Sentences like these are just dumb catchphrases at best, and deliberate disingeniuity at worst. What is the "caution" you advise other than "not using them"? Me, I would say sure, go ahead and release them on a smaller island or two before you do the mainland. Beyond that, there's nothing left to test. You're either in favor of it or you aren't.
Trying to sound all wise by advocating cautious prudence, without giving any specifics whatsoever on what course of action you're in favor of (yet implying that all kinds of unrealistic bad things could happen), is weak sauce.
They aren't even listening to what they're saying any more. I repeatedly heard that Trump was dangerously transphobic after he said openly that he wouldn't have a problem if Caitlyn Jenner wanted to use the womens' restroom in one of his buildings and also saying that he's in favor of letting the states decide on transgender laws (which sure, that's not ideal, but for a Republican that's as good as it gets.) And Majiid Nawaz and Tarek Fatah get called out for being Islamophobes. And yes, a gay jew who has black boyfriends is routinely labeled a homophobic, white supremacist Nazi.
I had some faint hopes back in November that this would be a time of reflection for the left, but I guess Trump is just too good of a troll.
This is going to end badly. People rejoicing now at a "leftist version of the Tea Party" are in for a rude awakening. The American left can't out-stupid the right. They're just going to end up alienating most of the centrists and intellectuals that are usually on their side.
The truly demented part is that freckled Irish and black-haired Ashkenazi Jews aren't considered PoC, yet lilly-white East Asians and European-descended Latinos are. This is as close as it gets to an open admission that it isn't about biological race any more, but is instead about slamming anyone who is critical of separatist-type multiculturalism. And there's also probably a "fuck Israel / Jews are privileged (but somehow East Asians aren't)" tossed in there somewhere.
a single nuclear facility can be 4 times more waste than all the nuclear weapons ever detonated.
And four times [no oceanic ecosystems annihilated or significantly damaged by the radiation from atomic weapons] is going to calculate out to what now? Keeping in mind that the reactor would obviously not decay and disperse its entire mass immediately. Also, I rather doubt the toxic waste generated would be the same (proportional to energy output), as you can fairly carefully choose what the neutrons in your reactor are going to end up hitting.
I'm not saying that this is definitely the best or smartest solution; it's just that the people arguing that nuclear waste is super duper dangerous and tricky to figure out what to do with are obviously full of shit. Hell, I just replied to two people claiming that the amount of waste from a single "average sized" waste depository, or just the on-site waste at Fukushima, could cause massive global-scale extinctions under completely realistic conditions. If that turns out to be true, I'll apologize quite frankly, but there's no one on the other side of this that ever says anything sensible. Oh well. At least you quoted some numbers.
In Fukushima's case there were so many fuel rods in the collapsing structure that the plutonium fire would be an extinction level event for the northern hemisphere.
The small little thing you overlook (convenient, as you are obviously do not have effective intelligence) is that a single, average-sized nuclear fuel dump that leaks its contents into the atmosphere is quite enough to sterilize the planet with regards to higher life-forms
Citation needed. And for *you* my dear, I'll even bring back my $1000 Paypal prize if you can possibly demonstrate the truth of this ludicrous claim.
No, perfect atomization into nanoparticles and perfectly even dispersion over the Earth doesn't count. You didn't say that. You just said that if all of the contents in a single average-sized depot "leaked into the atmosphere", the entire planet would be sterilized of all higher life forms. And I call bullshit.
Why the hell not? This is the problem right here: you seem to think the modified mice will obediently do exactly as the scientists want them to.
The technique is either effective enough for a total kill on its own or it isn't. If it IS effective, then it is self-limiting (which is what that statement was referring to.) If it isn't effective, it isn't an extinction threat.
In reality there is absolutely nothing to stop the very first mouse that's released from hopping straight on a plane and wiping out the entire worldwide population.
In reality, that is an incredibly stupid statement. It's found on dozens of islands and every continent but antartica, and their ranges are interrupted on those continents by geographic barriers that are not regularly crossed. Genetic diversity can be preserved, if desired, through harvesting females even after the modified males have moved into an area.
If you want to argue "it'll be a giant pain in the ass and cost money", that's another discussion entirely. Pinning your entire argument on on the house mouse being in real danger of extinction is laughable.
For a potential world-wide ecological disaster like killing an entire species
No. No potential. Stop being a moron. The only way this could happen is if a crazed billionaire went around intentionally seeding them everywhere, on every island, in every isolated geographic pocket, and even then I strongly suspect the demented millionaire would fail. It's simply too widely distributed, and too easy to stop and reverse once we notice a problem, especially since females are guaranteed to not be carriers.
The crazed billionaire would need to buy up all the pet stores in America, too, because every single one of them carries house mice, (usually for under $2 each.) And laboratories; scientists use them all the time.
Which are that it was not self-limiting
It is obviously self-limiting. Dead mice do not breed, and there are likely hundreds of geographically separate breeding populations (not to mention caged populations) that could not possibly be struck simultaneously.
Not sure how many ways I can re-state this, so perhaps you could simply record yourself saying this aloud, put an audio player on repeat and go to bed with it. Zero danger of this species disappearing from the face of the Earth. Zero.
Cane toads are just one example among many of human mistakes, the Lenape Potato, Thalidomide, the Mosul Dam, Tacoma Narrows, the Gimli Glider, the Dust Bowl, the Four Pests, I could go on, but why? Will you realize the problem?
The problem is that there is a massively influential, hysterical, disingenuous anti-GMO lobby in the world. Your analogies are not analogous and these lofty concerns aren't mentioned or taken seriously in most other fields.
Your ideological goals here are obvious. If this was about "prudence", one of you naysaying AC asshats might have deigned to mention an alternate plan by now. Strangely, you do not. Let me get you started: are you for or against widespread 1080 campaigns?
The tone and content itself in these sorts of objections, one of "stop and consider", is pathetic. It literally sickens me that some people might be fooled into thinking this is a legitimate form of discourse. We've already stopped and considered. There's nothing more to consider. The risks and benefits and mechanisms involved here are fairly well understood, and the danger is negligible. There is only the decision of whether to bend knee to the neo-Luddites' hollow objections or to act. (Possibly deploying it on a smaller island first, sure.)
Which itself is a confluence of poor planning, ranging from the IP allocations to the human misuse that is uncontrolled.
And your logic dictates that those responsible they should have done nothing at all instead of helping to bootstrap the internet.
Not convinced this is true[1], but if so, kill 'em all. Using a mass release of more modified males, if appropriate, but also some rounds of poison baits. After they're all dead, repopulate. If you're concerned about them being genetically interesting, collect a bunch of females first (and a few males that you test-mate.)
It's not like people will be welcoming stowaways. I'm sure the docks and ships will be heavily baited. Conceivably, if house mice are a significant agricultural pest farmers might make an effort to smuggle them, which... I don't know, I guess I didn't devote a lot of time thinking about intentional smuggling into native ranges. Are mice really such a scourge that this would be likely to happen?
you should engage under "the principle of charity" with your opponents' arguments
Uh, you should see some of my other posts in this thread. This one was downright cordial. Politeness has its place but shouldn't be overused. Neither science nor politics can advance if no one ever bashes heads.
1. It's a complicated analysis. A pure random chance of mating means the modified mice always (statistically speaking) win. In practice, physical proximity from birth does count for something and mice aren't too picky about whom they fuck, particularly if they can't find anyone else. A possibility of a protracted war with periodic flareups... maybe. Highly uncertain; too dependent on specific biological factors.
Assuming that the people in charge of this shit are competent is a total non-starter. They obviously are not. They weren't sensible or competent about it even before the political pressure started messing everything up.
"This is how it must be done because that's how people are doing it" is responsible for 97% of the evil and misery and stupidity in the world today.
Lots of morons, hopefully they will learn from you and your comments.
Again, short answer: There's a shit ton of mice and despite being the same species they're not all in constant contact with each other. Climates change, rivers change course, highways are built, predators change territories, and suddenly two groups just don't have contact with each other for a year, a decade, whatever. Long enough for one population to die out (and take the gene with it) before it can contaminate everyone on the continent.
I'm also not completely convinced the gene alone is a guaranteed kill even within a given territory because the inbreeding resistance will quickly break down once the number of females begins to drop and the number of non-modified males should begin to rise as they not only have more access to their female relatives (being closer in proximity), but a non-modified male siring a litter of half-females will (in a male-dominated population) ultimately end up producing more male descendants than a modified male siring an all-male litter. In this manner, I think I could imagine the non-modifieds winning an evolutionary war even without a protective cocoon of isolation. Depends on a lot of factors though, particularly territorial behaviors, maternal behaviors, ability to track females in heat from a distance, likely effects of inbreeding depression, etc.
Your non-chalant attitude about radioactivity downplays the risks
It does not. It *compares* them. And nuclear power has been responsible for far less death and suffering even if we include Chernobyl. Without Chernobyl, we're deep into 'more people have been killed by pillow fights' territory.
A meltdown and loss of control can cause it to spread wide as it has with Fukushima.
And Fukushima has been a *financial* catastrophe. It has not been a public health one compared to the other risks we accept all the time with fossil fuels.
Radioactivity has toxicity properties in its own class
Just pure white noise. I understand that sentences like these (which are being posted by many people, not just you) are meant to be persuasive, but it's just a complete non-starter. I don't care if it's different. Toxic heavy metals can be terrifying enough, thanks. "Different" doesn't matter. Severity does. And the numbers I've seen show pretty convincingly that nuclear isn't nearly as bad.
This isn't possible, you would contaminate the ocean and kill lots of things.
Skimmed your post, and I declined to do a full read through and response after this. If you're just going to fiatly assert unintuitive bullshit like that (why would it disintegrate that fast despite a protective coating? To what extent would the particles migrate up to life-heavy parts of the ocean? How would they kill massive amounts of sea life given that 1. Almost nothing lives down there except some weird, sparse slow-growth colonies that we could avoid 2. water is rather good at absorbing several forms of radiation at a distance and 3. there's a LOT OF IT compared to amount of material the reactor is shedding ? Why didn't our multiple multi-megaton bomb tests in the pacific inflict massive ecological harm to sea life given that it was much closer to the surface and the neutron radiation must have been many orders of magnitude more intense?) with no citation or back of the napkin estimates to back it up, I think we're done here.
Even better: are you saying that this (sorry, there is no English version) is fake?
No, I'm saying it's dumb. Probably. I didn't click it, but if it's some grand and expensive nuclear materials repository then yes, that's moronic. Lock 3 MIT grad students in a room for a week and I guarantee you they will design a plant that can store everything on-site for virtually nothing (the security that guards the plant also guards the waste.) Failing that, seal it with something that's slow-degrading and dump it under 5 miles of seawater in a place where there's virtually no life at all.
The fact that people have built something moronically inefficient and pointless means... just that. The pharaohs built the pyramids; doesn't mean it helped them out in the afterlife.
People keep talking about the gene being 'self-limiting'. Don't you realize that it isn't self-limiting at all? If it were, it could never work as advertized.
If we assume that the "works as advertized" means "will eventually kill all the mice in its own" then can you see how that is very clearly self-limiting? When all the mice in an area are dead, the now-dead males will not be hoping on boats and chatting up the sexy lady mice in foreign ports, which limits (with satisfying finality) the gene's future effects. Clear enough?
When geographic barriers are taken into consideration, and given the massive distribution of the species, it seems clear enough that many subpopulations will survive through isolation and will be able to repopulate the species (and will do so with remarkable rapidity even without human assistance) once the main bulk has died off from lack of females. I suspect the kiwis will be ready to move in with an aggressive poisoning campaign to pick off the stragglers, but I also suspect that they will confine their efforts to the shores of NZ.
The faster that die-off happens, the smaller the chance is of a stowaway and the harder it is to spread over a large, continent-sized area. The slower the die-off happens, the more time humans have to react and contain it. There's no catastrophic failure mode here that I can see.
attempts to mess with nature like this have pretty much always resulted in considerable disaster that left the ecosystem a poorer place
Stupid, moronic, blithering pop-sci Jurassic Park raptorshit. I just don't even know how to respond to that sentiment politely any more, sorry. That's just profoundly dumb and ignorant on SO many levels. For starters, humans have constantly messed with nature and have had plenty of successes, including but certainly not limited to the reintroduction of species. Secondly, and more importantly, "like this" is ridiculous. The cane toad was nothing whatsoever like this.
and kindly don't look down on other people like that
I'm sorry, but if you compare hyperloops to tricycles (I'm sticking with this analogy) and insist your comparison is valid and we should therefore be wary of depressurization dangers with tricycles, I will look down on you.
Cane toads were obviously not self-limiting, nor were they ever advertised as such, nor were they or their prey genetically modified, nor was the species to be attacked a nonnative one. The analogy fails in every single way. The benefits clearly outweigh the risks and the criticism is obviously coming from a bad faith anti-GMO scaremongering place (as opposed to a sensible precautionary principle approach that recognizes that there's a lot more than one species at stake here. For example, I've yet to read anyone here suggest a massively intensive 1080 campaign as an alternative.)
The short answer is that it is but one prong of a multi-pronged campaign that involves, among other things, a hell of a lot of poisoned baits. Also, they may be releasing them in overwhelming numbers in certain locations, which is something that would not happen with accidental releases.
If you just released a small number of the modified mice on the island and did nothing else, no poison campaigns at any point or anything, I would quite expect some pockets to survive and eventually rebound.
Mercury doesnt have the radioactivity of what comes from Fission. Radioactive materials are exponentially worse because its like a little transmitter that constantly damages tissues around it.
Starting with a fiat assertion that radioactive poisons are worse than heavy metal toxicity is just juvenile. If mercury poisoning doesn't sound sexy enough to you, try reading this. One drop spilled on a hand wearing a latex glove. One drop on a gloved hand... that's all it took to condemn her to a slow and agonizing death over the next 8+ months.
Let's suppose this works as advertised, and so, almost inevitably, house mice become extinct in Eurasia as well.
This is flawed for two reasons:
1. If it's very effective then why would it be "inevitable" than an accidental release would occur OVER THE ENTIRETY OF EURASIA (which surely comprises dozens of non-interacting / non-overlapping breeding populations) as well?
A very effective and quick mouse-killer capable of that would "almost inevitably" kill off all the mice in New Zealand before any stowaways could work their evil.
On that note: stowaways also have a bit harder of a time than normal, since they will have to find a receptive female on the other end before they die (of hunger, predation or at the ripe old age of two or three years old.) Since they are femaleless, they won't be able to establish an initial population through sibling inbreeding and then expand later until they find more mice.
2. It's not at all clear what would happen if this technique were used in a low-key way without population bombing (like sterile insect technique, but genetically modified instead of sterile) or supplementary anti-mouse measures like poisons. As the numbers of females decreased, non-modified males would enjoy better long term reproductive success than their modified counterparts because a male who has a litter of half females should, in a sufficiently female-depleted environment, produce more males than a male who has a litter of all males. I haven't thought about this at length but I'm assuming that there will be an equilibrium point preventing complete extinction, particularly when geographic considerations and incest are taken into account.
Such an equilibrium will probably result in the slow extinction of the modified males, though there's a small chance something interesting could happen and (over the course of thousands of years, i.e. more than enough time for us to fix the problem) they could evolve into a different species of reproductive parasite.
It's not clear what will happen if you introduce a serious evolutional bottleneck.
and enough of them to get a sufficient degree of variation on the Y chromosome.
Nonsense. The Y chromosome has very little work to do (as does the W chromosome in female birds, presumably), and by definition it doesn't have a lot of diversity--it's passed down mostly unchanged from father to son.
Genetic diversity is a good thing because it prevents inbreeding depression through recessive genes and the like. But this is clearly inapplicable to a chromosome that offspring only ever receive one copy of. There's no real benefit to diversity there.
You'd also need to make sure that nobody releases their pet mouse with the gene after you have started reintroducing mice.
Again, these buggers last like two years. Modified males will be readily detectable due to the number of offspring mice produce. Also, very few people capture wild house mice as pets (given they are literally $1 at the pet store), let alone capture them and go on to release them later.
You're at a 9 when you should be at a 2. There's a minor risk that this will be a local annoyance in a few places. This isn't going to be a catastrophe. What IS a catastrophe is the current state of New Zealand ecology.
Fission reactors convert slightly harmful raw material into extremely dangerous products which will remain like this for hundreds/thousands of years.
White noise propaganda, i.e. the entire premise is constructed for people who've never thought critically about anything. Do you know how long toxic mercury compounds released from coal remain toxic before they degrade? If they degrade? And do you care? Toxic mercury compounds from coal burning and gold mining is lowering the IQs of hundreds of millions of children around the globe right this very second. I'd much, much rather us deal with the possibility of very slightly higher cancer rates (maybe) than live with that.
Meanwhile, the entire Earth is one giant fission reactor, orbiting a fusion reactor that puts out dangerous amounts of UV radiation. Baby Jesus doesn't weep just because we made one corner of our fission reactor spaceship a little hotter, and there are countless economical ways to deal with this waste (one of the most sensible and economical being to keep it on site. If this isn't possible with current designs, they are doing it wrong.)
Bear in mind that our great, great, great, great, etc. grandsons will have still to maintain and fix the containers storing some of the products which our plants are currently generating.
1. Spoken like someone who doesn't understand what the time value of money is. Even if that chain of custody goes on for a literally infinite amount of time and the isotopes remain permanently dangerous, you are still describing a finite sum of money (and probably a much smaller one than you're imagining) unless you assume an average of zero interest / zero economic growth.
2. If you're still not satisfied, drop it in an ocean trench and stop whining about it. It's not that bad. It really, really isn't. The world is awash with radionuclides and almost every person alive (except for the exceptionally melanistic and the arctic-dwellers) has suffered a radiation burn and laughed it off, even though some of us will go on to die from it (malignant melanoma.) Send a sub down there first to make sure there aren't any interesting tubeworms we might accidentally kill, then chuck it in. What the hell do you think is going to happen? Do you honestly believe a nuclear reactor could poison a significant portion of the ocean, let alone poison it by slowly decaying in darkness a few miles down? I mean, *strangely enough* we didn't kill off all the fish in the Pacific even though we detonated several very large bombs near the surface...
For the security objection, anyone with the tech to retrieve a very heavy thing from those depths could obtain radioactive materials some other way far more easily.
Yes, but coal is shit and oil is shit and they both kill people all the time. And also cause global warming, contaminate fish with toxic heavy metals, etc.
The argument against shitty nuclear designs is (for the sane and knowledgeable among us) thus more about cost than risk to human life, and since you're talking about already-built stuff then most of the costs are already sunk and if there's no easy migration path you're probably better off simply spending more effort on backup equipment and contingency plans. This is completely ignoring the public relations aspect of nuclear, which I've no idea how to manage and at this point probably isn't fixable.
But yeah, you've fully grasped one side of the coin: "Nuclear experts are full of shit."[1] The other side of the coin is the comparison to alternatives, and speculating how much cheaper nuclear could go if we reduced certain safety measures[2] while still keeping the death toll lower than fossil fuels, which is something virtually no one bothers doing. Nuclear being expensive remains a self-fulfilling prophesy as long as you refuse to take off the blinders.
1. This is true of most experts, but particularly experts in controversial or highly politicized fields who have grown insular, defensive and/or polarized over time.
2. Not relaxing the safety measures to prevent catastrophic "everything is now fucked" incidents like Fukushima so much as allowable radionuclide release during normal operation, perhaps allowable radiation exposure levels adjusted to end up being as dangerous as working in a coal mine, etc. Also, there's some common sense shit like designing reactors and sites that can store all of their waste on-site that no one seems to be talking about, but is perfectly doable in principle and would at the very least least nerf one very common complaint.
He flirts and hits on 10-15 year old girls regularly (often enough that there are multiple tapes of him doing it).
This may be entirely true. The problem is, after all of the lies and hyperbole and just plain talking about irrelevant bullshit, I've run out of fucks to give. I'm not running this down. Give us a link to the tape, give us a link to the authenticating source to show it's not an impersonator and give us your contact info so we can shame you if it turns out you're lying, like all of the people[1] who inserted the phrase "for consent" into Trump's last bombshell sex scandal tape.
People still don't realize just how much damage the left did to themselves over the past year, attacking senseless irrelevancies like an immune system trying to kill the Spanish flu. And it's only going to get worse, isn't it? Trump is the perfect troll, a natural troll who doesn't even realize he's doing it. All you assholes out there with your Mango Mussolinis, Cheeto Benitos, and Creamsicle Hitlers... here's another name for you, an old nickname that I promise you Trump is going to bring back:
Teflon Don.
1. Including Anderson Cooper at CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, and countless others.
Slashdot Mirror
Prudence shows grounds for caution.
Sentences like these are just dumb catchphrases at best, and deliberate disingeniuity at worst. What is the "caution" you advise other than "not using them"? Me, I would say sure, go ahead and release them on a smaller island or two before you do the mainland. Beyond that, there's nothing left to test. You're either in favor of it or you aren't.
Trying to sound all wise by advocating cautious prudence, without giving any specifics whatsoever on what course of action you're in favor of (yet implying that all kinds of unrealistic bad things could happen), is weak sauce.
They aren't even listening to what they're saying any more. I repeatedly heard that Trump was dangerously transphobic after he said openly that he wouldn't have a problem if Caitlyn Jenner wanted to use the womens' restroom in one of his buildings and also saying that he's in favor of letting the states decide on transgender laws (which sure, that's not ideal, but for a Republican that's as good as it gets.) And Majiid Nawaz and Tarek Fatah get called out for being Islamophobes. And yes, a gay jew who has black boyfriends is routinely labeled a homophobic, white supremacist Nazi.
I had some faint hopes back in November that this would be a time of reflection for the left, but I guess Trump is just too good of a troll.
This is going to end badly. People rejoicing now at a "leftist version of the Tea Party" are in for a rude awakening. The American left can't out-stupid the right. They're just going to end up alienating most of the centrists and intellectuals that are usually on their side.
Unfortunately for you, a majority of SJWs appear to be racists.
The truly demented part is that freckled Irish and black-haired Ashkenazi Jews aren't considered PoC, yet lilly-white East Asians and European-descended Latinos are. This is as close as it gets to an open admission that it isn't about biological race any more, but is instead about slamming anyone who is critical of separatist-type multiculturalism. And there's also probably a "fuck Israel / Jews are privileged (but somehow East Asians aren't)" tossed in there somewhere.
Mark Twain was obviously an anti-conservative, but trying to recruit him in defense of political correctness? Really?
a single nuclear facility can be 4 times more waste than all the nuclear weapons ever detonated.
And four times [no oceanic ecosystems annihilated or significantly damaged by the radiation from atomic weapons] is going to calculate out to what now? Keeping in mind that the reactor would obviously not decay and disperse its entire mass immediately. Also, I rather doubt the toxic waste generated would be the same (proportional to energy output), as you can fairly carefully choose what the neutrons in your reactor are going to end up hitting.
I'm not saying that this is definitely the best or smartest solution; it's just that the people arguing that nuclear waste is super duper dangerous and tricky to figure out what to do with are obviously full of shit. Hell, I just replied to two people claiming that the amount of waste from a single "average sized" waste depository, or just the on-site waste at Fukushima, could cause massive global-scale extinctions under completely realistic conditions. If that turns out to be true, I'll apologize quite frankly, but there's no one on the other side of this that ever says anything sensible. Oh well. At least you quoted some numbers.
In Fukushima's case there were so many fuel rods in the collapsing structure that the plutonium fire would be an extinction level event for the northern hemisphere.
Citation needed.
The small little thing you overlook (convenient, as you are obviously do not have effective intelligence) is that a single, average-sized nuclear fuel dump that leaks its contents into the atmosphere is quite enough to sterilize the planet with regards to higher life-forms
Citation needed. And for *you* my dear, I'll even bring back my $1000 Paypal prize if you can possibly demonstrate the truth of this ludicrous claim.
No, perfect atomization into nanoparticles and perfectly even dispersion over the Earth doesn't count. You didn't say that. You just said that if all of the contents in a single average-sized depot "leaked into the atmosphere", the entire planet would be sterilized of all higher life forms. And I call bullshit.
Why the hell not? This is the problem right here: you seem to think the modified mice will obediently do exactly as the scientists want them to.
The technique is either effective enough for a total kill on its own or it isn't. If it IS effective, then it is self-limiting (which is what that statement was referring to.) If it isn't effective, it isn't an extinction threat.
In reality there is absolutely nothing to stop the very first mouse that's released from hopping straight on a plane and wiping out the entire worldwide population.
In reality, that is an incredibly stupid statement. It's found on dozens of islands and every continent but antartica, and their ranges are interrupted on those continents by geographic barriers that are not regularly crossed. Genetic diversity can be preserved, if desired, through harvesting females even after the modified males have moved into an area.
If you want to argue "it'll be a giant pain in the ass and cost money", that's another discussion entirely. Pinning your entire argument on on the house mouse being in real danger of extinction is laughable.
For a potential world-wide ecological disaster like killing an entire species
No. No potential. Stop being a moron. The only way this could happen is if a crazed billionaire went around intentionally seeding them everywhere, on every island, in every isolated geographic pocket, and even then I strongly suspect the demented millionaire would fail. It's simply too widely distributed, and too easy to stop and reverse once we notice a problem, especially since females are guaranteed to not be carriers.
The crazed billionaire would need to buy up all the pet stores in America, too, because every single one of them carries house mice, (usually for under $2 each.) And laboratories; scientists use them all the time.
Which are that it was not self-limiting
It is obviously self-limiting. Dead mice do not breed, and there are likely hundreds of geographically separate breeding populations (not to mention caged populations) that could not possibly be struck simultaneously.
Not sure how many ways I can re-state this, so perhaps you could simply record yourself saying this aloud, put an audio player on repeat and go to bed with it. Zero danger of this species disappearing from the face of the Earth. Zero.
Cane toads are just one example among many of human mistakes, the Lenape Potato, Thalidomide, the Mosul Dam, Tacoma Narrows, the Gimli Glider, the Dust Bowl, the Four Pests, I could go on, but why? Will you realize the problem?
The problem is that there is a massively influential, hysterical, disingenuous anti-GMO lobby in the world. Your analogies are not analogous and these lofty concerns aren't mentioned or taken seriously in most other fields.
Your ideological goals here are obvious. If this was about "prudence", one of you naysaying AC asshats might have deigned to mention an alternate plan by now. Strangely, you do not. Let me get you started: are you for or against widespread 1080 campaigns?
The tone and content itself in these sorts of objections, one of "stop and consider", is pathetic. It literally sickens me that some people might be fooled into thinking this is a legitimate form of discourse. We've already stopped and considered. There's nothing more to consider. The risks and benefits and mechanisms involved here are fairly well understood, and the danger is negligible. There is only the decision of whether to bend knee to the neo-Luddites' hollow objections or to act. (Possibly deploying it on a smaller island first, sure.)
Which itself is a confluence of poor planning, ranging from the IP allocations to the human misuse that is uncontrolled.
And your logic dictates that those responsible they should have done nothing at all instead of helping to bootstrap the internet.
I don't think Shane_Optima can refrain from despising others over this
Two extraneous words there.
Every so often, another avalanche will occur.
Not convinced this is true[1], but if so, kill 'em all. Using a mass release of more modified males, if appropriate, but also some rounds of poison baits. After they're all dead, repopulate. If you're concerned about them being genetically interesting, collect a bunch of females first (and a few males that you test-mate.) It's not like people will be welcoming stowaways. I'm sure the docks and ships will be heavily baited. Conceivably, if house mice are a significant agricultural pest farmers might make an effort to smuggle them, which... I don't know, I guess I didn't devote a lot of time thinking about intentional smuggling into native ranges. Are mice really such a scourge that this would be likely to happen?
you should engage under "the principle of charity" with your opponents' arguments
Uh, you should see some of my other posts in this thread. This one was downright cordial. Politeness has its place but shouldn't be overused. Neither science nor politics can advance if no one ever bashes heads.
1. It's a complicated analysis. A pure random chance of mating means the modified mice always (statistically speaking) win. In practice, physical proximity from birth does count for something and mice aren't too picky about whom they fuck, particularly if they can't find anyone else. A possibility of a protracted war with periodic flareups... maybe. Highly uncertain; too dependent on specific biological factors.
what kind of corroborates my assumption.
Assuming that the people in charge of this shit are competent is a total non-starter. They obviously are not. They weren't sensible or competent about it even before the political pressure started messing everything up.
"This is how it must be done because that's how people are doing it" is responsible for 97% of the evil and misery and stupidity in the world today.
Lots of morons, hopefully they will learn from you and your comments.
One can dream.
Again, short answer: There's a shit ton of mice and despite being the same species they're not all in constant contact with each other. Climates change, rivers change course, highways are built, predators change territories, and suddenly two groups just don't have contact with each other for a year, a decade, whatever. Long enough for one population to die out (and take the gene with it) before it can contaminate everyone on the continent.
I'm also not completely convinced the gene alone is a guaranteed kill even within a given territory because the inbreeding resistance will quickly break down once the number of females begins to drop and the number of non-modified males should begin to rise as they not only have more access to their female relatives (being closer in proximity), but a non-modified male siring a litter of half-females will (in a male-dominated population) ultimately end up producing more male descendants than a modified male siring an all-male litter. In this manner, I think I could imagine the non-modifieds winning an evolutionary war even without a protective cocoon of isolation. Depends on a lot of factors though, particularly territorial behaviors, maternal behaviors, ability to track females in heat from a distance, likely effects of inbreeding depression, etc.
Your non-chalant attitude about radioactivity downplays the risks
It does not. It *compares* them. And nuclear power has been responsible for far less death and suffering even if we include Chernobyl. Without Chernobyl, we're deep into 'more people have been killed by pillow fights' territory.
A meltdown and loss of control can cause it to spread wide as it has with Fukushima.
And Fukushima has been a *financial* catastrophe. It has not been a public health one compared to the other risks we accept all the time with fossil fuels.
Radioactivity has toxicity properties in its own class
Just pure white noise. I understand that sentences like these (which are being posted by many people, not just you) are meant to be persuasive, but it's just a complete non-starter. I don't care if it's different. Toxic heavy metals can be terrifying enough, thanks. "Different" doesn't matter. Severity does. And the numbers I've seen show pretty convincingly that nuclear isn't nearly as bad.
This isn't possible, you would contaminate the ocean and kill lots of things.
Skimmed your post, and I declined to do a full read through and response after this. If you're just going to fiatly assert unintuitive bullshit like that (why would it disintegrate that fast despite a protective coating? To what extent would the particles migrate up to life-heavy parts of the ocean? How would they kill massive amounts of sea life given that 1. Almost nothing lives down there except some weird, sparse slow-growth colonies that we could avoid 2. water is rather good at absorbing several forms of radiation at a distance and 3. there's a LOT OF IT compared to amount of material the reactor is shedding ? Why didn't our multiple multi-megaton bomb tests in the pacific inflict massive ecological harm to sea life given that it was much closer to the surface and the neutron radiation must have been many orders of magnitude more intense?) with no citation or back of the napkin estimates to back it up, I think we're done here.
Even better: are you saying that this (sorry, there is no English version) is fake?
No, I'm saying it's dumb. Probably. I didn't click it, but if it's some grand and expensive nuclear materials repository then yes, that's moronic. Lock 3 MIT grad students in a room for a week and I guarantee you they will design a plant that can store everything on-site for virtually nothing (the security that guards the plant also guards the waste.) Failing that, seal it with something that's slow-degrading and dump it under 5 miles of seawater in a place where there's virtually no life at all.
The fact that people have built something moronically inefficient and pointless means... just that. The pharaohs built the pyramids; doesn't mean it helped them out in the afterlife.
People keep talking about the gene being 'self-limiting'. Don't you realize that it isn't self-limiting at all? If it were, it could never work as advertized.
If we assume that the "works as advertized" means "will eventually kill all the mice in its own" then can you see how that is very clearly self-limiting? When all the mice in an area are dead, the now-dead males will not be hoping on boats and chatting up the sexy lady mice in foreign ports, which limits (with satisfying finality) the gene's future effects. Clear enough?
When geographic barriers are taken into consideration, and given the massive distribution of the species, it seems clear enough that many subpopulations will survive through isolation and will be able to repopulate the species (and will do so with remarkable rapidity even without human assistance) once the main bulk has died off from lack of females. I suspect the kiwis will be ready to move in with an aggressive poisoning campaign to pick off the stragglers, but I also suspect that they will confine their efforts to the shores of NZ.
The faster that die-off happens, the smaller the chance is of a stowaway and the harder it is to spread over a large, continent-sized area. The slower the die-off happens, the more time humans have to react and contain it. There's no catastrophic failure mode here that I can see.
attempts to mess with nature like this have pretty much always resulted in considerable disaster that left the ecosystem a poorer place
Stupid, moronic, blithering pop-sci Jurassic Park raptorshit. I just don't even know how to respond to that sentiment politely any more, sorry. That's just profoundly dumb and ignorant on SO many levels. For starters, humans have constantly messed with nature and have had plenty of successes, including but certainly not limited to the reintroduction of species. Secondly, and more importantly, "like this" is ridiculous. The cane toad was nothing whatsoever like this.
and kindly don't look down on other people like that
I'm sorry, but if you compare hyperloops to tricycles (I'm sticking with this analogy) and insist your comparison is valid and we should therefore be wary of depressurization dangers with tricycles, I will look down on you.
Cane toads were obviously not self-limiting, nor were they ever advertised as such, nor were they or their prey genetically modified, nor was the species to be attacked a nonnative one. The analogy fails in every single way. The benefits clearly outweigh the risks and the criticism is obviously coming from a bad faith anti-GMO scaremongering place (as opposed to a sensible precautionary principle approach that recognizes that there's a lot more than one species at stake here. For example, I've yet to read anyone here suggest a massively intensive 1080 campaign as an alternative.)
Fuck the mice lovers. Long live Middle Earth.
The short answer is that it is but one prong of a multi-pronged campaign that involves, among other things, a hell of a lot of poisoned baits. Also, they may be releasing them in overwhelming numbers in certain locations, which is something that would not happen with accidental releases.
If you just released a small number of the modified mice on the island and did nothing else, no poison campaigns at any point or anything, I would quite expect some pockets to survive and eventually rebound.
Mercury doesnt have the radioactivity of what comes from Fission. Radioactive materials are exponentially worse because its like a little transmitter that constantly damages tissues around it.
Again with the white noise propaganda, from a 6 digit ID no less. Radioactive effects can be judged worse than toxic mercury only as a function of dose comparison (and also whether or not you prefer increased risk of cancer or degraded higher thought processes.) It isn't *inherently* worse. That's just dumb. You're full of millions of radioactive atoms right this very second. The dose makes the poison. There's even a theory that lower levels of radiation actually help make you more resistant to cancer by stimulating DNA repair mechanisms.
Starting with a fiat assertion that radioactive poisons are worse than heavy metal toxicity is just juvenile. If mercury poisoning doesn't sound sexy enough to you, try reading this. One drop spilled on a hand wearing a latex glove. One drop on a gloved hand... that's all it took to condemn her to a slow and agonizing death over the next 8+ months.
Let's suppose this works as advertised, and so, almost inevitably, house mice become extinct in Eurasia as well.
This is flawed for two reasons:
1. If it's very effective then why would it be "inevitable" than an accidental release would occur OVER THE ENTIRETY OF EURASIA (which surely comprises dozens of non-interacting / non-overlapping breeding populations) as well?
A very effective and quick mouse-killer capable of that would "almost inevitably" kill off all the mice in New Zealand before any stowaways could work their evil.
On that note: stowaways also have a bit harder of a time than normal, since they will have to find a receptive female on the other end before they die (of hunger, predation or at the ripe old age of two or three years old.) Since they are femaleless, they won't be able to establish an initial population through sibling inbreeding and then expand later until they find more mice.
2. It's not at all clear what would happen if this technique were used in a low-key way without population bombing (like sterile insect technique, but genetically modified instead of sterile) or supplementary anti-mouse measures like poisons. As the numbers of females decreased, non-modified males would enjoy better long term reproductive success than their modified counterparts because a male who has a litter of half females should, in a sufficiently female-depleted environment, produce more males than a male who has a litter of all males. I haven't thought about this at length but I'm assuming that there will be an equilibrium point preventing complete extinction, particularly when geographic considerations and incest are taken into account.
Such an equilibrium will probably result in the slow extinction of the modified males, though there's a small chance something interesting could happen and (over the course of thousands of years, i.e. more than enough time for us to fix the problem) they could evolve into a different species of reproductive parasite.
It's not clear what will happen if you introduce a serious evolutional bottleneck.
A worldwide evolutionary bottleneck is nonsense. I don't know what you could possibly be smoking to assume this would be "inevitable".
and enough of them to get a sufficient degree of variation on the Y chromosome.
Nonsense. The Y chromosome has very little work to do (as does the W chromosome in female birds, presumably), and by definition it doesn't have a lot of diversity--it's passed down mostly unchanged from father to son.
Genetic diversity is a good thing because it prevents inbreeding depression through recessive genes and the like. But this is clearly inapplicable to a chromosome that offspring only ever receive one copy of. There's no real benefit to diversity there.
You'd also need to make sure that nobody releases their pet mouse with the gene after you have started reintroducing mice.
Again, these buggers last like two years. Modified males will be readily detectable due to the number of offspring mice produce. Also, very few people capture wild house mice as pets (given they are literally $1 at the pet store), let alone capture them and go on to release them later.
You're at a 9 when you should be at a 2. There's a minor risk that this will be a local annoyance in a few places. This isn't going to be a catastrophe. What IS a catastrophe is the current state of New Zealand ecology.
Fission reactors convert slightly harmful raw material into extremely dangerous products which will remain like this for hundreds/thousands of years.
White noise propaganda, i.e. the entire premise is constructed for people who've never thought critically about anything. Do you know how long toxic mercury compounds released from coal remain toxic before they degrade? If they degrade? And do you care? Toxic mercury compounds from coal burning and gold mining is lowering the IQs of hundreds of millions of children around the globe right this very second. I'd much, much rather us deal with the possibility of very slightly higher cancer rates (maybe) than live with that.
Meanwhile, the entire Earth is one giant fission reactor, orbiting a fusion reactor that puts out dangerous amounts of UV radiation. Baby Jesus doesn't weep just because we made one corner of our fission reactor spaceship a little hotter, and there are countless economical ways to deal with this waste (one of the most sensible and economical being to keep it on site. If this isn't possible with current designs, they are doing it wrong.)
Bear in mind that our great, great, great, great, etc. grandsons will have still to maintain and fix the containers storing some of the products which our plants are currently generating.
1. Spoken like someone who doesn't understand what the time value of money is. Even if that chain of custody goes on for a literally infinite amount of time and the isotopes remain permanently dangerous, you are still describing a finite sum of money (and probably a much smaller one than you're imagining) unless you assume an average of zero interest / zero economic growth.
2. If you're still not satisfied, drop it in an ocean trench and stop whining about it. It's not that bad. It really, really isn't. The world is awash with radionuclides and almost every person alive (except for the exceptionally melanistic and the arctic-dwellers) has suffered a radiation burn and laughed it off, even though some of us will go on to die from it (malignant melanoma.) Send a sub down there first to make sure there aren't any interesting tubeworms we might accidentally kill, then chuck it in. What the hell do you think is going to happen? Do you honestly believe a nuclear reactor could poison a significant portion of the ocean, let alone poison it by slowly decaying in darkness a few miles down? I mean, *strangely enough* we didn't kill off all the fish in the Pacific even though we detonated several very large bombs near the surface...
For the security objection, anyone with the tech to retrieve a very heavy thing from those depths could obtain radioactive materials some other way far more easily.
Russia (unlike the US) accepts international law
Except for some of that pesky esoteric shit like territorial integrity or chemical weapons.
Yes, but coal is shit and oil is shit and they both kill people all the time. And also cause global warming, contaminate fish with toxic heavy metals, etc.
The argument against shitty nuclear designs is (for the sane and knowledgeable among us) thus more about cost than risk to human life, and since you're talking about already-built stuff then most of the costs are already sunk and if there's no easy migration path you're probably better off simply spending more effort on backup equipment and contingency plans. This is completely ignoring the public relations aspect of nuclear, which I've no idea how to manage and at this point probably isn't fixable.
But yeah, you've fully grasped one side of the coin: "Nuclear experts are full of shit."[1] The other side of the coin is the comparison to alternatives, and speculating how much cheaper nuclear could go if we reduced certain safety measures[2] while still keeping the death toll lower than fossil fuels, which is something virtually no one bothers doing. Nuclear being expensive remains a self-fulfilling prophesy as long as you refuse to take off the blinders.
1. This is true of most experts, but particularly experts in controversial or highly politicized fields who have grown insular, defensive and/or polarized over time.
2. Not relaxing the safety measures to prevent catastrophic "everything is now fucked" incidents like Fukushima so much as allowable radionuclide release during normal operation, perhaps allowable radiation exposure levels adjusted to end up being as dangerous as working in a coal mine, etc. Also, there's some common sense shit like designing reactors and sites that can store all of their waste on-site that no one seems to be talking about, but is perfectly doable in principle and would at the very least least nerf one very common complaint.
He flirts and hits on 10-15 year old girls regularly (often enough that there are multiple tapes of him doing it).
This may be entirely true. The problem is, after all of the lies and hyperbole and just plain talking about irrelevant bullshit, I've run out of fucks to give. I'm not running this down. Give us a link to the tape, give us a link to the authenticating source to show it's not an impersonator and give us your contact info so we can shame you if it turns out you're lying, like all of the people[1] who inserted the phrase "for consent" into Trump's last bombshell sex scandal tape.
People still don't realize just how much damage the left did to themselves over the past year, attacking senseless irrelevancies like an immune system trying to kill the Spanish flu. And it's only going to get worse, isn't it? Trump is the perfect troll, a natural troll who doesn't even realize he's doing it. All you assholes out there with your Mango Mussolinis, Cheeto Benitos, and Creamsicle Hitlers... here's another name for you, an old nickname that I promise you Trump is going to bring back:
Teflon Don.
1. Including Anderson Cooper at CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, and countless others.
I don't know, "Mango Mussolini" is kinda catchy.