MORE ESKOM WOES... is that possible?

[Gabriël]

45 minutes ago, plonkster said:

There is nothing genetic about glyphosate. It's a fairly simple chemical that disrupts photosynthesis in plants.

my 2 pence... although there is nothing 'genetic' in glyphosate, as soon as it alters or changes or disrupts a 'natural' genetically controlled process like photosynthesis it will act on genes, which will start to react, as they are made up of dna, the latter will start to loose information, changing the genes to adapt to the new circumstances, thus mutating - we will get a domino effect like monkeys somehow figuring out that its not desirable , but because we as humans have been desensitized to nature since we started clothing ourselves with fig leaves [the original hemp underwear] we can't taste or smell the difference [we have always gone for the looks of things, cf eve]...

[___]

Mmmmh, I can't find anything about monkeys not eating GMOs. It makes me think of a similar argument I heard about ants not wanting to eat aspartame (because that's always how I determine if my food is safe... I see if ants will eat it!). Aspartame is vile stuff for sure, but the reason the ants don't want it is because it is designed to have little nutritional value...

 

[___]

So now I'm totally off the rails, but this all just made me think of another such scientific argument: Apparently it's now been scientifically determined that the patriarchy designs cars for men only and don't care for women. A study has shown that in an accident, a woman is more likely to get injured!

Reality: The study was done ten years ago on cars that included vehicles from the 90s, and while women are more likely to get injured, men are more likely to die. In other words: The patriarchy has no problem sacrificing some of their own, as long as the woman suffer!

(As my primary school English said: If you believe that, you can believe anything).

[Gabriël]

On 2019/07/12 at 12:19 PM, plonkster said:

Can a little but of glyphosate harm us? I don't know. But what would be very interesting is to see how much other cr*p (natural and man-made) we live with... completely oblivious to its effects. Like stuff in our drinking water that gets past the purifying plants...

indeed @plonkster, i believe it was you or @The Terrible Triplett who recently on this forum analysed a situation from the 'other side' [typical reverse engineering - hacker style - thought process ] - would it not be prudent to also approach this situation vis a vis impact on human health from the end state, i.e. death - and then working backwards. i don't know what that might entail, but we have two definite points, birth and death - now i have to admit i am at a dead end [no pun intended] with this idea so i just throw it into the air, much like tossing a  bouquet at a wedding... and calling all philosophers 

[___]

13 minutes ago, Gabriël said:

situation vis a vis impact on human health from the end state, i.e. death

Yeah I get it. Truth be told, I might be becoming immune to other BS arguments and hence I'm now immune to this one too (and I probably shouldn't be). If I am honest, this is quite possibly how so many American conservatives have become climate-change deniers. They got immunized by all the other BS that was forced on them. But it is unfair to throw all the stuff you don't like into one container and blast them all, so yeah... not really fair of me to throw anti-GMO people and anti-vaxers into the same group either. That's a bit like throwing all Afrikaans speaking people and Steve Hofmeyer supporters into the same group

So here is the thing. I don't buy the money argument. The argument that money is enough to make all scientists toe the line and hide the truth is BS for climate change and it is also BS for Glyphosate and for GMOs. There is some misinformation out there, that is true. There always is. But there is no orchestrated effort to suppress the truth, the studies does not presently support what those on the extreme edge say it does. Again, that doesn't mean it is good. But it does mean the dissenters are overstating their case. That would be my first point.

My second point, even if we do consider this from a life/death/health position, one would have to consider if it is possible to grow food on an industrial scale (as we do nowadays) without some meddling in the affairs of nature. I don't think it is, and the reason why I don't think so is because it is unavoidable, and we have literally been doing it for centuries, bending nature to our will. I agree that we have to be careful, but again I think the level of hysteria is overblown on the one end, and ignorant on the other (people don't know just how much we've bent it already). If we do what is asked of us on the extreme ends, might we not end up with a shortage of food, which brings the threat of death to your door much faster?

You know Bananas, right? You know the one we eat mostly is very different from the ones that grow in the wild? We made it so nice and sweet and easy to peel with small soft pips by meddling with nature. We did so by normal genetic selection, essentially using information that was already in the genome. Then Panama disease started wiping out entire brands since the 1950s... cause our soft bananas without seeds (they reproduce asexually) make for large fields of genetically uniform material.

So maybe, what I am saying, is that the answer is a lot more complex than some think it is. It's not as simple as just going back to nature.

[Johandup]

On 2019/07/12 at 12:19 PM, plonkster said:

Can a little but of glyphosate harm us? I don't know. But what would be very interesting is to see how much other cr*p (natural and man-made) we live with... completely oblivious to its effects. Like stuff in our drinking water that gets past the purifying plants...

So in the USA their consumption is only 250 million pounds per year.....

I can only guess where it will all ends up....

Like the tests on the fish caught in the cape.....

I stopped eating fish now!

[Johandup]

So back to the electricity topic. One women (from Zim) told me they had no electricity for 3 weeks now. I can only think how that must change your lifestyle. But they are only paying 11c US $ per unit.

hmmm

[Guest]

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

aspartame

You do know the for and against medical arguments is as rough and tough as with Monanto / Bayer products?

But yeah, the backwards and forwards on Monsanto / Bayer, leaves just one question: Would you feed your small ones GMO's foods?

37 minutes ago, plonkster said:

climate-change deniers. 

About that ... just in: https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-07-12-climate-change-hoax-collapses-new-science-cloud-cover.html 

 

[DeepBass9]

I think climate change is going to be awesome. I look forward to when the whole world is a warm balmy tropical paradise, like the Carboniferous. We can then restock our fossil fuels for the next ice age.

As for this : : https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-07-12-climate-change-hoax-collapses-new-science-cloud-cover.html  . There has always been the opinion that high CO2 is a response to climate change, not a cause.

Edited July 15, 2019 by DeepBass9

[Bobster.]

1 hour ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

About that ... just in: https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-07-12-climate-change-hoax-collapses-new-science-cloud-cover.html 

That site illustrates another problem we have - sorting the truth from the misinformation, the science from the other stuff. It takes time, and time is a scarce commodity these days. To verify everything you read or hear takes up more time than we have.

[Gabriël]

4 minutes ago, Bobster said:

To verify everything you read or hear takes up more time than we have.

hence a timeless solution

[___]

2 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Would you feed your small ones GMO's foods?

Apparently I already do...

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Right, so a bit of schooling at the university of google: The issue is so called cisgenic engineering vs transgenic.

With cisgenic engineering you use the genes from the same plant to select the traits you want. This is to essentially do in the lab what would normally take decades to do using artificial selection on the ground. This is essentially a shortcut and doesn't create anything technically new. You're essentially flipping the DIP switches on the product.

With transgenic engineering, you're going across species. So you get things like pigs that glow in the dark or corn that makes a toxin that kills the pests that wants to eat it.

I'm not opposed to cisgenic engineering, but I am concerned about transgenic meddling.

[Gabriël]

9 minutes ago, plonkster said:

transgenic meddling

are there any transgenic things that have managed to reproduce naturally and in doing so manage to transfer this 'transgenic' trait to their offspring?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, DeepBass9 said:

I think climate change is going to be awesome.

To add to the pile. The rise in earthquakes and volcano's will hasten your "awesome changes".  

Yes, human's are messing up the earth but on the scale that is claimed ... I'm not 100% sure of human's the one and only cause.

But the sun is affecting our world quite a bit. I have a feeling to get an idea to form an opinion that "global warming" is driven by the sun, as are the earthquakes and volcano's, both having substantially increased in the last year. 

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

I'm not opposed to cisgenic engineering, but I am concerned about transgenic meddling.

I prefer human kind to leave both well alone ... yes we need more food but we can sort that, with effort, without tampering.

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

Apparently I already do...

Jip, without having been properly informed. 

[DeepBass9]

1 hour ago, Gabriël said:

are there any transgenic things that have managed to reproduce naturally and in doing so manage to transfer this 'transgenic' trait to their offspring?

Yes.  Me.   mwhaaaahaaaahaaaaa! 

[Bobster.]

16 hours ago, Gabriël said:

are there any transgenic things that have managed to reproduce naturally and in doing so manage to transfer this 'transgenic' trait to their offspring?

I don't think that matters. We already have plenty of things - like solar panels - that would not occur naturally. And we use them. The question should be if there is real danger.

[Bobster.]

15 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

I prefer human kind to leave both well alone ... yes we need more food but we can sort that, with effort, without tampering.

It's way too late for that. Very few crops we consume are as nature intended. Man has shaped nearly all of them. 

It's also undesirable to eschew scientific intervention. In a world where the population is growing and jobs are disappearing, we need to increase yield per acre.

[DeepBass9]

Increasing yields per hectare (acre!) is punted as a boon for small farmers, but it is not. What happens is that large companies buy up lots of land and concentrate on growing a few crops on an industrial scale, thereby squeezing the small operators out of the market. All of the 'square food' that is stocked in supermarkets is primarily made from GMO wheat, maize, soya, sugar and a bunch of chemicals. Many types of food that are labour intensive to grow and harvest become unprofitatable, hence the premium paid for 'hipster' foods that are hopefully organically grown, pesticide free and from heritage seed varieties. 

Here's what happened in India with GMO cotton. https://www.soilassociation.org/news/2017/october/gm-cotton-s-dramatic-failure-in-india/

As soon as I have finished my pasture egg breakfast, I'll take a pic of some actual food that is actually organic with actual nutrients in it.

*disclaimer, my toast is from GMO wheat*

[DeepBass9]

I made a new topic here : 

https://powerforum.co.za/topic/3953-deep-mulching-vegetable-production/

 

[___]

1 hour ago, Bobster said:

It's way too late for that. Very few crops we consume are as nature intended. Man has shaped nearly all of them. 

So here is my somewhat controversial opinion on the man-shaping of nature: So what!?

One cannot argue with facts, but one can argue about what they mean. It is a fact that man has drastically changed nature. But it is also a fact that man is part of nature, and that everything he does is (from a purely materialistic point of view, which I don't subscribe to) is no more unnatural then ants farming with aphids or baboons raiding fruit trees. What these facts mean is the question. Inevitably you have to venture outside the realm of pure facts so you can make value judgements.

That is a really roundabout way of saying you can't say that man meddling with nature is bad without assuming a value system that is itself above nature (one might say it is supernatural, where super means "above", which is how early 20th century writers often used it). That makes the whole back-to-nature movement a bit... well... self-defeating

18 hours ago, Gabriël said:

are there any transgenic things that have managed to reproduce naturally and in doing so manage to transfer this 'transgenic' trait to their offspring?

Such crops are often designed to be unable to reproduce further. That is for two reasons. The official one is that you can be sure you don't accidentally mess up gene pools. The unofficial one is that you want your customer to buy new seeds every year. And the reality is that when it mixes with another non-modified breed you're still not 100% certain of the possible outcomes. An animal example might be how the Scottish Wildcat's gene pool is diluted by stray domestic cats.

[Gabriël]

53 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

I'll take a pic of some actual food that is actually organic

i can't wait

[DeepBass9]

African wildcat as well. Even though the domestic cat came from the African Wildcat originally.

While we are on the topic, think about modern industrial scale meat production systems. Massive feedlots with animals full of antibiotics to prevent diseases, shot full of growth hormones and fed on GMO maize, urea and chicken crap. Delicious. 

Once again you will pay a premium for grass fed animals, but they are much more healthly than 'grain fed' feedlot animals. So stick to karoo lamb, game meat,extensively raised cattle, and free range poultry.

Edited July 16, 2019 by DeepBass9

[___]

Just now, DeepBass9 said:

While we are on the topic, think about modern industrial scale meat production systems. Massive feedlots with animals full of antibiotics to prevent diseases, shot full of growth hormones and fed on GMO maize, urea and chicken crap. Delicious. 

Once you've eaten proper beef, you won't ever go back though. And cattle isn't supposed to be "grain fed". That is one thing I really wish people understood. When you switch animals to grain you also have to be careful that they don't get pulpy kidney. My poor father in law lost a few sheep, he moved some sheep off the non-existent veld (because of the big drought) onto other feed and lost a few that way. Of course there is a vaccine for that...

 

[DeepBass9]

 

Tin foil hat time:

If you google 'GMO crop failures in India', this is your second hit : https://www.soilassociation.org/news/2017/october/gm-cotton-s-dramatic-failure-in-india/

The first hit is : https://issues.org/keith/ : The GMO-Suicide Myth BY KEITH KLOOR

Keith Kloor is 'allegedly' an agrochemical industry shill : https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/keith-kloor-the-agrichemical-industrys-favorite-writer/

So is actual research into the risks of GMOs and roundup being countered by paid shills?