1/3 of the food is not even eaten - it is thrown away at any of the several stages of production.
Which begs the obvious question: Why do we need GMO to feed the world?
Third, inflation-adjusted price of many commodities have been stable for a century.
Which commodities would those be? And how do you define "stable"? Maybe I've missed something, but I can't think of anything that has been stable for 100 years. Throwing "inflation-adjusted" in there helps, but inflation itself is an instability in the system.
Fourth, there is no clear correlation between population density and income per capita.
How is income relevant?
when the population grows we share the benefits of more scientists, engineers, musicians, writers, philosophers, etc.
We're already developing technology and printing words and making music much faster than humanity can keep up with it. How many more do you reckon we need?
We already invent pointless jobs for people, mostly in the public sector, because there isn't enough real honest work for everyone to do. That's in the first world, where we can afford more cruft. What happens in India and China, though, as mechanization replaces smallhold farming? What are a half-billion extra people, in each of them, going to do?
Hey, if they are so untested, why is it that all those things currently awaiting approval listed on the APHIS site are not yet on the market?
There is *some* government mandated testing before things go on the market. Everyone knows this. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many others, it's not sufficient. You can eat some arsenic and not be dead in a month -- it doesn't mean arsenic is good for you. Not to tie GM crops to arsenic, but the point is, there have been no long-term studies done on possible health impacts.
Me, I try to avoid, as much as possible, anything GM. It's getting more difficult as time goes on, especially when agribusiness is trying to legally prevent non-GMO products from advertising that fact about themselves. Wonder why they'd want to do that, if GM stuff is equivalent? Why not label, and let the market decide?
You do realize there is more to agriculture than yield, yes? [...] but railing on that makes the silly assumption that agriculture can be measured with a single number).
I know a lot of farmers. I do business with farmers. I'm related to a lot of farmers, too. There is one number that measures their success: bushels to the acre. So no, there is absolutely NOTHING more to agriculture, commercially speaking, than yield. Yield equals money, period, end of story. Seriously... where do you even get off thinking you can peddle bullshit like that?
Oh, and anyone can go look at the ag magazines; look at the advertising for GM seeds. All of it is Yield Yield Yield. That is the only thing. That is what Monsanto, Bayer, Pioneer -- all of the seed companies -- promise: yield. They may couch it in other marketing mumbo-jumbo and legalese, but the end message to the reader is yield.
Some farmers do have other personal yardsticks, like how much topsoil they replace, or how much wildlife comes back... but those aren't the kind of farmers who grow GM crops -- or even row crops at all -- they're the graziers.
I'll tell you what your line means to me: it's back-pedaling. The whole advertising campaign being pushed on the whole planet for GMO -- is "feed more people" which is yield. Now you're trying to say it's something else... and it's because the yield claims have thus far failed to... yield.
your criticism is basically 'we might lose the benefits already provided by GE crops therefore GE crops are bad' which is pretty silly,
Would you like to phrase that differently? Because it doesn't make sense at all.
not all herbicides are the same, a fact Benbrook consistently ignores (sort of like a liter of wine has more mass than a line of cocaine but less impact, which is the true measure of a substance),
Not all herbicides are the same... sure, that's a true statement. It's also completely meaningless. We were promised by the chemical companies that herbicide-tolerant crops were going to reduce herbicide usage, and that turned out to be an enormous lie.
Some of us weren't surprised by that. Why would a company put something on the market that will cost it profit over the long run? Why would you spray less chemical on a crop designed to tolerate it? You'd have to be an idiot to believe the advertising.
They knew what they were doing. How can you go on defending this?
Well, let's see. Your first link leads to a German academic paper that would cost me 40 bucks in PDF to debunk. But the summary provides a few bar graphs which immediately give the lie to the text -- at best, pesticide use is only *slightly* reduced on Bt cotton.
The third link is an advertisement, full of lies, damned lies, statistics, and weasel language. Its authors, Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of PG Economics Ltd., Dorchester, UK, trace back to here -- http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/who-we-are.php -- where it says things like: "PG Economics Limited is a specialist provider of advisory and consultancy services to agriculture and other natural resource-based industries. Our specific areas of specialisation are plant biotechnology, agricultural production systems, agricultural markets and policy." and "...on-going management consultancy and advice in the following core areas: Commercialisation of new technology/biotechnology". Translation, in case you didn't catch it: they're selling something.
The advertisement's premise is that chemical use is reduced because of herbicide-tolerant GM crops. Sounds great. Except, well... it's bullshit. A quick Google search kicks out 14 million results for "pesticide use up", this one from Reuters at the top: Pesticide use ramping up as GMO crop technology backfires: study The chemical companies are selling more herbicide than ever, because farmers didn't used to spray herbicide on crops because it would fucking kill them! Topping that off, the weeds are developing herbicide resistance... so... now what?
Things look pretty grim when you ignore a lot of facts.
There are fewer and fewer "starving third-worlders" thanks to economic development.
Citation, please? Kindly don't forget to count people on food aid.
We already know what to do to control population growth, namely economic growth. [...]people who threaten to destroy economic growth through heavy-handed and ill thought out interference in markets.
Now hold on there, bub. Nowhere did I even hint at interference in markets. But since you went there, let's talk about interference in markets.
How about agribusiness conglomerates interfering in markets? Like, say, dumping American corn in Mexico at far below the Mexican cost of production? That one thing directly caused economic failure for millions of Mexican farmers, forcing them northward for work. That's heavy-handed, don't you think?
What about corporations "privatizing" the water supplies of South American countries, charging for what was once free? How is that not interfering in the market?
What about building sweatshops in the poorest countries to take advantage of cheap labor, as unemployment and poverty grow back home? How many thousands of American unemployed does it take to rate "heavy-handed"?
What about forcing Bt cotton into India? Roundup-Ready soybeans into Brazil? Those weren't voluntary actions by peasant farmers; those were forced actions carried out by bribing government officials. That's not market interference?
I'm sorry, but you need to unplug from the propaganda mill for a moment. Free markets (a la Adam Smith), and what we know today as capitalism, are not even distant relatives. They're different species. I'm all for free markets. I think a free market would be a great idea, but I don't think any of us have ever seen one.
Anyway: the economic growth mantra is not a solution; it's a mantra. Unlimited, perpetual economic growth is no more possible than unlimited, perpetual population growth.
Of course a realist also knows that a species that uses the spectre of global climate change to manipulate markets, expand taxation, circumvent rights and priviledges previously guaranteed, and as a political power grab deserves whatever it gets.
That's where I'm aiming with this. (And well said, by the way.)
It seems to me that many otherwise decent scientists are being used by politicians and fat-cats to seize more power for themselves. Well, power and money.
Al Gore, golden sales boy of Global Warming: The Movie, is ever the humanitarian to warn us all, right? Ah, follow the money. Gore is heavily invested in companies that stand to profit from carbon 'credits', as well as other proposed regulations and taxes created in the name of Global Warming. Okay, sure, it's smart to invest in possible trends; it's business savvy, right? Gore is smart! But I'd believe him more if he wasn't poised to make millions, possibly billions, from the implementation of his proposed solutions to Global Warming. We all know that rich people get to buy laws that make them richer; let's not kid ourselves. (I dream of owning my very own Congressman someday!)
More and more are piling on, too. Global Warming has generated whole new industries, and spawned an epidemic of "greenwashing". Every business that can build a profit model on Global Warming are rushing to get in. Just look for the corporate sponsors behind any GW advertising/websites/newsvertisements/etc.
It's really the same reason I never bought in to the "War on Terror". There's too much money involved for too many people for any truth to be heard over the beating of the war drums.
The overwhelming consensus, among the educated doctors and scientists of his day, was that washing your hands was pointless. We look back now and laugh at the folly of Semmelweis's detractors. But then, he was laughed at, driven to madness, and beaten to death.
My point was simple: just because there is consensus (which may or may not be manufactured*), does not mean that the consensus is correct.
There was a little media hysteria over the possibility of a ice age, but the science supported warming over cooling at nearly 6 to 1 already by that point.
In terms of what scientists talked about with other scientists, you may be correct. However, it was not the public perception driven by the media. My (admittedly anecdotal) evidence is asking older folks what they remember about the time -- preferably people who were well mature, 30-40+ adults -- and the overwhelming majority remember hysteria about cooling/Ice Age, and not warming. Remember that most people did not seek out scientific papers; they watched TV or read newspapers. The message they heard was cooling. Accuracy of media is another story, not the point here.
This is also false, the IPCC has never been the IPGW.
The IPCC, Wikipedia reports, was founded in 1988. 1988 was not the beginning of history. (Was that before you were born? Just asking.) Here, again, media presentation comes into play... and even well past 1988 the buzz words were definitely "global warming". It is also reasonable to suppose that the UN would choose the more neutral-sounding "climate change" to avoid the appearance of presupposition.
That is not at all what climate change means. Climate change is about changes in the long-term baseline for weather, so yes if new events are possible because the average amount of rain fall or temperature (for example) has changed over the long term, then climate change may be partially responsible for a new extreme weather event. For instance if you increase the average temperature by 1 degree over the long term, you also increase the maximum reachable temperature by one degree and the minimum reachable temperature by 1 degree (simplistically, it's actually a lot more complicated that). Regardless of that change, individual events aren't general regarded as scientific proof of climate change but changes in the distribution of events can be. For instance, in a stable climate you would expect a roughly 50-50 split over time between record highs and record lows and that the number of new records overall would decrease over time. For the last 20 years or so we've been looking at around 66-33 for the high/low split, and the difference between the number of record highs and record lows is increasing, plus the number of record highs is not falling off at the rate we would expect for a stable climate.
I have read this paragraph 5 times, and it's still gobbledygook. It sounds like (correct me if I misunderstand) you are saying that climate change, whatever it may be, may or may not influence the weather. That's a pretty vague thing on which to base worldwide government policy.
As to your last phrase there, "stable climate", I would not suggest that climate is stable. Climate does indeed change -- I just oppose the alarmism, and question the tenets of what has already become a religion for many people. Heck, 12,000 years ago, there was a mile of ice over where I'm sitting right now. A mile of ice! If we reflect on what the climate was like in the Northern Hemisphere 12 millenia ago, we'd say "thank the gods for global warming!"
But as you must know, man did not cause that mile of ice to melt. Thus, factors other than (or in addition to) man affect climate. Thus, I remain skeptical -- not a denier, but not jumping on the bandwagon either. Why are the AGW people here so insistent that everyone must *believe*, or be branded a heretic?
Yes, the ancient Greeks, etc etc. I'm referring to a time, centuries *later* when the Catholic church burned people at the stake for it. Sometimes knowledge is lost, regained, suppressed, ignored. Round Earth was not by any means common knowledge for large stretches of human history.
(and I doubt your statement about citrus fruits is accurate),
The relevant story is under the header "Woodall and Lind". It took 170 years for the Royal Navy to adopt what the East India Company knew. That's the short of it; you can Google more if you wish.
always the "third world" that needs population control: you know, those foreigners, those threatening not-quite-people who we could do with fewer of.
Considering that those are the people in the parts of the world that are not able to feed themselves... that would seem to be the obvious answer, wouldn't it? You wouldn't cut off your left hand if your right foot had the gangrene, would you?
If we were to kill off the evil white man instead, who would feed the third world? They'd all starve even faster.
Do you have a better idea? Or were you just looking for someone at which to direct some sanctimonious liberal outrage?
Yes, it's an ugly prospect all around. But think of the alternative: how far can the population grow before we actually do overload the carrying capacity of the planet, and we ALL starve? 10 billion? 12 billion? All consuming more and more?
Population control is definitely bad political juju. But it's something we need to start thinking about before it's too late, don't you think?
But there's nothing *inherently* worse about GMO products than products modified through regular, boring, done-that-way-for-thousands-of-years artificial selection.
In a strictly moral or practical sense, I agree. My issue is that regular, boring seed selection has a millenia-long safety record; GM does not. We have not had enough time to ascertain any long-term effects, if there are any. We are rushing headlong into a new technology that a not insignificant amount of research shows might not be wise to rush into.
Basically, I urge caution, research, safety. And that's where most of us "anti-GMO nutjobs" actually stand.
Genetically modified food feeds over a billion people who would not otherwise be able to eat
A billion people the planet doesn't need, perhaps? What good to anyone are billions of starving, or semi-starving, humanoids who rely on food aid to continue living, and then breed more of the same?
Better birth control = no billion people starving without Monsanto raking in $Bns from seed patents.
How much of our planet's fossil fuel resources should we continue to mine for large-scale agriculture, before we have the conversation about why there are so many starving third-worlders, and what we might do to control overpopulation?
I see this assertion time after time -- that we must feed 8, 10, 15 billions of people -- without asking the question, "Does the planet need that many people?"
GMO is a non-solution to a problem that we could much more easily prevent.
The only winner in GMO is the patent holder who collects the royalties.
You cite as an example something that doesn't exist and really isn't likely to ever exist - co2 storage in underground tanks.
It is indeed hypothetical -- the idea was in Popular Science. It's a beautiful example, however, of the difference between a government/corporate solution, and a good solution. Many things from Popular Science do become reality eventually, and kindly note that I did not state it was an extant thing. Maybe someday when there are "<supposition>" or "<illustrative>" HTML tags, I'll use them to help you out.
You dismiss climate change by associating it with extremists which is pretty much the opposite of consensus.
Again, I did no such thing. Honestly, I had hoped you'd actually read, if not understand, what I wrote, because you seem bright enough. I guess that was too much to hope for. I put a not insignificant amount of time and thought into my post, and you pretty much ignored nearly all of it.
I'll not waste time conversing with someone who won't bother with anything more than torturing a straw man out of one of my sentences. Good day.
Science, by definition is open to reevaluation. Because humans are involved it isn't a perfect process.
That, sir, is exactly my point. There can be no such thing as "settled science" because of this. There was no false equivalency; I was alluding to the fact that humans are arrogant when it comes to their place in the time-line. We always think we're not only smarter than those who came before us, but it carries forward such that we think we're not going to get any smarter than we are now. *That* fallacy is why we have people saying absurd things like "settled science". (Yes, I know more politicians than scientists are saying that; it does not, however, disprove my point.)
It's like this: my old man had some rather... interesting... ideas about things. I had my science education, and I could scoff at some of his ideas. Haha, I'm superior in knowledge to my parents. Thing is, though... my kids and grandkids are going to do the same thing to me someday, unless I have already somehow achieved omniscience. Since I'm not certain I have achieved omniscience (I would know if I had, right?) I can assume, safely, that there is more yet to learn.
But if the scientific consensus on global warming is the equivalent of blood-letting with leaches then the opposition to the consensus is on the order of suffocating a patient with a stubbed toe to put him out of his misery.
It's not the equivalent, and I didn't say that. Kindly let me put my own words in my mouth. Here, I'll spell out exactly where I'm going with this:
I am strongly environmentalist, precisely because of science -- science that is of course not settled, but solid enough that I'm comfortable taking action on it.
For instance: I support, very strongly, alternative energy sources. Why? This is simple math. We live on a planet of a finite size, therefore, oil, gas, and coal must be of finite supply. Also, air pollution is an obvious factor -- more so in the developing world. Car exhaust, say. While the battle rages over the danger of C02, I already know that CO, NOx, and HC emissions are unhealthy. Duh, right? So THAT is why I follow biofuel research.
Coal plant emissions are unhealthy. Soot, acid rain, etc... we've been through this, and we have people working on it. Dear gods, look at China. You have to swim through the smog. It doesn't take much scientific data to prove to me that it's not a good thing. It's not that I see solar power as a panacea, but I'd call it a step in the right direction. I'm torn on nuclear. It rarely goes wrong, but when it does... hoo boy.
I live where a lot of fracking for natural gas goes on. There is debate on how much harm it causes, but again, it's not a pure process by any stretch. We use gas to heat our houses. Could we do something different? Sure. Passive solar design for newer houses. I have seen houses in the Colorado mountains heated through entire winters, with nights down to -30F, without fuel -- only passive solar heat and thermal mass and good insulation. This is scientifically sound stuff here, as well as economically.
I hope these examples will illustrate my position. There are many things, easy and hard, that we can and should be doing, to improve our environment. If (and I do mean, IF) AGW people are right, then I have already taken steps in the right direction. If not, I've still done the right thing. Simply put, I refuse to waste time arguing over whether more CO2 is bad, or whether polar bears are drowning, or whatever other ManBearPig lunacy the Algores of the world are spouting. I'm working with what we DO know. And unlike Algore, I'm not flying around in a private jet or spending a small country's GDP to heat my house.
I plant trees, not because Global Warming, but because I like trees for shade, bird habitat... it also turns out that trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Nifty, eh? I drive a fuel efficient car, not because Climate Change, but because I'm chea
The AGW bigots are kind of like Jehova's Witnesses. JWs, several times throughout their history, asserted the end of the world was coming. When the end failed to materialize -- each time -- the church would sidestep their inaccuracy with things like "well, we have 'new light' now." Or they'd flatly deny they ever said the end was coming, instead claiming they only meant a change of some sort was coming... and oh look, some kind of change did happen!
So how does this apply? When I was a wee lad, the "settled" climate science was that Earth was cooling, and we were careening head-on into a new Ice Age that was going to destroy us all. It wasn't just a tale, either -- they had mountains of data and the most sophisticated models the computers of the day allowed.
Then, as the science progressed a bit (and as the Coming Ice Age had failed to raise the requisite amount of alarm in the populace) it was decided that no, we're not cooling -- we're warming. In point of fact, the phenomenon was called "Global Warming". Pretty specific, that. Not, "we're not sure what's happening but it ain't good," but "it's definitely getting, and will continue to get, warmer, and we're all gonna fuckin' die!"
Then, as science, data collection, and computer modeling advanced yet further... "Global Warming" has been called into question. So much so, in fact, that many of the climate scientists of today will not use the phrase "Global Warming", but have chosen the trademark of "Climate Change". It's back to "we're not sure what's going on but we're all gonna die!" "Climate Change" is a delightfully vague yet alarming turn of phrase, and a stroke of genius.
So now, every time something odd, unusual, rare, extreme, or even normal happens with weather, it can be attributed to "Climate Change" -- because something changed, see? Climate Change equals different weather, so something in weather that didn't happen last year or the year before is now because of Climate Change.
This, kiddos, is what we call circular reasoning.
Go ahead, Climate Change bigots. Mod me down. I've got karma to burn. I could post AC, but I'm thumbing my nose at you.
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Um... it's summer at the South Pole... so what could possibly be the point of your comparison?
Which begs the obvious question: Why do we need GMO to feed the world?
Which commodities would those be? And how do you define "stable"? Maybe I've missed something, but I can't think of anything that has been stable for 100 years. Throwing "inflation-adjusted" in there helps, but inflation itself is an instability in the system.
How is income relevant?
We're already developing technology and printing words and making music much faster than humanity can keep up with it. How many more do you reckon we need?
We already invent pointless jobs for people, mostly in the public sector, because there isn't enough real honest work for everyone to do. That's in the first world, where we can afford more cruft. What happens in India and China, though, as mechanization replaces smallhold farming? What are a half-billion extra people, in each of them, going to do?
There is *some* government mandated testing before things go on the market. Everyone knows this. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many others, it's not sufficient. You can eat some arsenic and not be dead in a month -- it doesn't mean arsenic is good for you. Not to tie GM crops to arsenic, but the point is, there have been no long-term studies done on possible health impacts.
Me, I try to avoid, as much as possible, anything GM. It's getting more difficult as time goes on, especially when agribusiness is trying to legally prevent non-GMO products from advertising that fact about themselves. Wonder why they'd want to do that, if GM stuff is equivalent? Why not label, and let the market decide?
I know a lot of farmers. I do business with farmers. I'm related to a lot of farmers, too. There is one number that measures their success: bushels to the acre. So no, there is absolutely NOTHING more to agriculture, commercially speaking, than yield. Yield equals money, period, end of story. Seriously... where do you even get off thinking you can peddle bullshit like that?
Oh, and anyone can go look at the ag magazines; look at the advertising for GM seeds. All of it is Yield Yield Yield. That is the only thing. That is what Monsanto, Bayer, Pioneer -- all of the seed companies -- promise: yield. They may couch it in other marketing mumbo-jumbo and legalese, but the end message to the reader is yield.
Some farmers do have other personal yardsticks, like how much topsoil they replace, or how much wildlife comes back... but those aren't the kind of farmers who grow GM crops -- or even row crops at all -- they're the graziers.
I'll tell you what your line means to me: it's back-pedaling. The whole advertising campaign being pushed on the whole planet for GMO -- is "feed more people" which is yield. Now you're trying to say it's something else... and it's because the yield claims have thus far failed to... yield.
Would you like to phrase that differently? Because it doesn't make sense at all.
Not all herbicides are the same... sure, that's a true statement. It's also completely meaningless. We were promised by the chemical companies that herbicide-tolerant crops were going to reduce herbicide usage, and that turned out to be an enormous lie.
Some of us weren't surprised by that. Why would a company put something on the market that will cost it profit over the long run? Why would you spray less chemical on a crop designed to tolerate it? You'd have to be an idiot to believe the advertising.
They knew what they were doing. How can you go on defending this?
Not "wrong". Untested, unproven, with insufficient research on safety. Also, GM crops have thus far failed to deliver on the higher yield claims: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html
Well, let's see. Your first link leads to a German academic paper that would cost me 40 bucks in PDF to debunk. But the summary provides a few bar graphs which immediately give the lie to the text -- at best, pesticide use is only *slightly* reduced on Bt cotton.
The third link is an advertisement, full of lies, damned lies, statistics, and weasel language. Its authors, Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of
PG Economics Ltd., Dorchester, UK, trace back to here -- http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/who-we-are.php -- where it says things like: "PG Economics Limited is a specialist provider of advisory and consultancy services to agriculture and other natural resource-based industries. Our specific areas of specialisation are plant biotechnology, agricultural production systems, agricultural markets and policy." and "...on-going management consultancy and advice in the following core areas: Commercialisation of new technology/biotechnology". Translation, in case you didn't catch it: they're selling something.
The advertisement's premise is that chemical use is reduced because of herbicide-tolerant GM crops. Sounds great. Except, well... it's bullshit. A quick Google search kicks out 14 million results for "pesticide use up", this one from Reuters at the top: Pesticide use ramping up as GMO crop technology backfires: study The chemical companies are selling more herbicide than ever, because farmers didn't used to spray herbicide on crops because it would fucking kill them! Topping that off, the weeds are developing herbicide resistance... so... now what?
Things look pretty grim when you ignore a lot of facts.
Try harder next time; I've got plenty more ammo.
There are fewer and fewer "starving third-worlders" thanks to economic development.
Citation, please? Kindly don't forget to count people on food aid.
We already know what to do to control population growth, namely economic growth. [...]people who threaten to destroy economic growth through heavy-handed and ill thought out interference in markets.
Now hold on there, bub. Nowhere did I even hint at interference in markets. But since you went there, let's talk about interference in markets.
How about agribusiness conglomerates interfering in markets? Like, say, dumping American corn in Mexico at far below the Mexican cost of production? That one thing directly caused economic failure for millions of Mexican farmers, forcing them northward for work. That's heavy-handed, don't you think?
What about corporations "privatizing" the water supplies of South American countries, charging for what was once free? How is that not interfering in the market?
What about building sweatshops in the poorest countries to take advantage of cheap labor, as unemployment and poverty grow back home? How many thousands of American unemployed does it take to rate "heavy-handed"?
What about forcing Bt cotton into India? Roundup-Ready soybeans into Brazil? Those weren't voluntary actions by peasant farmers; those were forced actions carried out by bribing government officials. That's not market interference?
I'm sorry, but you need to unplug from the propaganda mill for a moment. Free markets (a la Adam Smith), and what we know today as capitalism, are not even distant relatives. They're different species. I'm all for free markets. I think a free market would be a great idea, but I don't think any of us have ever seen one.
Anyway: the economic growth mantra is not a solution; it's a mantra. Unlimited, perpetual economic growth is no more possible than unlimited, perpetual population growth.
Of course a realist also knows that a species that uses the spectre of global climate change to manipulate markets, expand taxation, circumvent rights and priviledges previously guaranteed, and as a political power grab deserves whatever it gets.
That's where I'm aiming with this. (And well said, by the way.)
It seems to me that many otherwise decent scientists are being used by politicians and fat-cats to seize more power for themselves. Well, power and money.
Al Gore, golden sales boy of Global Warming: The Movie, is ever the humanitarian to warn us all, right? Ah, follow the money. Gore is heavily invested in companies that stand to profit from carbon 'credits', as well as other proposed regulations and taxes created in the name of Global Warming. Okay, sure, it's smart to invest in possible trends; it's business savvy, right? Gore is smart! But I'd believe him more if he wasn't poised to make millions, possibly billions, from the implementation of his proposed solutions to Global Warming. We all know that rich people get to buy laws that make them richer; let's not kid ourselves. (I dream of owning my very own Congressman someday!)
More and more are piling on, too. Global Warming has generated whole new industries, and spawned an epidemic of "greenwashing". Every business that can build a profit model on Global Warming are rushing to get in. Just look for the corporate sponsors behind any GW advertising/websites/newsvertisements/etc.
It's really the same reason I never bought in to the "War on Terror". There's too much money involved for too many people for any truth to be heard over the beating of the war drums.
Not to mention, the Howard Families to lead the way.... ;-)
Because soon the children will be too fat and lazy for joysticks and buttons.
*With the exception of a few obtuse contrarians that you can find in any human endeavor.
Like Semmelweis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
The overwhelming consensus, among the educated doctors and scientists of his day, was that washing your hands was pointless. We look back now and laugh at the folly of Semmelweis's detractors. But then, he was laughed at, driven to madness, and beaten to death.
My point was simple: just because there is consensus (which may or may not be manufactured*), does not mean that the consensus is correct.
Hence:
Consensus != Fact
* See Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"
There was a little media hysteria over the possibility of a ice age, but the science supported warming over cooling at nearly 6 to 1 already by that point.
In terms of what scientists talked about with other scientists, you may be correct. However, it was not the public perception driven by the media. My (admittedly anecdotal) evidence is asking older folks what they remember about the time -- preferably people who were well mature, 30-40+ adults -- and the overwhelming majority remember hysteria about cooling/Ice Age, and not warming. Remember that most people did not seek out scientific papers; they watched TV or read newspapers. The message they heard was cooling. Accuracy of media is another story, not the point here.
This is also false, the IPCC has never been the IPGW.
The IPCC, Wikipedia reports, was founded in 1988. 1988 was not the beginning of history. (Was that before you were born? Just asking.) Here, again, media presentation comes into play... and even well past 1988 the buzz words were definitely "global warming". It is also reasonable to suppose that the UN would choose the more neutral-sounding "climate change" to avoid the appearance of presupposition.
That is not at all what climate change means. Climate change is about changes in the long-term baseline for weather, so yes if new events are possible because the average amount of rain fall or temperature (for example) has changed over the long term, then climate change may be partially responsible for a new extreme weather event. For instance if you increase the average temperature by 1 degree over the long term, you also increase the maximum reachable temperature by one degree and the minimum reachable temperature by 1 degree (simplistically, it's actually a lot more complicated that). Regardless of that change, individual events aren't general regarded as scientific proof of climate change but changes in the distribution of events can be. For instance, in a stable climate you would expect a roughly 50-50 split over time between record highs and record lows and that the number of new records overall would decrease over time. For the last 20 years or so we've been looking at around 66-33 for the high/low split, and the difference between the number of record highs and record lows is increasing, plus the number of record highs is not falling off at the rate we would expect for a stable climate.
I have read this paragraph 5 times, and it's still gobbledygook. It sounds like (correct me if I misunderstand) you are saying that climate change, whatever it may be, may or may not influence the weather. That's a pretty vague thing on which to base worldwide government policy.
As to your last phrase there, "stable climate", I would not suggest that climate is stable. Climate does indeed change -- I just oppose the alarmism, and question the tenets of what has already become a religion for many people. Heck, 12,000 years ago, there was a mile of ice over where I'm sitting right now. A mile of ice! If we reflect on what the climate was like in the Northern Hemisphere 12 millenia ago, we'd say "thank the gods for global warming!"
But as you must know, man did not cause that mile of ice to melt. Thus, factors other than (or in addition to) man affect climate. Thus, I remain skeptical -- not a denier, but not jumping on the bandwagon either. Why are the AGW people here so insistent that everyone must *believe*, or be branded a heretic?
Yes, the ancient Greeks, etc etc. I'm referring to a time, centuries *later* when the Catholic church burned people at the stake for it. Sometimes knowledge is lost, regained, suppressed, ignored. Round Earth was not by any means common knowledge for large stretches of human history.
(and I doubt your statement about citrus fruits is accurate),
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/125350-overview
The relevant story is under the header "Woodall and Lind". It took 170 years for the Royal Navy to adopt what the East India Company knew. That's the short of it; you can Google more if you wish.
always the "third world" that needs population control: you know, those foreigners, those threatening not-quite-people who we could do with fewer of.
Considering that those are the people in the parts of the world that are not able to feed themselves... that would seem to be the obvious answer, wouldn't it? You wouldn't cut off your left hand if your right foot had the gangrene, would you?
If we were to kill off the evil white man instead, who would feed the third world? They'd all starve even faster.
Do you have a better idea? Or were you just looking for someone at which to direct some sanctimonious liberal outrage?
Yes, it's an ugly prospect all around. But think of the alternative: how far can the population grow before we actually do overload the carrying capacity of the planet, and we ALL starve? 10 billion? 12 billion? All consuming more and more?
Population control is definitely bad political juju. But it's something we need to start thinking about before it's too late, don't you think?
But there's nothing *inherently* worse about GMO products than products modified through regular, boring, done-that-way-for-thousands-of-years artificial selection.
In a strictly moral or practical sense, I agree. My issue is that regular, boring seed selection has a millenia-long safety record; GM does not. We have not had enough time to ascertain any long-term effects, if there are any. We are rushing headlong into a new technology that a not insignificant amount of research shows might not be wise to rush into.
Basically, I urge caution, research, safety. And that's where most of us "anti-GMO nutjobs" actually stand.
They come out of the woodwork any time the letters "G" "M" and "O" appear together in a story.
Ad hominem might apply if I directly accused someone of being a shill, which I may yet do, but have not so far.
Meanwhile, put your outrage on hold until I give you something to be outraged about. Judging by your prior commentary, it won't take long.
Genetically modified food feeds over a billion people who would not otherwise be able to eat
A billion people the planet doesn't need, perhaps? What good to anyone are billions of starving, or semi-starving, humanoids who rely on food aid to continue living, and then breed more of the same?
Better birth control = no billion people starving without Monsanto raking in $Bns from seed patents.
How much of our planet's fossil fuel resources should we continue to mine for large-scale agriculture, before we have the conversation about why there are so many starving third-worlders, and what we might do to control overpopulation?
I see this assertion time after time -- that we must feed 8, 10, 15 billions of people -- without asking the question, "Does the planet need that many people?"
GMO is a non-solution to a problem that we could much more easily prevent.
The only winner in GMO is the patent holder who collects the royalties.
Cue the Monsanto shills in 3...2...
You cite as an example something that doesn't exist and really isn't likely to ever exist - co2 storage in underground tanks.
It is indeed hypothetical -- the idea was in Popular Science. It's a beautiful example, however, of the difference between a government/corporate solution, and a good solution. Many things from Popular Science do become reality eventually, and kindly note that I did not state it was an extant thing. Maybe someday when there are "<supposition>" or "<illustrative>" HTML tags, I'll use them to help you out.
You dismiss climate change by associating it with extremists which is pretty much the opposite of consensus.
Again, I did no such thing. Honestly, I had hoped you'd actually read, if not understand, what I wrote, because you seem bright enough. I guess that was too much to hope for. I put a not insignificant amount of time and thought into my post, and you pretty much ignored nearly all of it.
I'll not waste time conversing with someone who won't bother with anything more than torturing a straw man out of one of my sentences. Good day.
Oh well, at least they know there's a Constitution, and that it governs a Republic (not a democracy) unlike Republicans and Democrats.
Kinda sad all around.
Yeah... aren't they supposed to be made from vegans?
Science, by definition is open to reevaluation. Because humans are involved it isn't a perfect process.
That, sir, is exactly my point. There can be no such thing as "settled science" because of this. There was no false equivalency; I was alluding to the fact that humans are arrogant when it comes to their place in the time-line. We always think we're not only smarter than those who came before us, but it carries forward such that we think we're not going to get any smarter than we are now. *That* fallacy is why we have people saying absurd things like "settled science". (Yes, I know more politicians than scientists are saying that; it does not, however, disprove my point.)
It's like this: my old man had some rather... interesting... ideas about things. I had my science education, and I could scoff at some of his ideas. Haha, I'm superior in knowledge to my parents. Thing is, though... my kids and grandkids are going to do the same thing to me someday, unless I have already somehow achieved omniscience. Since I'm not certain I have achieved omniscience (I would know if I had, right?) I can assume, safely, that there is more yet to learn.
But if the scientific consensus on global warming is the equivalent of blood-letting with leaches then the opposition to the consensus is on the order of suffocating a patient with a stubbed toe to put him out of his misery.
It's not the equivalent, and I didn't say that. Kindly let me put my own words in my mouth. Here, I'll spell out exactly where I'm going with this:
I am strongly environmentalist, precisely because of science -- science that is of course not settled, but solid enough that I'm comfortable taking action on it.
For instance: I support, very strongly, alternative energy sources. Why? This is simple math. We live on a planet of a finite size, therefore, oil, gas, and coal must be of finite supply. Also, air pollution is an obvious factor -- more so in the developing world. Car exhaust, say. While the battle rages over the danger of C02, I already know that CO, NOx, and HC emissions are unhealthy. Duh, right? So THAT is why I follow biofuel research.
Coal plant emissions are unhealthy. Soot, acid rain, etc... we've been through this, and we have people working on it. Dear gods, look at China. You have to swim through the smog. It doesn't take much scientific data to prove to me that it's not a good thing. It's not that I see solar power as a panacea, but I'd call it a step in the right direction. I'm torn on nuclear. It rarely goes wrong, but when it does... hoo boy.
I live where a lot of fracking for natural gas goes on. There is debate on how much harm it causes, but again, it's not a pure process by any stretch. We use gas to heat our houses. Could we do something different? Sure. Passive solar design for newer houses. I have seen houses in the Colorado mountains heated through entire winters, with nights down to -30F, without fuel -- only passive solar heat and thermal mass and good insulation. This is scientifically sound stuff here, as well as economically.
I hope these examples will illustrate my position. There are many things, easy and hard, that we can and should be doing, to improve our environment. If (and I do mean, IF) AGW people are right, then I have already taken steps in the right direction. If not, I've still done the right thing. Simply put, I refuse to waste time arguing over whether more CO2 is bad, or whether polar bears are drowning, or whatever other ManBearPig lunacy the Algores of the world are spouting. I'm working with what we DO know. And unlike Algore, I'm not flying around in a private jet or spending a small country's GDP to heat my house.
I plant trees, not because Global Warming, but because I like trees for shade, bird habitat... it also turns out that trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Nifty, eh? I drive a fuel efficient car, not because Climate Change, but because I'm chea
Then take *that* output and encrypt it, right?
Manual cipher on paper -> airgapped computer -> whatever heavy duty digital encryption
I admit I don't know a lot about how encryption works. Could someone who does, explain why this would or would not be effective?
If only people could discern the difference between propaganda and fact.
The few thousand years of recorded history we have are not encouraging, though.
The AGW bigots are kind of like Jehova's Witnesses. JWs, several times throughout their history, asserted the end of the world was coming. When the end failed to materialize -- each time -- the church would sidestep their inaccuracy with things like "well, we have 'new light' now." Or they'd flatly deny they ever said the end was coming, instead claiming they only meant a change of some sort was coming... and oh look, some kind of change did happen!
So how does this apply? When I was a wee lad, the "settled" climate science was that Earth was cooling, and we were careening head-on into a new Ice Age that was going to destroy us all. It wasn't just a tale, either -- they had mountains of data and the most sophisticated models the computers of the day allowed.
Then, as the science progressed a bit (and as the Coming Ice Age had failed to raise the requisite amount of alarm in the populace) it was decided that no, we're not cooling -- we're warming. In point of fact, the phenomenon was called "Global Warming". Pretty specific, that. Not, "we're not sure what's happening but it ain't good," but "it's definitely getting, and will continue to get, warmer, and we're all gonna fuckin' die!"
Then, as science, data collection, and computer modeling advanced yet further... "Global Warming" has been called into question. So much so, in fact, that many of the climate scientists of today will not use the phrase "Global Warming", but have chosen the trademark of "Climate Change". It's back to "we're not sure what's going on but we're all gonna die!" "Climate Change" is a delightfully vague yet alarming turn of phrase, and a stroke of genius.
So now, every time something odd, unusual, rare, extreme, or even normal happens with weather, it can be attributed to "Climate Change" -- because something changed, see? Climate Change equals different weather, so something in weather that didn't happen last year or the year before is now because of Climate Change.
This, kiddos, is what we call circular reasoning.
Go ahead, Climate Change bigots. Mod me down. I've got karma to burn. I could post AC, but I'm thumbing my nose at you.