So is Anti-GMO Equivalent to Nazi Book Burning?

The idea that those that oppose GMOs through direct action are equivalent to Nazi book burners is a troubling notion.  It is based on two simplistic premises that science is neutral and that the advancement of knowledge is good.  However, the premises contradict each other.  If science is neutral, and science has the goal of the advancement of knowledge, then to my mind the advancement of knowledge can be neither good nor bad, just the uses to which it can be put.  Any thinking person can agree that although science may be neutral, scientists and everybody else, are not. That corporate greed can undermine the neutrality of scientific results should be a cautionary tale to us all. 

Consider that Nazi science was neutral, but the scientists were not. It is clear that Nazi science, although neutral, was often also immoral. Scientists could agree to go on wholeheartedly with the experiments, or sabotage them. The scientist as a Nazi would go on with experiment in good faith.  The scientist as a moral person would find any way possible to disrupt it.  So the question is who, if any, are the real Nazis in this debate?

Discussion over honest differences of opinion in the arena of scientific ideas is the way knowledge advances.  Theories change on as experiments warrant. However, as with a medical trial, the experiment stops when the precautionary principle suggests that harm could be done.

As the patient is on the operating table, the GMO supporters argue that the patient will die without the operation.  They argue that the anti-GMO people are causing the patient to die by halting the operation and saying that anti-GMO people are doomsayers. The death of the patient is itself a theory open to debate, as is the efficacy, morality and safety of the operation.  This makes the GMO supporters not only the doomsayers, but also immoral by openly violating the precautionary principle.

Ishtarmuz’s Rebuttal to: People will starve to death because of anti-GM zealotry

Ishtarmuz’s Rebuttal to: People will starve to death because of anti-GM zealotry as seen the Telegraph.co.uk on 23 May 2012

The father of the Green Revolution would have supported the GM wheat scientists at Rothamsted, argues Prof Malcolm Elliot.

Genetically modified crops have the potential to save lives around the world Photo: ALAMY

Original article posted by Prof Malcolm Elliot 12:24PM BST 23 May 2012. He writes:

In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote in his book The Population Bomb that “mass starvation” due to “burgeoning population growth” was inevitable. “It is now too late to take action” to avoid hundreds of millions of deaths in developing countries, he declared, more than 40 years ago. Nothing could be done to stop all those people dying from hunger, because there were simply too many mouths to feed. It was already game over.

Indeed Ehlich used a flawed model to make his prediction.  Unfortunately, he did not use the ubiquitous logistic curve which held true. Population should peak and level off as population density peaks and resources remained constant or decline. Everything else equal, this would have been true with no intervention.  In fact, it might be argued that any intervention that caused the population to continue upward instead of leveling off, like a green revolution, is responsible for the current population issues and has killed more than it has saved.

That Ehrlich was wrong, both morally and factually, was largely down to the efforts of one man. Norman Borlaug was as concerned about population growth as Ehrlich, but instead of making doom-laden prophecies about mass death, he decided that the best course of action to stop people starving would be to help them produce more food. Now famous as the father of the Green Revolution, he toiled for years to breed high-yielding cereal crops and other innovations which enabled poor countries to dramatically increase agricultural productivity.

Some might be interested in this podcast:  Exposing the Green Revolution: Myths, Realities, and Community Responses. 

The task of feeding the world is only going to get harder in years to come. By 2050 the world’s population will approach 10 billion, and combined environmental crises mean we must produce much more food on less land with less water, fewer agrochemicals and less fossil fuel, while still maintaining biodiversity. At the same time, farming must adapt to changing climate zones and weather patterns. To do all this we must heed Borlaug’s plea to deploy the full range of cutting-edge techniques to produce higher yielding, higher quality, lower input, lower environmental impact crops. As founding director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for Global Food Security, I can testify to the urgency of this challenge.

I see the same fallacious argument here that was originally argued against.  The only difference here between a doomsayer and a doomsayer with a solution that puts money and control of food in fewer and fewer hands, is that the inevitable doom predicted by the former is replaced by the inevitable doom hidden by the latter.  I can forgive the former of blindness, the latter is unforgivable.

Among the techniques that Borlaug highlighted were gene manipulation approaches that promise to deliver results faster and more precisely than the classical crop breeding techniques. Dr Clive James, Borlaug’s deputy director at his wheat and maize research centre in Mexico during the 1970s and 1980s, today reports that the 94-fold increase from 4.2 million acres in 1996 to 395 million acres in 2011 makes GM crops the fastest-adopted crop technology in recent history. During the period from 1996 to 2011, millions of farmers in 29 countries worldwide chose to plant and replant an accumulated acreage of 5.9 billion acres – a testimony to the fact that such crops deliver sustainable and substantial socioeconomic and environmental benefits.

RELATED ARTICLES (from original post):

• GM vandals are shutting down scientific debate  22 May 2012
• Witless GM vandalism 21 May 2012
• Genetically modified wheat that repels insect pests 29 Mar 2012

Yet this progress has not been smooth. Norman Borlaug was forced to spend his dying years campaigning to protect agricultural innovations like GM from being derailed by activists who opposed all genetic engineering for ideological reasons, or were simply against modern biotechnology on principle. As Borlaug warned in 2004, success for the anti-GM lobby could be catastrophic: “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”

The idea that scientists invested in the idea of patenting corporate scientific technology lack any ideological bias would be laughable if it was not so sad and dangerous. His line of argument boarders on propaganda.

This warning seems particularly prescient right now, as anti-GM activists threaten to destroy publicly funded research on wheat at the Rothamsted Institute here in the UK. A group called “Take the Flour Back” has pledged to destroy the entire trial site next Sunday, while on Sunday a lone activist broke into the experimental plots and caused damage before being arrested by police. The threatened “decontamination” by anti-GM zealots is supposedly in response to the danger of pollen from the wheat spreading to neighbouring fields – the activists seem to be labouring under the misunderstanding that wheat is wind pollinated, whereas in fact it is self-pollinating, so little if any pollen ever leaves the plant. This sadly testifies to the extent of their understanding of agriculture.

Except you can read in GMO Compass this:

Normally, self-pollination occurs, which means wheat plants fertilize themselves with their own pollen before flowers even open. Nevertheless – depending on genotype and climatic conditions – cross-pollination with other wheat plants is possible. It usually occurs at a rate of approximately one to two percent. The rate can increase up to 9.7 percent when weather conditions are dry and warm.

Unlike, yes, but possible.

It is also important to understand what the scientists at Rothamsted are trying to do. Their experiments test the important ecological concept that natural behaviour-modifying pheromones – which repel sap-sucking insect pests called aphids – can be used to protect crops in the same way as they protect wild plants. The project is publicly funded and, if it is successful, the results will not be patented. Indeed, if successful the trial runs counter to the interests of the agrochemical industry because it may point the way to another type of plant protection which reduces insecticide use and the effects on non-target insects, and thereby benefit both biodiversity and productivity at the same time.However, the activists seem impervious to scientific reasoning, and have rejected an offer by the Rothamsted team for a public debate in front of an audience. Still, constant attacks by a tiny, ideologically motivated minority on work which could benefit the whole of humanity raise serious questions. Can a small, thuggish “action group” take a unilateral decision to suppress the advance of knowledge which might benefit everyone? If so, they will continue wilfully to deprive British farmers of the benefits of a technology that is already cherished by millions of producers worldwide, and limit the response of distinguished British scientists to the needs of the billion people who are already starving.

It is truly unfortunate that a small group of thuggish scientists can decide to steer research in a direction which is more driven by profit than people and that it can be marketed as free and open research that is to the serve man and knowledge. I suppose it could be a cookbook.

. 

This attack on both scientists and the scientific method cannot go unopposed. It is incumbent upon everyone who values science and reason to stand up to vandalism and the destruction of legitimate scientific experiments. The attack on Rothamsted’s experimental plot must not go ahead.

Indeed we cannot stand for this attack on science. This attack on science by a handful of scientists with the hubris to push dogmatic, reductionist scientific advances in technology as representing the syne qua non of science is not acceptable. That something can be done, does not mean it should be done. Unintended consequences are more than just a small possibility.

Professor Malcolm Elliott is the founding director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for Global Food Security

Enough Said.

 Repost of original article and image under fair use provisions of local copyright law.

History of Money: The Money Masters #OccupyWallStreet #SEP17 #USDOR

History of Money: The Money Masters 1/2 

Vodpod videos no longer available.

History of Money: The Money Masters 1/2, posted with vodpod

History of Money: The Money Masters 2/2

Vodpod videos no longer available.

It’s The Corporatism, Stupid. ™  #OccupyWallStreet  #SEP17 #AntiBanks

Vodpod videos no longer available.

It’s The Corporatism, Stupid.™, posted with vodpod

Finance Capital will usher in third world status for all of us, unless we #OccupyWallStreet #AntiBanks #SEP17

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Finance Capital will usher in third world statu…, posted with vodpod

RT: History of Monsanto

Vodpod videos no longer available.

RT: History of Monsanto , posted with vodpod

Corporate Power – The Bane of Civilization #MarchOnWashington #OCT06

Corporate Power – The Bane of Civilization

It is corporatism. It is the new slavery. If you don’t like the status quo, then march on your capital on #OCT06. Bring a tent.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Discovered Corporate Power – The Bane of Civilization via CONTRACOMA
Follow my videos on vodpod

BP Oil Leak Vs. Aus Rotten

Vodpod videos no longer available.

1st collector for BP Oil Leak Vs. Aus Rotten
Follow my videos on vodpod

BP Corporate Greed Irresponsibility led to Environmental Disaster.

Runaway corporate greed haunts America

BP and the Audacity of Corporate Greed

Hackgate: The official movie trailer – The Fall of the Murdoch Empire and the fall of Corporatism

Hackgate: The official movie trailer
Vodpod videos no longer available.

Hackgate: The official movie trailer
Follow my videos on vodpod

5 Must-Reads on the Phone-Hacking Scandal

Murdoch Hacking Scandal: ‘Catalogue of Failures’

Murdoch hacking scandal: A lesson for news consumers

Olbermann On Murdoch Hacking Scandal: Stock Down And Advertisers Pulling Ads

Vodpod videos no longer available.

1st collector for Olbermann On Murdoch Hacking Scandal: Stock Dow…
Follow my videos on vodpod

NO Monsanto #GMO

NO Monsanto

Vodpod videos no longer available.

NO Monsanto
Follow my videos on vodpod

Monsanto: The Death Merchants

The #GMO Daily

Latest GMO tweets

“GMO” the musical

Vodpod videos no longer available.

1st collector for “GMO” the musical
Follow my videos on vodpod

No Monsanto

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Payday Monsanto – NO Monsanto , posted with vodpod

Just Say No To GMO

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Just Say No to GMO music video www.NaturalNews…., posted with vodpod

What does Bill Gates, Monsanto, mosquitoes, Xe, chemtrails & vaccines have in common? #FYW

What does Bill Gates, Monsanto, mosquitoes, Xe, chemtrails and vaccines have in common?

Vodpod videos no longer available.

1st collector for What does Bill Gates, Monsanto, mosquitoes, Xe,…
Follow my videos on vodpod

Modifying Weather: Cloud Seeding has Some New Believers

ROCKY BARKER, 11/19,2009
The Idaho Statesman

as posted by U.S. News & World Report

BOISE, Idaho—Cloud seeding once was seen similar to well divining, medicine shows and miracle healers.

But today Idaho Power Co. is investing up to $1 million to seed the clouds above Idaho’s mountains, in hopes of increasing the snowpack that holds the water that will drive the hydroelectric turbines to produce the cheapest power the company can get.

The utility is not alone. Eastern Idaho counties and businesses have put together a coalition to pay for cloud seeding in the Upper Snake River Basin. They estimate their limited efforts already have increased the snowpack there by 7 percent, about half as much as Idaho Power hopes for.

“I feel really good about it,” said Paul Romrell, a Fremont County commissioner who heads the coalition. “Our reservoirs levels are in better condition than they’ve been in for years.”

The basic technology has been around for a while. Silver iodide is sprayed into the clouds, pulling the moisture out to form ice crystals that drop and fall on the earth as snow or rain.

Boise Airport has long used cloud seeding to clear winter fog that delays flights. Farmers experimented with the technology back in the 1980s.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made news recently when he called for a massive cloud seeding program to combat the record drought in his country and Cuba. China has the most extensive weather modification program in the world, with more than 35,000 people working in cloud seeding programs across the country, Business Week reports.

In the past, cloud seeding’s effectiveness for increasing precipitation was dismissed except in special cases, said Kevin Wade, Idaho Power water resource information supervisor. But scientists recognized that it was effective when it was used in mountain ranges to create snow.

That has led several Western states, including Wyoming, Nevada and Colorado, to embark on major cloud seeding efforts. Idaho Power began in 2003 after a stockholder at an annual meeting asked its leaders to study it.

Roger Fuhrman, who headed Idaho Power’s water management staff, was skeptical, but the utility put engineers CH2M Hill to work on the study.

“They convinced us this was real science and could be duplicated,” Fuhrman said.

Now Idaho Power has 10 silver iodide generators on the ground in the Payette drainage and one plane devoted to cloud seeding there. It has another 10 of the remote-controlled generators in eastern Idaho, where the coalition has 25 manually operated generators.

“The remote control generators can be fired up from a laptop in Boise,” Romrell said.

The company estimates it can increase the snowpack in the watershed above its hydro dams from 120,000 acre-feet to 250,000 acre-feet annually. That means the $1 million expenditure breaks down to about $7.70 an acre-foot.

“That varies from year to year,” Fuhrman said.

For comparison, Idaho Power pays $8 an acre-foot to buy power in the Payette Basin and more than $20 to buy water in the Upper Snake.

The technology is not without a downside. When a huge blizzard brought record snows this month to Beijing and other cities, Chinese officials acknowledged that cloud seeding contributed. The state-run Xinhua news agency said the Beijing Weather Modification Office claimed it had created 16 million metric tons of additional snow in the storm, which angered people caught in it.

Idaho Power and eastern Idaho officials say the cloud seeding they do is targeted to backcountry drainages in the Payette Basin and eastern Idaho.

“If the wind would put the snow over a populated area, we won’t turn it on,” Romrell said.

—

 Follow U.S. News Science on Twitter.

Look at one of the patents for this technology:

Stratospheric Welsbach seeding for reduction of global warming 

United States Patent 5003186

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a method for the reduction of global warming resulting from the greenhouse effect, and in particular to a method which involves the seeding of the earth’s stratosphere with Welsbach-like materials.

Global warming has been a great concern of many environmental scientists. Scientists believe that the greenhouse effect is responsible for global warming. Greatly increased amounts of heat-trapping gases have been generated since the Industrial Revolution. These gases, such as CO ₂ , CFC, and methane, accumulate in the atmosphere and allow sunlight to stream in freely but block heat from escaping (greenhouse effect). These gases are relatively transparent to sunshine but absorb strongly the long-wavelength infrared radiation released by the earth.

Most current approaches to reduce global warming are to restrict the release of various greenhouse gases, such as CO ₂ , CFC, and methane. These imply the need to establish new regulations and the need to monitor various gases and to enforce the regulations.

One proposed solution to the problem of global warming involves the seeding of the atmosphere with metallic particles. One technique proposed to seed the metallic particles was to add the tiny particles to the fuel of jet airliners, so that the particles would be emitted from the jet engine exhaust while the airliner was at its cruising altitude. While this method would increase the reflection of visible light incident from space, the metallic particles would trap the long wavelength blackbody radiation released from the earth. This could result in net increase in global warming.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for reduction of global warming due to the greenhouse effect which permits heat to escape through the atmosphere.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A method is disclosed for reducing atmospheric warming due to the greenhouse effect resulting from a greenhouse gases layer. The method comprises the step of seeding the greenhouse gas layer with a quantity of tiny particles of materials characterized by wavelength-dependent emissivity or reflectivity, in that said materials have high emissivities in the visible and far infrared wavelength regions and low emissivity in the near infrared wavelength region. Such materials can include the class of materials known as Welsbach materials. The oxides of metal, e.g., aluminum oxide, are also suitable for the purpose. The greenhouse gases layer typically extends between about seven and thirteen kilometers above the earth’s surface. The seeding of the stratosphere occurs within this layer. The particles suspended in the stratosphere as a result of the seeding provide a mechanism for converting the blackbody radiation emitted by the earth at near infrared wavelengths into radiation in the visible and far infrared wavelength so that this heat energy may be reradiated out into space, thereby reducing the global warming due to the greenhouse effect.  [more]

Chemtrails, Monsanto & Olgacom connection explained

Vodpod videos no longer available.

1st collector for Chemtrails, Monsanto & Olgacom connection expla…
Follow my videos on vodpod