Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
acephalousuniverse
Nov 4, 2012

computer parts posted:

You asked why people don't focus on people who are sympathetic to your arguments. It's because you're (at best) preaching to the choir. The vast majority of people think GMOs are bad but Capitalism is just dandy.

No, you don't get it. I'm talking about focusing on people who are sympathetic but don't already agree with you. The point is to know when to write off people who obviously aren't going to be persuaded through argument. Just like was mentioned earlier, you don't try to convert freepers to communism, you try to radicalize liberals. Similarly you don't try to reason with people who are obsessed with GMO conspiracy theories, even more so because there's no actual reason to give a poo poo about GMO conspiracy theories as an issue more than any other particular issue. If the vast majority of people think GMOs are bad and capitalism is good, then you need to work on the capitalism stuff and maybe use the legit problems with how GMOs are handled or how Monsanto as a company acts as a synechdoche of capitalism to radicalize them further rather than being a weirdo right back, equally obsessed with GMOs over everything else in the world and focusing on that for no reason. Wasting your time trying to win one for rationality on this particular issue is stupid and pointless.

The point for me here is "why on earth should I give a poo poo if anyone has scientifically wrong opinions on GMOs and devote my time to fixing that considering everything else that's wrong with the world right now, especially given the fact that people who have wrong opinions on GMOs end up hating companies that are actually evil anyway."

acephalousuniverse fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jul 1, 2013

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Sogol
Apr 11, 2013

Galileo's Finger

Cream_Filling posted:

It is probably in part a licensing issue, with China demanding technology sharing agreements with foreign businesses in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Also because GMO crops aren't popular or available beyond a handful of crops, with cotton, corn, soy, and maybe some of the oil seeds being the only relevant ones to China (though honestly that's the majority of commercially available GMOs right now anyway). I know Bt cotton has already been rolled out in China to some success, but it doesn't account for a whole lot in terms of volume. Finally, the agricultural system in China is extremely weird and inefficient. Most farmers still use labor-intensive methods, modern financing is pretty limited, and there is very little capital available for most farmers due to the inefficient nature of the market. We're talking about a country that even 10-20 years ago had a huge number of people who were essentially sharecroppers living as subsistence farmers.

China's biggest macro problem agriculturally is first that they don't have a lot of arable land relative to their population, and second that they've already depleted most of their major aquifers, which is why they currently import heavily from the US (and don't care if it's GMO or not) and are working to acquire large amounts of land in Africa in exchange for cash, arms, and development projects. This is also why their domestic GMO efforts are focused on water conservation instead of reduced pesticide usage or reduced labor costs, both of which they don't really care about.

Again, you ask a question about something you don't know much about, but instead of doing the research or just leaving it at the question, you go off on another tangent and expound on something vaguely related but not at all relevant. This is not contributing. It's pompous and irritating, and comes off as you wanting to show off and ramble. Being a "thinker" and coming up with possibilities is useless without the knowledge necessary to distinguish between what is relevant and useful and what is a waste of time. I can make up uneducated guesses based on first impressions, too. I just don't subject other people to them without the courtesy of developing my thoughts and making them directly relevant to the topic, or at the very least keeping the length of the guess in proportion to how strong the connection really is.

Though labor intensive China's traditional ag system is considered high yield, though yields have leveled recently. They do care if it is GMO and have a process for that. They have a more thorough labeling process with five different grades of food production dileneated. They just approved three additional GM soy beans (they currently import 8 types). These are used for oil and they claim the modified genes are removed in the process. The Chinese ag system is currently undergoing a policy (rather than legislative) driven change. The small farms are being aggregated. Farmers are granted the right to lease their farms. Districts are leasing the farms, removing the farmsteads and aggregating the acreage for mechanized farming. This also allows migrant labor to farm and the current farmers shift to service economy. The district builds housing and pays the farmers for the lease. This is happening all over the 10% arable acreage of China. It is believed that this move will increase yields, not only from mechanization and monocropping, but simply from the additional acreage gained by removing the individual farm steads. I have met with district government, soil scientists, economists, systems theorists and farmers about this in several provinces. Economically it is well received. There is an underlying concern about long term soil health and the effects on community. Mostly though the farmers are elderly. Their children are not interested in farming. The migrant workers see it as an opportunity.

I am well aware of China's international resource acquisitions for land as well as minerals and again have spoken directly with some of the entities involved, in particular about things like how to deal with the issues of a Chinese management structure for a local work force in places like Africa. I speak Chinese, have been going to China since shortly after what is called the 'cultural revolution' in the 'west' and have lived and worked in China for several years at different points. In the last decade much of that work was related to agricultural and sustainability efforts. Though I am profoundly ignorant about many things, I do not think you are well served by assuming that because I have a question that I have no direct experience.

I am sorry you don't seem to be able to make connections between what I am writing in the thread and what you feel ought to be in the thread.

Edit: it is not simply that they have depleted their aquifer. The Chinese aquifer is replenished from Himalayan glacier run off. These glaciers have diminished over the past decade resulting in increased desertification.

Sogol fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jul 1, 2013

Tubgirl Cosplay
Jan 10, 2011

by Ion Helmet

computer parts posted:

You asked why people don't focus on people who are sympathetic to your arguments. It's because you're (at best) preaching to the choir. The vast majority of people think GMOs are bad but Capitalism is just dandy.

And given that most of the critiques of GMOs are just ill-informed or generalized critiques of capitalist finance or food production, this is what we call a teachable moment.

Sogol
Apr 11, 2013

Galileo's Finger
One of the points made earlier in the thread is that we should keep things about the food production process opaque in order to preserve the health of the market from superstitious, ignorant reactions. Here is an article from Mother Jones on meat production that includes the relationship of Monsanto and big ag's relationship to transparency. Personally, I feel the opacity creates a kind of alienation that buttresses the system. In this alienation we have no direct relationship to food production and only exist as consumers. I have been involved in permaculture, bio-intensive, etc. types of educational process for children in the US. It is often the case that the children do not know what a carrot looks like. It is just orange cubes. I have been in villages in Fiji with both American and Fijian children when a feast was being prepared. In such a village meat is not a daily occurrence, so slaughtering the pig, knowing that a feast is going to happen is big deal. The cut its throat and let it bleed out. To the Fijian children this is a big deal and all part of the feast. It might only happen once every few months. The American children tend to be completely freaked out and then really do not want to eat the pig. The same children have no difficulty eating meat based food products, in which consciousness of the means of production have been quite thoroughly deleted.

http://www.motherjones.com/environm...ws-mowmar-farms

This is from the end of the article and is similar to the dynamic in which the reactionary view of GMOs conflated with the 'evilness' of Monsanto serves to hinder what might be the most beneficial aspects of GMO development and innovation. The main thrust of the article has to do with how attempts to make even legal practice publicly visible are treated quite literally as terrorism.

quote:

"Some of these standard operating procedures are things that the general public doesn't like," Hitt said, "and, if by viewing them, your potential customer is turned off, then it is incumbent upon the industry to make changes." Take the use of gestation crates. When public opinion turned against keeping sows in nearly four-month-long confinement during pregnancy, the big producers were quick to change—with Smithfield and Hormel among the first to demand that their suppliers retrofit their operations. It's to avoid these kinds of costly PR nightmares, Hitt said, that industry has pushed to keep consumers from seeing how their food is raised and made.

But the ag gag campaign has come at another kind of cost for the industry. Bills to criminalize undercover investigations have created the impression that something brutal—and potentially illegal—is still going on inside facilities like Fair Creek. I asked Becker if the industry might not be better served by increased transparency, rather than tightened security. Why not open up the operation to journalists to prove that it no longer resembles the days when it was MowMar Farms? He gave a list of reasons—sow health, proprietary practices—it wouldn't be possible. Months of follow-up requests have gone unanswered.

It's not hard to see why such evasiveness makes the public uneasy. In an era where we are all beginning to see the effects of letting industries regulate themselves—from the Deepwater Horizon spill to Wall Street's meltdown to spinach recalls—people are asking legitimate questions about the safety of their food supply. With federal regulatory agencies now hobbled by spending cuts, the secrecy and impunity afforded by ag gag could send meat production back to the days of The Jungle.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

acephalousuniverse posted:

No, you don't get it. I'm talking about focusing on people who are sympathetic but don't already agree with you.

Those people don't exist.

acephalousuniverse
Nov 4, 2012

computer parts posted:

Those people don't exist.

Okay. Centrists and liberals don't exist. Best to keep tilting at windmills in order to make yourself feel good about having the most "rational" opinion on every hot news item of the day.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

acephalousuniverse posted:

Okay. Centrists and liberals don't exist. Best to keep tilting at windmills in order to make yourself feel good about having the most "rational" opinion on every hot news item of the day.

Those do exist but the popular social perception is "GMOs (specifically) are bad and will mutate you".

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

acephalousuniverse posted:

The point for me here is "why on earth should I give a poo poo if anyone has scientifically wrong opinions on GMOs and devote my time to fixing that considering everything else that's wrong with the world right now, especially given the fact that people who have wrong opinions on GMOs end up hating companies that are actually evil anyway."

You have a point; I'd forgotten that it is impossible to do multiple things at once. Any effort put into improving the popular perception of GMOs is counterproductive, because it will not directly lead to the glorious communist revolution.

Do you not realize this is what you're saying?

acephalousuniverse
Nov 4, 2012

Amarkov posted:

You have a point; I'd forgotten that it is impossible to do multiple things at once. Any effort put into improving the popular perception of GMOs is counterproductive, because it will not directly lead to the glorious communist revolution.

Do you not realize this is what you're saying?

Not even that it's counterproductive, just that it's completely pointless. No one on earth is being hurt by GMO conspiracy theorists, the only people that benefit from this thread are smug dudes who like to be right about everything "scientific" and Monsanto.

What IS counterproductive is placing more emphasis on the fact that a person is anti-GMO than the fact that they are a potential anti-capitalist ally. Alienating people based on the former is stupid since the latter is infinitely more important. If there was a mob in the street rioting to destroy capitalism and all of them were rabidly anti-GMO, I'd be out rioting with that crowd rather than sitting in my dorm going "heh stupid cranks!!!!! learn science!!!!"

computer parts posted:

Those do exist but the popular social perception is "GMOs (specifically) are bad and will mutate you".

Okay. I agreed with this multiple times.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

acephalousuniverse posted:

Not even that it's counterproductive, just that it's completely pointless. No one on earth is being hurt by GMO conspiracy theorists, the only people that benefit from this thread are smug dudes who like to be right about everything "scientific" and Monsanto.

Either drop the "smug" bullshit or quote a post, what you're doing now is a strawman. These assholes torch publicly funded laboratories and trash test fields, throwing years of good research helpful to everyone down the loving drain because a bunch of reactionary fucks couldn't bother to crack open a science book.

Does that make me smug, being angry at the loss of knowledge and endangering of innocent lives through arson?

T-1000
Mar 28, 2010

Sogol posted:

Here is an article on gene flow for bt brinjal in India. Brinjal is eggplant and the first GMO food crop in India. They put a temporary moratorium on it earlier this year. The GE is similar to the papaya case in that it makes the eggplant resistant to two of the primary insect pests. The article is commissioned by Greenpeace so clearly there is an agenda.

Here is the article summary:


http://www.greenpeace.org/india/PageFiles/446445/GE-Bt-brinjal-revisited.pdf
It's pretty rich for greenpeace to say that further study is needed when they're the people who break into government-funded research into GMO safety, trash years of research and potentially compromise the immediate environment by opening up a previously-contained farm.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Indeed.

Songol, what point were you trying to make by posting that?

acephalousuniverse
Nov 4, 2012

Solkanar512 posted:

Either drop the "smug" bullshit or quote a post, what you're doing now is a strawman. These assholes torch publicly funded laboratories and trash test fields, throwing years of good research helpful to everyone down the loving drain because a bunch of reactionary fucks couldn't bother to crack open a science book.

Does that make me smug, being angry at the loss of knowledge and endangering of innocent lives through arson?

Do you honestly think that opening a science book or having a Calm Rational Discussion is going to dissuade those people from doing those things?

Regardless, yes I am much more angry about what Monsanto is doing that what some small group of misguided assholes did. Monsanto has a far wider and more negative influence than any group of eco-terrorists could possibly have.

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

acephalousuniverse posted:

Do you honestly think that opening a science book or having a Calm Rational Discussion is going to dissuade those people from doing those things?

It's significantly more plausible than your idea that the socialist revolution will dissuade those people from doing those things.

acephalousuniverse
Nov 4, 2012

Amarkov posted:

It's significantly more plausible than your idea that the socialist revolution will dissuade those people from doing those things.

I didn't say it would. In fact I offered nothing in the way of dissuading those people from doing those things, because I don't care. The only way to stop them is the same way you stop any random terrorists: security. Reason doesn't apply.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Anti science stupidly is leading to a resurgence in mumps, and measles.

Sogol
Apr 11, 2013

Galileo's Finger

Solkanar512 posted:

Indeed.

Songol, what point were you trying to make by posting that?

There are several things interesting here, it seems to me. One has to do with the Indian moratorium on GMO food. Not on GMOs altogether, just direct food products. Indeed India is in the top five countries in the world in terms of GMO acreage. There is all the turmoil in India over the farmer suicides that may have influenced the moratorium, though articles about it don't seem to ever say that. The farmer suicides are more directly related to changes in subsidies in India which leads small acreage farmers to then switch to cash crops. The most common is btCotton. They can't make the btCotton work at the scale of a small farm. Proximal cause makes it worse, since the most common form of suicide is drinking the RoundUp used on btCotton. Please read here that I am not saying btCotton causes the suicides. I am saying the proximal cause is associated with GMOs and this has likely effected the recent GMO legislation related to bt binjal.

Another thing that is interesting is that bt binjal is produced and owned by an Indian company. I think this is positive. One of the things that gets conflated into blanket objections to GMOs is the consolidation of patents and proprietary seed stock.

The main reason that I posted it is that it is a well constructed and researched piece on gene migration and cross pollination. It (re)makes the argument, whether one agrees with it or not, that serves as the basis for concern about cross pollination. It also cites the references such that the question of cross pollination could be unfolded if one wished. I am pretty sure that the article was generated as a lobbying effort while the debate on bt binjal was being had in India. It remakes an argument that has been made previously and does so in the context of recent GMO legislation outside of the US. I feel that trying to understand the international landscape beyond the US is important. This includes things like the US French ambassador's wiki leaks regarding big ag/US strategy in the EU.

Cross pollination is also a market issue in this regard, since if there are international moratoriums on GMOs that are directly ingested by humans, the possibility of cross pollination destroys the international market for US farmers. This is the major concern about the Monsanto 'mutant' wheat recently found in Oregon.

The risks and objections to GMOs seem to me threefold. One is people's perception of personal safety. Another is 'releasing GMOs into nature' and perceptions about the effects of that. That can be considered a question about process safety and likely related to concerns people have of the first sort, but also related to issues people have about biodiversity. The third has to do with the current implementation of GMOs through questionable business practices and through a system of big ag. The concerns about big ag with respect to GMOs have to do with someone owning a limited set of proprietary seed stock. There is also concern about the means of delivery and the impact of the integrated supply chain for that and the host of consequences associated with the current formulation of that supply chain on a planetary scale. The article itself is an argument more about the question of biodiversity and issues related to that, so it is about process safety.

(There is some way in which I should like Greenpeace, but I do not. I feel their activism often strengthens the system they are protesting, rather than effectively undermining it.)

Personally I don't eat GMOs, but this is not because of personal safety concerns. I am less clear about process safety and industry is notoriously bad at accurately assessing risk associated with process safety for a variety of reasons. It is because I am doing my best to remain a functioning person in a social contract while not participating in those supply chains as they are currently formed and implemented. This is not limited to GMOs.

I feel that the issues of process safety must be watched very closely in most of the industrial processes and practices, but I don't feel like there should be some moratorium on GMOs based on inflated issues of personal safety. I do feel there should be real transparency so that people can make choices individually and collectively. The Mother Jones article is about that and the strategic response of big ag to that. Of course such transparency requires an informed citizenry, which is a bit of a catch 22.

I also support localized food where it is possible, not because I think it is some panaceaic solution, or because I believe in the artificiallly polarized organic v mechanized monocropping rhetoric. Indeed there are a range of emergent and known sustainable agricultural practices possible at a variety of scales, including holistic management and such. I happen to support localized food where possible because I feel it is much better for local economy, ecological footprint and resilience where it is possible. One of the best places for generation of localized social fabric and community is around localized food. This local social fabric has been severaly eroded over the past century in the industrialized social contracts and that erosion makes meaningful community action very difficult.

Food is an amazingly effective way to revitalize such fabric, not through the protest of GMOs or something, but through locally owning the means of production to the greatest extent possible. It is one means to begin to create the possibility of localized identity as an alternative to consumer identity. Indeed many large social movements have at their core a relationship to food when it comes to action and the ability for people to find immediacy and poignancy. I have adopted these types of practices (and some others) because I feel we are on the edges of various kinds of collapse with regard to planetary systems, both human and natural. I am mostly persuaded of this because I had access to most of the large corporate strategic think tanks (internal and external) for several decades and participated heavily in their scenario planning processes. Supporting local resilience and the creation of social fabric where it has been eroded seems to be one of the only viable strategies I can come up with in the immediacy of my own life, particularly in the US where there is little or no federal support possible at present.

In line with this I have found the distinction that Wendell Berry makes between natural economy and financial economy useful ("What Matters: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth"). GMOs in their current form and implementation can be considered more a part of a financial economy, rather than a natural economy. Here is an excerpt from an article by Berry that touches on some of themes in "The Progressive":

quote:

My economic point of view is from ground level. It is a point of view sometimes described as “agrarian.” That means that in ordering the economy of a household or community or nation, I would put nature first, the economies of land use second, the manufacturing economy third, and the consumer economy fourth.

A properly ordered economy, putting nature first and consumption last, would start with the subsistence or household economy and proceed from that to the economy of markets. It would be the means by which people provide to themselves and to others the things necessary to support life: goods coming from nature and human work. It would distinguish between needs and mere wants, and it would grant a firm precedence to needs.

A proper economy, moreover, would designate certain things as priceless. This would not be, as now, the “pricelessness” of things that are extremely rare or expensive, but would refer to things of absolute value, beyond and above any price that could be set upon them by any market. The things of absolute value would be fertile land, clean water and air, ecological health, and the capacity of nature to renew itself in the economic landscapes. The cultural precedent for this assignment of absolute value that is nearest to us probably is biblical, as in Psalm 24 (“The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof . . .”) and Leviticus 25:23 (“The land shall not be sold forever . . .”). But there are precedents in all societies and traditions that have understood the land or the world as sacred—or, speaking practically, as possessing a suprahuman value. The rule of pricelessness clearly imposes certain limits upon the idea of landownership. Owners would enjoy certain customary privileges, necessarily, as the land would be entrusted to their intelligence and responsibility. But they would be expected to use the land as its servants and on behalf of all the living.

The present and now-failing economy is just about exactly opposite to the economy I have just described. Over a long time, and by means of a set of handy prevarications, our economy has become an anti-economy, a financial system without a sound economic basis and without economic virtues.

It has inverted the economic order that puts nature first. This economy is based upon consumption, which ultimately serves not the ordinary consumers but a tiny class of excessively wealthy people for whose further enrichment the economy is understood (by them) to exist. For the purpose of their further enrichment, these plutocrats and the great corporations that serve them have controlled the economy by the purchase of political power. The purchased governments do not act in the interest of the governed; they act instead as agents for the corporations.

That this economy is, or was, consumption-based is revealed by the remedies now being proposed for its failure: stimulate, spend, create jobs. What is to be stimulated is spending. The government injects into the failing economy money to be spent, or to be loaned to be spent. If people have money to spend and are eager to spend it, demand for products will increase, creating jobs, industry will meet the demand with more products, which will be bought, thus increasing the amount of money in circulation, which will increase demand, which will increase spending, which will increase production—and so on until the old fantastical economy of limitless economic growth will have “recovered.”

But spending is not an economic virtue. Miserliness is not an economic virtue either, but saving is. Not-wasting is. To encourage spending with no regard at all to what is being purchased may be pro-finance, but it is anti-economic. Finance, as opposed to economy, is always ready and eager to confuse wants with needs. From a financial point of view, it is good, even patriotic, to buy a new car whether you need one or not. From an economic point of view, however, it is wrong (and unpatriotic) to buy anything you do not need. Only in a financial system, an anti-economy, can it seem to make sense to talk about “what the economy needs.” In an authentic economy, we would ask what the land, what the people, need.

From an economic point of view, a society in which every school child “needs” a computer, and every sixteen-year-old “needs” an automobile, and every eighteen-year-old “needs” to go to college is already delusional and is well on its way to being broke.

Sogol fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jul 2, 2013

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
GMOs also have a very different political dimension in India than in Western Nations.

There's the Bhopal disaster, for one. People in India haven't forgotten.

GMOs can be seen as another manifestation of Western Exploitation - the science should be public and if we have barriers of goods (but not information) - perhaps a 'homegrown' application would be developed and accepted.

Sir James Goldsmith was an early critic of Globalization, GATT, and the more money==better approach to agriculture (rather than nutritional yields, tradition, etc). In a 1994 interview he mentions the criticisms of Vandana Shiva.

While Goldsmith died in the late 90's; Dr. Shiva is still alive but has become a bit of a reactionary crank about the technology - however I don't blame her after decades of effort accomplishing little to affect the 'inevitable form' of globalization (brought to you by Monsanto, BP, Apple, etc)

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

karthun posted:

Anti science stupidly is leading to a resurgence in mumps, and measles.

Which would be fine if it were them getting sick. But it's their children.

:smith:

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Nevvy Z posted:

Which would be fine if it were them getting sick. But it's their children.

:smith:

And a lot of other hapless individuals. Anti-vaccination stuff is not just stupid, it's antisocial.

AHungryRobot
Oct 12, 2012

V. Illych L. posted:

And a lot of other hapless individuals. Anti-vaccination stuff is not just stupid, it's antisocial.

"Herd immunity? What's that? :downs:"

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
Why has so many people started randomly defended Monsanto on the internet, always talking about anti-science and such.

The entire seed business is corrupt as gently caress and you people coming in defending Monsanto are either scum or getting paid.

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

Buller posted:

Why has so many people started randomly defended Monsanto on the internet, always talking about anti-science and such.

The entire seed business is corrupt as gently caress and you people coming in defending Monsanto are either scum or getting paid.

Do you care to elaborate on what, precisely, this corruption is? Because as we have covered repeatedly, all criticisms of Monsanto seem to be either unfounded bullshit or capitalism.txt.

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

Buller posted:

Why has so many people started randomly defended Monsanto on the internet, always talking about anti-science and such.

The entire seed business is corrupt as gently caress and you people coming in defending Monsanto are either scum or getting paid.

I prefer to hate Monsanto for what they've actually done, not for what a bunch of sensationalistic goofballs claim they've done.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
Oh okay just capitalism.txt, phew here I thought the actions of the people controlling the worlds food production might actually have an effect on actual people but turns out it can be reduced to a textfile metaphor!

You can't seperate the industries scientific department from it's actions, just because whatever soybeans they are making might not be immediately destroying it's surrounding natural enviroment, we still have no idea what nature in many parts of the world will look like after interacting with GMO crops for xx+ years, not to forget that alot of groundwater have been destroyed by garden chemicals being sold over the counter for everyone to put in their yards.

On top of all this comes your dumb capitalism.txt bullshit gently caress you. (yes please judge Monsanto on what they have done instead of what you think they might have done: Agent Orange)

Edit: "GMOs have had a strong net positive effect on the environment. Roundup ready crops, for example, don't require secondary tilling, which greatly reduces soil erosion. More importantly, massive amounts of additional land would be required for crops to feed the world if we only had organic farming. From Lynas' article at: "

Throwing plant killing liquids into the soil (read: gonna make it into water at some point): better than tilling a field.

Buller fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jul 2, 2013

Forever_Peace
May 7, 2007

Shoe do do do do do do do
Shoe do do do do do do yeah
Shoe do do do do do do do
Shoe do do do do do do yeah

Amarkov posted:

Do you care to elaborate on what, precisely, this corruption is? Because as we have covered repeatedly, all criticisms of Monsanto seem to be either unfounded bullshit or capitalism.txt.

Well, I happened to make specific, non-"bullshit", sourced claims of shady business practices just two pages ago, and followed it up by specifically addressing your concern that this was all the price of capitalism - like most things, there are some instances where this is the case and others where it isn't. It looks like you may have missed or forgotten about these, in light of your comments that "If there were someone who hated Monsanto, but was otherwise fine with GMOs, sure. This would be a productive and effective technique. But that situation doesn't really happen" (which is literally exactly what I expressed).

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

Buller posted:

Throwing plant killing liquids into the soil (read: gonna make it into water at some point): better than tilling a field.

Yes, this is literally true. I do not understand why you think "HERBICIDES :supaburn:" is a sufficient refutation.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
Haha that is literally the most pathetic reply you could have to that post, please scurry back into your hole you rat.

Okay just looked up your rapsheet, that abortion thing makes me think I might just have gotten trolled by a contrarian.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

You can't seperate the industries scientific department from it's actions, just because whatever soybeans they are making might not be immediately destroying it's surrounding natural enviroment, we still have no idea what nature in many parts of the world will look like after interacting with GMO crops for xx+ years, not to forget that alot of groundwater have been destroyed by garden chemicals being sold over the counter for everyone to put in their yards.

Why are you worried about plants that are so poor to compete in "natural environment" that they require near constant human interaction to prevent them from collapsing under the weight of their massive fruit? Its like worrying about domesticated poultry with breasts so big that the birds can not naturally breed escaping and running the pheasant population extent or Chihuahua's escaping and having wolves go extinct. If corn and soy were not tended by farmers the fields would be overrun with weeds and grasses, just like the "natural environment" was in the great plains a thousand years ago.

:edit:

jesus loving christ are you really wanting to talk about the damage that tile drainage and tilling have done to our rivers?

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
It's not only plants its animals too, many animals have very specific habitat demands, so theres always the risk of extinction (local or global) when you alter nature. Not to say what unknown consequences there may be to animals interacting with GMO on a mass scale (Like the butterflies in China).

smitz
Nov 5, 2003

Buller posted:

Why has so many people started randomly defended

Have you really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

Buller posted:

It's not only plants its animals too, many animals have very specific habitat demands, so theres always the risk of extinction (local or global) when you alter nature. Not to say what unknown consequences there may be to animals interacting with GMO on a mass scale (Like the butterflies in China).

Through what mechanism would animals interact with GMO crops on a mass scale? As karthun said, no food crops are even close to competitive in the wild; even on specially prepared farm fields, constant human intervention is necessary to keep weeds and pests from killing them.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

It's not only plants its animals too, many animals have very specific habitat demands, so theres always the risk of extinction (local or global) when you alter nature. Not to say what unknown consequences there may be to animals interacting with GMO on a mass scale (Like the butterflies in China).

And that is why we should seek to heavily modify as little area as possible. This means we need to have crops that are modified and bred to convert as much energy as the plant gets from the sun into sugars and starches rather than trying to compete against other plants for sunlight.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010

Amarkov posted:

Through what mechanism would animals interact with GMO crops on a mass scale? As karthun said, no food crops are even close to competitive in the wild; even on specially prepared farm fields, constant human intervention is necessary to keep weeds and pests from killing them.

http://ag.arizona.edu/ento/courses/ento446_546/readings/Losey_1999.pdf

http://independentsciencenews.org/news/bee-learning-behaviour/

http://independentsciencenews.org/news/bt-maize-pollen/

"The European approval process for transgenic crops has been criticised consistently and heavily in recent years, in particular for failing to draw sufficiently on ecological expertise. This result suggests that the spectre of widespread ecological damage arising from transgenic crops can no longer be considered unfounded speculation. Matt Shardlow believes that “all GM crops should be rigorously tested for their impact on invertebrates which are the foundation of life on earth. If they are failing to do that then they are not adequate.”"

Just if you wanna go all science on it.

karthun posted:

And that is why we should seek to heavily modify as little area as possible. This means we need to have crops that are modified and bred to convert as much energy as the plant gets from the sun into sugars and starches rather than trying to compete against other plants for sunlight.

If there is a surplus of food people are just going to start producing more meat or cash crops, take a look at South America and their Soy Bean production.

Buller fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jul 2, 2013

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

If there is a surplus of food people are just going to start producing more meat or cash crops, take a look at South America and their Soy Bean production.

We have to strive for a surplus of food. A surplus of food is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. Btw you haven't responded to my post about the ecological damage done by traditional weed control methods like tilling.

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

Buller posted:

http://ag.arizona.edu/ento/courses/ento446_546/readings/Losey_1999.pdf

http://independentsciencenews.org/news/bee-learning-behaviour/

http://independentsciencenews.org/news/bt-maize-pollen/

"The European approval process for transgenic crops has been criticised consistently and heavily in recent years, in particular for failing to draw sufficiently on ecological expertise. This result suggests that the spectre of widespread ecological damage arising from transgenic crops can no longer be considered unfounded speculation. Matt Shardlow believes that “all GM crops should be rigorously tested for their impact on invertebrates which are the foundation of life on earth. If they are failing to do that then they are not adequate.”"

Just if you wanna go all science on it.

I'm going to assume you have no understanding of the problem here. If you do, I'm sorry for sounding patronizing, but hopefully the information will be new to someone reading this.

Modern scientific studies are almost always statistical. That is, studies do not have 100% certainty, meaning that a single study is never conclusive. In your specific example, Lang and Vojtech concluded that

quote:

...possible effects of Bt maize on European butterflies and moths must be evaluated more rigorously before Bt maize should be cultivated over large areas.
Additional studies were performed, and confirmed to the satisfaction of the relevant European agencies that Bt maize does not pose an environmental risk in this way.

Now, I can understand why this might still trouble you, if you thought that only GMOs have this type of thing happen to them. But this simply isn't the case. For instance, remember trans fats? We used them for almost a hundred years, and it wasn't until the 1990s that we realized the huge health risks they posed. This kind of thing happens; the only way to eliminate unintended environmental risks is to reduce human activity to the point where it has no environmental impact.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
Got a link for that mate? Or maybe youre just talking unfounded bullshit?

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010

Buller posted:

Got a link for that mate?

I can find a few studies on the swallowtail from before 2006, if you want those. It's quite difficult to find studies from after 2006; I'm not in the field, so I don't know how to properly filter out all the anti-GMO groups that started spamming the Lang study after it came out.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
Do you at least have one about trans fat harming the environment?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Amarkov
Jun 21, 2010
Don't be pedantic.

If you really want something that's closer to the standard idea of an "environmental risk", here you go. We're still reevaluating precisely how bad tillage is for the environment, and unless some huge development I'm not aware of has happened, it's entirely possible the science will settle on "oh god why would you just indiscriminately dig up the soil".

  • Locked thread