An article on The End Of Life As We Know It

[conuly]

If Cuba is everybody's favorite success story, North Korea is the opposite.

Comments

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

This is my skeptical fase.
He seemed to have a valid arguement. Many of the poitns are ones i;ve brought up myself in the last 10 years
Then I got to the paragraph where he exhorts the virtues of no till and 100% organic production and its apparent ability to somehow miraculously produce 80% more food
Ok so I follow the footnote.
Right althoguh the footnote links to a source of questionable validity (any organic associaltion will have editorial bias) they at least publish some real figures. Specificly a range of -6% to +57% This is qualified range too, compared to a world average, NOT a control experiment. SO in other words it aint science at all. It certainly aint the magic bullet this article is extoling.

I'm forced to dismiss this article as hysterical bullpucky with an anti agribusiness, pro organic bias so heavy that even somebody who has been predicting TEOTWAWKI for the last 10 years finds it improbable.

[conuly]

Thank you. I have had only half attention this whole week, so I'm relieved to have somebody willing to do more than skim briefly like I did :)

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Not a problem. The Real issues round peak oil and climate change are scary enough and complex enough without borrowing trouble.
Despite popular protestations by greenpeace and other anti GM food organizations to the contry, GM food contains no animal bits, Now admittedly my source for the next statement is pen and teller's bullshit program, so it's also probalby a little dubious, but monsetro claims to have been working, not so much on yeild increasing or what ever but on attempting to disease harden by increasing genetic diversity.
Yeah they will own patents on the genotypes (I never said they were GOOD, did I?) but at least someone other than drippy idiots who over inflate figures and confuse bullshit statistics for science are worried about the same disease issues that matter.
Where Do I think the answer lies? My childhood experences with my grandfathers fam makes me think somwehre in between. Industrilized farming hits a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly. Pure organic farming, espicaly with the depleted seedstocks available to people in the 21st centruy would meen that one good blight and we all starve.
The only way we are gonna get back the genetic diversity we need to divorce ourselves from petrochem based pesticides and fertilizers is to geneticly modify the hell out of what we have left in the hopes we can tailor environment specific strains of multiple types of geneticly diverse crops.
So yeah. Basicly, I'm anti "anti gm food", predominatly becasue I'm convinced that most anti Gm campaginers have never cropepd anything bigger than a small garden patch.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

This is my skeptical fase.
He seemed to have a valid arguement. Many of the poitns are ones i;ve brought up myself in the last 10 years
Then I got to the paragraph where he exhorts the virtues of no till and 100% organic production and its apparent ability to somehow miraculously produce 80% more food
Ok so I follow the footnote.
Right althoguh the footnote links to a source of questionable validity (any organic associaltion will have editorial bias) they at least publish some real figures. Specificly a range of -6% to +57% This is qualified range too, compared to a world average, NOT a control experiment. SO in other words it aint science at all. It certainly aint the magic bullet this article is extoling.

I'm forced to dismiss this article as hysterical bullpucky with an anti agribusiness, pro organic bias so heavy that even somebody who has been predicting TEOTWAWKI for the last 10 years finds it improbable.

[conuly]

Thank you. I have had only half attention this whole week, so I'm relieved to have somebody willing to do more than skim briefly like I did :)

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Not a problem. The Real issues round peak oil and climate change are scary enough and complex enough without borrowing trouble.
Despite popular protestations by greenpeace and other anti GM food organizations to the contry, GM food contains no animal bits, Now admittedly my source for the next statement is pen and teller's bullshit program, so it's also probalby a little dubious, but monsetro claims to have been working, not so much on yeild increasing or what ever but on attempting to disease harden by increasing genetic diversity.
Yeah they will own patents on the genotypes (I never said they were GOOD, did I?) but at least someone other than drippy idiots who over inflate figures and confuse bullshit statistics for science are worried about the same disease issues that matter.
Where Do I think the answer lies? My childhood experences with my grandfathers fam makes me think somwehre in between. Industrilized farming hits a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly. Pure organic farming, espicaly with the depleted seedstocks available to people in the 21st centruy would meen that one good blight and we all starve.
The only way we are gonna get back the genetic diversity we need to divorce ourselves from petrochem based pesticides and fertilizers is to geneticly modify the hell out of what we have left in the hopes we can tailor environment specific strains of multiple types of geneticly diverse crops.
So yeah. Basicly, I'm anti "anti gm food", predominatly becasue I'm convinced that most anti Gm campaginers have never cropepd anything bigger than a small garden patch.