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Stewart Brand on 'Environmental Heresies'
FleaPlus writes "The MIT Technology Review has an article predicting where the mainstream of the environmental movement may likely reverse its collective stance in the next ten years. The four areas discussed are population growth, urbanization, genetically-engineered organisms, and nuclear power. The article is written by Stewart Brand, known for creating the Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL online community, and the Long Now Foundation. Brand also has some interesting comments regarding the sometimes-conflicting interaction between romantics and scientists in the environmental movement. There's an online debate between Brand and former DOE official Joseph Romm on TR Blogs." Frankly, unless humanity decides to undergo a massive collective personality change of not being consumption-focused, I don't see much other way around these particular issues. What we all need is an Arthur to keep us depressed and sleeping in darkened rooms to lower energy consumption.
"I don't much other way around this particular issue."
Do they even READ these things before accepting them?
Or maybe we need more "The Day After Tomorrow" scenarios.
You are not an environmentalist, or you would know that the few decades time is if the entire world switched over the Nuclear all at once for 100% of it's energy needs. Obviously this is stupid, and Nuclear energy has it's place as an alternative to coal mainly.
And also it assumes that we do no reprocessing, and we make no use of thorium. There's enough thorium on Earth to keep the breeder reactors running for... well, as near forever as you need it to be.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Increasing demand for power and other resources isn't going away. Time to suck it up and deal with imperfect solutions.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
a few decades? that's plenty of time to supplement light/sweet oil production which will start declining in about five years. That gives us plenty of time to develop smarter ways of getting energy
The whole concept behind the environmental movement is that humans are unable to live symbiotically with Nature. No matter where we go, we act more as parasites that strip our host of life than as beneficial citizens of Nature.
1) Population growth: Humans are the problem. Despite the shrinking birth rate, this does not bode badly for Nature which will theoretically revive itself once we are not sucking nutrients out of the ground and burning it into the sky and water.
2) Urbanization: Cities are the largest contributors to localized pollution. Air quality, sewage overflows, and general griminess ooze from cities. I don't see how environmentalists could come around to see how cities are beneficial to the environment.
3) Genetically-engineered organisms: Knee jerk reactions defines the environmental movement. If they haven't listened to real science thus far, what will convince them otherwise?
4) Nuclear power: Ethical scientists have already converged on this as a plausible renewable energy source. Too bad the environmentalists haven't.
These are issues that are bugs so far up the asses of environmentalists that it is hard to believe that they could change their minds about them. I find it more likely that this one guy came to his senses and sees conservation as a constant management of the environment rather than as political capital. The problem is that the anomie of distancing himself from his old friends is too powerful and he finds himself trying to continue associating himself and his ideas with theirs.
The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities.
as part of his observation that urbanization is slowing population growth (which he contends is slowing growth).
Actually, my observation is exactly the opposite. I seem to hear more sympathy for packing everyone together than for spreading them out in the modern environmentalist rhetoric. That's why "sprawl" has become a cuss-word among this bunch.
For another example, look at the current opinion of Walmart. Just today I heard an NPR story about Walmart that criticized them for their environmental impact (pollution and rainwater runoff from their parking lots, plus the extra air pollution from people driving there, I guess).
I guess my point is that the "environmental movement" is a little conflicted; they apparently either like or dislike centralization and efficiencies of scale, depending on the context.
Have you read my blog lately?
The problem I have is that there aren't any good replacements, nothing renewable comes close to the energy return of fossil fuels or nuclear (at current production).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Animal life came out of the oceans some 500 million years ago. For over half that time the land was dominated by dinosaurs. For perhaps 100,000 years the land has been dominated by humanity.
Yeah, we've done well.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Start your own news portal and steal all of slashdots readership. Good luck.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
If you took the time research your position on nuclear energy, you would see that uranium is not the only element that is favorable for nuclear power. Let's not forget that fusion and fission reactors can feed from each other, in effect, recycling each other's waste products.
one can make similar arguments about oil deposits. in fact, for years, people have been claiming that we'll run out of oil in 20 years, and every 20 years, we still have oil to burn. why? because technology advances. oil reserves that were not economical or feasible to pump from 20 years ago are now very viable. we've got these nifty steam injection techniques that can extract from oil sands which have oil concentrations that are far below what previously would have been considered justification for even installing a well.
I'm sure the same could apply to uranium. What isn't viable today to process, could well be quite viable in 20 years if we approached the problem head on.
... including the last paragraph on the second page that begins
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
This is one issue that's always bugged the hell out of me about the wackier spectrum of environmentalists.
GM crops have the potential, hell, they're *necessary* for a great number of third world countries to be able to grow enough food to feed their people. And these guys are trying to stop that for the sake of nonsensical political motivations.
Then they go about using scare tactics, calling it "frankenfoods" and whatnot, as if there's something horrific about it. Excuse me, but we've been genetically modifying our crops for millenia. We've just gotten more sophisticated about it.
from the FA:
Now we come to the most profound environmental problem of all, the one that trumps everything: global climate change
I actually don't understand your comment
If it's not the illogical people that are against nuclear power, and don't understand things like "real life", it's the rich people with more money than sense.
There have been numerous stories about wind-power stations, or water-power stations being denied permission to be built, because rich people don't want to ruin their view of the ocean from their homes on the ocean. Damnit.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Regardless of where you fall on the Social Security kerfluffle, there is one lovely bit of silver lining; here we see a leader thinking outside the box of his term.
Now, what we need is some intellectual judo to throw this outburst of leadership into other (possibly more) useful directions.
Folks, they never put seatbelts into cars until the likes of Ralph Nader proved that safety sells.
Hybrid cars, not these <expletive> SUVs (that Jesus surely would've eschewed) are what we should endorse.[1]
Focus on the facts, not the hormones. Disagree agreeably, compassionately, and, above all, think. Live in the now, but consider the longer term, please. While I like TFA in general, I wonder whether the polarization of the camps into granola heads/propeller heads that this sort of article can engender is helpful.
You will not be charged for this pep talk.
[1]For the record, I bought a PT Cruiser because the Honda model lacked cargo room when last I shopped.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Well, (from TFA) he has a degree in biology, and was involved in a Pentagon study on climate change. Oh, and he just got an article published in the Technology Review. You might have heard of it.
Also, eating muesli and selling organically grown tat (what's that?) doesn't disqualify someone from being an expert on these things, so quit the ad hominems.
What are YOUR qualifications by the way? Good Slashdot karma?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I know who Stewart Brand is. I want to know what among his experience means we should believe a single word he has to say on the Environment?
Or maybe Mr Brand believes a science degree and a few moderately succesful books immediately qualifies him as an expert in anything he cares to to turn his mind to (I believe affliction is usually known as EricRaymondism.)
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
My problem with a lot of environmental thought is its all tied up in a package of garbage ideas. Efficiency good, but technology bad. Walmart is EVIL! SUVs are EVIL! Globalism is evil! What's wrong with the Nature Conservancy approach? Buy up the land while trying to respect property rights. Look for approaches that make economic sense to the locals so they are sustainable. Be more efficient without hating SUVs or even nuclear power. Why does it all have to be tied to some lefty anti-capitalist, anti-globalist worldview?
Too bad that people don't realise that coal based energy production is much more hazardous to inveroment...furthermore, it's not only about what people typically understand as pollution, but also also radioactive "waste"! (typical nuclear plant doesn't release them to biosphere; typical coal plant releases some amount of it - radioactive elements that were in its fuel) And meanwhile almost 100% of electricity here comes from coal, and worst of all, 2/3 of it is brown coal :/
And probably public will block construction of nuclear power plant, that is planned in the next ~10/15 years...
One that hath name thou can not otter
That's the entire intent of this article.
But it is becoming more and more obvious that the global warming emperor has no clothes.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Certainly, some environmentalists have financial motives but the majority do not. When scientists are concerned about global climate change, they are publishing these warnings in the hope of drawing attention to what they genuinely perceive as a serious problem. Ditto for polution concerns, supplies of natural resources, biological diversity and ecosystem damage. These are FACTS.
In contrast, the news releases from industry which make their way across television and newspaper spread absolute lies. Examples:
- there is no global climate change (flies in the face of 90%+ of scientific opinion)
- business can continue as usual without worrying about environmental factors (a hope, for short term business as usual)
- the economy can survive $100 oil
- nuclear is the solution to our energy needs
Here's the important point: a lot of scientists work for industry. So they have a distinct bias. In many cases they are providing reports for their employer. So next time you run into a scientific report, check the source... not all scientists are funded equally.-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Uranium deposits are shrinking at an alarming rate. In a few decades time, the cheap U ores would have run out, and the remaining deposits would absorb more energy to extract a gram of U than that gram can ever hope give back.
Alright, since I don't know the current figures on Uranium deposits/Uranium consumption
I'll accept that that might be true. However even if all Nuclear power gave us was another
two decades woundn't that buy us time to transition from an oil infrastucture to an
infrastucture based on some kind of alternative energy?
"The moment "pride" is lost, "freedom" is also lost." - Ramza.
By 'well', do you mean using up the earth's resources to the point of our own extinction?
Dinos: "we died off after 300 Million years"
Joe Bob: "ha! We can beet that!"
This article describes a GMO rice that is herbicide resistant. Scientists spliced in a human enzyme that is very effective at crunching toxins to create rice that can withstand a wider variety of weed-killers. This lets farmers rotate their weedkillers to reduce the chance that the weeds evolve resistance.
The GMO rice provides two other important environmental benefits. First, the new enzyme is so efficient at detoxifying the herbicide that the resulting rice is relatively herbicide free (non-modified rice contains 20X more residual herbicide). Second, the GMO rice extracts herbicide from the soil, meaning less herbicide in run-off.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Unless the odd grammar above somehow changes the meaning of the sentence, I think Marvin was who you were going for there...
As long as I'm nitpicking, when I think of "an Arthur" I think of http://www.thetick.ws/car8.html
In a few decades time, the cheap U ores would have run out, and the remaining deposits would absorb more energy to extract a gram of U than that gram can ever hope give back.
Over reliance on Nuclear energy can easily turn us away from looking at real alternatives. That's my gripe with Newkiller. Not some quasi-religious aversion.
And what are those real alternatives pray tell? Not solar power, wind power, conservation - that rickety tripod of enviromentalist dogma. Your statement that Uranium availability is in decline is absurd. The same Chicken Little arguments were used by environmentalists in the '70's about oil, and came to nothing. Uranium is still in plentiful supply on the Earth's surface and, for the very long term, in asteroids.
It is good to see environmental pseudo-science challenged in articles like this.
an ill wind that blows no good
I'm fairly sure that they're modding him down for the idiotic content of his post. It is lacking any sound argument from the facts, and unduely simplifies the nuclear power source issue.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
"radical conservation in energy transmission and use"
He says this like it's an insignificant thing. It's not. We literally throw away approximately 60% of the energy used to produce electricity as "waste heat". And this is at the power station itself (including nuclear)!
We then go on to use most of the 40% of the energy we have actually transmitted to produce more heat. It's not what could be classed as clever.
Changing this single inefficiency in our energy generation sector would do the job. It's not even particularly radical, the solution is a couple of hundred years old, it's just that until very recently it's been cheaper to just pump in more oil, gas or coal.
Deleted
On population, he points out that global population is close to leveling off and is declining precipitously in many countries. Why? Mostly it is the unprecedented worldwide migration from rural villages to cities, where having lots of children is less of an advantage. If those concerned with sustainability get out ahead of this trend and help guide it, it could be an environmental blessing. Cities put people close together, reducing their collective energy use. They free up rural areas for wildlife and wilderness (if protections are put in place).
Regarding biotech: There's truth to this, though it's slightly facile. It does, after all, matter that GM has been developed by giant corporations and has been used primarily for their benefit. But the idea that the technology itself is intrinsically bad ... that doesn't make much sense to me. As Brand says, the proper reaction for greens ought to be to appropriate the technology and use it for their ends, particularly since, embrace or no embrace, it's gonna spread. Open-source biotech seems like a promising way for GM to do some environmental good. Brand offers some scenarios.
Ultimately, I suspect that urbanization, GM crops, and nuclear power are inevitable. If all we do is stand on the sidelines shouting "no, no, no!" the process will proceed without us, guided by the worst actors. The smartest thing that those of us concerned about the health of humanity and the planet can do is get involved and try to steer toward an outcome that is equitable and sustainable.
The fact he has never studied any of these things is what disqualifies him.
Kind of like how Bush isn't qualified to be commander in chief?
Goodbye, Excellenet Karma
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The biggest polluting country in the world has a decidedly environmentally-unfriendly government running things, and it doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.
You mean Australia? The only reason the US is tagged as the world's biggest polluter is because the Kyoto protocol excludes greenhouse emissions from land-clearing.
This will never happen. Every single attempt to create a global consciousness is shot down/abused/misused/pilloried by every single other attempt at creating a global human consciousness.
Too many global human consciousnesses, fighting each other, pathetically. We need a Grand Uniter.
Aliens?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Warning: my post somewhat oversimplifies things, the point is that other countries have won special considerations in the Kyoto protocol that do not apply to the United States for various reasons. "World's biggest polluter" becomes a subjective title when the political definition of "pollution" keeps changing.
"killed TONS of people"?!
Do you mean one dozen over-weight americans or several dozen non-americans?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
He wasn't paranoid, just depressed... "the end of the world... big suprise... It will probably all end in a huge explosion and still leave me behind... typical."
GM crops make a negligible difference to third world countries. The yields on GM crops are only marginally better than for regular crops, the difference is only significant for those huge agribusinesses who have tens of thousands of acres of the stuff.
It's war, corruption, disease and import tariffs which decimate the farming populations of third world countries. What they need is good stable government and fair trade with the developed world, not GM crops.
Deleted
will be the first thing reversed.
It's high time the top brass of the environmental movement admit that stopping Nuclear power was a mistake that has lead to greater devastation of the environment by coal plants.
Even the nuclear waste issue pales in comparison to the the ecological damage coal plants have caused and will keep causing until we replace them (finally) with much cleaner nuclear technologies like Pebble Bed. Coal of course has it's own waste issues.
The anti-nuclear power movement has been one of the best examples of the law of unintended consequences in our times.
"Their answer is "Not much," because they know from their own work how robust wild ecologies are in defending against new genes, no matter how exotic"
"The second greatest cause of extinctions is coming from invasive species, where no solution is in sight. Kudzu takes over the American South, brown tree snakes take over Guam . . ."
So why is kudzu a problem if wild ecologies are so good at defending against new genes?
My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated.
When I read this I thought of Hillary Clinton's memorable tome, "It Takes a Village". In retrospect it was about a prescient as Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead". Did she get anything right?
an ill wind that blows no good
It seems that you just burn it directly. Oh well.
Deleted
First, it is inaccurate to say that all environmentalists are opposed to urbanization. That's just silly. Sprawl represents an enormous and unecessary destruction of resources and introduces inefficiencies in transportation and infrastructure. The urban dweller does not need to drive 20 miles in an SUV just to buy a gallon of milk.
I think the author is a bit confused here. The reactionary anti-urban mentality is not generally one posessed by those who are concerned with the world and society around them or the that of the future. Quite the contrary, it is the ultra-right, greed is good, conservative libertarians for whom a retreat from civilization to a private suburban or rurual hermatage most appeals.
It is not inconcievable that there be unintended effects of have GMO's, for instance some resilient crop could become a super-weed, disrupting other species. I don't know if this is likely. Nuclear power: Ethical scientists have already converged on this as a plausible renewable energy source.
Renewable? No. Clean? It depends.
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
1) Population growth: Humans are the problem. Despite the shrinking birth rate, this does not bode badly for Nature which will theoretically revive itself once we are not sucking nutrients out of the ground and burning it into the sky and water.
So... the solution to overpopulation is the end to the human race? We will always be "sucking nutrients out of the ground" as long as we continue to eat and/or live on Earth, which is basically as long as there are people. I'm not going to get into the actual feasibility of colonizing the rest of the solar system.
2) Urbanization: Cities are the largest contributors to localized pollution. Air quality, sewage overflows, and general griminess ooze from cities. I don't see how environmentalists could come around to see how cities are beneficial to the environment.
Not all environmentalists are civilization-hating Luddites who want to return to our hunter-gatherer roots. There are many who believe that it is possible to develop in a environmentally sustainable way. There are environmentalists who don't mind admitting that they value human life more than field mice.
3) Genetically-engineered organisms: Knee jerk reactions defines the environmental movement. If they haven't listened to real science thus far, what will convince them otherwise?
Show me the "real science" that proves all GMOs are safe. Yes, there may be no cause for alarm. Still, I think the burden of proof should be creators of these products and the governments that support them to prove that they are safe before they are widely used.
4) Nuclear power: Ethical scientists have already converged on this as a plausible renewable energy source. Too bad the environmentalists haven't.
Nuclear power may be a good addition to our range of power options. From what I have read, it is not ready to be a total replacement for other sources of energy. Also, it has been billed as safe before, before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Things rarely work out as well in practice as they do in theory.
It sounds like you believe that there is a single, unified environmental movement, and that it has only one set of beliefs. Furthermore, you seem to believe that the most extreme views represent the views of everyone. Sounds like you should try looking into what environmentalists are actually saying - not just reading news reports and jumping to conclusions.
These are not isolated, ignorant farmers who just plant corn. These farmers are doing their hardest to follow best practices and be competitve in the agri-industry, and honestly, they're still killing their land. Unless we make a big change in how soil quality is treated, our ability to produce food is going to take nose dive. It's simple.
And don't start on the vegetarianism rant. In North America, plant production with the overuse of petroleum based chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides is what is killing soil - not grazing.
Either think outside of the box or get buried in it.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
fusion reactor? where can I get one of those?
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Oh, you're right, just ignore him. Heck, feel free to ignore anyone whose arguments and correlated data don't fit your ideology. And, if someone does present information that fits with your ideology, please feel free to agree while sitting on your butt doing nothing more than posting to Slashdot.
Hell, I've been eating genetically engineered food since I was a kid. Cows have been engineered to be docile and tasty. Corn is essentially grass with incredibly huge kernels. The main issue is that previous methods are slow and random. The new ones are much faster.
To be fair, it's possible to put in genes that would take forever to express themselves via selective breeding (e.g. getting corn to produce fish oil). Some of these could trigger allergies or other unintended effects. Still, I'd rather see the environmental groups embrace this technology and recommend some base-level guidelines (e.g. when doing cross-species gene splicing, some basic safety tests are required).
Unfortunately I fear you've shot your whole argument with the stuff inside the parenthesis. I also fear that I need to alter it, for the worse:
The "real world" purpose for GM is to increase the profitability of those companies in that market.
That's the marketplace in action, and unfortunately reducing resources has little to do with it, unless the resources reduced are procured from a competitor. I suspect similar reasoning is why medical cannabis is has been an issue between the DEA and alternative medicine anecdotes. IMHO, it should be in FDA studies, but there's just *no profit* in it compared to synthetic drugs.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I concider myself a soft enviromentalist, Population growth, well it's a problem in some countries in most of europe the population is in decline only kept up by economic migrants. I don't have much of a problem with urbanisation, but it'd be nice if we could have clean cities instead of dirty ones (comming from congested brittan I don't much like the car, and have no problem with keeping them out of city centers), Neuclear power, it won't last forever but for now it's looking like one of the best options.
But GM foods and other orgaisms, they do worry me a little bit, I'm just waiting till we see the roundup ready dandylion.
"2) Urbanization: Cities are the largest contributors to localized pollution. Air quality, sewage overflows, and general griminess ooze from cities. I don't see how environmentalists could come around to see how cities are beneficial to the environment."
You hit the nail on the head.
Cities are localized sources of pollution.
Take New York City for example. Does it damage the environment more than 1,000,000 homes on quarter acer lots would? In a city you can reduce the use of cars more effectivly using mass transit. You have more resources to deal with waste disposal and power issues. 1,000,000 homes would probably eat up more than 1,000,000 acers of land once you figure in roads, shopping, services, and places to work. Thow in 1,000,000 septic systems, 2,000,000 cars, and a million lawns and you have a huge mess.
Read Asimov,s Caves of Steel. There they have just a few MASSIVE cities with most of the land free of people.
PS. Want to help the environment? Ban Golf Courses. Take a look at a map sometime and see just how much land they take up. Not to mention the water and chemicals that are used on them. They my look green but there really is no nature left on them.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The only issue of significance is the di-morphic split between humans and Transhumans. All other issues are transitory and irrelevant.
Climate change in particular is the LEAST of our worries as it will take the longest time to occur.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
1) Population growth will settle just as starvation, disease and other 3rd world issues will settle as those countries liberalize and develop their economies so they can distribute goods and services.
2)Cities are far more efficient places for people to live than suburbia. If there were no cities, land use and pollution would skyrocket as each person took his 40 acres and a SUV. Look at LA. That's what the entire east coast would be like w/o cities.
3)Genetically engineered food is better than no food...
4) Nuclear power is a no brainer to anyone except NIMBY types.
"Environmentalists" are politicians. Most of their organizations are basically just law firms. I equate them with oil execs. We really need more publically funded independent research in vertical solutions to improving the environment.
bp
Well, one reason is to consider our quality of life before we are wiped off the face of the planet (if that even happens). This kind of attitude is like saying "I'm going to die eventually anyway, so why bother keeping myself healthy and enjoying life?"
It is also unecessarily alarmist. Environmentalists are often accused of being hysterical - but most of them don't believe in this "apocalypse" scenario, like you do. Yes, we are upset about environmental degradation. Yes, people are suffering because of it. But only the most lunatic fringe believes in a sudden impending doom, or stocking up on shotguns for when the revolution comes, or the energy runs out. It's because environmentalists are interested in survival that they don't just give up in the face of overwhelming odds.
(OT: I always find it amazing how the political extremes on both right and left, adopt this "sudden extiction" rhetoric from opposite angles - religious and environmental)
Basically, we are perfectly capable of humans of adapting to changes in our lifestyles, and we are capable of slowing, and even reversing the damage we have done. We can survive and change if we want to. Sure, people don't like change, but I think most people would prefer survival to wallowing in our own filth, when they are faced with the inevitable.
Throughout history, there have been people who have predicted total doom, and those who predicted total utopia. I don't believe any of them have ever been correct. Meanwhile, most of us live in a difficult, complicated world that has many shades of gray - and do our best to cope with what we have. The visions of some future paradise or hell, are used to manipulate the dreams and fears of people, to draw them away from the difficult contradictions of reality.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It doesn't sound like the Africans are too concerned about starvation, either, huh? Maybe they should, like, do something about it, like every other civilization has had to at one point or another in its history.
To be fair, nuclear power is a tricky beast. The main problem is the safe storage of the byproducts, which tend to be very nasty. The best I can see is dumping them into some subduction trench and let the earth itself recycle it (how's that for irony). All of these issues does add to the overall cost of things.
I think that much of the future relies on the "smaller and cheaper" approach. It's far cheaper to entertain yourself with a computer game than to buy a big boat and drive around a lake each weekend. Using LEDs for lighting is a huge energy saver. Creating power from solar, biomass, and wind seem quirky, but their cost is slowly approaching that of traditional methods.
My other hope is that everyone starts looking at the overall cost of energy sources. Coal has significant air pollution and carbon emission issues. Nuclear has disposal problems. Oil ends up getting us involved in expensive wars. Eventually, we have to pay the piper.
Lefties need to stop talking about environmentalism and instead keep using phrases like "filth peddlers", against nature", "against cleanliness", or "companies who defile the holy planet". Get on FOX's propoganda channel and talk about how the "filth industry" is "graying our churches". Fight fire with fire.
or else my new child wouldnt be able to updated with the new Microsoft GP SP3 v11... this time without diabetes!!!
*jumps into the air*
not to self: find own DNA sequence and patent it... before THEY do....
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Just to add to this post... as someone who has worked in a nuclear reactor, I'd like to comment on the safety of nuclear vs. coal/petroleum industries. In addition to nuclear releasing far less pollution into the environment (and all its waste being very localized and contained), there is the issue of worker safety.
The nuclear industry is very well regulated. Worker safety (and radiation exposure) is meticulously monitored and recorded. Because the entire system is so paranoid and regulated, it is very safe. The most dangerous thing about working in a nuclear plant is conventional industrial accidents (like a crane falling on you). The risk increase due to the presence of nuclear power is minimal.
It is very strange that the public would be shocked and horrified if 10 people were killed in a nuclear power plant accident. However, many more than that are injured or killed every year in the coal/petroleum industry (think of fires on oil rigs, etc.) because this industry is far less safety-oriented. (It's also worth reminding that nuclear power is "more expensive" than other power sources mostly due to this level of regulation.)
The number of injuries/deaths in the nuclear power industry, per year, is small compared to other power industries (and indeed compared to most industries in general). So from the point of view of worker safety, nuclear (in its current, regulated form) is the best.
we've got these nifty steam injection techniques that can extract from oil sands which have oil concentrations that are far below what previously would have been considered justification for even installing a well.
Which is why Shell *lied* about their proven reserves back in 2000, because they thought they could use this nifty new technique, which ended up collapsing the reservoirs, causing it to be MORE difficult to get the oil out.
Get your head out of the clouds. Oil is NOT a sustainable resource.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The purpose of this rice is to sell more herbicide. That's pretty much it. Better yield? Possibly. Nothing to do with feeding the third world though.
Deleted
You may have heard about the embargo? Long gas lines? Why, would the embargo hurt, if the US oil production didn't decline after the '70's? Answer: US domestic oil production has been in decline since the 1970's. Wake up, there will be plenty of oil, but no more cheap oil as global production is peaking. Can Saudi still provide swing capacity? Why is solar, wind and conservation a "rickety tripod" ? Does hydroelectric count as solar? (think hard here, what drives the water back to the resevoir?) Asteroids for uranium source? Can I get what you are smoking? I can't speak to U ore supplies, but oil has peaked in the US. This is a fact. What makes you think it won't peak in the other oil producing counties?
So the environmentalists can all join VHEMT, and the rest of us can all wait a generation or two. An organism attempting to maximize its survival is about the most "natural" process you can find; why do environmentalists object to humans doing this? All other animals are trying to do the same thing all the time; it's not our fault they can't eliminate predators or affect environmental factors to the extent that we can.
I think the first markup I learned, was that the subject of the sentence is the proper word to be linked to the article or reference. Perhaps if you aren't sure, then use the entire sentence. Of course, if you're not sure what the subject is, perhaps you should revisit your original thinking.
I wonder how many people spent how much time meandering the mouse.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Ehrlich may have underestimated the ability of technology to increase food production on the short term but I think he was right in principle. It is my understanding that the large fish population in the Atlantic is a minor fraction of what it was only 30 years ago. That is an epic planetary die-off that has already occurred in an extraordinarily short time. World-wide human starvation hasn't been seen (yet) because we are still in the transition process of stripping the planet bare. Why do we need _any_ population increase to finish the job?
Haven't people heard the story about passenger pigeons:
"It was Alvin Jones who told us about the Pigeon Roost Prairie which was near the Jones homestead. He said so many pigeons stopped to roost in the pines in this are that they broke the limbs off the trees and the trees died, so there was a prairie there. There wasn't a living tree for 150 acres, and it was called Pigeon Roost Prairie. That was virgin pine timber they killed. The pigeons were almost as big as a chicken, not the homing pigeon; they were two or three times larger, about the size of a pheasant. Not thousands of pigeons but millions of pigeons! I tried to learn all I could about this pigeon migration. I was interested in it. It was something to think about. There would be so, many they would darken the sun for three days, all going north."
http://www.ulala.org/P_Pigeon/Texas.html
Aren't people curious about how primitive cultures were able to feed themselves with sharpened sticks? I suspect it was because going down to the brook to spear a carp was only somewhat more inconvenient than going down to the freezer to find something to thaw.
Like boiling frogs, the human lifespan is only 70+ years. Perhaps it is too short for people to actually experience ecological change and ingrain any feeling for the issue. As long as there is soylent green, some people will call it a balanced ecology. Others think more diversity is valuable.
The point is that the planet was already damaged by population and industry before anyone on Slashdot was born. We should be discussing whether we are at the planetary coup de grace stage, not congratulating ourselves on how population isn't a problem.
(AND, if we didn't have so many people, there would be one less argument for both GMO and nuclear.)
Wait a second. I will give you credit for what I believe are several valid points. I will also give you credit for at least one implied faulty belief.
You bust on people who buy SUVs instead of hybrids and then you use the excuse of cargo room for not buying one yourself. You cannot rationally impose a criteria on others (people should buy hybrids instead of SUVs) and then choose not to follow that criteria yourself (i.e. buying a PT Cruiser instead of a hybrid).
Who determines how much cargo room is enough for everybody? Certainly not you or me.
Ford's hybrid Escape seems to be a step in the right direction and I hope it is very successful for them. Part of the determination of that success will be consumer interest. Consumer interest is, in turn, driven (no pun intended) by building what some of us consumers want, i.e. a vehicle that has cargo space, 4-wheel drive, good fuel economy, etc.
I would love to have a mid-size SUV that had 30mpg fuel economy. I really don't care if it is hybrid, diesel, or something else as long as it is reasonably priced, reliable, and has maintenance cost no greater than conventional vehicles (give or take a bit).
Letter To Iran
You are generous when giving us 100,000 years.
Civilization as we know it today started with the industrial revolution. We'll be lucky if it last beyond 400 years.
The geographic requirements for nuclear power plants and long term nuclear waste storage are just about opposite.
At some point, you guys are going to sound like people who won't set foot on a boat because "gosh darn, that there Titanic was supposed ter be unsinkubble!" If we're going to make that kind of comment, I could say: "at some point, you guys are going to sound like people who keep driving drunk because 'gosh darn, I made it home safe every other time!" Hardly addresses the point, does it? Just to clarify things, I was pointing out that there are reasons for caution, not claiming nuclear power should be banned for all eternity.
Humans most certainly can live symbiotically with nature. Our ancestors did it for millions of years, and it's probably only in the past few thousand years that population and cities became problematic.
The question is, do we, with our modern technology, really want to become hunters and gatherers again, living in severely reduced numbers, such that the ambient food supply is always there replenishing itself?
Even in rural areas in developed countries (I live fairly rurally), we have modern grocery stores and a decent hospital. There are even three wal-marts in a 45-minute radius that are accessible. No, it isn't super-convenient, but we get by okay.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
So, which one are you claiming that most environmentalists believe - that we are inherently evil, or that we are just like other animals? Most environmentalists believe the latter. It's the religious (Christians, Muslims, etc) who believe in inherent evil - and the US government is mostly comprised of people who believe in inherent evil and are opposed to environmentalism.
There are too many of us to go back to some agrarian past.
Right - but who is suggesting that we go back to some agrarian past? Certainly not the vast majority of environmentalists. So, who exactly are you responding to by making this argument?
We will need to use technology to sustain the population levels expected while we minimize our footprint.
And this is exactly what most environmentalists are arguing! Modern environmentalism is inextricably intertwined with technology. In fact, you will hear some of the most interesting and innovative proposals for technology from environmentalists. In contrast, listen to how unimaginitave, low-tech and wasteful most of the ideas coming out of the energy industry are! Or even the computer industry!
The stinking hippie mankind-haters have no solutions other than a time machine to take us back to a past that never existed.
Who the heck are you talking to? I don't see anyone in the linked article suggesting we go back to the past, or hate mankind. I don't see modern environmentalists making these arguments, either. In fact, I don't even hear this argument from "stinking hippies." Not to mention that hippies, stinking or otherwise, are extremely rare people to come across. There aren't very many of them around.
So, I wonder why you mention this stereotype so prominently. Is it "stinking hippies" you know who have put forth these arguments? Or is it just a stereotype that you have been fed by the media and politicians?
Your complaint is really out of touch of what environmentalists are actually doing and saying today. It reads like the same kind of propaganda heard daily from industry mouthpieces.
You talk about "mankind hating" - but what is your stereotype if not hateful? How are are we to make any progress as a society, and work together towards common goals, if we keep on feeding ugly stereotypeslike this? Sooner or later we have to stop bitching about people who look different than ourselves, and get to work fixing our problems together!
... and then they built the supercollider.
"And that is the problem with the environmental movement. I don't see the millions of environmentalists giving up electricity or their homes in the suburbs or the country."
That is a very trite response. It is a common tactic in a debate to immediately jump to an extreme position. People aren't being told to give up electricity, just use less and be more efficient. This should be a laudible goal by anyone's standards. To say "but you use it!" is an asinine response. We have to function in the society we are born in, that includes having to use a car and electricity. It doesn't mean we can't push for change.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
His reliance on nuclear energy as the solution to the greenhouse emission problem betrays exactly the sort of lack of creativity just described. Natural ecosystems need not suffer substantial presence of intensive agriculture and global warming CO2 can be sequestered from the atmosphere in the process.
Agriculture need not be land intensive. In fact, it can be removed from the vast majority of existing ecosystems with a relatively minor amount of innovation in food processing and packaging.
On about 108 acres, Earthrise Farms in the Imperial Valley desert, California is producing 67kg of protein per square meter per year using relatively little water. This is better than 20 times the yield of soybeans and includes one of the broadest spectrums of amino acids of any known source of protein. The crop is spirulina, a blue green algae that is a source of nutrition at the base of the aquatic food chain. They have been doubling their production every 5 years but have limited themselves to a niche market in health food or "nutriceuticals". The primary technology they need developed to make this protein directly consumable by humans as a staple of the diet is removal of nucleic acids -- something that may be feasible as an extension of their centrifugal drying process. In any case, it is an excellent feed stock for animals and can displace many times its own acreage in conventional agricultural uses.
The late John Martin at Moss Landing hypothesized in 1987 that large sections of the tropical Pacific were ready to support ecosystems nearly as abundant as the oceans off the coast of Peru except for the lack of one key nutrient: Iron. In 1995, subsequent to his death, his team tested "the Iron hypothesis" by spreading a half ton of iron sulfate (available in huge cheap quantities as a byproduct of iron smelting) over a wide area of ocean. The south Pacific ocean turned from "crystal clear electric blue", virtually devoid of life, to duck pond green. They produced 25,000 tons of biomass for a factor of 50,000 gain from fertilizer to biomass. Once the ocean desert bloomed with phytoplankton, zooplankton, the next link up the food chain, began grazing. Had they kept going, zooplankton grazing fish could have been introduced, such as anchovies, but they terminated the ferti
Seastead this.
Didn't read the article, did you? Go find the paragraph about flouridation.
Let me lay this out in short sentences. Herbicide resistant crops need less herbicide. That's not good for the chemical companies, but bad. Simultaneously, it has a net positive impact on farmers, food, and the environment.
Let me explain by analogy. I'm not a farmer -- but I do raise roses as a hobby. As you no doubt know, rose bushes are fundamentally unhealthy organisms which only thrive with massive doses of fertilizer, insecticide, and herbicide, so those of us who raise them know all about this.
Except for one thing: what you think you know isn't true. Older roses do require lots of support to thrive. More modern roses, with their huge flowers and bizarre growth patterns...don't. They've been selectively modified to resist the blights and infestations that killed older plants. They use the calcium in the soil more efficiently, and so don't need as much. They're stunningly healthy plants, designed to be raised in low maintenance gardens by amateurs.
As a result, if I'd grew the modern frankenplants, I'd spend more on the plants to start with, but far less on chemicals.
The same kind of thing applies in frankenfood. If I raise glycophosphate-resistant wheat, then I can apply a glycophosphate-based herbicide to the fields in quantities sufficient to kill the weeds without affecting the wheat. Guess what? That's less than ten percent of the amount I used to apply to the fields. Traditional preemergence applications had to persist in the soil long enough to affect the broad-leaf weeds, which meant applying enough to resist washing away. Applying postemergence means applying only enough to kill the weeds that are there right now. Monsanto will sell me less herbicide than they used to...not more.
Should the environmental movement favor nuclear power?
Who cares!
The four subjects he raises are fringe distractions from the major policy questions which have the largest impact on our environment, which are merely a symptom of wider deficits in our nation's democratic culture.
Population growth is becoming a non-issue.
I favor nuclear power as long as the details are right - if the public is going to take all the risks, we shouldn't allow some private entity to reap the profits off of it.
I favor genetically modified organisms which are designed in a way that benefits farmers and/or the environment, rather than maximizing the profits of entrenched power.
Likewise, urbanization is fine if it leads to prosperity, but as a result of people being driven off of the land by thugs (e.g. Columbia) it is a bad thing.
The devil is in the details, as has always been the case. In ten years time the details may have changed enough that the present situation becomes unrecognizable; so I think trying to predict what we will be trying to do ten years from now is futile and silly.
This isn't to bash futurism generally - we can't know what to work towards now if we don't have some concept of what the future will be like. But trying to predict the future of activism? Waste of time.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
WE R DEAD HA HA HA!!!
Many of today's big enviromental issues are mostly about supply.
Enviromentalists go on about the problems associated with emissions from the current rampant energy use but personally I think of even more concern is whats going to happen in 50 years time when even optomistic estimates show oil completely running out (atleast for the next few million years!).
Even if their is any oil left in 50 years (or even in 25-30 years for that matter) it is likely to be so highly priced and with much of it reserved (e.g. for military use) 99% of us simply won't be able to drive cars or do anything which relies on car use (pretty much all of modern life in the USA).
People talk of hydrogen cars etc. but if it can't be done now, why would it suddenly be possible in 25 years time? After all the idea was around 25 years ago and very little progress has been made since.
The same goes for natural gas (the stuff used to heat houses etc.). If its all gone (or even nearly gone) in 60 or so years, how exactly are we going to warm our houses?
Enviromentalists go on and on about the damage the effects of current energy usage will effect our great grand-children but I in my early twenties and hope to be around in 25, 50, even 75 years time (if I'm lucky) and wonder how exactly the world is going to carry on being so 'modern' without any oil or gas?
You could likely splice off a version control argument, as the HDTV article on
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I was under the impression that Marvin was a Marshin.
This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
Right here.
Population is the most important issue in politics for me, so I read the section on this topic (but skipped the rest). I'm so tired of the descriptions of "doom and gloom" that will happen with low fertility rates and a shrinking population - these authors are a mirror image of the mistakes they claim that past environmental authors have made in predicting the future.
o rder/2127rank.html, you will see there are still quite a few countries that have fertility rates above 2.1. (By the way, saying 2.1 is steady state assumes an average infant mortality rate that is pretty high. If you want the human race to all move into a the modern industrialized world, something under 2.05 is required). Granted, I don't have the plots of all countries fertility rates over time and some of these countries near the top may be declining, but I see absolutely no way we can declare success now. I expected better out of Technology Review, the magazine where I first learned about fuel cells for automotive use.
There are some scientific facts on population that are rarely disputed:
1] The earth has a finite carrying capacity
Actual numbers will vary anywhere from 1 to 10 billion people, but it's obvious that constraints on food, water, energy, pollution sinks do constrain the number of us. My opinion is that the number is less than we are now, but we are getting by (some of us anyway) because of unsustainable oil and water use. Perhaps we could get by on renewable energy with around 2 billion people.
2] Large numbers of humans cannot leave the earth
There is no way we could move even 1/1000th the world population off the earth even if there was someplace to go. The resources/pollution needed to do this make it a non-starter for addressing population growth.
3] Adjustments need to be made to run an economy with a declining population growth
Not impossible, but obviously it is harder to operate a system that is shrinking instead of growing. Tricks like using lots of workers to support fewer retirees won't work. Any pyramid scheme seems great when you are on the growth side, but I'd prefer not to have the human race crash like a big pyramid scheme.
4] Fertility rates can be adjusted by government action
Coercive measures while espoused by some as necessary have been avoided in very successful transitions to lower fertility (e.g. Iran). We have less experience with going the other way, but some countries (e.g. Singapore) are trying incentives to raise the fertility rate. I see no reason that these rates can't be successfully adjusted if for some reason, 50 years from now, the world wide fertility rate dips down well below 2 and stays there so long that our population goes below 2 billion.
Now, back to the article:
In each country listed: Japan, Germany, Spain, Russia (I think) and Italy, they could stand to lose 30% of their population anyway. I think the U.S. is too crowded and Europe has much higher densities (and Japan is worse) in terms of population per arable land unit.
"It turns out that population decrease accelerates downward just as fiercely as population increase accelerated upward, for the same reason."
What does this mean? If you measure the increase or decrease of an exponential function (what he's talking abut here) as a percentage, then of course they have the same fierceness, but there is no concept of acceleration (percentage growth is constant). If you measure the amount in absolute numbers, then exponential increase is accelerating, but exponential decrease is always decelerating.
As far as fertility going down everywhere, we in the U.S. are now at 2.08 and this is going up (albeit slowly). We were closer to 2 about 5 years ago I think. If you look at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rank
Dara
The fact that they are localized is the point of the argument.
If you graph pollution over area, a place like manhattan obviously generates significantly more waste than a small town or suburb. But if you divide that by population density, dense cities actually come out ahead! People in cities like SF or NYC live in smaller homes with more efficient heating, rely on public transportation or walking to get around, and focus resource delivery and consumption onto a very small area. Compare that to your typical suburb, where the average family's environmental footprint is a lot bigger.
RTFA: The success of the environmental movement is driven by two powerful forces--romanticism and science--that are often in opposition. The romantics identify with natural systems; the scientists study natural systems. The romantics are moralistic, rebellious against the perceived dominant power, and combative against any who appear to stray from the true path. They hate to admit mistakes or change direction. The scientists are ethicalistic, rebellious against any perceived dominant paradigm, and combative against each other. For them, admitting mistakes is what science is.
Problem solved decades ago.
Drop your emotional dogma and the human race can get somewhere.
sig not ready: (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail.
While I agree that "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil", and that I'd rather drink after an environmentalist than an industrialist, I have grown not to trust anyone's expressed motives.
It's not the financial motivation of environmentalists that is the problem, but their reflexive devotion to the cause. Many truly believe that disaster is impending, or even that we're currently living through it. An overlapping set are drawn to the movement because they get emotional mileage from striving for a Great Purpose. It's the thing that lends importance to their lives, and they cling to it with everything they've got.
Facts, perhaps, but the question is the degree of the problem and the overall impact of the solution.
TFA draws a line between scientific and emotional environmentalism, but there is certainly some overlap. As you state it, "when scientists are concerned about global climate change ...." An otherwise keenly analytical scientist with an emotional leaning to environmentalism studies the environmental aspect of a topic and finds that a disaster is impending.
Scientists also know on some level that the more sensational or controversial a finding the more their name gets around. Grants come in, articles are published, books are written, and careers are made.
We all have our biases, and we all are working an angle.
sigs, as if you care.
Over here. The article linked to at the bottom is more detailed and convincing than Raymond's blog entry - do read it.
At the very least, Kuhn has been wrong for the last hundred years or so. His major accomplishment was to give a name ("paradigm shift") to a phenomenon that had been going on for awhile in the art world - you get attention for your work by making it radically different from everything else. After the one-two punch of relativity and quantum mechanics, lots of people dreamed of making a "paradigm-shattering" discovery in the sciences, and a bunch of them did, in biology, paleontology, geology, etc.
Sure, scientists are human, and there are fads and fashions in research and publishing. But, swallowing Kuhn whole is well down the path towards deconstruction in the sciences, which I think should be vigorously opposed.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Look up dwarf wheat sometime, and the difference it has made in the Indian subcontinent.
GM is little more than deliberately engineered advantageous mutation.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Changing it at the genetic level through fancy techniques is not incredibly different than isolating a strain for its characteristics and cross pollinating it.
Corn isn't anywhere near what its original form is, being modified for years and years to be the tall vegetable we're accustomed to.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
you seem to have missed his point.
He was saying he use to use 100 gallons of pesticide A on traditional crops....with GM crops he now only uses 10 gallons of pesticide A.
Now if you go to pesticide B which is 20X stronger you would only be using HALF a gallon instead of 5 gallons....the GM crops still use less pesticide.
Renewable? No. Clean? It depends.
% 20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_ waste_future/nuclear_waste_future.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fasbre.html
Renewable? YES! It's called reprocessing. We recycle the used radioactive material that comes out of a nuclear power plant and reprocess it in a breeder reactor to get more useable nuclear material. The result is more material suitable for a reactor and some (as in very little) low level radioative material that is much easier to hand and dispose of.
The original plan back in the 50's when we staretd using nuclear power was to use reprocessing on the fuel and make waste management easier. Carter nixed this. So as for "Clean? It depends." well, it still depends.
Here's some links on the matter, please actually read them, they give a better explanation than I can:
http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
If I was Monsanto's competitor, could I legally produce and release roundup-resistant weeds to nullify the benefits of roundup-ready soybeans?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Thanks for today's communist editorial on Prav...er, I mean slashdot. Try to spend more time on NOT POSTING DUPES than on front-page editorializing. OK? Thanks.
Or that from a net standpoint the US is a Carbon sink, not an emitter.
is actually what is accepted as having curtailed "natural" global population growth.
"Much has occurred in recent years to assuage the earliest anxieties of Zero Population Growth: abortion has not only been nationally legalized but declared a constitutional right; contraception has become ever more effective and widespread"
http://tinyurl.com/884ln
The author of this article assumes a great many things and reaches conclusions by really stretching. I do see his points, but also his bias. For an enviromentalist, he's sure looking more and more like an extremist.
Words to men, as air to birds.
I'm sorry but that old bogeyman that water is scarce is just plain wrong.
For one thing, water patterns will naturally shift over long periods of time across the globe. So some areas may get drier, but others wetter also. That will also cause a shift in population.
And even in areas that you think have a "water problem" really do not have a water problem. I live in Denver which has been experienceing years of drought. But how much did I pay for a whole month of water, watering plants as I wished and taking long showers whenever I felt like? I paid just $15 for that water.
Wake me when anyone on earth is paying as much for water as we do for gasoline right now. Wake me when lawns and plants with automatically timed sprinklers do not dot countries everywhere. Then I might agree someone has a "water problem". Right now people just have a "water inconvieninece".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I moved to an urban area, I recognized instantly that I was lowering my environmental impact. I do not drive, I take up less land, and I take advantage of economies of scale for shipping and distribution of goods. I also have more options for recycling and co-op purchasing. Environmentalists are opposed largely to suburban sprawl that destroys habitats, wastes water for lawns, and makes mass transit impractical.
Brand writes off environmentalists' opposition to GM crops and nuclear power as romantic, but an environmentalist would just as easily paint his glowing portrait of these technologies as naive scientific idealism. It's unfortunate that Brand is unwilling to see the highly rational thinking behind environmentalists' opposition to GM and nuclear power.
Food and power "shortages" are in large part economic, which is to say they're a distribution problem, or ultimately a political problem. As an environmentalist, I do not see an inherent or immediate need for GM crops or additional nuclear power. I'm aware that we could already feed everybody on Earth with existing agricultural technologies, but we lack the political and economic will. Further, I do not trust corporations sponsoring genetic research. They are motivated by profit, not by environmental conservation, and will gladly wipe out everything that can't sue them on their way to profitability.
Environmentalists have already seen corporations do massive damage to the environment, and there is no reason to believe that corporations have changed in any way. 50 years ago, scientists were using the same food shortage arguments to back the introduction of pesticides, hormones, and chemical fertilizers into the food chain. I would rather not see a repeat of DDT with GM crops, and as corporations gain legal impunity, I see no reason to trust them or the scientists in their employ. Rather, I would like to see an emphasis on organic, sustainable farming, with a slow, balanced introduction of GM species after careful scientific peer review and heavy governmental oversight. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the political structure to provide trustworthy governmental oversight of GM foods, and until we do, it would be better in my opinion to hold off.
As for nuclear power, there are better options that have been ignored or underfunded in favor of GE's and MIT's pet projects. Whether it's tidal generators, solar, wind power, or bioenergy, I think it's worth focusing first on technologies that don't produce toxic wastes that will be around for thousands of years and can be used to make weapons, no matter how "safe" they are. It's not that nuclear energy is heresy, it's that it looks like a poor stopgap measure when we're on the way to genuinely sustainable power. Rather than invest in a nuclear power problem, it would be better to promote sustainable power and conservation in the meantime.
Well, then why don't you actually explain what is stupid about it? Your reply doesn't seem to have anything to do with what Hemos wrote. He never wroteanything about going back to some "agrarian past." He never mentioned hating mankind, hippies, or evil.
Basically, all he said is that it might be a good idea to change the way we approach the environment.
I do think his views are reflective of a distain that many in the environmental movement have for progress and mankind.
Can you actually tell me who these people with a disdain for humanity and progress specifically are? Hemos was advocating progress, not railing against it. And where was mankind mentioned as evil, or otherwise disparaged?
... and then they built the supercollider.
How is more efficient to use the "100 year old solution" when the price doesn't reflect this?
By "efficient" he was talking more about a dramatic lessening of waste heat from energy generation - the cost is of course the reason why more efficient solutions haven't been applied. But when the costs get close the higher efficency systems have other intangible benefits that will probably lead to them being adopted sooner rather than later.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you saying that "for over half that time", the land was dominated by one single species of dinosaur? If not, I think I'll go ahead and count the successes of all mammals under what humans have accomplished.
"An organism attempting to maximize its survival is about the most "natural" process you can find; why do environmentalists object to humans doing this?"
"enviromentalists" is a big group, with a variety of positions, some of them looney. (Note that you can substitue pretty much any large political group as the quoted word in that sentence.) I consider myself an environmentalist, and speaking for myself, and at least quite a few others I know:
We do not object to humans attempting to maximize our survival; in fact, that is exactly what we are arguing in favor of. We think society currently tries to maximise quality of life in the (very) short term, at the expense of the long, or even medium term. Yes, humans can control enviromental factors to a far greater extent than animals, or even humans of previous generations, and that is a good thing. Perhaps we should think about how best to use that power, even if just to benefit ourselves.
I thought most of our power came from coal...at least in the US.
However, the thoughts of a nuclear powered 911 Turbo DO sound exciting!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There has already been a mild turn-around in the hyperactive NGO world view on global trade.
For example, Oxfam recently complained about the EU blocking Chinese textile imports.
Most likely rectal..
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Brand's piece is long on rhetoric and short on information. It presents a breathless technological romanticism which ignores the difficulties in all of the "hopeful" proposals that he makes, e.g. the use of GM bacteria to attack invasive species. The problem of specifically targetting a host with a live organism and limiting it to that host is not likely to be solved any time soon. Not even if Brand waves the magic wonder wand of "GM" over it. The history of environmental remediation is littered with the introduction of live parasites which would supposedly prey upon the unwanted pests, cause a population crash and then die out with the pest. Environmental remediationists are now trying to figure out how to get rid of the live parasites which are doing just fine and have _adapted_ and _evolved_. GM is a solution looking for a problem: the favorite supposed problem is the worldwide food shortage. This supposed shortage is a distribution problem. It is caused by deliberate economic manipulation by the developed nations. I don't have the time to go into the problems with his lauding of the automobile as now being some sort of wonder vehicle because the yuppie-next-door is able to get 30mpg in her Prius. Overall a fairly unimpressive article that would fit in well with the anti-scientific, irrational technological fetishism of middle-class liberals that don't want to admit that there are hard societal problems to solve.
Now, what effects those herbicides will have on the people eating said crops, I leave to the peanut gallery to debate. Just because the plant's immune doesn't make humans immune.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I'm wondering if all this work on GM foods, and selective breeding...while increasing shelf life...and less herbicides, have contributed to the lack of TASTE in foods? I mean, these days....tomatoes you buy in the store suck. No flavor...just bland, and watery or mealy. I didn't realize just how bad until about a year ago while visiting up northeast of the US...went to a farm that was having a festival...and they specialized in heirloom tomatoes...organically grown....real old fashioned stuff. Well, just eating a few samples of those tomatoes REALLY brought back memories of how I remembered how all tomatoes Mom bought at the store tasted....somewhere along the line...I think with breedeing, 'frankenfood' and such, they've forgotten the most important thing...flavor.
Same gripe I have about jalapeno peppers....I remember when they used to have some heat to them...but, some idiot has been breeding them for lack of heat. I swear, I've gotten some fresh ones, that weren't any more spicy than bell peppers. I've switched to serranos for now...at least they haven't bastardized those yet...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I agree that the logic is weak and the ideas unsupported by the facts. But that doesn't make the post "Flamebait".
A deliberately inflammatory user name can be flamebait just as much as a comment. I wonder whatever happened to those "Adolf Hitler" or "Nick Berg's Head" users? The troll deserves to be modded flamebait or troll every time he posts.
Roundup was already one of the most popular herbicide when roundup-ready corn hit the market. Prior to GM corn being available farmers were applying the herbicide 4-5 time in good years and upto 8 times in really bad years. By using roundup-ready corn and roundup together farmers apply the herbicide at most 3 times befor the corn is tall enough to kill off weeds on its own by preventing the weeds from receiving enough light. The net result for monsanto is $ from both the pesticide and the seeds. Now most farmers, even prior to the advent of GM crops didn't save seeds because they would miss out on the genetic improvements from year to year. Seed companies practiced intensive selection for production traits prior to using GM to improve plant quality. Genes native to the plants confering resistance to mold, insect infestation, and improved growth were combined via controlled polination for decades prior to the GM revolution. The net gain for producers is time. 1 application of roundup as opposed to 4 applications in good years and even better in bad years. As we all know time is money, and as someone who has worked on family run dairy farms, (tip: most large "Factory Farms" are family owned and operated) there are never enough hours in the day to manage animals, crops, employee's, maintenance and the ever increasing paper work needed to run a farm. saving that much time is worth the premium paid for the seeds. Land is finite. Most farms cannot get larger with out buy land off of competitors aready using it to grow the same crops, and often the land is more valuable for urban sprawl than agriculture. The best way to make more money is to improve the efficiency of production via less input costs, or increased production from the same land. Most of the posts i've seen on this page are from the "non scientist" members of the environmentalist movements. Being a tech person is not the same as devoting your life to understanding the problems facing agriculture and attempting to solve them. As a Scientist associated with this problem (i'm a phd student in animals science) I'm constantly frustrated by the ignorance western peopls have concerning their own food supply and the arrogance seen from people despite there admited ignorance. the article may or may not be correct on the other points. I'm not associated with those fields but I am qualified to comment on the validity of the GM topic and they are right on the money
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The deal that is proposed lets wind mills be built and their is no fee or tax, just a blank check for a well-connected company to build hundred of windmills in a very public waterway.
There is a give-away to a well-connected few and just because it is wind power doesn't make it a good idea.
Why can't I build a windmill in Nantucket sound, or anyone? No, the powers that want the Nantucket sound windmill plan want it to go to private interests who will be given a very sweet deal.
It is a bad deal for Massachusetts.
Because the power density of these sources is orders of magnitudes lower than what is needed. These are toys when what we need are engineering solutions.
Does hydroelectric count as solar? (think hard here, what drives the water back to the resevoir?)
Well numb nuts, by your bizarre reasoning I also come to the conclusion that petroleum is derived from solar power as well. Organic material is buried in sediments by the hydrologic cycle and heated in an anoxic environment to produce oil. Perhaps I should have clarified and say solar-electric.
Asteroids for uranium source? Can I get what you are smoking?
I point out that Uranium is abundant in the Solar System and is present in significant concentrations in metallic asteroids. Do you disagree with that? I thought it was important to stress this in considering Uranium a long term power source after terrestrial suppies are depleted. Got it?
an ill wind that blows no good
I have always felt that environmentalist should embrace urbanization. However, I feel that it is more important for industry to exist in urban settings then people. This is because when industries cluster in a single location it becomes immediately clear what the environmental effects of these industries will be. The combined results of these industries waste products can be seen much easier than those of decentralized and well insolated (by natural or artificial blinds) industries. The addition of people into the mix makes for incredible political force for change in industrial policies and practices. If you look at some the most tragic environmental disasters (such as Woburn, MA and Three Mile Island) they happened in places where the there was not as much political pressure for change because there were not as many people.
...about pretty much everything he's ever promoted.
Resource shortages, overpopulation causing mass famine, worsening pollution... he's been wrong about all of them, every time, over the course of decades.
What in the world would lead you to think he's right about anything *now*? Just the fact that he's promoting Global Warming is a great sign that it's not happening for the reasons he's pushing.
All Roundup Ready items must be Roundup Ready or you cannot plant there (roundup stays in the soil).
Please don't spread misinformation.
Roundup is basically a chemical called glycophosphate. While Monsanto-sponsored studies found it to be pretty much non-toxic in animals, as a reflex, I take corporate-sponsored studies with a grain of salt. (Anyone who does not, is foolish).
But while toxic effects are arguable, one thing is not: glycophosphate is water soluable. As such, roundup does *not* stay in the soil. Not past the first rain.
The IP restrictions on GM crops, however, are a legitimate reason for serious, serious, concern.
Should we ban slave-collars for those who willingly, cheerfully, don them?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's funny you mention golf courses. I was browsing around desert southwest cities on maps.google.com the other day, and found that golf courses are very easy to find down there ;) If you look at a desert southwest city from overhead, just look for the green spots - they're almost always either A) parks, B) sports fields (baseball, etc), or C) golf courses. Golf courses tend to be the largest.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
How's that for an "imperfect solution"?
Or is it merely inconventient?
I think the word you're looking for is 'naive.'
Actually, here in California, the tomatoes *last year* were better than what we have now. There was a nasty frost in the early spring that ruined a lot of tomato plants, and so we're stuck with late-sprouting crops and screwed-up tomatoes.
So at least at the source, a really yummy fresh tomato isn't unheard of these days.
Causation can cause correlation
Actually, this usually has more to do with harvesting things prematurely for long-haul shipment, and then force-ripening (with gas exposure, etc) just prior to sale. The fruit, or vegetable in question doesn't have as long to properly ripen and generate the compounds that we enjoy as the familiar mature tastes.
This is driven mostly by the demand from less well educated (in culinary terms) shoppers wanting to see/feel crisp-looking produce of every variety on the shelf through every season, or with their unwillingness to pay what it costs for the more immediate transportation of those same items if they were left to ripen on the vine/tree, etc. Spend a little more on the same varieties at a higher-end store, and you'll get your flavor back. But you'll also be burning more fuel, because the produce was probably flown to you (unless it's grown locally).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I don't know who modded you up, but you don't deserve it, as your logic is fundamentally flawed.
They're not going to dump herbicides with "wreckless abandon" because doing so takes time and money. Farmers, like most people, don't want to spend either unproductively.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
And the focus on consumption in much of the world is a recent thing -- since the industrial revolution. In some countries, it has only been seen in the past fifty years or so.
Presently, there is low demand for nuclear fuel, one can expect that were demand to rise, more inexpensive sources would be located.
In any event, a 'stopgap' measure of 50-100 years worth (+150-300 years with thorium) is exactly what is needed while power sources that never run out are brought online (such as space based solar).
building and disposing of a safe nuclear powerplant requires so much energy, that they're not so terribly efficient.
This is exactly the problem the Pebble Bed technology solves.
Hey...you live in New Orleans too, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
whom do you prefer, Hitler or Stalin?
the points that aren't strawmen.
Regarding long term waste storage, this is being handled for coal waste by letting it sit in the open and leach into the ground. The worst we do now with nuclear is a MUCH better solution (and yes coal waste is deadly and yes it is killing 10s of thousands of people as we speak).
Pebble Bed reactors can't melt down and the coolant doesn't become radioactive, these are concerns with old technology reactors (and theoretical concerns that have caused much more actual harm to happen from coal power plants--we didn't build nuclear because of what might happen, so we built coal despite what does happen, aren't we big smarties).
The environmental movement's war on peaceful nuclear power to stop proliferation is one of the biggest strawmen of all: stopping the US from building new nuke plants certainly hasn't done anything to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons, if anything it has made it worse since developing nations can't buy safe and monitorable nuclear plant technology from the US, they get it from Russia, China, and North Korea.
So we see the law of unintended consequences strikes twice: the Environmental Movement's war on Nuclear power in the US has led to an increase in proliferation of nuclear weapons and an increase in environmental degradation.
Woo hoo.
Compared to the price of milk or eggs, the price of a gallon of gas has been remarkably stable.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
This problem has been solved. The waste is processed into what amount to vitrified glass blocks which have stable storage lifetimes in the thousands of years. There is no way short of intentional refinement for waste stored in this manner to re-enter the environment in the relatively short term, unlike liquid or cannister based storage mechanisms. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that in a thousand years or so, we'll have a lot better idea of what to do with the blocks themselves, if indeed anything need be done. We've only had nuclear power for half a century or so, after all.
The correct choice at this time seems to be a combination of pebble bed reactors, which are highly resistant to serious problems such as meltdown or explosive failure, and vitrified glass waste storage insofar as waste storage turns out to be required. Pebble bed reactors are somewhat different from the reactors we're used to thinking about, particularly in that they repeatedly re-process their own fuel, continually converting "waste" from the previous stage into still more energy.
The primary problem is political and environmentalist fearmongering (to the extent that it is not just ignorance, which I am perfectly will to credit both politicians and environmentalists with.) People will believe anything, especially if it comes with a nice, high energy dose of hysteria.
The secondary problem is that building nuclear power plants -- any kind -- is a long, drawn out proceedure. If we started today, money no object, the public all about supporting it, it'd still be quite a few years before the putative new plants began to benefit the infrastructure. Compound this with the fact that we're not going to start today, or at any time in the foreseeable future, and the fact that money is a severe problem, the public is in no way supportive, and the future for reasonable nuclear energy generation appears mighty bleak.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's a bright side to this. As with PETA, over time people are becoming more and more skeptical of hard-core environmentalists who seem completely unwilling to modify their cherished views in any way, shape or form. They sound more and more like religious fanatics blindly following holy scripture than folks concerned with providing feasible and acceptable alternatives to perceived problems.
If they keep up the whacko "Gaia is the Earthmother! All hail Gaia!" approach eventually they'll marginalize themselves out of existence. I say let them destroy themselves.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The nuclear industry is one of the most cautious I know of. Look at the redundant safety systems and the layers of steel and concrete (not to mention red tape) protecting all modern US, Canadian, and European nuclear plants and you'll agree: they're very cautious.
The question is, do we, with our modern technology, really want to become hunters and gatherers again, living in severely reduced numbers, such that the ambient food supply is always there replenishing itself?
That certainly seems to be the extreme position. Of coure, the extremists seem to assume that their superior 'moral' position will somehow assure that they and their greenie friends will be the ones that survive the great die-off, while us evil consumer-types will be the ones that perish.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Actually, cities can be much more environmentally friendly than distributed residences.
Apartment buildings are much more efficient to heat and cool than single family houses. Density in cities means people have significantly shorter commutes and are much more likely to take public transportation, yielding huge benefits in engergy consumed and pollution generated. While cities are point sources for pollution, the overall pollution output of cities is less than if the same population was distributed, e.g. living in the suburbs.
There was a great story about this in The New Yorker last fall, maybe the october issue? Finding the reference is left as an excercise to the karma whore.
Nuclear Energy has its place. It would be far better if we had fusion reactors, but we don't. If we don't reduce carbon emissions, immediately, we are in danger of severely altering our environment for thousands of years, if not permanently.
Nuclear works. There are designs that are far safer than the ones which have had accidents. Thorium can be converted into fissionable material in pebble-bed reactors, greatly extending the time during which fission will provide us with power.
There is no one single approach that will fix our problems. We can't afford to rule out any viable approach based on emotion. We need to look carefully at the benefits and risks of each option and pick the ones that will rapidly reduce our production of carbon emissions.
Though nuclear waste is a problem, it is one that can be localized. The change of climate for the entire Earth for thousands of years will kill far more people and species than any botched nuclear waste storage.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Of course not all GMO's are safe, not all of anything is safe. If I were to shoot you, unless some Real Scientist could prove you were safe, you'd be shot. As for TMI, I suspect that each coal-fired power plant, releases more radioactive material into the enviroment than TMI did. Each smoke detector will eventualy release more radioactive, fissile products into your local land fill than will ever be released in an accident transporting spent fuel rods to a waste repository or reprocessing plant.
.than your department store shelf.
You wouldn't believe the amount of training, proceedures and paper-work required to transport to transport one M8A1 chemical alarm because it contains the americium 241, the same stuff in your household smoke detector, and in less quantity
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
DDT is the best chemical yet created for killing of mosquitos. Banning DDT in the third world has allowed mosquito populations to grow. Mosquitos carry diseases such as west nile and malaria. West nile and malaria have killed many people. The envoronmentalists (not just ones in the US, either) caused DDT to be banned in order to recieve international aid (IMF, among others). Environmentalists banning DDT has caused mosqitos to infect people leading them to an early grabe. Thus, environmentalists have killed people. That is the logic being used. (NOTE: Not my opinion, I just know the logic behind this one).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I wasn't disagreeing with you, merely making fun of my fellow overweight Americans! Sorry for any misunderstanding.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
But you're forgetting about the rare Golf Ball Weevil, a beetle which bores holes in lost golf balls and lays its eggs inside of them. The larvae gnaw upon the nutritious core of the golf ball, emerge, and then fly away to find new golf courses.
Cities just can't do that. They're too dense with humans to support sustainable ecosystems.
There are some zoos that are more humane than others and the more humane ones tend to have bigger habitats for their animals.
The other thing orbital space habitats buy you, aside from a place for technological civilization outside Earth's natural habitats, is time for humans to learn enough about themselves to humanely evolve themselves to a different mode of life entirely. Cramming humans into cities with our current ignorance of human biodiversity and nature is hubris. Worse, those who are most in a position to influence public policy are most adapted to urban environments and therefore are in a position of public trust and authority while they have an interest in cramming the more rural-adapted folks into environments where those folks are at a competitive disadvantage.
Seastead this.
I don't think I was giving you the kneee-jerk response. I merely stated that the purpose of GM is to give those companies higher profit. Where that also does better for farmers and food supply - in th e long term, great. But one should never make the mistake that those companies are doing this for the "greater good of humanity." As long as you know their motivation and can work with it, fine. But keep its limits and side-effects in mind.
As for round-up resistance, the thing that worries me most about it is that I keep hearing about "jumping genes" that move from species to species much more readily in plant and bacteria than in higher animals. It gives me just a bit of fear about how soon we'll have roundup-resistant weeds, and whether that will happen faster because we've put these designer genes into our crops. (Roundup-resistant weeds may also may happen slower this way, for the same reason that antibiotic effectiveness degrades when people quit after they feel better, rather than take the whole treatment. The knockout punch is best.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"nothing renewable comes close to the energy return of fossil fuels or nuclear (at current production)."
Am I the only person to have noticed the success of wind power these days?
Current state-of-the-art wind turbines (1.5+ MW) are able to compete with other power sources on equal terms (and before you rant about PTCs, Production tax credits, remember that other power sources also receive massive direct and indirect subsidies). I don't know how you calculate your "energy return", but I hope you include e.g. for nuclear, the astronomical cost of decomissioning, which can be greater than the cost of running the plant for the whole of it's lifetime.
Wind power has the potential to fulfill a great deal of our energy needs. Denmark, for example, already gets 20% of it's energy from wind power.
It's unfortunate that older wind projects like Altamont Pass have given so much bad press. Newer projects, and especially offshore wind farms are much easier on the eye and on the environment. e.g. A Vestas V90 3MW turbine pays for itself energetically within the first 7 months of its 20 year rated liftime.
And anyone who says that reducing energy consumption is not part of the solution has lost touch with reality. This is the same sort of person who has maxed out all their credit cards, has massive debts and doesn't intend to reduce their spending. (Did someone say National debt, Mr. Bush?)
However much energy we produce, we will always be able to consume it all if we waste it. And the expense is no barrier - if there is oversupply in our market economy, the price falls. So energy saving schemes must always be part of the solution.
Concidering that
1 forrestry companies plant, two to three trees for everyone harvested,
2 the trees that they plant are specialy bred to be more effiecent at producing the type of wood desired, unlike existing trees which furhter reduces the consumption of existing wild forrests
that recycling paper would actualy be a bad thing
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The parent poster is right: 'herbicide resistant crops' mean crops that are resistant to herbicides (as opposed to being resistent to diseases).
Therefor, whether 'they' are 'going to' drop herbicides with reckless abandon will depend on the 'they' (note that some GM-users do exactly that, though), but in any case, it *does* mean one *can* dump large amounts of herbicides on the plants, without causing damage (to the plants that one is cultivating, that is).
Maybe you meant something else then 'herbicide resistent'?
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Perhaps I'm ignorant, but are such strains as described above commercially available, and used right now? I'm unaware of any of the "riskier" GM derivatives being used in commercial ventures at this moment.
My point in the parent is simply: we've been doing GM for centuries at varying levels, and demonizing the whole process with a Luddite viewpoint of "GM is bad, mmmmmmkay?" is bogus.
P.S. it's normally bad form to add an ad hominem attack such as "fuckwit" as it tends to water down the idea that you're a thinking individual actually interested in debate.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I want to apologize for the harshness of my response. Most of that was intended for some others who had responded to your comment.
As for the possibility of resistance jumping, it is a legitimate concern. However, the gene used for roundup ready crops was discovered in the wild. Genetic researchers very rarely synthesize genes from scratch. More often they find a useful gene in one place and put it somewhere else, and since roundup had been used for a long time before roundup ready corn was introduced and the gene hadn't jumped species before there is not a strong argument for believing that it will happen now.
The reason that gene transfer is such an issue with antibiotics is due to the brevity of the generational period. some bugs can experience several generations in a single day, and microbiota transfer genetic material far more easily than plants. Each cell of bacteria is capable of becoming the progenitor of a new population. While the potential is there for plants, the likely hood of this happening isn't. The plants involved here reproduce sexually, and the only way a new gene can become the progenitor of a new population is if it is a seed. otherwise any modification to that cells genome die with that cell.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Yes, and I live in Alabama. In can be over 90 and 99% humidity for over 100 days. I have summered here many years without A/C. But I'm young. I think that climate control as implemented in the US is very wasteful. Central heating and air, while nice, heats and cools a lot of empty rooms in the peoples' McMansions. And large office buildings are empty half the time (or more) yet are heated and cooled as if someone were there all the time. We need to think of better ways to live and work. I just don't think it was a fair comment that some of the alternate energy sources are "rickety". There are numerous examples of self sufficient homes. It costs alot, as much as some of the SUV's and cars that people drive, but unlike them, it would pay for itself. Large cities, are a whole different problem. Granted, I heat with natural gas, and sometimes I've been known to use a window unit A/C. But I have to wear a sweater at work (in a very cool office) in the summer. I think people have grown soft, but I guess it is only a sign that we are a prosperious nation. That gets cheap oil overseas. Things are the way they are because it has been the path of least resistance, I suppose. To do otherwise takes foresight and thought. I ride my bike as transportation as much as possible. We need (and in my opinion, should want) mass transit and more bike lanes. Fewer automobiles. We could simultaneously tackle obesity as well. But I'll have trouble getting the rednecks to give up their big ass trucks (the ones that need them are good ole boys BTW).
Yes, I know what I'm talking about, being as I grew up in New Jersey and spent enough time weeding our own hard-won tomatoes and working on the far more productive local farms.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The classic glycophosphate herbicide is Monsanto Coroporation's "Roundup". Using them has nothing to do with newer and more deadly herbicides.
Surviving any mass die-off is a roll of the dice initially through plague and famine, followed by inevitable tribism and warlords, followed by a realization of "this sucks!", followed by a re-start of civilization, followed by the exact same sequence of posts to Slashdot II in a few thousand years.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Do they not recoup and produce more energy than was used to make them? Over the lifetime of the panel? We should also look at vegetable oil as an enegy source. Of course, a lot of people say that you need petrochemicals to grow them in the first place (like plants didn't grow before petrochemicals) There is a lot of fallow land in the US. Ethenol is an energy loss, hydro electric is established, nuclear, well I'm open to it. Cities are both simultaneously wasteful (the way we implement them) and have economies of scale going for them. Windpower needs wide open spaces, and wind of course. There are no easy answers.
Corn isn't anywhere near what its original form is, being modified for years and years to be the tall vegetable we're accustomed to.
In fact, corn has been so un-naturally selected it can't even breed on its own any more.
Simple economics. Farmers are in business to make money. When you are talking about 2000 acres, the cost of everything adds up. When you can turn the sprayer down to half the volume and get the same results as before because you can use a different, stronger poison, that appears on the bottom line.
The typical suburban lawn gets at much chemicals as a 20 acre field. Homeowners care about their green lawn more than the environment, and the cost is so cheap they don't care. Farmers are using much more expensive fertilizer (something that doesn't target their crops), applied more carefully.
Actually, I believe that with this plan you use less herbicide. If you have to use one certain kind because others will kill your crop, (which is true in many cases of GM) the only way to get rid of weeds is to give them larger and larger doses of weedkiller. This way you can just spray a small amount of a different kind and get the same or better effect.
What we should worry about is one company owning the rights to the pesticides and "locking farmers in" to using their seed and chemicals. But if you can easily buy weedkiller brand x and use it on this rice, then I have a hard time seeing a downside to it.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
This is the single best troll I've seen on /. this year. My hat's off to you, master of the trade (you bastard).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
His first point, anout slowing demographics, is not very much debatable: it is as it is, and if it's in decline, it's in decline. Whether we will level out completely, or go down, or up again, is not as clear cut, however. The author gives as main reason that people go to cities, but I think this explanation is inadequate, and certainly not enough to explain the changing demographics.
It should be noted, for instance, that, during the middle ages, the amount of children born in cities were no less then those on the countryside. What did change, though, is the empowerement of women (also in matters of procreation) and social and medical advancements. THOSE are the real reasons why demographics go down. It also follows that, if, by some disaster or serious economic and scientific decline we would degrade into former levels of welfare and reduced possibility for the women to control any family planning, demographics would go up again. It is therefor not an absolute certitude that the world-demographics will continue to decline...this is only true as an extrapolation, if everything remains the same. However, it is exactly the danger of this sort of extrapolation that the author is (also) lamenting against.
As for GM crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only says the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated an natural earea, and the contamination is a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans or other species.
Now, he's counterargument that those don't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wilde' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary. So, maybe some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some will, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to other species, including humans.
Also, the reductionist view of 'we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries' is somewhat misleading too. Yes, ppl have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, those trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that 'we have always done that in breeding' I would like to see any example where this has been tried before. No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequuences (which we do know knothing about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsily, that we've been using those techniques for millenia.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects as the author claims it has or will have - more about that at the end.
The weather and nuclear fission...well, I agree with that part. I do think the greens are just dead wrong in their crusification of nuclear power. Sure, as the author says, it has it's problems of its own, but those are rzally miniscule compared to the far larger and imminent (and worldwide) threat of global warming. Fine if you shut those reactors down, IF YOU HAVE A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE - but, wishful thinking aside, there currently is none. The author correctly points out, that, even if you cobine all other alternatives together, you still will only have a fraction of
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Coming from a large US farm background (2000+ acres of corn and soybeans) I can say the GM crops reduce fuel and chemical consumption in many ways.
For instance in the 70's, we used to run mechanical cultivators through the corn at least once and the beans 2-4 times to root out the weeds. (think big tractors). Now, my brothers don't even own a cultivator. They use spot treatments of Roundup and other chemicals to kill the weeds. And believe me, at the cost of Roundup, they experiment all the time with reduced concentrations, spot treatments, etc. Fewer trips, fewer chemicals, less cost to the farmer.
Jim Wildman jim@rossberry.com
I have a nuclear power plant 3 miles from my house. Everyone in town loves it. (when we think of it at all. We just know it pays a lot of taxes and you never see it) The big city in the state hates it and wants to close it down, even though it isn't in their backyard.
His following theories are so weak it would be easy to rebut them- would that only get me branded as a naive romantic? Like with the supposed Christians that tell me the devil gives people rational arguments to doubt (their version of) the true faith, I suspect there is no use arguing.
Nuclear energy will save us and the earth that rest on four pillars. Amen.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Instead of focusing on the negative, environmentalists need to start telling us about the positives. For thirty years it's been one doom and gloom scenario after another. But this earthday PRI released their annual Earthday statistics paper. This year the US had the lowest recorded level of pollution ever. Why isn't this being hailed as a environmental victory? Our birthrate keeps going down year after year. Why isn't this lauded by Malthusian environmentalists? The US has more timber acreage than in any time in history, but no one knows about it. Why?
It's one thing to claim that there isn't a problem, but it's just as pigheaded to pretend the opposite that there has been no progress.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
And Skippy was enlightened.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
What about coal? From what I have read without breeder reactors we have about 50 yrs worth of uranium left. Coal on the other hand gives us 500. I know we have all been indoctrinated since grade school that coal is dirty, but scrubbers can be used to get out most of the stuff other than CO2. Nuclear power is also not the only option for generating hydrogen. Using the water-gas shift reaction you can get H2 from coal. 500 yrs gives use alot more time to come up with something better.
Actually, here, as in several other parts of your message, you hit the nail on the head.
What degree of "proof" is needed? How "safe" is safe? What degree of risk are we willing to assume? Do the benefits greatly outweigh the risks?
Unfortunately, it seems as if too many people in the environmental camp cry out for absolute proof and zero risk. Since that is obviously an impossibility, they insist we do nothing.
A case in point are the casks developed for transportation of spent nuclear fuel. They drop them from 100 feet, run trains into them, and so on, and yet for some people they never seem to be "safe" enough.
It's not that it's not safe, it's just that it's a convenient delaying tactic.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You seem to miss the point. First of all, there is a difference between 'will' and 'can'.
Secondly, it is not inconceivable that some farmers will do so (and I believe, some already do exactly that). For instance, it can be out of habit, or a misguided sense of 'more is better'; so when a little bit of herbicide kills 60% of unwanted plants, they think a lot of herbicide will kill even more.
Or, for instance, the bad herbes get immune against it, and the farmer has to dump increasingly large amounts of herbicide on it to have the same result. Where this dumping had a former limit to the point where his cultivated plants also became affected by the herbicide, there is now no limit (or a much higher one), because his plants are 'herbicide resistant'. Which, logically, amounts to being able to dump a LOT more of herbiceds on the fields.
Point is, it IS conceivable (and not even farfetched) that farmers do exactly that, so the parent poster was right. They CAN (and some probably will) drop more herbicides on their fields then they used to.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
They most certainly are not. Most have everything to do with money. People have made fortunes on being able to regulate the scarcity of resource supply. That covers the gamut of everything from Governments regulating logging rights to Exxon ensuring they make a profit.
They've been able to do this because of the relative difficulty and money involved in delivering these resources.
Sustainable economies are unatractive because of two reasons, they either remove the scarcity of obtaining the resource, thereby eliminating profit potential and undermining the market system itself (ie wind/tidal power), or they require a bit of a technological jump in order to be realized.
Solving the first problem requires nothing short of a revolution.
People talk of hydrogen cars etc. but if it can't be done now, why would it suddenly be possible in 25 years time?
It's amazing how things suddenly become possible when they are the only solution. Hydrogen cars are completely feasible today, it's just that there are more cost effective solutions avaiable. Once oil becomes 200-500% more expensive than it is today, the hydrogen cars will suddenly be "discovered".
Recombinant DNA techniques were developed from the life cycle of bacteria. Retro virus have long been known to transfer genes from wildly different organisms (ie Chicken Flu). Cross species gene trans-location has been occuring naturally. Lastly there is always mutation for the occurence of new genes.
Maize and dogs are two of Humanity's longest running genetic engineering experiments. A chihuaha, cocker spaniel, bull mastiff, and a wolf all have the same genetic ancestor. There are traits in modern (unenhanced via GM) corn that just do not exist in maize.
Caution is warranted in GM foods, but that is because the change happens so fast. Changes that might have taken a Mellineum to take effect, happen in a single generation.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
To be economical, PBMRs require no containment structure. For something that uses graphite as a moderator (and still calls for air to be used as emergency coolant) - and, for hydrogen-generating plants, has water flowing right outside the core - and for which there has already been one accident even in the testing phase - I'd hardly call that safe enough to justify the danger. Containment structures have saved our collective arses about a dozen times in this country ;)
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
Did you miss the part of the article that said that this rice actually removes herbicide from the ground? Once your weeds are killed the rice sops up the excess and processes it into harmless chemicals. The rice had 20x less herbicide in it than conventional rice, plus the growing medium had nearly zero of the applied herbicide in it, while with conventional rice, the growing medium still contained 25% of the orginial herbicide. One of the main problems of irrigating otherwise fallow croplands is that evaporation leads to concentration of the residual herbicides and fertilizers that are applied to the ground. These run off into lakes and streams, further polluting the environment. If we can eliminate herbicide runoff from this, then we should be behind this wholehartedly, regardless of if it sells more herbicide or not.
The real issue is that we need to move to breeders, including thorium breeders. Between uranium and thorium breeders, there is enough known deposits to provide the world's current power levels for thousands to tens of thousands of years. Using only uranium, and U-235 at that (only 0.7% of uranium) is clearly a limited proposition. The only concern is that sodium breeders are somewhat nasty beasts, mainly because sodium is so reactive (it reacts explosively with the very material that makes up its containment structure - concrete; the concrete outgasses hot hydrogen, which can ignite).
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
I already responded to this question.
Seastead this.
To be fair, nuclear power is a tricky beast. The main problem is the safe storage of the byproducts, which tend to be very nasty. The best I can see is dumping them into some subduction trench and let the earth itself recycle it (how's that for irony). All of these issues does add to the overall cost of things.
I have often heard the idea of subducting nuclear waste thrown around and, as a geologist, I have never heard of a worse idea. If you bury nuclear waste in a container in the upper layers of oceanic crust near a subduction zone you will be subjecting it to:
Immediate exposure to a corrosive salt water and increasing temperature environment
Increasing compressional stress due to accumulation of sediment and stresses in the accretion wedge.
Huge accoustical stresses from large earthquake in the decending slab.
Melting of the already leaking container within a few million years (at most) due to subduction.
Efficient aerial dispersal magma laced with radioactive goo through pyroclastic eruptions, lahars, and lava flows
Not really a good idea is it?
an ill wind that blows no good
" Except you have to feed citys how many tractor trailers of food and other things come into NY every day? "
The same amount of land would be needed for the spread out community. The distances would tend to be greater because of the lower density of the population. And you lose the ability to use more efficient methods like rail. If you look at energy per ton mile it goes something like this. Ship, Rail, Tractor Trailer/Jumbo jet, Car, and at the bottom small aircraft. It tends to use a lot more power to move lots of small shipments than a few large ones.
"When you clear land for a high voltage power line is that localized pollution? "
But you would have at lest the same amount of land cleared for power lines for a spread out community not to mention all of the right of way used for power poles that are underground in a large city. So yes it is localized in that it is smaller total footprint. Also you do not have to destroy the land to put up how voltage wires. While you may no t like the way they look the wild life really will not care much. They do not block migration paths.
"When you make towns in upstate NY go away so you can put in a reservoir so the city has water is that less damage?" We are talking impact on the environment so the destroying of a town is not a negative in this context.
You would still need a water system that would support 3+million people. So yes again it is no worse and probably much less of an impact than supplying the population spread out in single family homes. Also you have to look at the actual impact of the water system. The New York City water system is actually pretty low impact for the population it supports. The reservoirs create new ecosystems and are kept in pretty good condition. Now the LA/Southern California water system is a nightmare but then LA/Southern California is sort of the worst of all possible worlds a spread out huge population in an area that really can not support it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Your idea of taxing those in the 1st world countries into a less-modern lifestyle isn't a solution. FYI not everyone wants to go back to horse & carriage transport, iceboxes, oil-lamps and well water. Besides, that's not where the real demand is anyway. It's not due to "piggish consumption" -- much of the increased demand for power comes from the citizens of third-world countries who would like to better their lives with refrigeration for their food and homes, appliances to perform some of the cooking and cleaning chores, vehicle transportation and increasing development of industry.
Is this the same United Nations whose staff engaged in sexual abuse of defenseless refugees in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea?
Is this the same United Nations that accuses the United States of human rights violations while electing Libya to chair the Human Rights Commission?
And I am supposed to take a self-serving report from such a corrupt, self-serving organization seriously because????
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
SUVs are station wagons. What makes them better is that station wagons essentially became illegal due to the CAFE regulations. If we got rid of fleet fuel economy standards, station wagons would make a comeback in no time.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Actually, this was effectively debunked by Gerard O'Neill in his book "2081" if not his earlier book "The High Frontier".
The earth to orbit transportation economics of an electromagnetic catapult system (other systems are possible such as Hans Moravec's Rotovator(tm)) result in far less environmental impact than sustaining the same human terrestrially.
Moreover, the energy and transportation scale required to have a net depopulation would be comparable to the current airline industry.
Seastead this.
I found the article's arguments about how quickly population is leveling off to be pretty surprising, so I headed over to www.census.gov to check out the numbers.
Though the growth rate is decreasing slightly, it still looks like a problem to me. The US is gaining a person every 13 seconds, and the world is gaining 2.3 people every second. The census projects what things will look like in 2050 assuming that the growth rate will continue to decline at the same rate, and we still will have 10 billion people by 2050.
It looks to me like the article was factually correct, but it only reported on the best looking numbers.
The numbers are there. No fundamental technological breakthroughs required nor even materials advances.
Seastead this.
First of all, a containment structure is primarily a one-time cost, especially when you build it around a reactor that "just sits there." All building one does is extends the time it takes for the reactor to become profitiable. It in no way turns the reactor design into one that is not economical. Secondly, compared to the reactors that are out there running today, a PBMR is more economical almost no matter how you build it.
Containment of a breeder or a 60's-style pile based reactor is absolutely required, because the failure modes for these designs are horrific. But advocating classic dome-style containment of a PBMR based on issues that apply to other reactor types is about as sensible as requiring a ship's watertight hull on a freight train. Yes, the cargo ship will sink without one, still, it makes little (or no) sense on a freight train. You need serious containment when there are serious heat, pressure, radiation and shock issues. Decent PBMR's don't present those issues, and the failure modes are outright fuzzy and friendly by comparison to almost any other reactor design.
I don't have any particular problem with adding containment, though, if it were the straw that causes the average|median 100 level IQ public and the not-much-better media to drop the paranoia. The issue isn't what hoops have to be jumped through, the issue is that no one will do any jumping at all at this point in time.
There are many PBMR designs; it is hardly fair to cherry pick the bad ones and tar the entire lot with the faults of the bottom feeders. Why not look over the various information sources on PBMR's and see where the designs are today? You might be pleasantly surprised. These aren't your father's nuclear reactors, to misquote somebody or other.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They're not going to dump herbicides with "wreckless abandon" because doing so takes time and money. Farmers, like most people, don't want to spend either unproductively.
You are absolutely correct, except for one thing, Farmers are usually in a worse financial position to waste money on things like herbicides. Anyone that hasn't been in the agricultural business has no idea how much herbicides and insecticides cost, and how little most farmers want to use them. The only reason farmers use pesticides at all is to protect their investment and bring more product to market.
As GM plants become more common, less herbicide will be used, so the cost of said herbicides will increase (theoretically) proportionally. The chemical manufacturers will still make their money, the new biotech companies providing the GM plants will make their money, the farmer will get screwed and people will complain about how evil the frankenfood and herbicides are while ordering their $2.99 cheeseburger.
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I guesss a lot of people 1T years for now will disagree :)
Rethinking email
Look, this "population growth is a problem" myth has been around for decades. It's also wrong.
See the Julian Simon vs. Paul Ehrlich bet. Basic supply/demand theory suggests that if there is an increasing demand for a limited supply of resources, the price on those resources ought to rise, correct? This was the premise by which biologist Ehrlich made a bet with economist Simon -- that increasing population growth increases the demand on a limited set of resources, and thus the price of those resources will rise.
But Ehrlich was wrong. Prices of a basket of commodities in the bet decreased quite markedly over 10 years. Why? Technology and efficiency gains. Simon won the bet: prices of each of the 5 bet-on commodities fell, despite the population around the world rising over the same period.
Why do some enviros continue playing the overpopulation card? Who knows. Economic illiteracy and retardation, I guess. IMO, a a more-legitimate environmental challenge to solve is that of urban sprawl and the crowding-out effect it has on natural animal habitats... and those of air and water pollution...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
a containment structure is primarily a one-time cost
So is a wind turbine. You still have to amortize it.
A PBMR is more economical no matter how you build it
No. PBMRs are small reactors - in fact, a PBMR will cost you a little over a hundred million instead of the several billion that you'd pay for, say, a CANDU. The lack of a containment structure is *how* they make it economical. They instead use a "confinement structure", which is not positive-pressure.
serious heat
PBMRs operate about 4 times as hot as PWRs
serious pressure
Pressures are roughly equivalent to PWRs
radiation
It is just as radioactive, mass for mass.
shock issues
Shock is bad in any reactor.
Of course, containment structures aren't related to any of the above. They're related to *containment* in the event of an accident; which is what must be discussed here.
There are many PBMR designs
They all use graphite as a moderator and call for air to be used as an emergency coolant, as I said above. I'm not cherry-picking - that's part of what a PBMR is. The other parts of what a PBMR is include helium as primary coolant, a mix of microspheres of fuel and graphite, a pellet recycling method that monitors decay, and a few other basic features. The technical details vary - many designs even include a secondary water cooling loop, which is just asking for problems.
Decent PBMRs don't present these issues
They sure as heck present a number of accident risks. The very testbed for PBMRs in Germany led to a minor leak of radioactive material and a huge economic setback when the pellet feeder jammed, and it took weeks to restore it. This is one of the most minor accident scenarios, however. The most major accident scenarios are on plants that use water secondary cooling and use water for hydrogen generation; water reacts explosively with hot graphite via hydrogen generation, so any water/steam penetration of the core is an immediate, serious accident situation. As for oxygen in the core loop, while fresh nuclear grade graphite is considered incombustable (this is debated), even proponents admit 1-2% erosion at the temperatures PBMRs operate before it cools, and since the graphite will not be fresh (but will have been bombarded for long periods by high intensity radiation and eroded by decay products), the risk is much higher of flammability/erosion. Worse, however, is that unlike the graphite that spread radioactive waste from Chernobyl, this graphite will be in direct contact with the fuel. The contamination of the eroding graphite will be quite severe as a consequence.
While radical environmentalists will try and convince you that every nuclear power plant is a Chernobyl waiting to happen, the converse can be said about nuclear proponents. It's not a ticking time bomb, but it's not some benign power source. Containment structures have prevented about at least a dozen nuclear accidents in the US alone which had the potential to be significant region contaminators. There's no reason to trust a graphite-moderated reactor with such a risk just because it has a negative void coefficient and inert primary coolant.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
Wat do you mean by "environmentalist circles"? Because this belief is only held by a minority fringe of environmentalists.
And how would you know if those random posters to slashdot are environmentalists? Why don't you just refer to them as "slashdot posters" - rather than trying to imply they are a part of mainstream environmentalism?
These people don't care about the evironment or sustaining a diverse biosphere, they simply hate the thought of human consumption
So, they're not actually environmentalists, then. So why are you calling them as such? I believe the correct term is "nutter."
I agree that religion is a very big problem - but most environmentalists are not religious. That cannot be said for the majority of politicians who oppose environmentalism, who are usually devoutly religious.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I already adressed that. You weren't talking about longer amotization, you said that the reactor would become uneconomical, which is hardly the same thing - it is simply nonsense. No turning on a dime, here. Go re-read your post. :-)
I was talking about these factors when an accident occurs, not at normal operating levels, which are mostly irrelevant to accident containment, as you say. Containment isn't about day to day running, it's about what can happen when a reactor goes outside of its normal operating profile for whatever reason. PBMRs just quietly shut down. It's a beautiful thing. They don't melt through the floor, they don't explode, and they don't freak out and run away at insanely high power levels. This is their nature. Hence, accident containment is a comparatively small task, yet one that when considered, has to deal with whatever levels there might be of heat, pressure, shock and radiation. Don't convolve operating issues with failure issues. I certainly wasn't. I was directly addressing containment itself.
You mention the reactor leak in Germany. Fine. This is a test/prototyping reactor. Any cows with three heads wandering around? No. Anyone get hurt outside the facility? I'm guessing, but most likely, no. Right? Any issues here other than basic design issues to be dealt with? No. In short, is this incident even worth considering as far as it might apply to a serious commercial reactor design?
No.
It means they need a better pebble feed mechanism. Clue: That's why they test.
I am in no way a blind nuclear fanboy. However, I am visionary enough, and engineer enough, to contemplate a final commercial design rather than a testbed when I consider a reactor's general characteristics, and to take the implied safety issues as face value, knowing they'll be addressed as appropriate in each installation, at least here in the US. Russia, I wouldn't presume to speak for.
Regarding containment issues, graphite and water and so on, if indeed the reactor needs containment, fine, build containment for it. It'll be later down the road when it pays for itself. So what? If the alternative is riding goats, then we need to build reactors. If the alternative is other... for instance, if someone pops up with a viable fusion design -- then we need to stop, change direction, and go that way. It's all this nabmy-pamby "oh my gawd, rad-e-a-shun!" stuff is what is going to put the world economy in the pot, not to mention the environment.
Radiation paranoids are depressingly ignorant. For every leak of a TINY bit of material into the atmosphere, there have been multiple fission explosions let off, which would hardly count as contained and which were far more violent and polluting than any nuclear incident ever, up to and including Chernoble. I think the total number is well over 5000 now. People ride aircraft and get radiation doses they have no clue about, and everyone who lives in (for instance) Denver is getting a significantly better "tan" than I am, since I live 2000+ feet lower than they do. People breathe coal exhaust and have not even an inkling of the types of toxins and even radioactive isotopes that come flying out of a coal plant's stack. I can never decide if it's paranoia that keeps them from learning, or the lack of learning than makes them paranoid.
Yes, there can be accidents. So lets face that. We lost forty one thousand plus people to car accidents in 1999, which was by no means a standout year. And that was just in the USA. Might we lose a few hundred people, maybe even a few thousand to a reactor accident? Sure. It could happen. It's not real likely, but it could happen. And it's b
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That doesn't solve all the problems. How do you transport the waste from the reactors to the processing and storage facilities?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Don't make me laugh.
First and foremost requirement for membership in a UN panel is agreement with the UN agenda.
In this particular case and in the case of Kyoto, the agenda is to redistribute the wealth of "first world" countries to "third world" countries.
Science has nothing to do with it.
The only "evidence" of global warming is your precious "computer models" comprised, conveniently enough, of proprietary code so that nobody can know what the true calculations are, just the magic result.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
You weren't talking about longer amotization, you said that the reactor would become uneconomical, which is hardly the same thing - it is simply nonsense.
Long amortization times *do* make things uneconomical. For god sakes, do we need to get into basic economics here? People don't invest in projects with long amortization times because they can make money faster elsewhere. That's why wind is uneconomical in most places. Sure, the turbines need little more maintenance than a containment structure, but do you see everyone rushing to put one in their back yard?
PBMRs just quietly shut down. It's a beautiful thing.
A hydrogen explosion or a graphite fire are *NOT* beautiful things. I'm not talking about a mere loss of coolant scenario, the thing that PBMR-proponents like to pretend is the only type of accident that occurs at nuclear reactors. FYI: Essentially every new reactor type that has come out has claimed to be meltdown-proof.
Any cows with three heads wandering around? No. Anyone get hurt outside the facility? I'm guessing, but most likely, no. Right?
In short, you're dismissing the fact that the only time a PBMR has been operated extensively, it's had an accident that cost millions of dollars and spread radioactive particles from crushed spheres over a two kilometer radius. Radiation doesn't cause three headed cows to start appearing; it modifies statistical likelyhoods of cancer and other such effects. This is a small accident, but it cost millions of dollars (tens of millions in modern dollars - compared to a plant that costs little over 100 million to build), led to an investigation that determined that the plant was unsafe, and is essentially the entire operating history of PBMRs thusfar outside of the new China models. Most critically, however, this is among the most minor accidents possible. I am here to discuss the major accident scenarios with you - graphite combustion/erosion in the presence of water, and hot hydrogen generation through water contact with graphite. Both of these you refuse to discuss. Until you become mature enough to discuss failure modes instead of going off into a rant against anti-nuclear nuts, what is the point?
You go and talk about the increased radiation exposure from riding in an airplane, or even living in Denver. That is nothing compared to what we're discussing here, and nothing compared to what containment structures have saved us from. A good chunk of Belarus and smaller chunk of Ukraine were rendered unfarmable or unlivable because of it (and this is after over 300 billion dollars have been spent); the economic consequences of a misstep are staggering. The main problem isn't immediate deaths, or your silly "three headed cows" concept - it's the rendering of large areas unlivable for hundreds of years (not millions, like anti-nuclear nuts claim, but still very significant number). Such serious economic consequences require serious preventative measures, and PBMRs do *not* have them.
Once again: I wish to either engage you about failure modes of PBMRs, or terminate this conversation. If you're going to simply claim that "they're safe" without discussing the failure modes I mentioned, you're deluding yourself. Don't take me as someone who hates nuclear power - I really like it. Some of the new designs coming out, such as the next generation of lead-bismuth breeder reactors look wonderful. But this whole PBMR-mania by people who love to ignore the fact that hot graphite+oxygen=graphite fire or erosion, and hot graphite+steam =hot hydrogen explosion, in both cases rendering hundreds of square kilometers of surrounding land unusable, really gets to me.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
From the article:
"Ignore the origin and look at the technology on its own terms. (This will be easier with the emergence of 'open source' genetic engineering, which could work around restrictive corporate patents.) What is its net effect on the environment? GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That's why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops."
Less use of herbicides? HAHA!!! Not even close. Many GMOs are made herbicide resistant so more herbicides can and are being dumped onto crops, fact is herbicide resistance encourages the use of more herbicides. How about increased yield? That I know of there's not one study that has concluded GMOs increase yield, however some studies has concluded they don't:
3. Does GE actually increase yield, or even have the potential to increase yield?
US Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, reportedly stated in a 1996 talk to the World Food Summit in Rome, that "Biotechnology can give us a quantum leap forward in food security by improving disease and pest resistance, increasing tolerance to environmental stress, raising crop yields, and preserving plant and aimal diversity" If you listen to radio advertisements aired in Ontario just last week, increasing yield is one of the key selling features of GE crops. But are these claims scientifically defensible?
Although "increasing yield" is one of the most common benefits attributed to GE, evidence to substantiate this (or any of the other oft-repeated claims) is hard to find. Lappe and Bailey (1998; p.82) analyzed data from soybean yield trials reported by Ashlock (1996). Yields from the 1995 and 1996 years were reviewed, with yield of Roundup Ready (RR) soybean varieties contrasted with that of their nearest conventional counterpart. In 30 of 38 comparisons, the conventional variety outyielded the RR variety. Mean reduction in yield of the RR varieties was 4.3 bu/ac or almost 10%, a loss which was statistically significant.
A more recent review of 40 soybean varietal trials in the north central region of the US by Oplinger et al. (1999) found a mean 4% yield drag in RR soybeans. Even comparing the top 5 varieties from each, RR still yielded 5% less than conventional soybeans. Thus, there is a cost to the crop from expressing the genes for Roundup resistance, and it manifests itself in lower yields.
Brown (1998) cites evidence of a marked plateauing of yield in most major world food crops. He contends that the really major gains in wheat, rice, and corn yield occurred between 1950 and 1990, due to improvements in harvest index, coupled with intensification of resource use. Gains since 1990 have slowed markedly, as the potential for additional gains is rapidly used up. It is difficult to see how genetic engineering, particularly with the simply inherited traits prominent in current GE crops, can fundamentally lower the "wall" inhibiting further gains in yield.
FalconDebunking the Myths of Genetic Engineering in Field Crops
Should there be a Law?
Why would herbicide resistant crops need less herbicide? You're trying to kill weeds, right? You haven't changed the weeds, so why would you need less herbicide? Why would you even bother making the crops resistant to herbicides if you're going to start using less?
If you want to use more herbicide, I could see maybe using herbicide resistant crops--maybe the regular crops can't handle the amount of herbicide you want to use.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
"What you paint is a vague picture of human doom
Actually, what I did was take numerous examples from contemporary society and world events and also myriad examples of nations throughout recorded history and apply them to the example at hand. In other words I used the established pattern of human behavior that has been unerringly followed throughout history and made a prediction about how things might turn out in the furure. Not too hard to do when you study history.
"What you are saying is that if others fuck up...
Actually you take that out of context. I think the idea of conservation and limiting pollution is great, and I do my part. HOWEVER...what one person can do on the positive side is infinitessimally small compared to the forces on the negative side. The only people concerned with cutting down on consumption are those with the luxury of doing it, and a vast number of those do not even care. That works out to be a really small part of the world.
Regardless, I do participate, but you seem to think that if I ride my bike to work I will save the world for my children. All I am pointing out is that that kind of thinking is moronic. Fundamental changes need to be made in the way that people think and react to reality for environmental concers to become top priority.
Maybe a giant climate shift would wake people up. Unfortunately, if it goes ice age on us I can see people strip mining the USA for all the coal we have (largest coal reserves in the world, BTW) just to keep warm. Imagine what that would do to the environment! In fact, I can see a vast increase in the consumption of resources if we did have a fdrastic climate shift, regardless of the temperature direction. People would throw all caution and restrictions to the wind in an attempt to maintain status quo, or just to stay alive for that matter.
Maybe I am a bit pessimistic, but how can you look at history, the trends of mankind, their treatment of eachother and their world, and think any other way?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Or, if we distributed the food we already have more fairly, we wouldn't even need genetically modified plants.
Getting the food that's already being produced will do more to feed the hungry than GE, GMO crops will. In many third world countries food doesn't make it into the hands of those who need it. In others farmers are driven off their land wherein the produce doesn't make it to market and is allowed to rot in the fields. Fact is is that most farmers can't even afford to buy gmo seed much less pesticides and herbicides.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Designed to sell more of their own pesticides"? Genetically modified food reduces the need for pesticides, as well as reducing the amount of farmland we have to use. Perhaps you're thinking of "Roundup-ready" crops which are immune to the plant-killer "Roundup". The thing there, though, is that Roundup is one of the most environmentally friendly ways to kill weeds that I know of, and Roundup-ready crops make it possible to use Roundup instead of less friendly herbicides.
Perhaps what was meant was "sell more of their own herbicides". In that case it's true, Roundup ready seed means more roundup Ready can, and usually is, dumped on crops. As for crops bred with pesticide mechanisms, yes it may reduce the need for pesticides, up until "pests" build an immunity. It can also adversely affect nontarget species. Meanwhile both herbicides and pesticides destroy healthy soil thus requiring more chemical inputs. Why use either when there are better methods?
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Montaso vs Schessmier" has already locked this into Canadian law by the Supreme Court of Canada, and since US law shares precedent with Canadian law, it's the law there too.
In the end that's the goal of Monsanto and other GMO companies, to get a lock on market segments so farmers are dependent on them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Actually, it is worse than that. When a bacterium finds a piece of DNA, from whatever source, it can do two things. eat it (food) or use it. Many bacteria actually spit out DNA fragments for this purpose. Genes can jump species this way. The short generational period is not enough to develope antibiotical resistance as fast as it has. (they thought of that when the first started using antibiotics, and figured that it wasn't a big enough problem. They did not think of (know about?) the gene swapping thing.)
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
I suspect similar reasoning is why medical cannabis is has been an issue between the DEA and alternative medicine anecdotes.
Hemp, aka cannabis wasn't always considered "alternative medicine", at one tyme it was very much excepted by the AMA:
"Did Anyone Consult the AMA?"
However, even within his controlled Committee hearings, many expert witnesses spoke out against the passage of these unusual tax laws.
Dr. William G. Woodward, for instance, who was both a physician and an attorney for the American Medical Association, testified on behalf of the AMA.
He said, in effect, the entire fabric of federal testimony was tabloid sensationalism! No real testimony had been heard! This law, passed in ignorance, could possibly deny the world a potential medicine, especially now that the medical world was just beginning to find which ingredients in cannabis were active.
Woodward told the committee that the only reason the AMA hadn't come out against the marijuana tax law sooner was that marijuana had been described in the press for 20 years as "killer weed from Mexico."
The AMA doctors had just realized "two days before" these spring 1937 hearings, that the plant Congress intended to outlaw was known medically as cannabis, the benign substance used in America with perfect safety in scores of illnesses for over one hundred years.
"We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman," Woodward protested, "why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared." He and the AMA" were quickly denounced by Anslinger and the entire congressional committee, and curtly excused.3
*The AMA and the Roosevelt Administration were strong antagonists in 1937.
When the Marijuana Tax Act bill came up for oral report, discussion, and vote on the floor of Congress, only one pertinent question was asked from the floor: "Did anyone consult with the AMA and get their opinion?"
Representative Vinson, answering for the Ways and Means Committee replied, "Yes, we have. A Dr. Wharton [mistaken pronunciation of Woodward?] and {the AMA} are in complete agreement!"
With this memorable lie, the bill passed, and became law in December 1937. Federal and state police forces were created, which have incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Americans, adding up to more than 14 million wasted years in jails and prisons - even contributing to their deaths - all for the sake of poisonous, polluting industries, prison guard unions and to reinforce some white politicians' policies of racial hatred.
(Mikuriya, Tod, M.C., Marijuana Medical Papers, 1972; Sloman, Larry, Reefer Madness, Grove Press, 1979; Lindsmith, Alfred, The Addict and the Law, Indiana U. Press; Bonnie & Whitebread; The Marijuana Conviction, U. of VA Press; U.S. Cong. Records; et al.)
The Last Days of Legal Cannabis
Falcon
I know it is off topic but felt it still needed to be answered.
Should there be a Law?
Didn't read the article, did you? Go find the paragraph about flouridation.
I read the MIT article twice and did a search of it and didn't come across "flouridation". I may of missed it and the search function may be broke, so can you show me where it is?
Let me explain by analogy. I'm not a farmer -- but I do raise roses as a hobby. As you no doubt know, rose bushes are fundamentally unhealthy organisms which only thrive with massive doses of fertilizer, insecticide, and herbicide, so those of us who raise them know all about this.
Like you I'm not a farmer though I do garden. I don't grow roses, mostly herbs and fruits and vegetables, but there are people who do grow them, garden like I do, organically.
Let me lay this out in short sentences. Herbicide resistant crops need less herbicide. That's not good for the chemical companies, but bad. Simultaneously, it has a net positive impact on farmers, food, and the environment.
First, why do herbicide resistant crops need less herbicides? The reason to make them resistant is so more herbicide can be used, which is the case. Because a farmer's crop is resistant the farmer can use more herbicide. Maybe you're thinking of pesticides? Here's an article about herbicides use for herbicide resistant crops:
Genetically engineered soybeans will increase herbicide residues in food by up to 200 times
Auckland, 25 February 1997 The US-based manufacturers of a genetically engineered soybean have applied to the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) for a two hundred fold increase in Roundup residues in Soybeans. The application calls for allowable residues in dry soybeans to rise from 0.1mg/Kg to 20mg/Kg.
The dramatic increase in residues results from the Roundup Ready Soybean, a genetically engineered soybean produced by Monsanto, which is resistant to Monsanto's own brand of herbicide - Roundup.
Last year, Monsanto promised the New Zealand public on Morning Report that such genetically engineered crops would result in reduced use of herbicides. This year the truth is coming out. The New York Times reports that soybean farmers in the USA are dowsing their crops liberally with Roundup. Monsanto is reported as very pleased by the increased sales of Roundup. However, consumers should not be pleased, since soybeans now contain dramatically elevated residues of the herbicide. Soybeans are used in up to 60% of processed foods such as baby foods, chocolate, bread, pasta, sauces, ice cream etc.
FalconGE soybeans will increase herbicide residues in food
Should there be a Law?
Almost all the people you discribed sound like hippys to me (know it all college hippys mostly, no doubt some stoned gigglers in the mix).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A good (bad) amount of the natural uranium (and other tasty treats) stays in the bottom ash (which is used to clear roads in some areas).
They are thinking of processing bottom ash into nuke fuel but as far as I know there is'nt much incentive as prices are low.
Lighter things like mercury mostly go up the stack (yum).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As GM plants become more common, less herbicide will be used, so the cost of said herbicides will increase (theoretically) proportionally.
Studies have already been shown that when herbicide resistant crops are planted more herbicides are used. Afterall that's why they are made herbicide resistant.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Same gripe I have about jalapeno peppers....I remember when they used to have some heat to them...but, some idiot has been breeding them for lack of heat. I swear, I've gotten some fresh ones, that weren't any more spicy than bell peppers. I've switched to serranos for now...at least they haven't bastardized those yet...
It does seem peppers are loosing their heat. Serranos have some but the hottest I've had in the past few years are Thai hot peppers. I want to grow both of them this year as well as anchos or anaheim and scotch bonnets. Some with heat and some for stuffing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
you seem to have missed his point.
He was saying he use to use 100 gallons of pesticide A on traditional crops....with GM crops he now only uses 10 gallons of pesticide A.
Now if you go to pesticide B which is 20X stronger you would only be using HALF a gallon instead of 5 gallons....the GM crops still use less pesticide.
It's seem you're missing the point, it's herbicides not pesticides being talked about.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Nest-dweller.
There are a lot of rocks in this Solar System.
It gives me just a bit of fear about how soon we'll have roundup-resistant weeds
They are already here, Roundup Ready resistant weeds have been found in the "wild":
Weed with Roundup immunity galloping across state
John Woodmansee4 0526/localnews/503241.html
Chronicle-Tribune, May 26 http://www.chronicle-tribune.com/news/stories/200
A herbicide-resistant weed that arrived in Indiana two years ago isn't standing still.
Marestail populations that are immune to glyphosate were first identified in 2002 in the southeast Indiana counties of Jackson, Bartholomew, Clark, Jefferson and Jennings.
LRecent field inspections by Purdue University researchers found the weeds in another 15 counties to the north and west, said Bill Johnson, Purdue Extension weed specialist.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in many herbicides, including Roundup.
Indiana farmers annually plant millions of acres in crops genetically modified to withstand Roundup applications. This year alone, 88 percent of the state's projected 5.45 million acres of soybeans are expected to be Roundup Ready varieties.
"We had a few isolated fields in southeast Indiana that were showing poor control of marestail with glyphosate in 2001 and 2002," Johnson said. "By late 2002 we'd confirmed glyphosate resistance in four counties, and we highly suspected it in six additional counties.
"We did some extensive field surveying in the fall of 2003 and now believe we've found glyphosate-resistant marestail in about 19 counties, mostly in southeastern Indiana," Johnson said. "We've found it as far north as Wells County, as far west as Montgomery County and as far south as Perry County."
Marestail -- also known as horseweed -- is a thin-leafed annual weed that can grow to more than 6 feet tall if undisturbed. The weed produces seed in July and August but can emerge at almost any time during the year.
"This weed is problematic for a number of reasons," Johnson said. "First and foremost, the weed's biology allows it to behave not only as a winter annual but also as a summer annual. I'm convinced that this weed can germinate and grow any time the soil is not frozen."
He said the second reason marestail is troublesome is that it already has developed resistance to ALS inhibitors and triazines.
"So we're running out of effective tools to manage the weed," Johnson said.
Aceto-lactase synthase (ALS) inhibitors kill weeds by preventing them from producing essential amino acids necessary for growth. Triazine herbicides work by interrupting a weed's photosynthesis.
Marestail's ability to reproduce poses a third challenge, Johnson said.
"The seed of this weed spreads rapidly. Because it's so adaptable, the weed easily could become a predominant weed on our landscape, much as giant ragweed, giant foxtail and velvetleaf have done," he said.
Farmers are relying too much on glyphosate-based herbicides, according to Johnson. If farmers begin noticing glyphosate-resistant marestail in their fields, one option is to utilize 2,4-D in their burndown applications next year.
"We know that 2,4-D is very effective on these weeds, so farmers need to use it in their burndown if they have marestail in their field, regardless of whether they think it is glyphosate-resistant," Johnson said.
John Woodmansee is the agriculture and natural resources educator and director of the Purdue Cooperative Extension Office in Grant County.
Originally published Wednesday, May 26, 2004
FalconWeed with Roundup immunity galloping across state
Should there be a Law?
A better way to fend off depression induced by 'Green' concern is to realize that enviro doomsayers like Stanfords Paul Ehrlich, et al were proven wrong. And still are wrong. Lay off the junk science. Your brain will clear and you will be happy again :-)
Studies have already been shown that when herbicide resistant crops are planted more herbicides are used. Afterall that's why they are made herbicide resistant.
Studies by whom? We all know that studies can be twisted to say many things. I'm sure more herbicides of certain types are used, but less of other types are used. As posted earlier, pre-emergents are used to control weeds on some non herbicide resistant crops (my personal experience is with Pinto Beans). This means that a herbicide that will keep weed from germinating is sprayed on the ground and then worked in prior to planting. This is done because Pinto Beans are particularly susceptible to many of the products used to kill broadleaf weeds (2-4D for example). The only way to control weed population is by using a pre-emergent, or to weed the fields by hand (machine cultivation isn't generally possible with pintos because the vines grow across the rows). If a herbicide resistant pinto bean was planted weeds could be killed using Roundup, 2-4D, or whatever herbicide the GM beans are resistant to as needed rather than using a pre-emergent just in case the weeds show up.
I'm sure in some instances more herbicide is used with herbicide resistant crops, but generally farmers are using some type of herbicide anyway. Herbicide resistant strains just make it possible to use cheaper, safer alternatives.
Find coupons in Greeley
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/so me_like_it_hot.html
Follow the money etc...if even some of this is true then things need to change. I hope more people read it to open some eyes
Actually, it's the Left that's opposed to fluoridation now too. See here:
For eons now, liberals have teased conservatives about one thing (well, many things, but I'm thinking of one in particular): the fluoridation of water. "Oh, you work at National Review? What do you do, write editorials denouncing the fluoridation of the water supply?" Ha, ha, ha. (Actually, we spend our time advocating separate lunch counters for Negroes.) In many quarters, "fluoridation of water" is a code word for right-wing kookery. Well, imagine my surprise -- and delight -- when I was talking recently with a dentist friend of mine and the subject of water fluoridation came up: "We still have to fight on that, all over the country," he said. "What," I said, "you mean the Birchers are still at it?" "Oh, no," he replied. "It's the Left. The opposition comes from the environmentalist, earthy-crunchy, sandal-wearing Left." Well, well, well. Who's laughin' now, baby?
If environmentalists would just buy the old-growth forest, they could accomplish their goal and do so without interfering with other people's livelihood. But that's not the accepted solution - it's easier to just find someone who owns part of that forest and try to change the law to make them do what you want them to do.
The fact that this solution is almost entirely ignored in favor of legislation makes these advocates look like "the government will save us" extremists even when they aren't.
Just trying to make the other POV clear.
-Yndrd1984
As an ex-NukeE and the son of an ex-NukeE, let me qualify that for you: the United States nuclear power industry has a good safety record overall; Chernobyl put a nasty blip in the international stats, and we'll never know the exact death count.
TMI, on the other hand, went quite well overall, aside from trashing a several hundred million dollar toy. The US has lost a few people over the years... and mostly learned from the mistakes so that it stayed only a few.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You got me there, when I said studies have show herbicide resistant crops use more herbicides I got the information from different websites, so your question spurred me to check and see just what studies drew this conclusion. I found this:
Evidence of the Magnitude and Consequences of the Roundup Ready Soybean Yield Drag from University-Based Varietal Trials in 1998"
This report reviews the results of over 8,200 university-based soybean varietal trials in 1998...
Use Trending Upward
Experience in the field in 1999 suggests strongly that use of Roundup this year will rise perhaps 15 percent to 25 percent above 1998 in terms of average pounds of Roundup applied per acre. In 1998 USDA data show that the average rate per crop year for Roundup on soybeans was 0.92 pounds and there were on average 1.3 applications per acre. In 1999, use will trend upward to perhaps 1.6 applications per acre and 1.2 pounds per acre on average.
To place this level of Roundup use in perspective, in 1998 well less than 0.5 pounds of herbicide were applied to the vast majority of soybean acres not treated with Roundup. On perhaps 15 percent to 20 percent of the acres, the rate was well under 0.25 pounds. So compared to these systems, RR soybeans are heavily herbicide dependent.
Moreover, because of weed shifts, resistance, price cuts and aggressive marketing, Roundup use is bound to rise sharply in the next few years, hastening the day when farmers will be forced to seek new solutions.
What comes next is the soybean farmer's $64,000.00 question. It remains to be seen whether any company or public research institution will come forward with answers that cut to the core of soybean weed management challenges. In the current economic and policy climate, this vital task might be left to growers themselves.
It names some of the studies or trials though not all, at more than 8,000 I understand.
The only way to control weed population is by using a pre-emergent, or to weed the fields by hand
Those aren't the only methods of weed control, there are organic methods as well. Two such methods are cover crops and mulching.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yes, but companies like Monsanto create the food crops to be sterile, and become the only source for the seed stock. Sure they can lose a little on herbicides now to have a strangle hold on food production later. I for one do not care to have the Monsantos of the world to have that kind of monopoly. Also, where human enterprise is concerned there are always trade-offs. I agree that in the long run we will probably get GM right. We can ooh and ahh about the commercial successes of GM, but what kind of damage might we be doing to the environment and ourselves while we are figuring it out? The article and comments I have seen so far do not acknowledge other viable alternatives to nuclear power and GM crops. I'd rather be dealing with the downsides to crop diversity and rotation, and wind power generation (carbon nanotube superconductors are on the way to efficiently get the power form the windfarms to the cities) than the downsides of GM and nuclear power generation AND waste management.
Introducing natural pesticides that eliminate or reduce the use of man-made chemicals that injure both the environment and the health of the people consuming the food while lowering the cost of the food
Because it's natural it's safer and won't harm the environment? That's usually what proponents of biotech usually accuse those against it of saying. As for lowering the costs of food, how does it do this?
# Increasing shelf-life, and therefore the range at which food can be reasonably delivered (this directly impacts the price of food in the third world, as getting food in place before it rots is a huge cost).
There's an easier, or at least better way to get food to people before it rots, grow the food closer to them. Better yet have them grow some of their own food. Indeed, while more and more people are moving from the country to cities, city farms, city gardens, and community gardens are also getting more and more popular.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The thing that gets to me about this whole discussion is the prevalent attitude that the Farming community is some organized evil that wants to poison everyone. That is just NOT true. Any Farmer I've ever met is more in tune with nature than most people that shop at the local whole foods store. All they want to do is grow quality products and be able to survive on the fruit of their labor, but to do that in the culture we have created they have to use herbicides.
Oh, I agree with you one this very much. Farmers are trying to live on their land and make a living wage from it. I "blame" big agrobusiness, like ConAgra, Tyson, and others for the low prices farmers get more than I do the government. Where I blame government is with all the subsidies gov gives out, and it's usually to the same companies or factory farmers. Actually that's one reason the WTO meeting fail in Cancun, back in 2003 was it? The EU, Japan, and the US wanted Third World countries to eliminate their import tarifs and to stop subsidizing their own farmers but they refused to agree to this before the First World stopped subsidizing it's own agrobusinesses. With these subsidies exporters from the EU, Japan, and US could export food to the Third World and sale it for less than it costs local farmers to grow crops.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Can you give a possible mechanism for these "unimagineable long-term digestive and other diseases" that may come from monkeying around with protein chains?
I can't give you what you're asking for, at least not now, but I can give you an example of possible health risks. It has to do with allergies, some people are allergic to Brazil nuts. It was found out that when a gene from the Brazil nut was transfered to soybeans those who were allergic to the nut were also allergic to the soybeans. Who knows what other allergins or health problems can come from GMOs?
FalconShould there be a Law?
And if you want tomatoes that taste like tomatoes - buy organic, or just grow your own. I just don't understand why the heck GM is needed to get a good-tasting fruit or vegetable. I'm surrounded by delicious vegetables that were grown organically. None of the GM foods or standard aqgricultural produce comes anywhere close in terms of quality.
I couldn't agree with you more, actually I believe most people should garden, grow at least some of their food. If a person doesn't have much tyme or space they could try a community garden, which are getting more and more popular in cities. They could also try CSA, Community Supported Agriculture. Personally, I'm planning on growing one or two different tomatos, maybe three peppers, some cauliflower, onions, maybe some carrots and/or radishes, and some herbs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I got an even better idea!!
How about we do as you say and take all the nuclear proponents and place them next to a nuclear power plant. NOW!! Lets take all the anti-nuclear people and crowd them around Coal and Oil Plants!!
PERFECT isn't it?!
The traditional way of killing weeds is by tilling. Tilling adds to erosion and releases carbon into the atmosphere. With Roundup, you can cut down on tilling, or stop tilling altogether.
I have no idea which is worse, tilling or Roundup, and it probably depends on the soil and climate, but it goes to show that these things are complicated.
And, of course, Roundup-resistant mutations will pop up. But that in itself is not an argument against Roundup as such anymore than antibiotic resistance is an argument against the use of antibiotics. It is an argument against *indiscriminate* use, but there are indeed lots of poisons that we use since a long time that are beneficial for us, used with moderation.
Nah, they lied. Or, at the most charitable, used an Enron-style accounting system.
Disclaimer: I used to work in the oil industry.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
The Australian Broadcasting Commission is airing a documentary as we speak. I'd better go and watch it. OTOH, nucular energy really is our only option, at least in the short term.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Both of which have GM modifications for sale as we speak.
You are correct, the grandparent was speaking of herbicides while I typed in pesticides but the point is still valid. Both chemicals are needed to acheive good growth and BOTH types of chemicals have been inserted into various GM crops.
I used the wrong word...I admit it....but that mistake actually strengthened my argument by pointing out how GM plants can allow you to lower the use of SEVERAL different types of chemicals.
Sorry, but as Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan is something more than "a few guilty of malfeasance."
If the very top leader of the United Nations is a crook, explain to me why anything the United Nations does should be taken seriously?
I dare you!
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Perhaps you should read Caves of Steel again. A few MASSIVE cities, yes.
"most of the land free of people"? Well, technically, yes, but it was cleared of people to make room for farmland. Pretty much every arable acre was under cultivation to feed the population in those MASSIVE cities.
What is most interesting is that the massively populated world described in "Caves of Steel" was only slightly more than our current world population (8 billion in CoS, 6 billion and change now). In fact, the MASSIVE city in the story was smaller than modern Tokyo. Actually, it was smaller than any of the dozen largest cities in the world today, and less than half the size of Tokyo....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The Chicken Little arguments about oil are actually still around - and as convincing as they ever were. We are running out of oil, it'll happen fairly soon, it's just that no-one knows quite how soon it'll happen. You haven't been paying attention.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
The Chicken Little arguments about oil are actually still around - and as convincing as they ever were. We are running out of oil, it'll happen fairly soon, it's just that no-one knows quite how soon it'll happen. You haven't been paying attention.
I never fail to be impressed with the zeal apocalypse predictions are made and how they never come true. Don't you get discouraged? Well, someday you may be right. Fairly soon, huh? As John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead."
an ill wind that blows no good
I wish that the same bill that the US Congress passed in the early 1960's that prohibited government agencies from competing with private communications satellites had instead, or in addition, prohibited government agencies from competing with private launch service companies -- even if that meant the first man on the moon was a Russian communist.
Your logic is essentially that of someone looking at the Jamestown settlement and claiming it is ridiculous to think the colonization of the New World would be largely a fiat accompli within a century.
You understand the limitations of government space programs quite well and underestimate the exponential power curves of economic growth.
Seastead this.
And the real problem isn't that we can't live after the peak oil but what it does to the economy. Recession isn't out of the question.
BTW, The Guardian recently had a nice article about the issues: The end of oil is closer than you think.
I just want to give folks a heads up. I think we should all shy away from saying things like "the environmental movement" because it's a lot like say "the open source movement." Or did I miss a memo and has everyone switched to the GPL now?
You are correct, the grandparent was speaking of herbicides while I typed in pesticides but the point is still valid. Both chemicals are needed to acheive good growth and BOTH types of chemicals have been inserted into various GM crops.
Neither pesticides nor herbicides are needed for good growth of plants. What is needed for good growth is healthy soil, which chemical inputs destroy. Organic farmers and gardeners along with those practicing permaculture, all of which are experiencing growth, are proving this. To receive certification as organic you've got to prove herbicides and pesticides amount others are not used. Fact is organics and permaculture shows no chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides are needed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
The only reason this planet can currently support 6 billion people is BECAUSE of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
You are correct, plants will grow without treatment. They grew in the wild before domestication and most species can grow there now. To "grow" plants need dirt (sometimes even very poor dirt), air, water and light.
The difference is efficiency. Organic farms produce a fraction of the output modern farms do. This at a dramactically larger man-hour investment PLUS a higher risk of food poisoning.
I am not debating the morality or wisdom of modern farming. It certainly has it's faults. A big one being monocultured crops which tend to be more seceptible to disease (organic farms have similar problems although not to the same extent) not to mention environmental issues.
Right now the choices are buy cheper food that has treatments or buy more expensive food with extra bacteria. Personally I go with the first, mainly because I am cheap, but others may decide differently.
Right now the choices are buy cheper food that has treatments or buy more expensive food with extra bacteria. Personally I go with the first, mainly because I am cheap, but others may decide differently.
Just because food is organic it doesn't mean it's not safer. While I've heard a number of reports of how some food item has caused illnesses or deaths, all of these reports have been of "conventional" foods. I haven't heard of one report of it happening with organic food. How many have died from Mad Cow Disease? Coming from another direction, all produce, whether conventional or organic should be properly washed and meats should be properly cooked. As far as costs are concerned, as in all free markets the greater the demand and the less available the higher the costs. As more farmers switch to organ the prices will drop, even as more people are buying organic. Organic may never reach parity with conventional food, then again it may. Yeah prices for conventional food is "cheap" in the US and other First World Countries in the grocery store but the costs of that food is actually higher. Well not really costs, bigAgra gets to pocket more than the amount shoppers pay, governments gives them massive subsidies. That's taxpayer dollars. I'd bet that if organic farmers got as much from subsidies as conventional farmers do, organic food would be a lot cheaper than they are. Not that I'm for it, I'm against all farm subsidies, I have yet to see anywhere in the Constitution of the USA about subsidizing farmers. I doubt even Thomas Jefferson who believe the USA should have an agricultural based economy would have put up with them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I think I'll still be alive when it becomes obvious that oil is no longer a viable energy source. (I just turned 54, so I reckon it'll be within 30 years.) Current thinking is that we're within 5 years of production declining below demand.
I used to work for an oil and gas company, and I noticed that there are very few large reserves being found on land or in shallow water these days. The reservoirs are getting smaller and more expensive to exploit.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 27, 2005
Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker says his investigation into the scandal-plagued oil-for-food program has not cleared U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of wrongdoing, despite Mr. Annan's claims to the contrary.
In an interview aired yesterday with Fox News, Mr. Volcker took direct issue with Mr. Annan's insistence that he had been exonerated by investigators probing both his role in overseeing the Iraq aid program and conflicts of interest involving a key contract awarded to a Swiss firm that employed Mr. Annan's son.
"I thought we criticized [Mr. Annan] rather severely," Mr. Volcker said of his panel's interim report, released March 29. "I would not call that an exoneration."
Asked point-blank whether Mr. Annan had been cleared of wrongdoing in the $10 billion scandal, Mr. Volcker replied, "No."
Mr. Annan has faced calls for his resignation from U.S. critics in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal.
Under the seven-year program that ended in 2003, Iraq was allowed to buy food and other humanitarian supplies through tightly controlled sales of its oil.
But the congressional Government Accountability Office found that the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein stole about $10 billion during the period, either through illegal oil sales outside the program or through corrupt deals and kickbacks within it.
Senior U.N. officials have been implicated in the scandal, and Mr. Annan himself faced harsh scrutiny when it was learned his son, Kojo Annan, had been employed by Cotecna, the Swiss firm that won a critical U.N. monitoring contract for the oil-for-food program in 1998.
Mr. Annan, who has fiercely resisted calls that he step down, immediately claimed vindication after the Volcker panel reported on March 29 that it had found "no evidence" that the secretary-general had used his influence to help Cotecna win the contract.
In a press conference that same day, Mr. Annan told reporters, "As I had always hoped and firmly believed, the inquiry has cleared me of any wrongdoing."
He has said he was "disappointed" to discover that his son had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from Cotecna for several years after leading his father to think he had cut all ties with the U.N. contractor.
Asked whether he was considering resigning from his post before his term ends next year, Mr. Annan answered emphatically, "Hell no."
The Volcker investigators faulted Mr. Annan for what they said was an "inadequate," one-day investigation into the Cotecna contract after his son's job history with the firm came to light in 1999.
Had Mr. Annan demanded a "thorough and independent investigation," the Volcker panel concluded, "it is unlikely that Cotecna would have been awarded renewals of its contracts with the United Nations."
Mr. Volcker's panel, which was commissioned by Mr. Annan last year, has come under fire with the recent resignation of two of the panel's lead investigators, Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, who left reportedly because they thought the reports released to date had gone too easy on Mr. Annan.
A spokesman for the Volcker panel said the two had left because their contracts had expired, but Mr. Parton has said in an e-mail released to the Associated Press that he left his job over "a matter of principle."
Efforts to reach the two investigators yesterday were unsuccessful.
Mr. Volcker, in the Fox News interview, said his panel "was not meant to be soft or hard" on Mr. Annan or the United Nations.
"We are out to get the facts, and I've said from the very beginning our responsibility is to follow the facts wherever they lead."
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Which is kinda why we have to stop buring coal sometime about 25 years ago, at least until a viable sequestration technology can be developed. And until that is accomplished, removing particulate matter from coal exhaust actually exacerbates the problem, so srubbers are arguabley worse than useless.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke