faetal on 22/3/2015 at 18:24
No, you've been throwing out statements like "I used to know a guy who said that animals on GMO foods had reduced fertility".
Just like I've been saying "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" essentially, which is also well supported by the section in bold.
It's not yet known just how much we may need GMO tech and people with insufficient training to know saying GMO is bad because Monsanto are evil (or variations thereof) are not doing anything worthwhile. It's like you above saying you aren't convinced of its efficacy or if enough testing has been done - you are aren't a toxicologist, a geneticist, a food safety expert or an ecologist. Since you can't tell the difference between a well designed study, or systematic review detailing the efficacy and/or safety of GMO in general and are instead seeking out papers which say what you want them to say, I'm not sure you're likely to be convinced.
Right now, GMO is a burgeoning technology. It may well improve to the point where it can be of great help to humanity, or it may end up being not effective enough to warrant the extra cost. But you can be damn sure that the issue will be decided empirically and not by a few plucky internet amateurs using confirmation bias having read the abstracts of a few papers which were found off the back of loaded search terms.
Muzman on 23/3/2015 at 04:43
It isn't really a war on free expression. Not in spirit anyway (which is perhaps a sign of lacking self awareness). A lot of it, as mentioned, is to do with allowing people who can't speak in the hue and cry to actually do so. Which sometimes works. But, yeah, it's this fascinating mix of post-modernist/post-structuralist notions of the (all)power of language and PTSD therapy and support 'culture' (kinda amazing that has a culture).
I think it's very easy to overrate the supposed danger of these movements and write about how disappointing today's youth are. Almost too easy. The rarefied environments these things spring up in are unlikely to spread with any success. It goes in the pile of university student thought adventures to reshape society and those not given to thinking the Nihilists or SR party are likely to spring up at any moment shouldn't be too concerned.
That said, the really convoluted examples you can find (read about or even run into) are really quite something. You've got people who seem, for all the world to be agoraphobic or manic depressives then furiously intending to shape all environments to their comfort. Which at times seems completely impossible. It's like we all become livery to an impossibly high strung royalty that doesn't actually exist.
heywood on 24/3/2015 at 15:41
faetal - I understand your point about efficiency gained by using GMOs helping to mitigate a global food shortage. But realistically speaking, that shortage is coming with or without GMOs. Even though the current population growth trend has been closer to linear than exponential over the last 50 years, we're still headed for a big crash. Agricultural efficiency improvements can delay it, but they will also make it more painful when it does happen. That is why I think it is better to adopt sustainable agriculture policies and absorb their cost impact now. When food scarcity becomes a global crisis, the countries that are most self sufficient and sustainable will fare the best.
demagogue on 24/3/2015 at 16:51
Since I studied this I can answer a few things, at least what was happening 10 years ago when it was part of my work. GMOs for developed and developing countries ate really two different issues. They're different technology, markets, conditions, economics, and politics.
Speaking of the ones for developing countries, some GMOs make certain crops, eg, grow in soils with higher salinity or with less water, but just because you can add certain crops to supply doesn't mean demand necessaily grows. But I think the important ones are really the modifications of already staple crops for nutritional value, eg, the GMO adding vitamin A to rice, since there's a deficiency in green vegetables in some regions where rice is a staple. So it's not dealing with food shortage per se, but making sure people are getting the nutrients they need with the food they're already eating.
There's socio-economic challenges or risks, eg, you don't want imported GMOs displacing native agriculture, and some of the early adopters of GMOs in developing countries are big farming conglomerates that don't really help poor rural farmers, and if anything make it harder for them to compete.
faetal on 24/3/2015 at 20:13
Heywood, you're right, but since people will never collectively gather the political will until they've had a good scare, any tech which can slow our decline increases the chance we think of a way out of it.
Yakoob on 25/3/2015 at 07:24
Hmm i was always under the impression that there actually is more than enough food for everyone, but people starve moreso due to distribution issues rather than under production. Stuff like transport, corruption, waste are the bigger culprit, so having cheaper GMOed up food wont necessarily be a solution in an of itself (save for when the mods allow the crops to grow in an impoverished area rather than needing to be imported).
Or is that basically anti-big-corp propaganda all the greenpeace folk keep falsely spreading?
faetal on 25/3/2015 at 09:18
As with most things, it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B. Food distribution is a huge issue. People wonder why there is poverty in developing countries with so much wealth in the world. The truth is that to live our luxury lifestyles here in the developed nations, we kind of depend on poverty elsewhere. Without the destitution of Africa, there'd be no abundance of cheap cereal to import for feeding livestock etc... Food prices are also pushed out of the reach of a lot of people by food speculation, where aggressive fund management manipulates food commodities to maximise return on any food-based investment.
There is also general consumer-driven food distribution inequality. Quinoa is a good example. Touted as the super-nutritious alternative to rice and pasta, quinoa is de rigeur on the plates of discerning health food enthusiasts, middle-class families and vegans throughout Europe and the US - it's a huge deal. Not so keen on the craze are the residents of the South American nations where, until recently, quinoa had been a great source of cheap protein in wild abundance. Now it's priced way out of their market because the growers can export it to the US and Europe for a much higher profit than selling it at home. Same deal with surimi and Indonesia (I think it's Indonesia).
However, we are also growing at a rate which the earth's inherent carrying capacity is not cut out for, not without big changes, such as we're seeing with the replacement of diverse areas of foliage with homogeneous coverage of whatever is the most profitable food stuff which can grow there. This *wrecks* the surrounding ecosystems by excluding species which depended on the diversity or on specific species of things which are no longer there and introducing or amplifying ones which thrive either on the specific thing being introduced, or just by being faster to adapt than other stuff which gets out-competed. Now imagine this happening on a huge scale and that the ripples of more gradual and lasting changes radiate outwards from this at a rate which lags behind the faster, more obvious ones. Eventually, we will not only run out of room, but we will be facing changes to the overall biosphere which are too ingrained in our global infrastructure for us to reverse them. Then there is climate change, which is already fucking with the synchronisation between insect pollinators and flowering plants.
In short, a global food web is robust in general, but usually only if it is settled. The scale and rate at which we are fucking with stuff may well look good to keep us fed for the short term (at the expense of those too poor to keep up with globalized food prices), but will probably not give us any kind of rosy, silos filled with golden kernels future when the newer, less robust human-centric food web we've thrown out like a giant carpet implodes when some unforeseen factor of the ecosystem comes to bite it in the ass. It could be an insect, a fungus, climate change, soil erosion, water shortage, other, some or all of the above - if you carpet the planet with stuff which is good to eat, we're unlikely to be the only species which think so. Our ingenuity won't out-pace the fast adaptation of micro-organisms and insects forever and certainly not comprehensively.
Nothing is infinite and an asymptote will stare us in the eyes eventually. If it's a catastrophe, then nothing will help, as Heywood says. We have to hope it will hit us with a holding pattern giving us enough time to make the necessary changes and start to contract. If having mature GMO tech under our belt is a facet of that, then by all means, let's not let hysteria, silly religious pretext (the "playing god" argument) or fear of the unknown hold it back. Neither ignorance or nihilism are worth putting effort into, which just leaves hopeful invention.
bjack on 25/3/2015 at 19:15
Quote Posted by faetal
… Neither ignorance or nihilism are worth putting effort into, which just leaves hopeful invention.
Good point. The ignorance part is what may kill us all. We introduce all sorts of things we think will have only localized effects. Man usually lights the fire first, then goes looking for the bucket of water when it spreads too quickly.
Currently, the EPA requires independent studies for approvals, but only if they are available. The requirement should be mandatory. Even then, collusion for both sides of the fence is still possible. There is no perfect solution. But maybe if a higher standard were in place, we would not have so many dead bees? I breaks my heart to see dead bees on my walkway every morning. We have thousands of artificial hives in my area, all to pollinate the few avocado farms left. There was a huge die off a few years back, but they seem to be recovering. Still, they are not thriving as they once were. There is no wholesale neonicotinoid spraying around here that I know of, but there are houses getting tented for termites. I noticed fewer dead bees of late, until a house 2 doors down got tented for termites. The dead bees were greater in number, then have slacked off. I wish I had noticed this sooner and taken careful notes. And no, I am not sure that neonicotinoids are the cause. It could have been the heat wave and then the cold span that followed.
So we just have to hope (have faith?) in the human spirit and hope that Man will not fuck things up so badly that we all grow huge tumors, starve, and/or kill off most of the planet. As Michael Crichton and George Carlin hypothesized, maybe Man is the catalyst for the next mass extinction. Our very efforts to survive may be that catalyst. Or, we will just keep on keepin' on for millennia. Won't matter though. The robots will have killed us off by then. :joke:
bjack on 26/3/2015 at 05:05
Well, those were due to hunting. The wholesale extinction of most everything is what they were getting at. I also loved Carlin's hypothesis that the Earth created Man because it wanted plastic. :D
