 400 YEARS AGO.
It is completely irrelevant to today's world.

Whenever some theocratic Islamist terrorist blows a bomb in a crowded square, anti-theists say "this is what religion does".

As it most certainly was.

Saying that "bin Laden is religious" is as relevant as saying "bin Laden has a long beard".

The probability of a Christian commiting terrorism is the same as a long-bearded man commiting terrorism.
Being "similar" to bin Laden in one aspect does mean one is a terrorist.

So Christians aren't calling gays demonically possessed?

Pat Robertson is more a politician then a pastor; and he is a televangelist.
You don't find this kind of rhetoric in Catholic churches.

They aren't involved in the cover up of horrific crimes against children?

The crimes primarily happened 30 YEARS AGO, during the ecclesial chaos that followed the revolution of 1968.
On average, a Catholic priest less likely to comit such a crime then a publich school teacher, and a Catholic
bishop is less likely to cover it up than a public school principal. But you conveniently focus on priests.

They aren't involved in killing children for witchcraft?

I won't read anything by Huffington Post. Huffington Post has a conspiratorial, crackpot Michael Moore mentality; it even promotes crackpot medicine such as the idiotic "vaccine causes autism" idea. See "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" at http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4283

They aren't fighting against laws like the Violence against Women Act?

Even the freaking ACLU has opposed that bill.

The attacks you have against Christianity are simply examples of evil caused by fallen human nature. You only mention situations in which Christians have caused evil, while conveniently ignoring all the goods brought by Christians. And you conveniently omit the 100,000,000 people killed by atheistic Marxism; you forget about the brutal dictatorships in China, North Korea and Vietnam, including thousands of forced abortions every year; the oppressive dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela; etc. And the societal decay caused by cultural Marxism (which is alive and kicking in the West).

I would argue that on top of the sectarian issues in this particular case, there is a major lack scientific achievement in that region of the world. Dr. Abdus Salam is one of only two Nobel laureates from a Muslim country. Islamic Universities have a shockingly low output (only 300 out of the 1800 universities in the region have even _one_ faculty member who has ever published anything. Compare that to Western Universities where typically every faculty member will have publications.)

Part of the problem might be the rote learning paradigm that dominates in the middle east. Free inquiry and critical thinking are probably discouraged in a region dominated by so many authoritarian regimes. However, I would argue that one of the main reasons science has failed to flourish in Arab-Islamic countries is the legacy of one man: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.

Al-Ghazali helped codify and unify several competing schools of Islamic thought, binding them around the central premise of rejecting outside influences to concentrate on spiritualism and devotion to God. While European philosophy focused on understanding the material world, al-Ghazali focused instead on the supernatural. After the Crusades destroyed the Islamic world's scientific Golden Age, al-Ghazadi's anti-scientific philosophy held sway and kept the region from experiencing the kind of Renaissance that moved Europe out of the dark ages.

No, unfortunately, they're hypothesis is a terrible fit for the data. Skeptoid

For those folks who don't get that your joking. Vaccines do not cause autism. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4055

Ah! The huffpo, that famously accurate beacon of science journalism! http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4283

Almost all of Coyne's talk thus far hasn't had any debate. His speech has been full of so many logical fallacies, I can only think of Brian Dunning's posts on the subject.

Jobs didn't have the "regular" adenocarcinoma that has a 5% five-year survival rate, he had a rare form that has an estimated 80%-90% ten-year survival rate when detected and acted upon early.

Alternative medicines on the whole are snake-oil treatments that sucker the desperate and ill-informed. Anecdotes do not make science. Unsurprisingly some hold the opinion that there is a greater than zero chance that Jobs would be alive today had he not attempted to treat his cancer with alternative therapies.

Paradolia.

go here:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4105

Do not read this article, click on the listen. Then listen.
Great example audio Paradolia

Someone suggested that the HAARP array (or something like it) was used to reach out and "crush" the Russian's test rocket in mid flight. Status-quo defenders will snicker and laugh at such a proposition

Yes. Yes I will snicker and laugh. It's either because a.) I am a brainwashed or naive tool of a massive government conspiracy which thinks that its best use of time is to rebut posters on Slashdot; or b.) I'm just someone who knows enough about basic RF physics to conclude that the conspiracy theories about HAARP are all total crap.

It is left to the reader and their judicious use of Occam's Razor to determine which of the above is more likely.

P.S. Private message me for the location of the freezer where we keep the remains of the Cigarette Smoking Man for experiments with the Black Oil!

No, it's not. You are fucking up your feet.
Have you looked at the feet of people that never wear shoes? I have and it's nasty. The have a hell of a lot of foot problems.

People invented foot wear for a reason. Which goes back 1000's of years.

research this shit, don't just spew what you 'think' is right.
Start here:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4185

Here, read this:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157

people will site 'studies' about HFCS. usually this one:
http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/HFCS_Rats_10.pdf

HINT: it's not really a good study.

Brian Dunning of the podcast Skeptoid debunked this ages ago: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4147

If you haven't already, Try reading "why people believe weird things" by michael shermer. Since reading this i'm convinced that there are no such things as ghosts, and that aliens aren't visiting the earth, whereas before i think i just adopted the attitude that the huge body of anecdotal evidence for both of them must indicate something, no smoke without fire, etc.

If you are interested in skepticism in general I can recommend the podcasts skeptoid, skepticality and the skeptics guide to the universe

The betty and barney hill episode of skeptoid is quite enlightening. There are quite a few UFO episodes.

The shermer book is essential reading.

If you haven't already, Try reading "why people believe weird things" by michael shermer. Since reading this i'm convinced that there are no such things as ghosts, and that aliens aren't visiting the earth, whereas before i think i just adopted the attitude that the huge body of anecdotal evidence for both of them must indicate something, no smoke without fire, etc.

If you are interested in skepticism in general I can recommend the podcasts skeptoid, skepticality and the skeptics guide to the universe

The betty and barney hill episode of skeptoid is quite enlightening. There are quite a few UFO episodes.

The shermer book is essential reading.

If you haven't already, Try reading "why people believe weird things" by michael shermer. Since reading this i'm convinced that there are no such things as ghosts, and that aliens aren't visiting the earth, whereas before i think i just adopted the attitude that the huge body of anecdotal evidence for both of them must indicate something, no smoke without fire, etc.

If you are interested in skepticism in general I can recommend the podcasts skeptoid, skepticality and the skeptics guide to the universe

The betty and barney hill episode of skeptoid is quite enlightening. There are quite a few UFO episodes.

The shermer book is essential reading.

The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.

OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:

• "Most" of the parents of autistic kids don't buy into the vaccine-causes-autism bunk - only a very vocal minority, which unfortunately our media amplifies
• The mechanism behind autism is, as you undoubtedly know, not well-understood. In the absence of a good understanding, this kind of uninformed speculation thrives.
• Lives have been lost as a result due to botched "Chelation" therapies, and money is being made by the self-styled DAN doctors who tell desperate parents what they want to hear

Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.

I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.

The anti-nuclear crowd are full of crap when they say they want clean, safe energy. Coal is many times worse than Nuclear in all aspects.

I recommend people read or listen to this.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092

The key difference being that we have ample evidence to suggest people can be allergic to things (cats, peanuts, pollen, ect), but controlled attempts to prove that that electromagnetic sensitivity is real have turned up flat. ES is BS, or at the very least, it is a psychological thing, not a physiological condition. This bears all the marks of the nonsensical woowoo ideas out there built upon anecdotal stories that real science can't confirm.

In the United States you would need at worse case scenario a Chernobyl style accident every 3 weeks to be more dangerous than coal. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092

If you haven't heard the Skeptoid episode on the topic of cell phones and cancer its worth a listen.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4117

Do you mean environmentalists in general? Or a particular group? I'm sure i have no idea what might or might not appease a particular idealogical or political interest group. There's no such thing as the pacific garbage patch - it's a myth. Presumably the sodium and chloride you're referring to are from desalination. In desalination the sodium and chloride that are separated out from the sea water are dumped back into the sea. So what is really being removed is the water, thus increasing the concentration of NaCl in the ocean. Unless the water that is separated out is permanently retained on land somehow this also gets back into the water table and returns to the sea, mitigating the impact of desalination, although the initial introduction of concentrated brine into the sea does have environmental impact. If we extracted lithium from the sea and put it into an ever growing arsenal of batteries - would it ever get put back in the sea? Would this matter?

You need to read this. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4058#

2012 debunked: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4093 Any reasonably intellegent person knows that 2012 is just another date with no particular significance. It may be a very entertaining movie but the date is just, well... another date.

And not the first circle, but the 13th: from http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4093

Mayans had three calendars. They had a solar calendar that was 365 days long, and a ceremonial calendar that was 260 days long. These two calendars would synchronize every 52 years. To measure longer time periods, they developed the "long count" calendar, which expressed dates as a series of five numbers, each less than twenty; something like the way we measure minutes and seconds as a series of two numbers each less than sixty. And, just in case this might seem too simple, for some reason the second to last number was always less than eighteen. The first day in the Mayan long count calendar was expressed as 0.0.0.0.0, and by our calendar, this was August 11, 3114 BC. Every 144,000 days (or about every 395 years, which they called a baktun), the first number would increment, and a new baktun would start. Recall how we all got to enjoy the excitement on the millennium of watching the digital displays roll over from 12/31/1999 to 1/1/2000? Well, that's what's going to happen on December 21, 2012 to the Mayan calendar. It's going to roll over from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0, just as it has done each of the previous twelve baktuns. There's no archaeological or historical evidence that the Mayans themselves expected anything other than a New Year's Eve party to happen on this date: Claims that this rollover represents a Mayan prediction of the end of the world appear to be a modern pop-culture invention. It's true that the Mayan carvings of their calendar only depicted 13 baktuns, but what did you expect them to do? Carve an infinitely long calendar every time they wanted to express a date?

I've just searched youtube and all i got was sensationalist close-up footage of isolated pieces of garbage rapidly edited together, and some other wider shots mixed in that showed single pieces of garbage in large areas of open sea. I'm with this guy. That fact that there is a shockingly unnaceptable level of trash floating in this area of the ocean does not justify crafting misleading footage and concocting silly stories about "gigantic floating trash islands" that simply do not exist. It just makes the side arguing for doing something about the trash look deluded, ignorant and hysterical, thus undermining their very important case, and giving the bury-your-head-in-the-sand brigade something to dismiss the whole issue with.

Pigs are raised in the wild, they only eat natural food and they receive no antibiotics or hormones. Their meat tastes a lot better than the supermarket one, and I keep both in the freezer.

It tastes better, not because of the absence of hormones and antibiotics, but because of the consumption of different foods. Furthermore, which "tastes a lot better" depends a great deal on preference (I know a lot of people don't like wild meat because it tastes "gamey").

And still, they taste better than the supermarket ones.

a) Organic vegetables may be boutique varieties that provide lower yields but taste better.
b) Supermarket vegetables often aren't picked at their proper ripeness.
c) Without a double-blind study, your claims could just as easily be placebo effect.

I approve locally grown food, too.

Well, be careful, as it's not necessarily a good thing for the environment.

I have been buying organic food for 30 years or so and it is not because I believe it has higher levels of nutrients, but largely because of the lower levels of pesticide nutrients.

You might want to try rethinking those assumptions. To quote:

Some supporters of organic growing claim that the danger of non-organic food lies in the residues of chemical pesticides. This claim is even more ridiculous: Since the organic pesticides and fungicides are less efficient than their modern synthetic counterparts, up to seven times as much of it must be used. Organic pesticides include rotenone, which has been shown to cause the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and is a natural poison used in hunting by some native tribes; pyrethrum, which is carcinogenic; sabadilla, which is highly toxic to honeybees; and fermented urine, which I don't want on my food whether it causes any diseases or not.

In short: organic farmers absolutely use pesticides, and a lot of them, some of which are pretty darn nasty.

and what about the Poisons?

Oh, and by the way, in that article I cited, he tackles the pesticide myth. My favorite quote is this:

Some supporters of organic growing claim that the danger of non-organic food lies in the residues of chemical pesticides. This claim is even more ridiculous: Since the organic pesticides and fungicides are less efficient than their modern synthetic counterparts, up to seven times as much of it must be used. Organic pesticides include rotenone, which has been shown to cause the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and is a natural poison used in hunting by some native tribes; pyrethrum, which is carcinogenic; sabadilla, which is highly toxic to honeybees; and fermented urine, which I don't want on my food whether it causes any diseases or not.

Yup... *way* better than traditional farming techniques. :rollseyes:

"locally produced" != "organic"

Doh, you're absolutely right, my mistake (ironic, too, since I've been taking others to task for conflating the two). Here, try this one. To quote:

Organic methods require about twice the acreage to produce the same crop, thus directly resulting in the destruction of undeveloped land. During a recent Girl Scout field trip to Tanaka Farms in Irvine, California, one of the owners told us his dirty little secret that contradicts what you'll find on his web site. Market conditions compelled them to switch to organic a few years ago, and he absolutely hates it. The per-acre yield has been slashed. Organic farming produces less food, and requires more acreage.

More acreage == less efficient.

and what about the Poisons?

Uhh... to quote a sage I read once: "clean your food". Ignoring the fact that I have yet to see a citation that actually links disease to pesticide contamination, something you'd think would be relatively easy given how hot a topic that must be.

Seems obvious, right? You might wish to check out Skeptoid episode 162 before you conclude that.

Shamelessly stolen link from this post.

As for pollution, is dumping tons of manure over a larger area (thanks to lower densities) *really* better than chemical fertilizers? Not to mention increased odds of salmonella contamination, among other things.

The majority of all organic food production comes from the billion dollar operations of the Albrecht brothers, owners of, among other things Trader Joe's and Aldi. They produce their organic (or bio brands) in prairie sized farms where the yields are significantly lower than their regular fifty per cent smaller prairie sized farms producing similar foods grown using more traditional farming methods. However organic foods are significantly more expensive than those from agri-business production, and the ticket price of these foods is even greater. It makes no difference to me whether someone wishes to eat organic or agri-biz products, that is their free choice, but the organic methods are sufficiently inefficient to significantly damage the net world production of food and lead to starvation in those countries unable to afford the higher prices and greater consumption of farmlands for lower yields. The use of "organic" fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides (such as pyrethrum) are also far more damaging to consumers than the rigorously tested and approved "chemicals" of the agri-business. This is one of the reasons for the increase in the incidence of food poisoning from leaf crops in the US.

This subject was covered by Brian Dunning more than two years ago, something that regular listeners to Skeptoid http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4019# will be familiar with.

Since I consider it unethical to eat organic foods (unless I grow them myself), I never purchase them where I have a choice.
But don't mistake me for an axe-grinder, I am just a pragmatist. During the Chernobyl disaster,when I lived in Scotland, I did not allow my children to drink contaminated British Milk and during the Great British BSE epidemic we dined for almost a year on delicious Scottish steak which at the time supermarkets could barely give away despite the fact that it came from (agri biz!) non-dairy certified herds. When the yuppie owner of Iceland (British Frozen Foods store) declared they would no longer sell genetically modified products, I voted with my feet and bought all the (cheaper, mostly lard and sugar) GM stuff in other supermarkets since I had eaten GM all my life (sheep with shorter legs, cows with more muscle tissue and hens with higher egg production) before then I experienced no significant loss. If something or someone could create a scare over Ben & Jerry's and Peanut Butter M&M's my diet would be so much richer in delicious combinations of fat and sugar at lower prices.

Brian Dunning makes the rather obvious observation: that people who want their food produced according to positively medieval methods would be the least likely to apply the same criteria to their medical treatment - with the natural exceptions of the herbalists, homeopaths and general moon-children.