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.

Comments

Re: Well, sure, but...

[kheldan]

Here's the facts of the matter:
1. GMOs are already 'out in the wild' and their altered DNA is already being spread to the rest of the biosphere due to cross-pollination.
2. Because Monsanto and companies like them will pay almost any amount of money to protect the investment in their IP, we'll never know the truth about the long-term health effects of eating GMO foods until if and when a pattern emerges.
3. Fact of the matter is: It's already too late to do anything about the situation, because of #1 and #2; genie is already out of the bottle, there is no going back, and if it ends up causing an extinction-level event in 10, 20, 50, or however many years, then we've only got ourselves to blame for it.

..and, naturally, I will now get modded down to (-1, Troll/Flamebait/whatever) for daring to state the truth, by the paid shills, GMO fanbois, rose-colored-glasses wearers, and everyone under the general category of 'what could possibly go wrong?' (aka Murphy invokers). At this point I just cross my fingers and hope that they actually did test the shit thoroughly enough to ensure that we're not going to completely fuck the whole planet and/or the Human race with it, or at the very least that I get to die of non-GMO-related natural causes before a GMO Apocalypse causes an extinction-level event.