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China Third Country To Be Hit By 'Brown Tide'
ananyo writes "The species of alga that causes 'brown tides' in the United States and South Africa is also to blame for massive blooms along China's east coast on the Bohai Sea, researchers have found. The finding could be the first step to tackling the problem. It is the fourth consecutive year the country has been hit by the bloom (Slashdot's story on the 2010 bloom), with the situation worsening each time the bloom returns."
PROTIP: it turns out it's super easy to defeat your opponents when they don't exist and you put words in their imaginary mouths. Later, we'll show you how to have an entirely fair and balanced "debate" internally within your own post without ever having to worry about learning something new in the process -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves or you might accidentally learn something!
I don't think it's being a Luddite to be concerned with the safety of something that is engineered, whether it be organic or a high-speed train.
Especially since in the U.S. there has been an awful lot of lobbying aimed to MAKE SURE that extensive long-term tests don't have to happen before these products go to market.
Even regular hybridization can occasionally cause bad side-effects and we've even seen this lately.
Being skeptical and wanting more information is scientific, not being a Luddite.
Here's a little advice, for free - when arguing your point, don't advocate for exterminating populations. . . . . It doesn't generally draw that many supporters.
"I don't think it's being a Luddite to be concerned with the safety of something that is engineered,"
There's being concerned the proper tests have been done and then there's dismissing something based on nothing more than dogma. Greenpeace et al are firmly in the latter category.
"Even regular hybridization can occasionally cause bad side-effects and we've even seen this lately."
Life isn't risk free, you mitigate as much as you can. You're just using the standard issue "It went bad once so never use it again" luddite argument. Sorry, but if everyone thought like that we'd still be living in mud huts and riding around on horses. ... Actually no , we'd be walking , because someone once fell off a horse and hurt themselves , best stay away from the dangerous beasts.
In general fear of GM crops seem to parallel fear of cell phone radiation.
Yeah, it's true that there's theoretical ways that either of them could hurt you, but most people who are afraid don't understand much about either topic. It's rare to find someone who even understands how regulators test that GMOs are safe for human consumption, and if you ask them how the testing process should be improved, they can't answer. Then if you ask them to do a cost/benefit analysis for GMO crops, they just stare at you like lost rabbits.
Another similar topic is irradiated food. Blanket fear of radiation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
GM corn has been a disaster?
Now, Monsanto's lawyers in combination with patent law have been a disaster -- I'll grant you that. But the technology itself is safe (see above, and see the safety tests on Bacillus thuringensis bacteria themselves, which farmers used to put directly on their corn) and has prevented tons and tons of insecticide from being sprayed on crops.
I was a field hand in a study of Bt cotton vs. conventional cotton. The instructions to farmers were "farm both of these like you normally would, and ignore us -- we're going to come in and count bugs once in a while". The conventional field was a wasteland, since farmers had to spray to kill caterpillars, and then spray again to kill all the things that the predators who're now dead would have eaten.
The Bt field had bugs (and other insects, but mostly bugs) all over it, happily eating each other and eating pests -- especially aphids. Aphids are a notable critter here, since they're resistant to most insecticides but are a tasty snack for all sorts of predators.
Commercial food interests may be greedy and evil but GM food should be evaluated on its own merits.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I'll translate your post for you, using a quote from George Carlin:
"The planet is fine, the people are fucked"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
That isn't entirely true. No doubt that there are a LOT of people think as you describe. My problem with GM crops is that they are patentable, and it isn't a criminal offense to put a kill gene in the crops. We have seen huge problems with food monoculture where a single disease wipes out enough of a countries food staples that there is wide spread famine. The kill genes mean that the corporations with the patents of the food can artificially create these kinds of situations.
The situation with GM crops almost sounds like it is coming right out of a James Bond story. My problems with GM crops isn't that I believe they are inherently safe. Heck, I would love to be able to buy strawberries that were deliciously sweet, the size of a watermelon, and stayed fresh for a month without refrigeration. My problem with GM crops is that in our legal climate, I don't trust corporations not to manipulate food availability to increase profits. I also would not put it past them to engineer the food to induce greater consumption.
It isn't the scientific issues that worry me. It is the legal ones.