EU’s refusal to permit #gmo crops led to millions of tonnes of additional CO2
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@kravietz
Monsanto is still buying news?
If you would like to actually learn something new, with solid scientific base, rather than just repeating FUD cliches invented at Greenpeace 30 years ago I recommend "Whole Earth Discipline" (2010) by Stewart Brand
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=3816FB871D4DF90AC879E582BAEE07AF
@kravietz
It's a bit rich linking me a GMO marketing blog and then saying Actually Learn Something...
There is this persistent idea that we need a centrally planned top-down solution to save the world, and I think part of it's appeal is that it allows people to believe that they're the intellectual elite.
20th century is littered with examples of such well meaning projects which all went awry (Seeing like a State - James C. Scott), but people like to believe...
> we need a centrally planned top-down
Your personal straw-man? Who said anything about "centrally planned"?
Farmers in India have 60% of their crops eaten by pest and have to flood it with pesticides to even collect something.
They ask smart guy on local uni to come up with a pest-resistant crop.
The university does it, everyone is happy.
Oh, apart from Greenpeace who prefers (sitting in their A/C office in NY) to starve, as "there's generally too many people".
@kravietz
Ok so you an I are aligned in being strongly against the "there are too many people" motherf****ers. I myself don't have strong enough words for them.
Now problem with GMO crops is it's kind of like virus research, if all goes well then everything is great. If something goes wrong then result could look like COVID-19. We need to make progress on both fronts but we also need to be extremely careful not to blow the world up doing it.
> Now problem with GMO crops
No, the problem with GMO crops is people's lack of understanding how genetics works. All this "viral growth" bullshit was completely invented by the likes of Greenpeace and has zero scientific base.
Any domesticated crops, including transgenic, are extremely sensitive and don't survive without cultivation, specifically because they are modified for specific traits *we* need, but not the plants.
It's the weeds who are evolution survivors.
@kravietz
Invasive species are a problem right now, even without people creating new ones.
But invasive species we understand and have systems for controlling. Hybridization and selective breeding likewise are reasonably safe because they're just so slow. All of these things we have a lot of experience with.
We need to get there on nuclear power, GMO, and stuff like viral research. But it's a long road and people running around yelling "No Risk, Trust Science" aren't helping.
This "slow and safe" is just another fallacy. Modern plant breeds, from foods to decorative flowers, are not made by decades of slow Mendel-like selection. They are produced by mutation breeding:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
Most cannabis varieties in sale today were also produced using radiation or chemical mutagenesis.
You can't imagine a more aggressive method of breeding than radiation or chemical mutagens, yet it's been around for almost a century now.
