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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.
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.
Ok let's put things into perspective for a minute:
Every time a plant breeds naturally, there are some millions of DNA nucleotides that are changed as a result of that process, and it happens in ways that are entirely unpredictable and unknown.
Yet in GMO, you're making a very deliberate change to some 200 (or less) nucleotides, and you know EXACTLY what that change does, because you've already observed its results before putting it on the market.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
All the seeds that just any jerk can buy are all these heirloom seeds.
Given that the vast majority of seeds I see in catalogs are F1 hybrids, it's unlikely that your statement is even remotely true. Most of what is sold to home gardeners is the same varieties being sold to commercial growers. Most home garden catalog vendors are in turn purchasing their seed from the big boys that supply farmers - Northup King, Stokes, and so on.
There are a few - Territorial Seed and Johnny's Selected Seeds come to mind - that to some degree also actively work on developing their own seed stocks; but even with them, most of the seed is being purchased from a handful of huge companies.
The only places I see heirlooms dominating a company's listings is in catalogs from companies specializing in open-pollinated vegetables - Seeds of Change, Abundant Life, etc.
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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). Cookie and Donut companies have for years claimed "Zero Grams Trans Fat" on products that are literally made of trans-fat by putting a token amount of wheat in there and adjusting portion sizes. You've got to make these 'warnings' really, really blunt or they just work around it.
As for labels, that's all well and good for the top 10%. What about the other 90%? You know how we found out sodium nitrate causes cancer? It wasn't the FDA. It was a farmer feeding old herring to cows and noticing they kept dying of liver cancer. The food industry doesn't exactly have the best track record....
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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.