The Gaming Den

So I generally love Mother Jones and all, but they really embarrassed themselves with this article.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott ... wer-yields

This is of course not just a one-off thing but an undercurrent of weirdness that flows through the left. Why?

A lot of the left (not all, and with no claim that it's unique to the left) isn't very good at thinking about things. So when those folks are fired up about protecting the environment (which I am also generally for), they approach it by trying to eliminate any man-made deltas from some imaginary "natural state."

It's actually pretty similar to a lot of the game design which gets criticized here, where intentions matter more than results.

Specifically, I would say it's because a lot of dumb, reactionary hippies kind of just happen to be on the left, and between a mistrust of anything to do with the government, and anything to do with science that can't get you high, GMOs, an already-poorly-comprehended-by-the public topic, are basically the perfect boogie man.

It's a bit interesting that two big left-wing conspiracies, GMO and Anti-Vax, are both built on the idea that corporations, Monsanto and Big Pharma, are doing some horrible evil. They are, of course, but their evil is mostly limited to using patent law to charge monopoly prices for medicine or to lock farmers into buying their seeds. I guess some people aren't satisfied with corporations only being guilty of naked greed?

There a basically two legit reasons to worried about GM food.

One is that it's basically impossible to "control" biological agents once they leave the lab.

The main thing is though is the coperations that make GMO's are like most corporations predictably terrible. They claim to have "patents" on genetic strands and will sue the fuck out of you if they find "their DNA" in your crops and you're not paying your protection money.

LR wrote:It's a bit interesting that two big left-wing conspiracies, GMO and Anti-Vax...

A bit of a side-note, but I didn't realize that anti-vax was considered "left wing". It seems a lot of conspiracy theories don't really fit well into left or right wing, but rather "paranoid anti-government", which could be either or neither.

Why is that article embarrassing?

RobbyPants wrote:

LR wrote:It's a bit interesting that two big left-wing conspiracies, GMO and Anti-Vax...

A bit of a side-note, but I didn't realize that anti-vax was considered "left wing". It seems a lot of conspiracy theories don't really fit well into left or right wing, but rather "paranoid anti-government", which could be either or neither.

The Anti-vax movement is a strange collection of far lefters and far righters. Michele Bachmann went on an anti-vax tirade on national TV, for example. The left-wing version of the anti-vax movement believes that corporations are giving you autism in order to steal money or something. The right-wing version of the anti-vax movement believes that the government is giving you autism in order to keep the people weak and easily controlled.

Maj wrote:Why is that article embarrassing?

Because its hate-on for genetic modification is so strong that it can't even keep to a coherent narrative. For example:

Mother Jones Article wrote:Turns out, though, that both assertions in BIO's statement are highly questionable. Washington State University researcher Charles Benbrook has demonstrated that the net effect of GMOs in the United States has been an increase in use of toxic chemical inputs. Benbrook found that while the Bt trait has indeed allowed farmers to spray dramatically lower levels of insecticides, that effect has been more than outweighed the gusher of herbicides uncorked by Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology, as weeds have rapidly adapted resistance to regular doses of Monsanto's Rounup herbicide.

First of all: roundup isn't toxic to humans. You can drink the stuff if you want to. Secondly, the fact that weed plants continue to evolve resistance to herbicides has absolutely fuckall to do with genetically modified crops. That's just a general fact about Evolution and how it hates you. Antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and fucking everything else we use to kill things that would harm us or our foodstuffs go obsolete over time. We need to increase the doses or find new ones. And that has nothing whatever to do with whether or not we use GM crops.

Conflating those two issues is ridiculous and offensive. If the person knows they are committing intellectual slight of hand, they are lying scum. If they don't know how irrelevant those pieces of data are to each other, they have no business writing a single word about technical subjects.

The fact that herbicides become less effective over time because evolution hates you has less than nothing to do with whether any particular GM crop is a good idea or not. Even bringing up that accusation while discussing the latter issue makes you a dishonest asshole.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: First of all: roundup isn't toxic to humans. You can drink the stuff if you want to.

Please don't try this at home.

Wikipedia wrote:Deliberate ingestion of Roundup in quantities ranging from 85 to 200 ml has resulted in death within hours of ingestion, although it has also been ingested in quantities as large as 500 ml with only mild or moderate symptoms.

Personal experience wrote:It can cause nasty burning and skin irritation on contact.

Not going to argue some of the finer points, because I think you're mostly right, but I have heard the "drink Roundup" meme all my life and hate seeing it spread.

The normal concentration of roundup for agricultural use is 2%. 200 ml of Roundup fills a 10 liter bucket. I would not be at all surprised if drinking twice your actual blood volume worth of the stuff was fatal.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Because its hate-on for genetic modification is so strong that it can't even keep to a coherent narrative. For example:

Mother Jones Article wrote:Turns out, though, that both assertions in BIO's statement are highly questionable. Washington State University researcher Charles Benbrook has demonstrated that the net effect of GMOs in the United States has been an increase in use of toxic chemical inputs. Benbrook found that while the Bt trait has indeed allowed farmers to spray dramatically lower levels of insecticides, that effect has been more than outweighed the gusher of herbicides uncorked by Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology, as weeds have rapidly adapted resistance to regular doses of Monsanto's Rounup herbicide.

First of all: roundup isn't toxic to humans. You can drink the stuff if you want to. Secondly, the fact that weed plants continue to evolve resistance to herbicides has absolutely fuckall to do with genetically modified crops. That's just a general fact about Evolution and how it hates you. Antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and fucking everything else we use to kill things that would harm us or our foodstuffs go obsolete over time. We need to increase the doses or find new ones. And that has nothing whatever to do with whether or not we use GM crops.

I believe that the arguement Mother Jones is using is that because Round Up doesn't kill the GM crops, farmers are using more of it than they would have otherwise, because without the modifications it would kill their crops along with the weeds and if they didn't have genetically modified crops they'd have to pick the weeds by hand or something.

Fun fact: We used to get concentrated round up at the shit plant I used to work at. I found out later than I was the only person there not filling the sprayer up with the concentrated stuff and was diluting it properly (our instructions was to put about 20 mg/L of what we were getting, I know it was stronger than what you'd buy commercially but I doubt it was 100%).

The boss noticed it when pretty much all the grass in the plant two or three feet away from the sidewalks was dead. When he found out how much money everyone was wasting, he hit the fucking roof. It was almost as funny as the time we had the USDA put out bird poison for the strling infestation we had, and they all flew to roost in a tree in some guy's yard and died. We got a complaint that he had fifty dead starlings in his front yard. It was hilarious.

Lord_Mistborn wrote:One is that it's basically impossible to "control" biological agents once they leave the lab.

This would matter, if there were anything special about the biological agents GM creates. I'm more concerned about perfectly natural tuberculosis and the spread of its massively drug resistant strains than I am concerned about tomatoes... doing whatever it is genetically modified tomatoes are supposed to do. Because tuberculosis has who knows how many thousands of years headstart on killing people, and evolutionary pressure to get better at doing so.

Lord_Mistborn wrote:The main thing is though is the coperations that make GMO's are like most corporations predictably terrible. They claim to have "patents" on genetic strands and will sue the fuck out of you if they find "their DNA" in your crops and you're not paying your protection money.

This is the actual issue. They have patented something inherently self-reproducing and invasive. And the courts have decided that the obligation for protecting those patents (again, of an invasive and self-reproducing agent) is on everyone but the patent holder. A comparable situation would be patenting a computer virus, releasing it into the wilds of the internet, and then filing lawsuits against every corporation who ends up with an infected network unless they buy rights to your software.

I have heard that "newer" GM wheats have considerably higher gluten content than 'natura' varieties, but I'm somewhat dubious on the source I heard it from. It could explain my gluten sensitivities and stuff are suddenly everywhere, maybe. Or could be unrelated, I dunno.

Anybody got some data on that?

DSMatticus wrote:I'm more concerned about perfectly natural tuberculosis and the spread of its massively drug resistant strains than I am concerned about tomatoes... doing whatever it is genetically modified tomatoes are supposed to do. Because tuberculosis has who knows how many thousands of years headstart on killing people, and evolutionary pressure to get better at doing so.

TB is doing way more damage, but GM Tomatoes can be pretty bad.

A comparable situation would be patenting a computer virus, releasing it into the wilds of the internet, and then filing lawsuits against every corporation who ends up with an infected network unless they buy rights to your software.

Which is actually very close to what companies are currently trying to do.

There was a wierd lawsuit a bit back, and I never heard how it ended up:

(This is all based on what I read. It seems truthy, but I have no independent verification.) Generally farmers buy seed, plant it, and sell all the yield. Seed companies also grow crops, but only to turn around and sell them as seed to farmers. That works well for everyone because specialization and division of labor. Generally, when a seed company has a patent, no-one gives a shit, because each company is competing by growing their own strains anyway, and farmers are buying a crop's worth of seeds every year anyway, and there are enough real options that no-one can really corner the market (i.e. if SuperCorn costs $TEXAS, you're still okay buying the slightly less awsome ÜberCorn instead). So eventually, some farmer decided he liked SuperCorn, but that the price wasn't worth the convenience, so he retained and stored some of his yield as seed. SuperCornCorp sued for patent infringement (iirc. It might have been breach of contract for license terms, but I'm pretty sure it was a simple sale).

It was in the past few years, and I really wonder what the outcome was.

Meikle641 wrote:I have heard that "newer" GM wheats have considerably higher gluten content than 'natura' varieties, but I'm somewhat dubious on the source I heard it from. It could explain my gluten sensitivities and stuff are suddenly everywhere, maybe. Or could be unrelated, I dunno.

Anybody got some data on that?

Wheat is a relatively high protein grain. 80% of the protein in Wheat is Gluten. While I'm sure that there are GM Wheats out there that have an even higher protein content, and thus have even more Gluten than normal, Gluten is already a super majority of the protein content of all Wheat. Whether it is genetically modified or not.

If you have Gluten sensitivity (whether Wheat Allergy or Celiac Disease), you have to stay away from Wheat, Barley, Triticale, and Rye. Completely. Genetic modification isn't going to make fuck all difference, because the Gluten levels are already "very high".

Note: if you mash up corn or rice it also gets sticky because they have their own proteins that serve a similar functions and that stuff is sometimes called "Gluten". But you should be safe, because it's a different chemical. If you also have Rice sensitivity you have a separate (though possibly related) problem in addition to Gluten sensitivity.

As always, when you want to get information about diet, medicine, and science, I suggest going to the Mayo Clinic rather than InfoWars.

-Username17

fectin wrote:There was a wierd lawsuit a bit back, and I never heard how it ended up:

(This is all based on what I read. It seems truthy, but I have no independent verification.) Generally farmers buy seed, plant it, and sell all the yield. Seed companies also grow crops, but only to turn around and sell them as seed to farmers. That works well for everyone because specialization and division of labor. Generally, when a seed company has a patent, no-one gives a shit, because each company is competing by growing their own strains anyway, and farmers are buying a crop's worth of seeds every year anyway, and there are enough real options that no-one can really corner the market (i.e. if SuperCorn costs $TEXAS, you're still okay buying the slightly less awsome ÜberCorn instead). So eventually, some farmer decided he liked SuperCorn, but that the price wasn't worth the convenience, so he retained and stored some of his yield as seed. SuperCornCorp sued for patent infringement (iirc. It might have been breach of contract for license terms, but I'm pretty sure it was a simple sale).

It was in the past few years, and I really wonder what the outcome was.

It has been appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court and is being heard Right Now.

Monsanto has sued 145 farmers since 1997, and most of them have settled rather than fight it all the way out. But the Soybean case is going the distance and is being heard by Justice "I can't believe I forgot the words again" Roberts as we speak.

-Username17

From what I understand, GM crops and neonicotinoid treatments entered the market at the same time. The combination of systemic herbicides and insecticides, along with various fungicides, has a nasty effect on the ecosystem.

This is by design. After all, the only thing you want growing in a corn field is corn.

Hysteria over something as innocuous as glyphosate use, is unreasonable. Concerns about the viability and repercussions of establishing large monocultures are not unreasonable.

I got more comfortable with GMO the day someone in the industry took the time to explain how crops work now, and have worked for much longer than I've been alive.

See, crop plants used to be a monoculture. Back in the '40's. But they kept getting sick and dying all at once. So what changed is people discovered random genetic mutations by way of intense radiation. Sweetcorn is regular corn where they bombarded millions of seeds with gamma radiation, picked out the plants that didn't kill the test pigs, and kept the sweeter one as a new monoculture. Every new breed in the last 40 years is the same. They didn't cross this and that or anything, they nuked it hard so some of it still grew, and hoped they found something nice in the test plots that still looked like what it should look like and had an immune system. That's what we eat right now. All of us. Because the old monoculture plants are no good against today's pests.

GMO is where they have some control of that process. Not much control, but some, and for the most part they make it so their new plant varieties are easier to kill off if things go bad.




But people hate GMO for the same reasons that people hated Nukes and Radio and Cell Phones and all sorts, because it's newer than what they were taught in school.

Right-wingers who hate them buy expensive-ass "organic" produce for their own kids and feel good about what their wealth is doing for their freedom and shit.
Left-wingers who hate them try to ban them, for your own good, and shouldn't everyone eat organic anyway, or at least have the right to know, and how can I be a vegan if they put a frog gene in my tomatoes?

And yes, when every crop is sprayed with roundup, rather than half the crops, the widespread resistance to roundup happens several orders of magnitude faster. Getting every farmer in the western world to use the same spray at the same time was always going to work like penicillin, in that it would be awesome for a very short while.

Also, research on ancient bacteria shows almost no resistance in bugs is newly evolved. All known bacterium-killing things and insect-killing things and grass-killing things arise from nature and have been tried by plants and animals over millions of years, and the means to resist them is also already out there lying around somewhere, just in very low concentrations until you do something to force that gene to proliferate again.

And yes, when every crop is sprayed with roundup, rather than half the crops, the widespread resistance to roundup happens several orders of magnitude faster. Getting every farmer in the western world to use the same spray at the same time was always going to work like penicillin, in that it would be awesome for a very short while.

Also, research on ancient bacteria shows almost no resistance in bugs is newly evolved. All known bacterium-killing things and insect-killing things and grass-killing things arise from nature and have been tried by plants and animals over millions of years, and the means to resist them is also already out there lying around somewhere, just in very low concentrations until you do something to force that gene to proliferate again.

tussock wrote:
See, crop plants used to be a monoculture...

See, this sentence tells me you're talking out your arse.



The thing is, informed people don't worry too much about the genetic modification of plant strains. People have been using selective cultivation techniques since the dawn of civilisation. GE is just an enhanced tool to facilitate this practice.

Some hippies are getting their tote bags all in a twist, complaining about anything that has to do with large-scale commercial agriculture, regardless of whether it is a problem or not. This draws attention away from real issues, such as the move away from IPM to blanketing crops with prophylactic applications of systemic pesticides.

note: I am not saying that any systemics being used in commercial agriculture today are anwhere near as dangerous as DDT, DDE or dioxins, but I do have some concerns about some of the water soluble nerve agents that are currently in use. I don't give two fucks about genetic engineering.

Meikle641 wrote:I have heard that "newer" GM wheats have considerably higher gluten content than 'natura' varieties, but I'm somewhat dubious on the source I heard it from. It could explain my gluten sensitivities and stuff are suddenly everywhere, maybe. Or could be unrelated, I dunno.

Anybody got some data on that?

You may be thinking of the claim in "Wheat Belly" (and probably other places I can't be bothered to look up) that dwarf wheat varieties have a higher glycemic index and cause a higher blood sugar increase than older, non-dwarf wheat varieties. Which isn't a GMO wheat thing, it's a "we bred this type of wheat because it was a lot easier to harvest" thing that wouldn't trip any GMO red flags. It's just selective breeding.

I have no idea whether that's a credible claim or not, since it was mostly based on anecdotal and circumstantial evidence instead of the studies cited for other things. But given the problems with his citations, it wouldn't surprise me if this one was not as simple as put forth.

TarkisFlux wrote:

Meikle641 wrote:I have heard that "newer" GM wheats have considerably higher gluten content than 'natura' varieties, but I'm somewhat dubious on the source I heard it from. It could explain my gluten sensitivities and stuff are suddenly everywhere, maybe. Or could be unrelated, I dunno.

Anybody got some data on that?

I have no idea whether that's a credible claim or not, since it was mostly based on anecdotal and circumstantial evidence instead of the studies cited for other things. But given the problems with his citations, it wouldn't surprise me if this one was not as simple as put forth.

Maybe this article will help?