It's a shame with all this hostility towards environmentalists.
Greenpeace is not an environmentalist group.
But use cleaner and more expensive energy?! Fuck no!
Right there, that's your problem. Better has to come at a cost. It's like a religion, and you have to pay for your sin. We could have nuclear, but nope. We have to convince people to live, as you put it, 'simpler and deeper,' change their lifestyles to match what you find aesthetic, rather than improve the means of production.
Cheaper cars, lower fuel expenses, no cable bill, no expensive cell phone bills because I don't have a smart phone, cheaper electricity because I don't have a TV in every room or any other energy sucking toys.
Found that guy. Okay, you like that, fine, do your own thing. Acknowledge that not everyone wants to live the same way.
I walk to local stores - they're less than half a mile away. See, being "green" also saves money on exercise. Why pay hundreds of dollars and get locked into a shitty gym contract when walking and carrying packages is great exercise?
Unless you've been working all day, you're tired, it could rain at any moment, you have more to carry than you can, ect. Then your activity becomes a privilege, which as it turns out is one of the main criticisms of the pseudo-environmentalism movement. Ever lived like that by necessity? I have, it sucks.
things would clean up on their own because we would spend time doing important things instead of wasting it on shit doing shit.
And of course, you know what the important things are. Have you ever considered that, maybe, the reason people dismiss environmentalists is because so many people who take up the mantle of 'environmentalist' are only using pseudo-environmentalist ideas to justify their own sanctimonious self righteous superiority. A different approach is needed.
Yep. I see them blatantly lying about my field (plant science) all the time, sometimes even attacking research, and their efforts have helped set it back by at least a decade. I have a very hard time trusting them about anything else when they so readily disregard facts to drum up controversy.
No. Let's just say you have someone who you know lies, and lies often. The last thing the said was a blatant lie, the thing they said before that was also a lie. Now they make a new claim. Do you run out and put time and effort investigating the claim, or just assume that, given the history of falsehoods and deceit, this is also likely a lie. Greenpeace lies. A lot.
Now, you're right, what they say here could be truthful, they could very well be right, but I see no reason to assume this is anything but yet another hit piece in a long line of deception, and as such, I'm going to default to making the safe assumption that this is not true. It's a boy who cried wolf situation. I'm not going to evaluate every questionable claim biased and frequently unscientific organizations like Greenpeace make. If someone with an ounce of credibility supports these claims, then maybe this will be worth thinking about. In the meantime, it's just Greenpeace being Greenpeace.
Check out the Breadfruit Institute for a good group on that topic. Breadfruit is highly productive and can be grown in some of the poorest most food insecure regions on the globe.
That's close, but not entirely true. Some apple trees are triploid, like Gravenstein and Jonagold, but most are diploid, so not really polyploid. Apple seeds will grow just fine, but the reason they are grafted is because they are very heterozygous, and as such, any seedlings will not have the same genetic characteristics as the original parent apples, and in all likelihood will be inferior. When people breed apple trees, they can go through thousands of seedlings only to find one tree with superior fruit. By grafting, you keep the superior genetics of an exceptional fruit, like Honeycrisp. Most fruit crops are reproduced asexually in some way for this reason, with the exception of cantaloupe, watermelon, and papaya, which have much shorter lifespans, and as such are much easier to work with. Trees are also grafted because, by using mature plant material, the tree will come to bearing faster, and you can select rootstock that offers dwarfing and disease resistance traits, which are useful.
You are right that he was against grafting though, proclaiming that it was wicked, damaging, and against the will of God. Unfortunately, judging by the modern opposition to GMOs, humanity did not learn anything from his silliness. Today, we have opposition to the Arctic apples, which hopefully will be released soon, which have the relatively simple trait of non-browning. Anti-GMO people claim they are worried that GMO apples will cross pollinate other apples, despite the simple fact that apples are asexually propagated. That's right, these folks don't know the first, most basic things about apple biology, but damn it they're going to pound in their stupid point anyway no matter how wrong they are. Ridiculous.
I can get wanting to protect something, but legally blocking something is just clinging to the past. I'll bet there used to be dozens of small buggy whip makers throughout France; too bad for them. It wasn't big business that killed them, it was technological progress. Now, if the people want to preserve the small shops, that's fine, they should shop at the small local shops. I sure do. I don't want to see video stores go extinct due to Netflix so I shop at mine, and I don't want to see book stores go away so I shop at my local bookstore. Just bought a book from them to start reading soon. But I'm not about to block anyone else from doing anything. The justification is understandable, but not sufficient. If the people of France really do not want free shipping, they can continue to shop at the small stores. If they do not, well, then I guess that shows what they really want.
Corporate issues have no bearing on this. Newspapers, radio stations, and television stations are also for profit entities but forcing them to remove articles or broadcasts is also censorship, or does their corporate nature make them fair game too? This is actively obfuscating public information to censor it.
So to you freedom is telling other people what they can and can't say and what public information they can and can't access because the truth could be abused? From where I'm standing it looks like you're trying to tell me that censorship is freedom, and it sounds more than a little Orwellian to me.
Is Google actually being compensate for this though? Perhaps the EU should start their own Ministry to censor what people should just forget and cut out the middleman.
Wow, for a second there I thought you were going to cite something other than the infamous Schmeiser case where the guy knowingly and intentionally saved seed he knew was cross pollinated. Accidental cross pollination does not equal knowing reproduction. That's like saying you can get sued for home movies and citing someone who got in trouble for recording inside a theater. You left out the most critical detail.
Simply put, they can't, and the result is suing people for storing seed.
Offhand I would speculate that, if forever reason, a farmer was trying to age seed to decrease the viability for whatever unknown reason they could simply check some records and find out if the numbers add up. It's an odd situation you've come up with, perhaps you could throw me a shred of something beyond blatant speculation.
Remember, if it happens just once, you can no longer say it doesn't happen.
Like I said, if someone has a better idea than the current system, I'm listening. Or are you implying the commonly spread falsehood that people get sued for mere cross pollination?
Breeding is a type of genetic modification, one of many (yes, there are more than two). You just change more genes and in a generally less predictable way.
That's an ignorant argument though. It's like telling a doctor not to bandage a slit wrist because it doesn't fix the underlying problem. No one is saying these types of things should be permanent, they're just to keep people healthy until economic development can provide a better diet. Somehow I doubt the people this would help are going to play the nirvana fallacy. Your cost claim is ridiculous. It costs a lot less to make a GMO than to fix a shitload of socioeconomic and political problems. As for your corporate issue, this is developed by a university funded by a charity. Perhaps you should RFTA before making assumptions. You've just justified the GP's post.
I mean, have hippies even started protesting this?
Not yet, far as I know, but since every GMO that has ever made it close to commercialization has been protested, I don't see why this should be any different.
And it IS a fucking strawman argument.
It would be if there were not first world activists who actually think that the poorest people on earth should just go buy some healthier foods. There is a reason why people who have made it their life's work to combat starvation and malnutrition are taking the route of Golden Rice and other biofortified crops (and it must also be said that the non-GMO biofortified crops escape all the controversy, almost as if the arguments against the GMO ones have nothing to do with their actual properties and everything to do with an irrational bias against their origin)
There are concerns about whether it will affect the fertility of the soil.
No, there aren't. Genetic engineering is not a black box. I don't see how beta carotene production is going to impact the soil. Sounds like a bullshit claim some clueless anti-GMO activist pulled out the usual place. I highly doubt this rice will be any different than any other rice, on average, in terms of soil impact.
ignore the lunatic fringes in any controversey
If we do that then there is no controversy. This is like creationism, or vaccine rejection. You can reject certain phylogeny, or take issue with particular vaccines, and you can make valid criticisms about certain aspects of some GMOs, but the movements as a whole are without merit.
You jest, but many people believe that modern day crops are natural. Strawberries, wheat, broccoli, corn, all man made, via genetic alteration and hybridization. Many more crops are what a chihuahua is to a wolf. If conventional breeding were invented today, it would be outlawed.
If your goal is helping people become food secure and self sufficient, a reliance on vitamin pills doesn't exactly help in the long term. As an aside, I find it funny how many people (not necessarily the parent poster, but a lot) who claim to support food security issues are quick to talk about keeping people in developing countries dependent on aid once the topic of GMOs that could help them comes up.
Because the argument that GMOs are these evil terrible things that you should totally give us your money to fight is going to be a harder sell once you've got news stories talking about how they are saving the lives of children whose only crime was being born in the wrong part of the world. Golden Rice is a bigdeal to many in the anti-GMO movement, which just goes to show you how little the 'not anti-biotech just anti-Monsanto' line goes.
I'd like to hear your practical alternative then. Plant breeding and genetic engineering are not easy, and the deregulation process for GMO crops can cost millions of dollars. If you're volunteering to foot the bill, I'm sure we can do away with plant patents. In the meantime, at the end of this year Monsanto's first GE soybean patent expires, which is how I thought patents were supposed to work (as in, develop something, recoup R&D costs and make profit, invention falls to the public). Copyright my be fucked to high heaven, but this is looking like it works to me, so perhaps you could elucidate the flaw you perceive here.
Also, even non-GMO crops can be patented. Plant breeders and genetic engineers, surprisingly, don't like to work for free. Various stonefruit hybrids (pluots, nectaplums, and plumcots) are patented because they took decades of hard work to develop. The Honeycrisp apple, one of the most popular apples, recently went off patent. The royalties from it went to support the breeding program which later produced my favorite apple variety, the SnowSweet apple (the world might not have that apple without patents). There are patented pineapples (like the Mele Kalima variety, which is one of the most amazing fruits I've ever had) and pawpaws (like the Shenandoah variety) developed by very small operations simply to protect the developer's work. A lot of the ornamental and floriculture industry uses plant patents. So tell me, if if those of us in plant improvement cannot patent our work, what do you propose as a fair system for all?
And one of those is suspected of making a comeback in a related form.
Thanks to people who oppose vaccinations. Boy, I love it when stupidity is used to justify itself. Criticizing that is like looking at the state of the chicken pox vaccine (you remember chicken pox right?) and saying 'Anti-vaxxers' kids still get it, therefore the vaccine is bad because it doesn't work if you don't use it!'
When a large multi-national company appears to be trying to force their produce down your throat
Thing is, they're not. They are no more trying to force anything down your throat than those who developed any other crop via any other method. Does that mean that someone is forcing tomatoes with extra disease resistance genes down anyone's throat? The problem is activist groups relying on consumer ignorance to make it seem that way. Sure, they've done their share of wrong to justify some sentiment against them, but with regards to this issue I have a hard time faulting Monsanto for being the target of a lie.
1-mandatory labeling of all GMO (and drugs)
There is no justification for that other than to make GMOs look somehow different and dangerous, both of which are incorrect. A fact taken out of context is nothing but a deception. And contrary to the weasel words of the anti-GMO activists, this is not the same as 'hiding' information. That information is freely available, that one is too lazy to educate themselves does not imply it merits labeling.
2- treat GMO as a new crop, not as a minor variant of an existing one that doesn't require testing for safety.
Then you would be treating them incorrectly, and also, they do require safety testing, more than any other crop before they are released.
Then why did the opposition to GMO crops start with the Flavr Savr tomato, developed by a small company? Why is there opposition to Golden Rice, Honeysweet plum, Rainbow papaya, Arctic Apple, low GI wheat, aphid repelling wheat, and other GE crops developed by small companies, universities, NGOs, and government bodies? If anti-corporatism was the actual concenr, and not just a line of bullshit used to make the anti-science seem somewhat justifiable, then those non-big corporation alternatives GMO would be embraced, not opposed with the same if not more furor. This is not the case. The anti-corporation angle is nothing but a weak excuse to justify a belief that has no basis in reality.
I've never heard of your 'crippled plant' claim and have no idea how that would even be biologically possible to be a result of the transgenes presently used in corn.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a shame with all this hostility towards environmentalists.
Greenpeace is not an environmentalist group.
But use cleaner and more expensive energy?! Fuck no!
Right there, that's your problem. Better has to come at a cost. It's like a religion, and you have to pay for your sin. We could have nuclear, but nope. We have to convince people to live, as you put it, 'simpler and deeper,' change their lifestyles to match what you find aesthetic, rather than improve the means of production.
Cheaper cars, lower fuel expenses, no cable bill, no expensive cell phone bills because I don't have a smart phone, cheaper electricity because I don't have a TV in every room or any other energy sucking toys.
Found that guy. Okay, you like that, fine, do your own thing. Acknowledge that not everyone wants to live the same way.
I walk to local stores - they're less than half a mile away. See, being "green" also saves money on exercise. Why pay hundreds of dollars and get locked into a shitty gym contract when walking and carrying packages is great exercise?
Unless you've been working all day, you're tired, it could rain at any moment, you have more to carry than you can, ect. Then your activity becomes a privilege, which as it turns out is one of the main criticisms of the pseudo-environmentalism movement. Ever lived like that by necessity? I have, it sucks.
things would clean up on their own because we would spend time doing important things instead of wasting it on shit doing shit.
And of course, you know what the important things are. Have you ever considered that, maybe, the reason people dismiss environmentalists is because so many people who take up the mantle of 'environmentalist' are only using pseudo-environmentalist ideas to justify their own sanctimonious self righteous superiority. A different approach is needed.
Yep. I see them blatantly lying about my field (plant science) all the time, sometimes even attacking research, and their efforts have helped set it back by at least a decade. I have a very hard time trusting them about anything else when they so readily disregard facts to drum up controversy.
Do you realize how stupid that is?
No. Let's just say you have someone who you know lies, and lies often. The last thing the said was a blatant lie, the thing they said before that was also a lie. Now they make a new claim. Do you run out and put time and effort investigating the claim, or just assume that, given the history of falsehoods and deceit, this is also likely a lie. Greenpeace lies. A lot.
Now, you're right, what they say here could be truthful, they could very well be right, but I see no reason to assume this is anything but yet another hit piece in a long line of deception, and as such, I'm going to default to making the safe assumption that this is not true. It's a boy who cried wolf situation. I'm not going to evaluate every questionable claim biased and frequently unscientific organizations like Greenpeace make. If someone with an ounce of credibility supports these claims, then maybe this will be worth thinking about. In the meantime, it's just Greenpeace being Greenpeace.
Check out the Breadfruit Institute for a good group on that topic. Breadfruit is highly productive and can be grown in some of the poorest most food insecure regions on the globe.
That's close, but not entirely true. Some apple trees are triploid, like Gravenstein and Jonagold, but most are diploid, so not really polyploid. Apple seeds will grow just fine, but the reason they are grafted is because they are very heterozygous, and as such, any seedlings will not have the same genetic characteristics as the original parent apples, and in all likelihood will be inferior. When people breed apple trees, they can go through thousands of seedlings only to find one tree with superior fruit. By grafting, you keep the superior genetics of an exceptional fruit, like Honeycrisp. Most fruit crops are reproduced asexually in some way for this reason, with the exception of cantaloupe, watermelon, and papaya, which have much shorter lifespans, and as such are much easier to work with. Trees are also grafted because, by using mature plant material, the tree will come to bearing faster, and you can select rootstock that offers dwarfing and disease resistance traits, which are useful.
You are right that he was against grafting though, proclaiming that it was wicked, damaging, and against the will of God. Unfortunately, judging by the modern opposition to GMOs, humanity did not learn anything from his silliness. Today, we have opposition to the Arctic apples, which hopefully will be released soon, which have the relatively simple trait of non-browning. Anti-GMO people claim they are worried that GMO apples will cross pollinate other apples, despite the simple fact that apples are asexually propagated. That's right, these folks don't know the first, most basic things about apple biology, but damn it they're going to pound in their stupid point anyway no matter how wrong they are. Ridiculous.
Maybe they'll split the difference and go with Vader Did Nothing Wrong.
I can get wanting to protect something, but legally blocking something is just clinging to the past. I'll bet there used to be dozens of small buggy whip makers throughout France; too bad for them. It wasn't big business that killed them, it was technological progress. Now, if the people want to preserve the small shops, that's fine, they should shop at the small local shops. I sure do. I don't want to see video stores go extinct due to Netflix so I shop at mine, and I don't want to see book stores go away so I shop at my local bookstore. Just bought a book from them to start reading soon. But I'm not about to block anyone else from doing anything. The justification is understandable, but not sufficient. If the people of France really do not want free shipping, they can continue to shop at the small stores. If they do not, well, then I guess that shows what they really want.
Corporate issues have no bearing on this. Newspapers, radio stations, and television stations are also for profit entities but forcing them to remove articles or broadcasts is also censorship, or does their corporate nature make them fair game too? This is actively obfuscating public information to censor it.
So to you freedom is telling other people what they can and can't say and what public information they can and can't access because the truth could be abused? From where I'm standing it looks like you're trying to tell me that censorship is freedom, and it sounds more than a little Orwellian to me.
Yeah, I also noticed that. It surprised me how many Europeans were actually defending censorship. Are they surprised that censorship ends poorly?
Is Google actually being compensate for this though? Perhaps the EU should start their own Ministry to censor what people should just forget and cut out the middleman.
Called it, in case you check old comments and had any doubt this, like all GMOs, would also be targeted.
Wow, for a second there I thought you were going to cite something other than the infamous Schmeiser case where the guy knowingly and intentionally saved seed he knew was cross pollinated. Accidental cross pollination does not equal knowing reproduction. That's like saying you can get sued for home movies and citing someone who got in trouble for recording inside a theater. You left out the most critical detail.
Simply put, they can't, and the result is suing people for storing seed.
Offhand I would speculate that, if forever reason, a farmer was trying to age seed to decrease the viability for whatever unknown reason they could simply check some records and find out if the numbers add up. It's an odd situation you've come up with, perhaps you could throw me a shred of something beyond blatant speculation.
Remember, if it happens just once, you can no longer say it doesn't happen.
Okay then, prove that it's happened once.
Like I said, if someone has a better idea than the current system, I'm listening. Or are you implying the commonly spread falsehood that people get sued for mere cross pollination?
Breeding is a type of genetic modification, one of many (yes, there are more than two). You just change more genes and in a generally less predictable way.
That's an ignorant argument though. It's like telling a doctor not to bandage a slit wrist because it doesn't fix the underlying problem. No one is saying these types of things should be permanent, they're just to keep people healthy until economic development can provide a better diet. Somehow I doubt the people this would help are going to play the nirvana fallacy. Your cost claim is ridiculous. It costs a lot less to make a GMO than to fix a shitload of socioeconomic and political problems. As for your corporate issue, this is developed by a university funded by a charity. Perhaps you should RFTA before making assumptions. You've just justified the GP's post.
I mean, have hippies even started protesting this?
Not yet, far as I know, but since every GMO that has ever made it close to commercialization has been protested, I don't see why this should be any different.
And it IS a fucking strawman argument.
It would be if there were not first world activists who actually think that the poorest people on earth should just go buy some healthier foods. There is a reason why people who have made it their life's work to combat starvation and malnutrition are taking the route of Golden Rice and other biofortified crops (and it must also be said that the non-GMO biofortified crops escape all the controversy, almost as if the arguments against the GMO ones have nothing to do with their actual properties and everything to do with an irrational bias against their origin)
There are concerns about whether it will affect the fertility of the soil.
No, there aren't. Genetic engineering is not a black box. I don't see how beta carotene production is going to impact the soil. Sounds like a bullshit claim some clueless anti-GMO activist pulled out the usual place. I highly doubt this rice will be any different than any other rice, on average, in terms of soil impact.
ignore the lunatic fringes in any controversey
If we do that then there is no controversy. This is like creationism, or vaccine rejection. You can reject certain phylogeny, or take issue with particular vaccines, and you can make valid criticisms about certain aspects of some GMOs, but the movements as a whole are without merit.
You jest, but many people believe that modern day crops are natural. Strawberries, wheat, broccoli, corn, all man made, via genetic alteration and hybridization. Many more crops are what a chihuahua is to a wolf. If conventional breeding were invented today, it would be outlawed.
If your goal is helping people become food secure and self sufficient, a reliance on vitamin pills doesn't exactly help in the long term. As an aside, I find it funny how many people (not necessarily the parent poster, but a lot) who claim to support food security issues are quick to talk about keeping people in developing countries dependent on aid once the topic of GMOs that could help them comes up.
Because the argument that GMOs are these evil terrible things that you should totally give us your money to fight is going to be a harder sell once you've got news stories talking about how they are saving the lives of children whose only crime was being born in the wrong part of the world. Golden Rice is a big deal to many in the anti-GMO movement, which just goes to show you how little the 'not anti-biotech just anti-Monsanto' line goes.
I'd like to hear your practical alternative then. Plant breeding and genetic engineering are not easy, and the deregulation process for GMO crops can cost millions of dollars. If you're volunteering to foot the bill, I'm sure we can do away with plant patents. In the meantime, at the end of this year Monsanto's first GE soybean patent expires, which is how I thought patents were supposed to work (as in, develop something, recoup R&D costs and make profit, invention falls to the public). Copyright my be fucked to high heaven, but this is looking like it works to me, so perhaps you could elucidate the flaw you perceive here.
Also, even non-GMO crops can be patented. Plant breeders and genetic engineers, surprisingly, don't like to work for free. Various stonefruit hybrids (pluots, nectaplums, and plumcots) are patented because they took decades of hard work to develop. The Honeycrisp apple, one of the most popular apples, recently went off patent. The royalties from it went to support the breeding program which later produced my favorite apple variety, the SnowSweet apple (the world might not have that apple without patents). There are patented pineapples (like the Mele Kalima variety, which is one of the most amazing fruits I've ever had) and pawpaws (like the Shenandoah variety) developed by very small operations simply to protect the developer's work. A lot of the ornamental and floriculture industry uses plant patents. So tell me, if if those of us in plant improvement cannot patent our work, what do you propose as a fair system for all?
And one of those is suspected of making a comeback in a related form.
Thanks to people who oppose vaccinations. Boy, I love it when stupidity is used to justify itself. Criticizing that is like looking at the state of the chicken pox vaccine (you remember chicken pox right?) and saying 'Anti-vaxxers' kids still get it, therefore the vaccine is bad because it doesn't work if you don't use it!'
When a large multi-national company appears to be trying to force their produce down your throat
Thing is, they're not. They are no more trying to force anything down your throat than those who developed any other crop via any other method. Does that mean that someone is forcing tomatoes with extra disease resistance genes down anyone's throat? The problem is activist groups relying on consumer ignorance to make it seem that way. Sure, they've done their share of wrong to justify some sentiment against them, but with regards to this issue I have a hard time faulting Monsanto for being the target of a lie.
1-mandatory labeling of all GMO (and drugs)
There is no justification for that other than to make GMOs look somehow different and dangerous, both of which are incorrect. A fact taken out of context is nothing but a deception. And contrary to the weasel words of the anti-GMO activists, this is not the same as 'hiding' information. That information is freely available, that one is too lazy to educate themselves does not imply it merits labeling.
2- treat GMO as a new crop, not as a minor variant of an existing one that doesn't require testing for safety.
Then you would be treating them incorrectly, and also, they do require safety testing, more than any other crop before they are released.
the real concern is anti-big greedy corps
Then why did the opposition to GMO crops start with the Flavr Savr tomato, developed by a small company? Why is there opposition to Golden Rice, Honeysweet plum, Rainbow papaya, Arctic Apple, low GI wheat, aphid repelling wheat, and other GE crops developed by small companies, universities, NGOs, and government bodies? If anti-corporatism was the actual concenr, and not just a line of bullshit used to make the anti-science seem somewhat justifiable, then those non-big corporation alternatives GMO would be embraced, not opposed with the same if not more furor. This is not the case. The anti-corporation angle is nothing but a weak excuse to justify a belief that has no basis in reality.
I've never heard of your 'crippled plant' claim and have no idea how that would even be biologically possible to be a result of the transgenes presently used in corn.