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Anti-GMO Activists Slow Scientists Breeding a CO2-Reducing Superplant (thebulletin.org)
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls it "a plant that could save civilization, if we let it." Slashdot reader meckdevil writes:
A "super chickpea plant" now in development could remove huge amounts of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and fix it in the soil, greatly diminishing the impacts of climate change (not to mention producing large amounts of tasty hummus). But fear of anti-GMO activists has so far deterred her from using the CRISPR gene-editing tool to speed work on the plant.
The effort is led by Joanne Chory, director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences -- who according to the article will make much slower progress without CRISPR. "Even with advanced breeding techniques, Chory estimates that developing a super plant in this fashion would take around 10 years..."
"She estimates that if 5 percent of the world's cropland, approximately the total area of Egypt, were devoted to such super plants, they could capture about 50 percent of current global carbon dioxide emissions."
The effort is led by Joanne Chory, director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences -- who according to the article will make much slower progress without CRISPR. "Even with advanced breeding techniques, Chory estimates that developing a super plant in this fashion would take around 10 years..."
"She estimates that if 5 percent of the world's cropland, approximately the total area of Egypt, were devoted to such super plants, they could capture about 50 percent of current global carbon dioxide emissions."
Sorry, but activists like this don't give a fuck what method you're using. They just hate GMO full stop. The idea that activists are stopping you creating this magical solution to climate change because they're focused on use of CRISPR reeks of bullshit.
It's probably the worst excuse I've ever heard for over-promising, and under-delivering.
In true slashdot fashion, I comment before reading the article.
If the carbon gets fixed into the soil, how does that change the soil chemistry? It is something that can be done for a couple of years, and then the soil is saturated and can't support life any more? Does it deep down with the water and poison the ground water? I hope that it would be something that could be useful, and not an egypt-sized carbon landfill.
Think of all the worst things we've imagined about science.
Nature has done all those most horrible things on a scale millions of times larger already.
Nature kills millions of people with radiation each year.
Nature makes self-replicating killing machines each day.
Nature has groups killing sub-groups within a species for random non-reasons, leading to extinctions in each era of life.
All the worst-case scenarios science is accused of slippery-sloping down have happened with nature, and WILL happen with nature over time.
Science lets us pick and choose the parts of nature we want to see more of. Yeah - we're still stumbling on nasty notes as part of that remix - but the sound of science so far has been amazingly good so far overall.
I'd completely understand if what they were protesting is corporate manipulation of science - that's worthy of protest and debate. But protesting the science itself? As in, our foundational shared understanding of nature? Might as well protest language.
Ryan Fenton
Looks like this is long term:
All plants produce suberin, a waxy, water-repellent, carbon-rich compound, also known as cork, that protects roots and resists decay. Coastal grasses make a lot of it to keep water out of their roots. It is one of the most stable substances around, persisting in soil for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. One of Chory’s goals is to develop perennial plants that make more suberin than existing varieties.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Yes, I know the original poster was being foolish, but it is a little more complex than this also.
When plants die, some of their carbon can compost to soil, some of their carbon is released as methane, etc and some of it as CO2 if they get burnt.
So, the benefits are much more complex.
One interesting factor that is rarely talked about is the grasses actually absorb and compost large amounts of CO2, by some estimates more than common trees.
People get all 'green' about trees, and you ignore grass, most likely because trees are 'big' and 'nice' and grass is just too common?
Then they tend to want more treesplanted, however they also often plant nice pretty SLOW GROWING trees... which contribute very very little.
Could this 'super plant' contribute more? sure, DEPENDING ON HOW IT WAS USED. It is common to burn the straw left over from processing chickpeas..
That would reduce its contribution to very little.
The larger question is not about how it is created, how will suitable care be taken about evaluation if its actual environmental impact.
I guess it is just due to ignorance about science that most people don't understand that GM, CRISPR, etc. just mimic the same processes that nature does trillions of times a day. Lots of mutations and viruses take genes from one species and insert them into others. Nature does this in a random manner, not targeted like scientists but the method is the same.
I think some people fear some mad scientist creating a super-organism which will take over. That's hard to do. Nature does routinely create more hardy organisms through the same mechanism and humans have created a few hardy organisms.
The most dangerous are superbugs created in industrial animal farms by bathing animals in antibiotics. No GM required. Nature just does its thing.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Unless the bastards are made of asbestos, I think there's a pretty simple countermeasure.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Don't those activists have faith that scientists can accurately predict all possible interactions in the real world from their models for decades ahead? Do they not understand that using the geometric progression to propagate extremely unlikely changes in genetic material is not a cause for concern because the models are so good they do not allow any room for errors?
Btw you do not work in biotech, do you? I would like to think that you advocate more GMOs for purely ethical reasons and not because you stand to gain from GMOs in any way.
Well that settles then, I for one totally trust that they would never intentionally (or even unintentionally) claim something was intentional instead of inadvertent.
The first link says this...
Climate contrarians accidentally confirm the 97% global warming consensus A new paper by GWPF's Richard Tol accidentally confirms the results of last year's 97% global warming consensus study"
The second is paywalled
The third link ...
Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.
etc etc