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The Goose that lays the Golden Eggs is almost dead...

Discussion in 'Whatnots' started by Fljotsdale, Aug 29, 2001.

  1. Fljotsdale Gems: 5/31
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    [​IMG] Very well said, Sprite. You speak a lot of plain common sense! :)
     
  2. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    If you are talking about the "doomsday" prediction of Sprite's Scenario Two, you couldn't be more wrong about the common sense part.
     
  3. Fljotsdale Gems: 5/31
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    Sorry, Blackthorne, (and Nobleman too) but although Sprite DOES seem over the top, it is a perfectly valid extrapolation from what little we are allowed to know. And not just ordinary Joe's like us hold that opinion - so do very many actually WORKING in the field, from environmental scientist down. It is mainly only the ones working for the corporations who pat our heads and say 'it is all going to be ok, don't worry your silly little ignorant heads.'
    I'm overreacting? Yeah. Maybe. Remind me of that when the crops fail and WE are starving, not only the 'third world' countries. :)
    No personal attack intended, guys, you are both people I have come to like. :)

    [This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited August 30, 2001).]
     
  4. Nobleman Gems: 27/31
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    [​IMG] Hi fljotsdale.

    I still study at University and when I hit the "real" world, its people like You that keep my common sense in realistic proportions. Nothing wrong in that. :)

    Sprite suggests us to make major changes. But visons in that league (drop big sinister firms, stop import export of food(cattle)) takes a Martin L. King extraordinairé to conduct on humanity. Can it at all be done? realisticly thinking? Or should we set more realistic goals. I know its unsatisfying to mend rather that change, but it's better than just standing by. I think peoples attitude towards a healthier world will indeed change in two or three generations. I have Nothing to base that assuption on except for the growing number of what I call "greenies". People who not actively but passively give support to a healthier environment. I don't think the world will end in an biologic Apocalyse but things will be better In my Honest opinion.

    [This message has been edited by Nobleman (edited August 30, 2001).]
     
  5. Fljotsdale Gems: 5/31
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    Nobleman! Actually, if you have read much of the stuff I post you will know that I am in favour of ACTION but not violence. We have to do relatively simple stuff - buying organinc, from small farmers, etc, and avoiding ANYTHING produced by big corporation whenever possible (I know it isn't all the time). Get your electricity supply from 'green' producers. Get a pushbike instead of using the car to go everywhere (yeah, you may need a car for some things). Use public transport if possible, rather than a car, for long distances. Stop using pesticides and herbicides in your garden and make sure your parents don't use 'em, either, if you are a teen or younger. ('Proper' gardening is healthy, anyway!) Recycle as a matter of course.
    Eventually, if enough of us do those things, we will make an impact where it counts - in the pockets of the Corporations (we hates 'em forever, we do!)
     
  6. Nobleman Gems: 27/31
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    Hi Fljotsdale

    We agree. both on the human awareness in the future and on what to do about it :)

    I am sorry if I made the impression of You beeing Violent. English is not my native language, so I am sorry that I wasn't more carefull in expressing myself in a toppic so important.
     
  7. Sprite Gems: 15/31
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    Nobleman, if you think I was advocating a mass movement I must have miscommunicated. My apologies. My point is that people who hold strong convictions shouldn't wait for a Martin Luther King type to lead them, they should make the small differences they can every day to live according to what they believe in. That doesn't take a leader- it just takes a little independent thinking.

    I don't care to destroy big corporations- who would pay my salary so I can afford expensive organic foods? But if you don't like what a particular company does, it's as silly to keep buying their products as it is to wait for someone to shut them down. There's no inherent reason ethical companies can't become big corporations and keep their "heart"- the only obstacle is persistent consumer choice to buy the product that's cheaper because of ethical corner-cutting.

    Blackthorne, I know your educational background relates to this area. I'm interested to know the basis for your conviction that the "worst case scenario" I described above is completely impossible. My bachelor's degree was not in science but in history, so I am extrapolating both my best and worst case scenarios from historical events. [I freely admit, by the way, that I am extrapolating ad absurdum- that's a fairly normal way of producing best and worst case scenarios for rhethorical purposes in philosophy although, I know, not usually in science. I'd have qualified that if I thought this was a scientific debate rather than a philosophical one.]

    The best case scenario I extrapolated from the New World foods (like potatoes) that dramatically reduced hunger and vitamin deficiencies in 17th and 18th century Europe, and the worst case scenario from the small extinctions that have occurred throughout the world as a result of travel and colonialisation- like Purple Loosestrife as I mentioned above.

    If you have the time or patience, I'd like you to explain it as I find this subject very interesting (so do others, it seems) and I'd like to be better informed. If you don't have the patience, can you at least say if your thoughts are in the field of:
    a) we could contain such a plant successfully to minimise its impact
    b) we could never produce such a plant
    c) no plant could ever have such an impact on an ecosystem even if it grew unchecked?

    ... and then we'll coauthor a really good sci-fi story about it. :b

    [EDIT: Thanks for responding Blackthorne, and for the link Nobleman- it's food for thought (pun intended). And by the way Fljotsdale - I too am a "she" not a "he". :)]

    [This message has been edited by Sprite (edited August 31, 2001).]
     
  8. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Here is where my unbelief lies:

    1)Cereal grains are not made or bred to spread like wildfire. The Purple Loosestrife is a perennial plant (meaning that it lives for more than one season), and will regrow itself if there is a small portion of root left in the ground. Grains are annuals (meaning they live for only one season and then die) and are bred so that their seeds (the grain that you eat) mature and ripen at the same time and remain on the stalk to be harvested. An even more special case is corn which cannot propagate itself without human intervention because it has no natural way to broadcast its seeds.

    2)Never eaten by bugs. What do you mean by this? Anything we can eat will be eaten by bugs and other animals. If you mean poisonous to insects and not to mammals, I assure you that is a temporary condition and that the the insects will eventually develop immunities to the poison before they are extinct.

    3)Outcompeting local plants. Annuals that are harvested for their seeds cannot outcompete any plant where this is not desired. The plant itself dies every season, and its seeds (that which would propagate a new generation) are taken by us to eat (or to feed to our livestock). Or of course to plant for the next crop.

    4)Outcompeting every plant on the planet. Hardly. A grain would never outcompete the trees in a forest, or any other well established perennial (like your Purple Loosestrife :) ), nor would it outcompete any plant that grows under different conditions (an extreme example would be water plants).

    5)Humans being the only animals left on the planet given your other predictions come true. Humans are hardly the only omnivores on the planet, and there are plenty of herbivores that would be able to eat this super-grain of yours to keep the carnivores happy.

    Oh! One thing I forgot to mention is my educational background doesn't really relate to this subject; it's more into electronics than biology. This is more from my own incidental knowledge of the subject (since I do have interests in sciences other than EE) and my own common sense. Which is why I said Sprite's common sense was not so common! :)

    [This message has been edited by Blackthorne TA (edited August 31, 2001).]
     
  9. Fljotsdale Gems: 5/31
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    Just 'cos someone goes a bit over the top to press a point, Blackthorne, is no reason to trash their argument. As I said, he was talking a lot of common sense, and far more than you, imho, 'cos at least Sprite is looking at possible (if overstated) unfortunate scenarios, while you appear to shutting your eyes. No offence intended -I'm sure you are more aware than your comments indicate - but Sprite expresses the fears of many. :)
     
  10. Shralp Gems: 18/31
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    Actually, Blackthorne was ASKED to present his arguments and then did so. Very compellingly too, I might add.

    Genetically altered plants can and do spread quickly. There's a corn variant called "Roundup Ready" that will withstand large exposure to the powerful herbicide Roundup; and it's spreading from farm to farm. Of course, as BTA pointed out, it wouldn't be able to spread if humans didn't keep planting corn. Yet we are, so this GM corn is spreading. I don't know if the modifications have spread to other plants yet (a friend with a biology degree thinks it quite possible).

    I'm not sure what to think about Frankenfoods like tomatoes with fish genes spliced in so that they can handle the cold better. At first it sounds pretty repulsive, but unless someone can tell me exactly what problem can spring from this -- I refuse to sign on to the alarmist bandwagon. After all, isn't such a thing just injecting MORE bioversity?
     
  11. Nobleman Gems: 27/31
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    The RoundupReady has a poor IMMUNESYSTEM due to applications with glyphosate when it's imposed to certain types of stress.

    Further the applications with glyphosate can reduce the yield due to changes in it's nitrogen fixation and it's nodulation.

    For those who want to know more (I guess none :p) You can read the script files by Dr. Charles M. Benbrook
    Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center
    Sandpoint Idaho
    May 3, 2001 http://www.biotech-info.net/troubledtimes.html

    Still I haven't heard of the spreading to other plants. But I'll look into it. I should have known. sorry :eek: Don't tell my institute :D
     
  12. Shralp Gems: 18/31
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    Nobleman, I can't pretend to understand what you were saying there, but I can help a bit with finding out about it spreading.

    Turns out that since the seed company who markets it (DeKalb?) patented the technology they've managed to finagle some weird deal in which other farmers can't grow it unless they pay. Well, it spread into an adjacent farmer's field. He didn't care, didn't use RoundUp, and didn't report it. So now the government (FDA, I think) is coming down on him.

    Sorry the details are hazy.
     
  13. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Fljotsdale - I did not (nor am I) say that caution is not warranted when it comes to genetic manipulations. But I believe that unfounded hysteria and the perpetuation of misconceptions is not warranted. I only objected to Sprite's "doomsday" scenario because she obviously did not believe it was really "over the top", and thought that given the right circumstances, it was possible. Then you came along and said that that was alot of "plain common sense" which I certainly do not agree with, and so I indicated my dissention and presented my reasons in my following post when asked.

    Also, when I see only one side of a controversial issue presented with no challenges to even "over the top" assertions, I feel compelled to step in and stand up for the other side of the controversy. :)

    [This message has been edited by Blackthorne TA (edited September 01, 2001).]
     
  14. Fljotsdale Gems: 5/31
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    [​IMG] Fair enough, Blackthorne! :)

    But, you know, the fact is that people prefer to go around with their eyes shut until disaster overtakes them. And I know there are arguments for and against using 'over the top' words to make 'em open their eyes for a few seconds.
    But what to do? Keep quiet about possible consequences and hope disaster DOESN'T strike, or try to motivate people to DO something, however small, (like recycling, like not buying from indifferent multinationals) to avert possible disaster?

    If saying something 'over the top' gets even one person to think, don't you think it might be worth it?
     
  15. Sprite Gems: 15/31
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    How did a discussion on the possibilities of GM crops turn into a debate on whether I had any common sense? Please let's keep this a debate and not a catfight.

    I was using hyperbole as a rhetorical device, NOT saying that my "Scenario Two" was the inevitable result of GM crops. As far as I was concerned both my Scenario One and Scenario Two were "over the top"- that is, reductio ad absurdum arguments as I have already said- to show opposite ends of a continuum of possibilities regardless of probabilities. It seems Fljotsdale understood that even if no one else did- but I'm sorry if I should have spelled that out.

    As far as not being "balanced"- I mentioned both an implausible worst case scenario and the implausible best case scenario, and elaborated on the worst case scenario since it interests me most, and since Kitiara had already more or less brought up the best case scenario above. I also encouraged Blackthorne to list his objections- which he did- to encourage further debate into this topic. I hope I wouldn't have to argue BOTH sides to be taken seriously in this debate. While I do argue with myself I don't usually do it in public forums.

    Can we get back on topic please? I am looking forward to learning from those here with more scientific backgrounds.

    [This message has been edited by Sprite (edited September 01, 2001).]
     
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