Europe’s latest bout of GMO phobia is captured in this Guardian headline: EU bans GM-contaminated honey from general sale In case you didn’t catch the tilt of the article, here’s the subhead: Bavarian beekeepers forced to declare their honey as genetically modified because of contamination from nearby Monsanto crops The thrust of this mind boggling…Continue Reading…
[UPDATE: In the comments, Kate Sheppard has responded to this post, saying that I (and William Connolley) have “grossly misconstrued” what she wrote in her Guardian article. Here is my explanation and apology to Kate.] In an article about the nuclear implications of this week’s East Coast earthquake, Kate Sheppard writes: We had a pretty good warning…Continue Reading…
Kenya’s government has made a controversial move to allow the import of genetically modified (GM) maize from South Africa to fight hunger and starvation, even though GM crops cannot yet be legally grown in the country. Or, put another way, this news prompts Charlie Petit at The Tracker to remark: When people are starving, genetically modified…Continue Reading…
When you can grow more food using the same inputs of land, water and fertilizer, everyone — farmers, consumers, hungry people and anyone who cares about CO2 concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere — is better off. From a profile of an environmentally-minded owner of a California-based R & D biotech company, who says he wants…Continue Reading…
If you want to know why the old school, inflexible wing of environmentalism is rotting from within, look no further than this gem of a comment at Dot Earth: Keith Kloor, Mark Lynas, Steve Nordhaus, and Roger Pielke Jr. share several characteristics: rudimentary knowledge of climate change (absent any scientific discipline), a way with words,…Continue Reading…
A scientist lays it out in the Guardian: The term “genetic modification” provokes widespread fears about the corporate control of agriculture, and of the unknown. However, results from 25 years of EU-funded research show that there is “no scientific evidence associating GM plants with higher risks for the environment or for food and feed safety than conventional plants and organisms”. This…Continue Reading…
Greenpeace continues its descent into anti-science oblivion. Last Thursday, the environmental group carried out a destructive anti-GMO stunt that has outraged scientists in Australia. Over at Sustainablog, agricultural scientist Steve Savage describes what happened: On July, 14, three Greenpeace activists dressed in hazmat suits scaled a fence, and used weed whips to destroy a GMO wheat experiment…Continue Reading…
If climate projections prove even partly correct in the coming decades, many areas of the planet will experience longer and nastier drought conditions. Let’s be clear: that won’t be anybody’s idea of fun in the sun. But as SciAm’s David Biello reports, for the last several years agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta have…Continue Reading…
Andy Revkin has a post related to a conference I (and numerous other journalists) also attended this week. Due to computer challenges (my laptop died on Tuesday) and other obligations, I haven’t yet been able to post on any of the sessions. But I’ll get something up by Monday. I’m still digesting it all. Meanwhile, for those who…Continue Reading…
I have no idea what an editor does over at ScienceBlogs. I doubt they do any actual editing of blogs. But evidently they get to choose their favorite posts, the way a clerk advertises his top ten flicks at your local movie rental store. So my eye drifted to a recent number one “editor’s pick”…Continue Reading…