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Illegibly Eligible posted:Seriously, good bit of research you did there. While I lack hard information to refute any of what you've found, anecdotal evidence suggests Monsanto to be somewhat less benign than they imply. I don't feel it unfair to draw a rough comparison to the RIAA in terms of "douchebagginess" if even 90% of the stuff I've heard is entirely bullshit. Still waiting for any evidence of your initial claims.
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Jun 28, 2013 09:22
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Deteriorata posted:There was no "no damage" option. There was a 'low damage' option of using a small nuke (kilotonish) to seal the well - but that would involve a federal government that is proactive about deep sea drilling. The current culture is to trust the march of progress led by the free market.
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Jun 28, 2013 14:05
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karthun posted:Still waiting for any evidence of your initial claims. Then you aren't listening. They have been convicted of bribing authorities to evade environmental oversight, committing fraud to hide the evidence. Nearly a thousand leaked diplomatic cables clearly showed the State Department pressuring foreign officials, businessmen, and scientists to accept Monsanto crops and seeds, many of which specifically advocated for Monsanto by name. The State department also produced taxpayer-funded marketing materials for these products. This is a level of government influence that is clearly an anti-competitive market pressures and a tremendous threat to proper oversight. They also knowingly (though I can't say willfully) flood the market with crops that punish every farmer who DOESN'T switch (and over the long term, even those who do) by drastically altering selection pressures that can breed pesticide-resistant weeds, pests, or secondary pests. Monocultures are dangerous, but it's important to note that this isn't an inherent problem with GMO's - a marketplace of competitive, diverse GMO companies wouldn't have this problem. It's clearly a problem of Monsanto's monopolistic business practice. In addition to limiting oversight through close governmental ties and outright bribes, Monsanto uses its patents to prevent University research on it's products. While conventional seeds and pesticides can be bought on the open market and used for research, the consumers who buy Monsanto products don't actually "own" that product - Monsanto effectively has veto power on all independent research conducted with it's products. If you support sound science, this is a problem, but again, not a problem with GMOs - it's a problem with the business practice. Naturally, Monsanto also fights any recommendations to governments and farmers where its own products aren't hyped, backing out of the UN-sponsored IAASTD report recommendations because it contained data that showed some limited instances where Monsanto products were less efficient than other practices, particularly in the developing world (because Monsanto practices largely require big machinery and large quantities of water and petroleum). Monsanto business practices run directly contrary to good policy on global health, environmental practice, and malnourishment. I am completely on board with the science of GMOs. I was against the food labeling in California, and largely support both "industrial agriculture" AND GMOs for largely environmental reasons. But saying that you have to be an idiot to disagree with the business practices of Monsanto is completely disingenuous. There are plenty of scientists that have articulated clear, researched arguments against Monsanto and other agritech companies - you would do well to listen to them.
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Jun 28, 2013 14:23
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McDowell posted:There was a 'low damage' option of using a small nuke (kilotonish) to seal the well - but that would involve a federal government that is proactive about deep sea drilling. Would that really be the "low damage" option? I can't imagine that would have been good for anything (if anything) lives at that depth. But I'll admit I don't know much about the effects, and try to be less hysterical about nuclear anything, but I recall seeing Micho Kauku on Rachel Maddow talking about how it was a bad idea. I could be mistaken it was a few years ago now.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:25
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KomradeX posted:Would that really be the "low damage" option? I can't imagine that would have been good for anything (if anything) lives at that depth. But I'll admit I don't know much about the effects, and try to be less hysterical about nuclear anything, but I recall seeing Micho Kauku on Rachel Maddow talking about how it was a bad idea. I could be mistaken it was a few years ago now. Well the other alternative was to allow the oil to wash up into Louisiana wetlands, which would have pretty much turned the entire coast into wasteland.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:38
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This is just capitalism.txt. You're taking things that basically every major multinational company does, and trying to spin them as evidence of Monsanto's horrible horribleness. Yes, Monsanto is not a paragon of virtue; nobody was saying that it was.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:46
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Forever_Peace posted:Then you aren't listening. The initial claim being responded to was: Illegibly Eligible posted:Where Monsanto is evil is their business practices. It really DOES harm food supply and fucks farmers over HARD. Say you want to grow Monsanto corn but not Monsanto tomatoes. Not gonna happen. Their licensing is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to NOT grow their crops once you start. Oh, it turns out there's a drought in your area, so you want to switch from Monsanto's (water intensive) crops back to something else that needs a bit less liquid? Too bad, you're under contract for X years. Oh snap! Your Monsanto corn was cross-pollinated with non-Monsanto corn from the next farm thanks to honeybees. You now owe Monsanto ridiculous amounts of money for violating their copyright. So this doesn't really help with that.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:55
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I remember reading a book once about how people with certain viewpoints had some sort of weird motivated reasoning thing going on. People who identified as conservative had stuff like climate change - basically, every piece of evidence only made them believe harder in their conclusion (that it isn't a real thing or whatever). People who identified as liberal or leftist or whatever, though, had GMO foods and anti-vax and the whole 'natural' food thing. I guess what I'm saying, OP, is that for some reason people who believe that Monsanto is literally the devil are basically impossible to convince otherwise because any evidence you find that proves them wrong will be twisted to prove that they're actually right or discarded. For what it's worth, I agree with you that Monsanto isn't really that evil (or at least, they're just as evil as any other capitalist multinational enterprise).
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Jun 28, 2013 16:00
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serewit posted:I remember reading a book once about how people with certain viewpoints had some sort of weird motivated reasoning thing going on. People who identified as conservative had stuff like climate change - basically, every piece of evidence only made them believe harder in their conclusion (that it isn't a real thing or whatever). People who identified as liberal or leftist or whatever, though, had GMO foods and anti-vax and the whole 'natural' food thing. I guess what I'm saying, OP, is that for some reason people who believe that Monsanto is literally the devil are basically impossible to convince otherwise because any evidence you find that proves them wrong will be twisted to prove that they're actually right or discarded. It's a form of confirmation bias. The pieces of information that confirm my point of view I accept uncritically as true, while those that contradict it are obviously plants from The Enemy and must be scorned.
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Jun 28, 2013 16:10
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Forever_Peace posted:They also knowingly (though I can't say willfully) flood the market with crops that punish every farmer who DOESN'T switch (and over the long term, even those who do) by drastically altering selection pressures that can breed pesticide-resistant weeds, pests, or secondary pests. Monocultures are dangerous, but it's important to note that this isn't an inherent problem with GMO's - a marketplace of competitive, diverse GMO companies wouldn't have this problem. It's clearly a problem of Monsanto's monopolistic business practice. How does this punish farmers who doesn't switch? Glyphosate resistant weeds only effect farmers that use Glyphosate. Farmers that don't use Glyphosate actually end up better because the genetic pathways for Glyphosate resistant are not efficient. This is why there is a 5-10% yield drag on RR crops.
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Jun 28, 2013 16:11
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karthun posted:How does this punish farmers who doesn't switch? Glyphosate resistant weeds only effect farmers that use Glyphosate. Farmers that don't use Glyphosate actually end up better because the genetic pathways for Glyphosate resistant are not efficient. This is why there is a 5-10% yield drag on RR crops. The third link (on secondary pests) describes what I think is probably the most important problem: "Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the National Agro-Technical Extension and Service Center in Beijing documented that as adoption of Bt cotton rose — and pesticide use declined — mirid bugs did more damage to cotton crops. What's more, the growing population of hungry critters also devoured crops of Chinese dates, grapes, apples, peaches and pears." Mass adoption of Bt Cotton resulted in damages to a host of other unrelated crops. Again, lower pesticide use is NOT a problem on it's own (it's exactly what we want to see from GMO use, and one of the primary reasons I support GMO agriculture). The problem is the Monsanto monopoly on Bt Cotton, resulting in monocultures that exert massive selection pressures. But you're right that this doesn't address Glyphosate-resistant weeds, so I'll answer that directly as well. Monsanto's Glyphosate patent expired in 2000, and a few dozen other competitors offer Glyphosate products. In contrast, RR crops are still protected: sales of roundup compose only about 10% of Monsanto earnings, but RR seeds make up around 40%. A lot of farmers use Glyphosate without RR crops directly preceding harvest (a practice called "pulse desiccation" http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/PC_91597.html?s=0), killing both unnecessary crop plant mass (easing the burden on of harvesting and increasing control over harvest date) AND weeds that aren't handled by other pesticides. The mass adoption of RR crops and subsequent development of roundup-resistant weeds has undermined the latter function of pulse desiccation, even for farmers that never buy a thing from Monsanto. Once again, the problem isn't inherent to GMOs: the problem is monopolistic monocultures. Slanderer posted:The initial claim being responded to was: You're right that I didn't address the impact of license agreements on poor farmers. You made it clear earlier in the thread that you didn't consider the few hundred lawsuits to be excessive or unmerited, which isn't really an empirical point I have any way of challenging (whether or not it's "a lot" is an opinion). However, I think I've addressed the sentiment that "Where Monsanto is evil is their business practices. It really DOES harm food supply and fucks farmers over HARD." in good faith, using actual evidence of harmful business practices. Writing off these harmful practices as "the price of capitalism" is cynical to the point of denialism. It IS true that ANY agritech monopoly would be problematic because of monoculture spread for exactly the same reasons, but it just so happens that Monsanto is the monopoly, so they specifically (and not all other corporations) are the problem. It's also true that there are plenty of practices in which Monsanto is not a deviation: tax havens, multimillion dollar lobbying efforts, campaign funding, profiteering etc. BUT! I have also outlined a number of ways in which Monsanto clearly deviates from simple incidental side-effects of being a corporation: bribery, fraud, taxpayer-funded marketing, state-department advocacy, and veto power over University research are NOT done by all multinational companies. THOSE are the problems I outlined with Monsanto.
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Jun 28, 2013 17:22
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Forever_Peace posted:Then you aren't listening. This is a great post. Thank you for taking the time to find specific evidence of wrongdoing like the bribery fine. In the Eight Ways article, you do have to dig a bit but eventually you can find stuff like this: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/failure-to-yield.pdf which goes into more detail and lists sources. I think if you want to defeat crazy conspiracy thinking, you want to be well armed with the truth.
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Jun 28, 2013 17:22
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KomradeX posted:Would that really be the "low damage" option? I can't imagine that would have been good for anything (if anything) lives at that depth. But I'll admit I don't know much about the effects, and try to be less hysterical about nuclear anything, but I recall seeing Micho Kauku on Rachel Maddow talking about how it was a bad idea. I could be mistaken it was a few years ago now. Water is really, really, really good at blocking radiation. The affected area would be ridiculously small compared to dispersants or letting the oil wash up on shore.
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Jun 28, 2013 17:43
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Technogeek posted:Water is really, really, really good at blocking radiation. The affected area would be ridiculously small compared to dispersants or letting the oil wash up on shore. The problem is that it's completely unproven technology. There was a decent chance it would fracture the rocks and make the oil leak worse and unstoppable. We also have no bombs of that size and would have to custom-make one for the purpose. That would require a lot of time and testing, which we didn't have. That ignores the PR problem of deliberately detonating a nuclear bomb and getting the public to accept it. It was some technology fetish web site's wet dream and little more. It's something out of the script of a bad Nick Cage movie. Nobody in authority in their right mind was going to even suggest setting off a nuke to try to shut it down.
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Jun 28, 2013 17:55
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KomradeX posted:Would that really be the "low damage" option? I can't imagine that would have been good for anything (if anything) lives at that depth. But I'll admit I don't know much about the effects, and try to be less hysterical about nuclear anything, but I recall seeing Micho Kauku on Rachel Maddow talking about how it was a bad idea. I could be mistaken it was a few years ago now. As an aside, Michio Kaku is sort of an outlier in the Physics community with regards to nuclear safety in general, and he is known to present nuclear safety as a much bigger issue that it is. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku#Anti-nuclear_batshittery That said, there are risks to doing massive geoengineering with nuclear weapons, but it was once considered as a possible future tool for a bunch of applications. Without looking it up (there should be lots about it), a lot of underground detonations were performed in Russia for this exact purpose. (EDIT: Ok, I looked it up for the next post) As for undersea use, it is relatively safe (in terms of nuclear weapon tests). The water itself will absorb the initial radiation, and if you do it deep enough, you can probably minimize how much radioactive material enters the atmosphere along with water vapor. At that point, other than a disruption to the surrounding ecosystem, the remaining harmful isotopes will be so diffused by the ocean that they will pose no risk to anything ever. Slanderer fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 18:04
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Deteriorata posted:The problem is that it's completely unproven technology. There was a decent chance it would fracture the rocks and make the oil leak worse and unstoppable. We also have no bombs of that size and would have to custom-make one for the purpose. That would require a lot of time and testing, which we didn't have. There were some precedents, actually. In the Soviet nuclear geoengineering program, they closed multiple natural gas wells using nuclear devices. This, of course, is still not the same as trying to do it to an oil well at the bottom of the Gulf, but it wasn't a crazy idea at all (just a disproportionately unpopular one due to ATOMS!!!!!!)
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Jun 28, 2013 18:08
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Kaku is a great example how even a smart person can be stupid. He can/understands ATOMS!, but for whatever reason(or maybe two reasons), doesn't want to use them. BTW OP, SAL has a pseudoscience thread, that might be of interest to you. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3100175
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Jun 28, 2013 18:15
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Slanderer posted:There were some precedents, actually. In the Soviet nuclear geoengineering program, they closed multiple natural gas wells using nuclear devices. This, of course, is still not the same as trying to do it to an oil well at the bottom of the Gulf, but it wasn't a crazy idea at all (just a disproportionately unpopular one due to ATOMS!!!!!!) It was crazy in that it had no precedent in the United States. There was no expertise for it. Sure it was theoretically possible, but nobody is going to propose some completely untested technology at the bottom of the Gulf on a whim of "hey, it's so crazy it just might work!" That's what's out of the script of a bad Nick Cage movie. If we'd had a 20-year track record of doing it, demonstrating the engineering and geological science chops to do it routinely without incident, then it certainly would have gotten a look. Given the situation as it was, using a nuke was a science fiction fantasy.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:23
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PhazonLink posted:Kaku is a great example how even a smart person can be stupid. He can/understands ATOMS!, but for whatever reason(or maybe two reasons), doesn't want to use them. I guarantee no actual scientist has as much faith in the scientific process as science fanboys. Most people have no idea the sheer quantity of gad-awful baloney we peer-review on a routine basis. Having reservations about implementation is a good thing.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:27
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As an aside, I just wanted to point out that the State Department pushes all sorts of American business interests overseas all the time, and always has. That is considered part of their job, and is not evidence of wrongdoing. This doesn't absolve Monsanto of the bribery or anything else, of course.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:55
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serewit posted:I remember reading a book once about how people with certain viewpoints had some sort of weird motivated reasoning thing going on. People who identified as conservative had stuff like climate change - basically, every piece of evidence only made them believe harder in their conclusion (that it isn't a real thing or whatever). People who identified as liberal or leftist or whatever, though, had GMO foods and anti-vax and the whole 'natural' food thing. I guess what I'm saying, OP, is that for some reason people who believe that Monsanto is literally the devil are basically impossible to convince otherwise because any evidence you find that proves them wrong will be twisted to prove that they're actually right or discarded. You don't need to convince them, you simply need to redirect them. That's my point. Tell them about all the actually horrible poo poo they do. The hardest part of marketing/advocacy/propoganda and all other forms of influence is connecting an emotion to a thing. The work is already done for you. Just educate them in something else. serewit posted:For what it's worth, I agree with you that Monsanto isn't really that evil (or at least, they're just as evil as any other capitalist multinational enterprise). So they're not evil, they're just part of one of the most evil coteries on the planet?
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Jun 28, 2013 20:09
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mugrim posted:So they're not evil, they're just part of one of the most evil coteries on the planet?
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Jun 28, 2013 20:26
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twodot posted:I think it's reasonable to interpret the phrase "Monsanto is evil" as "Monsanto is significantly more evil than a randomly chosen for-profit corporation". If you want to smash capitalism, I'm on board, but expressing "I'm anti-capitalist" as "I'm anti-Monsanto" is stupid and wrong. We must shun the synecdoche. It's just not reasonable.
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Jun 29, 2013 09:41
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Slanderer posted:The problem I'm running into is how to debate people in this community (or others like it), because of the sheer effort involved. Slanderer posted:ATOMS!!!!!! twodot posted:"I'm anti-Monsanto" is stupid and wrong. The communication skills among the "enlightened" in this thread are themselves illuminating.
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Jun 29, 2013 09:53
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FRINGE posted:
I think we're talking to the walls here. This is a perfect example of how a bunch of people can be totally right, and simultaneously be complete assholes. The whole attitude of "combating ignorance" is what's on display. If anyone here had an ounce of compassion instead of contempt for those who disagree with them there might ACTUALLY be a chance of convincing people that they should listen to all these wonderful (and completely respectable!) facts and figures. Seriously, nobody in this thread actually cares about educating others by speaking to them on their own terms. So why clothe the thread in the garb of some concern trolling and act like you want to learn how to preach your truth to the benighted masses? Just change the title to "GMO-HATING HIPPIES ARE DUMB AND SO GODDAMN STUPID". It's ok to do this. This is Something Awful, and this is how we talk about people on Freep, because we've written them off and we have contempt for them. We don't genuinely believe that talking sense to them will change their minds, so the Freep thread is not titled "Combating Conservative Ignorance: How to Change the Minds of Freepers". So now I'm getting all hyperbolic and feeling like the art of compromise and cross-pollination of ideas is truly dead, if it ever was alive in the first place. We don't have any cultural examples of people from ideological viewpoints REALLY reaching out to each other and meeting peacefully on common ground, do we? It's all just circlejerks of people talking about how stupid the other side is. I really wish that the OP and everyone else in this thread would actually be willing to stop and really think about how someone ends up feeling that Monsanto is "evil", get into their worldview, and not just roll their eyes at them, so that there was actually a real chance of people becoming more educated about the issue. I guess that will happen the same time we convince Freepers that Obama isn't a Marxist Kenyan Communist Fascist, right?
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Jun 29, 2013 18:15
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Quidam Viator posted:So now I'm getting all hyperbolic and feeling like the art of compromise and cross-pollination of ideas is truly dead, if it ever was alive in the first place. We don't have any cultural examples of people from ideological viewpoints REALLY reaching out to each other and meeting peacefully on common ground, do we? It's all just circlejerks of people talking about how stupid the other side is. Amen. I mean, we hopefully all have instances where we ourselves genuinely changed our minds about something after hearing honest, persuasive rhetoric (so presumably this isn't something that is absent in society), but I agree it's all too easy to pass. Dan Dennett has his own self-imposed rules for this: Dan Dennett posted:How to compose a successful critical commentary: And he also has some great advice here ("Answer Rhetorical Questions" is brilliant, and "Beware of Deepities" is a pretty pithy way of expressing skepticism of “a proposition that seems both important and true—and profound—but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous”). I guess that's why folks literally throw multinational conferences to discuss his ideas.
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Jun 29, 2013 18:51
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This is my fourth attempt at writing a response to this thread. I am struggling because the question seems simple, but also seems to me about a response to some very large, complex planetary systems. If I understand the question there are two or three parts to it. One part is about GMOs and why people respond the way they do. A second part might be about the informational landscape of that response. A third part is about Monsanto. The reason my other responses are sort of failed attempts is that to really get into this it seems necessary to me to deconstruct some pretty massive things and how they interact. This includes: - the nature of the objectivist endeavor, including scientific epistemology - the nature of the industrial era - the nature of profit as a moral context - the nature of industrial ag system - the nature of 'safety' in the context of industrialization and profit These require a bunch of context to consider, such as how fossil fuels are used to produce the systems from discovery to consumption, including food. How do does the 'supply chain work? What is the history and system of incorporation involved in all that? To deconstruct all of that also requires a deconstruction of identity and an understanding of historical context. Yikes. So I decided to maybe just start with the reaction to GMOs and maybe get to Monsanto later, since the Monsanto question can't be addressed without a lot of that deconstruction. Why are people offended/upset by GMOs? We take something that is known for thousands of years to be nutritious and beneficial and we re-contextualize it in terms of profit. That re-contextualization does not change anything about the external form of it. The two, now different categories, are indistinguishable. The scientific understanding of the effects are not as well known as a profit driven understanding might lead us to believe, even if we are able to actually understand the scientific point of view, rather than a participation in, or reaction against, 'authorized' scientism as an ideology. Even ignoring all the larger systemic consequences, we don't really know. Claims are made about knowing, but what is the context in which that knowledge has been generated? Why is that a problem? In the condition of not really knowing we might want to make a choice about that, in terms of what we eat. How possible is it to make that choice? In much of the world the distinctions about categories of food production and labeling associated with that at least give us some chance at making choices. In the US this not the case. The result is that we end up with an artificial landscape of choice polarized by organic and everything else. Suppose, for whatever reasons, you did not wish to ingest GMO food or food products. In the US only way you could do that is by only ingesting organic food. You don't have any other real options. Because cross pollination does occur (Papaya is a good example) even that choice might be compromised. This could occur for people as an infringement on their freedom, enacted based on a context of profitability. We can ask it this way. Should I be able to live in a way that does not include ingesting GMO's, which are a proprietary product? Should I have to remove myself from society or grow all my own food to be able to do that? What do we feel is the nature of the social contract with respect to this? I will stop here as this introduces many of the doorways to the larger deconstruction required to unfold the question, including why people might be inclined to vilify an entity like Monsanto, questions of social contract, freedom expressed as liberty and equity, systemic consequences, etc.
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Jun 30, 2013 20:14
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Sogol posted:The scientific understanding of the effects are not as well known as a profit driven understanding might lead us to believe The process of discovery, testing, innovation, testing, waiting, re-testing *REPEAT* should be conducted. It should be in labs and under the public domain. It should not be out in the wild. It should not be "owned" when it is done in the wild. It should not be "owned" when the long term interplay of the mechanisms can get all the way down to the internal interbreeding of the human-body-biome. * The "morally offended" among us who are mad that "the right track" is for "underinformed reasons" need to just suck it up and deal.
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Jun 30, 2013 22:18
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FRINGE posted:the internal interbreeding of the human-body-biome.
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Jun 30, 2013 22:22
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Strudel Man posted:What are you referring to here?  ). This stuff is a big loving deal, and is largely ignored by the Monsanto Defense Team. I'm just going to link-dump since this stuff has already surfaced in multiple threads in the last couple years: Human microbiome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome We are not alone: How the bugs in our gut influence our eating habits. http://thebrainbank.scienceblog.com/2012/06/01/we-are-not-alone-how-the-bugs-in-our-gut-influence-our-eating-habits/ Changing gut bacteria through diet affects brain function, UCLA study shows http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/changing-gut-bacteria-through-245617.aspx The Gut Response To What We Eat http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120318757 Gut Microbiota in Health and Disease http://physrev.physiology.org/content/90/3/859.long How Bacteria in Our Bodies Protect Our Health http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ultimate-social-network-bacteria-protects-health Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Microbial Communities Affect Human Health? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm Meet some of the bacteria that make up 90 per cent of the living cells in your body http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...-your-body.html
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Jun 30, 2013 22:50
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While this is all stuff that should be researched, there's a lot of things that should be researched but aren't due to lack of manpower and money. Figuring out how GMOs affect the gut microbiome in a medically relevant fashion means first doing human testing on a large number of individuals where we analyze the microbiome before and after consumption of GMOs as well as how this changes over time. Pair this with studies that analyze effects on health (and this part will probably require a very large cohort). Once that's done, you have to identify molecular mechanisms for how the microbiome contributes to these changes and that's likely to be the most time consuming thing of all. All in all, you're looking at a turnaround time of years and tens of millions of dollars. Require that for every GMO that gets developed and you're basically limiting GMO development to major corporations and restricting rapid-climate change response GMO technology, as well as GMO technology customized to smallholder farmers in the third world. Most importantly, you're doing all this for a field where there's no evidence of additional health impact beyond that already attributable to industrial agriculture.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:07
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Ugh, no, not getting into this.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:08
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Sogol posted:We can ask it this way. Should I be able to live in a way that does not include ingesting GMO's, which are a proprietary product? Should I have to remove myself from society or grow all my own food to be able to do that? What do we feel is the nature of the social contract with respect to this? Should crops made using "traditional" breeding techniques such as irradiating seeds in attempt to create useful mutations require labeling as well? Should corn grown under high voltage power lines require labeling to? Of course not. To do so is to poison the market against them by acting on fear and ignorance. EDIT: quote:(Papaya is a good example) I had to look this up to double check, but the introduction of GM papaya saved Hawaii's papaya crops from the Papaya ringspot virus. Slanderer fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 23:21
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FRINGE posted:This is the root reason that even the most under-informed of the crystal clutching hippies are on the right track* - with things being done the way they are being done right now. They are not on the right track at all--they don't even have enough actual evidence to know where the gently caress they are (thus the proliferation of provably false memes about GM crops causing cancer, killing bees, driving helpless Indian farmers to insansity and suicide, etc...). You're looking for independent testing? Hey, cool, no worries. Worry about independent testing for drugs too, then. To single out GM crops is part of the problem in that it exceptionalizes them, and makes it seem as if there is some grand scheme to hide the truth. Does the FDA or USDA test non-GM crops for safety, or pesticide contamination? Nope! And GMOs shouldn't be "owned" because they are in the wild? Why not? Because people could accidentally use them and get sued? Nope. Because they will destroy the 3rd world? Nope. Raisin bran is owned, but it surely affects my gut microbial flora---is this a crime of capitalism too? And, please, use less whitespace. Your posts are far too vapid to use so much screen real estate.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:40
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Slanderer posted:They are not on the right track at all--they don't even have enough actual evidence to know where the gently caress they are (thus the proliferation of provably false memes about GM crops causing cancer, killing bees, driving helpless Indian farmers to insansity and suicide, etc...). You're looking for independent testing? Hey, cool, no worries. Worry about independent testing for drugs too, then. To single out GM crops is part of the problem in that it exceptionalizes them, and makes it seem as if there is some grand scheme to hide the truth. Does the FDA or USDA test non-GM crops for safety, or pesticide contamination? Nope! The more I read this FRINGE's posts the more I get annoyed. It's like a cargo cult debate. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 30, 2013 23:44
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FRINGE posted:So have you been able to parse the advice given to you as to where the communication problems you seem to have with people might be yet? There is a certain richness in you coming into threads like these and lecturing others about their communication skills given your long rap sheet for tone and communication problems when strutting into threads just like this one in order to shout and snark other people down about the virtues of natural foods and herbal medicines. To go back to Vitiator's plea for trying to understand the base motivations and misgivings on the other side of debates like these I can't help but wonder what the point is. What is the virtue in trying to engage the Ken Hams wrt to evolution, the Arkanes of this world wrt to climate science, the FRINGE elements with regards to GM and natural foods. At some point I think we have to look at the OPs question about how to debate people like this and wonder if we should bother debating them at all. Despite plenty of people trying to engage in discussion and getting nothing but bile in return in past threads like these, no one budges from behind their entrenched positions, in part because the topic has become laden with a lot of fears and emotions. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 30, 2013 23:45
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FRINGE posted:This is the root reason that even the most under-informed of the crystal clutching hippies are on the right track* - with things being done the way they are being done right now. This does not cover the issues of biodiversity related to proprietary seeds and associated ag practices, which is where we begin to touch on some of the objections to Monsanto in particular. One of the things about the current system of industrialization is that it is functionally intended to both maximize and consolidate profit and capital. When practice is inconsistent with this it is related to as a moral violation. This article depicts how such consolidation works with respect to seeds and Monsanto. http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1266/pdf This image from the article shows the central position Monsanto has with respect to contracts for transgenic traits: All of that does begin to address the hydrocarbon supply chain and the consolidation activity done there. The corporate footprint of that chain is basically: big oil, big ag, pharma and chems. Three of those feed into the industrial food industry. If, for whatever reasons, one felt uncertain about ingesting GMOs it would be necessary to boycott all branded food. For instance, in the case of Monsanto they have now been spun off as ag specific with there previous pharma activity going to Pfizer/Pharmacia and there chem activity going to Solutia. Big oil also spun off most of its chem assets during the massive oil consolidation around the turn of the century. The chem split with Monsanto/Solutia involved indemnification from liability including superfund sites. These three now have no control crossover, but still share supply chain agreements dealt with through internal accounting. One of the production chains to look at is ammonia which is used in both glyphosate and fertilizers. Ammonia production currently uses over 1% of the global energy produced annually. That is just the production and does not include all the associated footprints. The primary use is Urea, which mammals produce, but is treated as waste in the industrial system. That waste treatment also has a footprint. Ironically one of the reasons human produced 'waste' cannot be used as a nutrient is that the human waste stream in industrialized social contracts contains so much pharmaceutical residue, that cannot be broken down using vermiculture and such. This pharma waste stream is also an integrated part of the hydrocarbon product chain. For instance, benzene is a key ingredient producing something as benign as ibuprofen.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:54
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Sogol posted:Yes, one of my failed attempts at writing a response included the unresearched effects of glyphosate on mammalian amino acid production in the microbiota, since interruption of amino acid production is how the 200+ million pounds of glyphosate we currently use kill everything non-GM growing above ground. It is this effect of killing everything non-GM that is touted as the 'efficiency gain' from the GM ag system. The 'labor" savings involved delete the fossil fuel footprint, the chained need to also use increased fertilizer due to industrial ag destroying soil systems, and the need for escalating use of the glyphosate formulations themselves. It is impossible to separate out GMOs from even this small piece of the larger 'supply chain' since at present that is the only advantage. In and of themselves GMOs do not produce higher yields and require more water, also thereby increasing the energy footprint. Are you arguing against GMOs, industrialized agriculture, Monsanto, excessive use of pharmaceuticals, or something else I'm missing? To go through the responses quickly. 1. GMOs are a wonderful and perhaps even essential technology that has not been shown to have a negative effect on the environment or human health. 2. Industrialized agriculture does have a negative effect on the environment, but moving to a purely organic system would require a massive amount of land clearance or letting a billion or more people starve. 3. Monsanto does do a lot of unethical things, but the rage generated by it does not really impede business operations, instead, the ignorance, legislation, and environmental terrorism has impeded university and public research, the exact things needed to move GMOs away from Monsanto to a something benefiting the direct interest of people all over the world. 4. What do pharmaceuticals have to do with this topic at all? Adventure Pigeon fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jul 1, 2013 |
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Jul 1, 2013 00:03
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Slanderer posted:Should crops made using "traditional" breeding techniques such as irradiating seeds in attempt to create useful mutations require labeling as well? Should corn grown under high voltage power lines require labeling to? You are now basically making an elitist argument in which a technocracy should be able to control the market and choices available because the populace is just too stupid and ignorant to do so. The US is pretty much the only place where labeling is an issue and this is in great part due to lobbying efforts. Another reason that Monsanto is disliked is because of its very effective use of lobbying to influence the legislative and judicial system. Just as Monsanto alone they spend between $5-10m annually on these efforts and that does not include lobbying through alliances and such. This is several times the investment made in US lobbying by its competitors. Sogol fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Jul 1, 2013 |
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Jul 1, 2013 00:06
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FRINGE posted:This is the root reason that even the most under-informed of the crystal clutching hippies are on the right track* - with things being done the way they are being done right now. Anti-GM protesters in Europe (where restrictions to grow and use GMOs are in place in case you're unaware), particularly in the UK, have repeatedly attacked publicly-funded field trials and safety tests (or even just straight up vandalised the offices and labs of university professors), they don't want to know if it's safe, they don't care.
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Jul 1, 2013 00:07
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