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Genetically Modified Rice Makes More Food, Less Greenhouse Gas
Applehu Akbar writes: A team of researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has engineered a barley gene into rice, producing a variety that yields 50% more grain while producing 90% less of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. The new rice pulls off this trick by putting more of its energy into top growth. In countries which depend on rice as a staple, this would add up to a really large amount of increased rice and foregone methane.
... what's it taste like?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And it will probably be just as attacked as golden rice by the Anti-GMO blowhards.
Let's face it, it's a GMO which we all know is *bad*. Sometimes you have to let folks starve in order to save them from something evil.
Do you have ESP?
I'm always amused by the way science is suborned to political expediency.
Some people strongly tout the consensus regarding global warming/climate change. They commonly disparage and dismiss those who don't fully subscribe as politically-motivated ignoramuses who are anti-science. The doubters view themselves simply as more cautious, unwilling to risk large costs when it is not clear that science can clearly predict there will be benefits.
Other people strongly tout the consensus regarding the safety of GM foods. The opposition claims to be simply cautious, unwilling to risk any unknown dangers of these foods despite the enormous benefits they could provide.
Interestingly enough, very often it's the same people who support massive reductions in CO2 emissions based on a scientific consensus and despite the economic costs and the uncertain climate benefits, and yet would prefer to avoid the benefits of GM foods due to fear of unknown bad results, despite the scientific consensus.
However, I also believe people have a right to their own paranoid delusions
That depends heavily on exactly how harmful the delusion is. Some are harmless, others not so much. But public policy should be based on actual facts and real evidence.
therefore they have a right to know whether or not the food they buy contains GMO ingredients
Why do they have a "right to know"? Is there any actual evidence that they are harmful even a little bit? If the answer is yes then maybe you have an argument. But since the answer so far is an unequivocal no, despite large amounts of research into the question, then I cannot agree with you. I prefer my public policy decisions to be made on scientific facts and not made on ill informed paranoia.
If there is a market for people who want to know if a food is GMO-free then you will see labeling to that effect on some products and that is fine. Although if they are truly paranoid I'm not sure how they could ever be sure the label was actually true.
The meta protests don't make any sense and are counter productive. They should protest what they're really upset about rather than annoying me with shit that doesn't matter or that is actually good.
What you're basically said here is that the modern environmental movement is run by sophists... aka disingenuous manipulators.
That isn't a new thing. We've had sophists in various fields since always.
If the environmental movement wants to retain its credibility it should note that if it doesn't stop it... they're going to run into the stoics eventually.
And stoics vs sophists plays out the same way every time.
Learn.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
companies use all sorts of tricks to hide stuff like that. Soup companies use yeast to put MSG in Soup without reporting it (it's a by product of the yeast, which serves no other purpose).
And recently there has been the phenomenon where companies try to hide things by using confusing nomenclature. E.g., "evaporated cane juice" in products with "no added sugar." Yeah -- "cane juice" -- it must be good for you, since they call it "juice"! Well, it's just another form of sugar... processed slightly differently, but still basically sucrose.
Basically, it's just a game... try to make things sound "natural" and "wholesome" when they're basically the same old crap. Same thing goes for "brown rice syrup" used as a sweetener in many things... basically sugar. But it's "brown rice"!! (Of course, brown rice also often has elevated levels of arsenic and other things... but hey, it's "natural" and "brown," so it must be good!)
You know how we found out sodium nitrate causes cancer?
Funny that you bring nitrates up, because that's one of my favorite examples of nonsense labeling. First, we get most of our nitrates from vegetables, so worrying about the small amounts in bacon and cured meats is probably not as big a deal as people make of it. (Yes, yes... cooking does other things to the nitrates and can make them bad, but proper curing also deactivates most of them too... we could argue this all day.)
But regardless of that, my favorite misleading labeling is all the "uncured" meats you see these days: "uncured bacon," "uncured salami," etc. Yeah, except these almost always contain huge amounts of "concentrated celery juice" (or sometimes another agent) which contains more nitrates than the standard salts used traditionally to cure meat. (And no -- to those natural foods wackos -- there's no evidence to support the idea that somehow those nitrates are better for you in the concentrated celery juice... basically because "natural" celery juice has unpredictable amounts of nitrates, they need to add more of them than they would for tradition curing salts.)
People just want stuff called "natural" with "juice" and "brown X" and "natural flavors" in it. It's almost all bogus nonsense, and often you end up paying a huge premium for something that could very well be worse for you.
Moral of the story: Labels frequently don't work to tell people what's actually better. Not saying we shouldn't try to use them, but companies will weasel their way around anything to appeal to customers.
(By the way, I'm all in favor of cooking for yourself with whole ingredients, using less "processed" foods, etc. But bogus "natural foods" nonsense is bogus nonsense.)
> And no -- to those natural foods wackos
typical fucking american.
when there's a corporation that's lying to and conning consumers, you blame the victim ("those natural foods wackos") rather than the perpetrators.
you yanks need to learn that "caveat emptor" is supposed to be a warning, not a fucking business model.
and quit admiring con-men. they're scumbags. they deserve gaol, not praise.
> Moral of the story: Labels frequently don't work to tell people
> what's actually better.
this is not the fault of the victims, the consumers, the "natural foods wackos". this is the fault of the perpetrators and their lobbyists and spin-doctors who expend large amounts of time and money to ensure that labelling isn't accurate or useful to consumers.
So, it's a GMO, which means the science-deniers on the left will hate it, and it reduces greenhouse gases, so the science-deniers on the right will hate it.
Basically, this is what we need, and it hasn't got a chance of success.