Hiya
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Posts posted by Hiya
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Can't disagree with anything you say there GW. I think the selective breeding for traits within livestock is OK , but the insertion of a totally foreign gene into a genome should not be permitted.
As for 'high yield infertile crops' they are just the way to make money for agri business mega corporations
My understanding is that the gene could possibly migrate to other species. I don't know if you would call it 'dangerous' per se, but what it would mean is that all the plants that are currently killed by Glyphosate, which I believe is most green leaved plants could aquire immunity.
And agricultural yields would fall as weed infestation got worse after 50 years of chemical eradication
But why should inserting a "foreign" gene into a genome not be permitted? There are examples of the transfer of genetic information in nature. The HIV virus will stick its genetic information into your genome, or bacteria can get genes for useful traits like immunity to antibiotics from other bacteria.
Yes the inserted gene can spread to other members of the same species or those which it can readily produce hybrids with (these often have low fertility), but the roundup gene isn't going to spread to all green leafed plants for the same reason humans won't get a tail from a dog.
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Not good indeed Gray Wolf, in fact I'd say that sort of dumping ought to be severely punished. There should be a system in place that ensures such things are responsibly disposed of, for while individuals may have legal ownership of a piece of land, they ought to display good stewardship. The environment is everyone's in common. It cannot be fenced in and the excluded locals sent packing to a factory somewhere instead. The environment is not somebody's private disposal ground. If practices such as those both you and I describe continue, I should think it is only a matter of time before the North Sea becomes as dead as the Baltic Sea - as if it isn't bad enough already.
Behind the above exchanges however was the various views of GM plants, two individuals apparently undisturbed about them, and one of them seemingly in favour. On the other hand, I am suggesting that big industry puts new ideas and new products forward, while it turns out years later that very objectionable features of their use were either not known, concealed, or ignored by the public authorities whose duty it was to safeguard our health and the environment. I have presented the fairly clear case of persistent herbicides and pesticides in evidence. Independent scientists warn that GM should only be introduced case-by-case following rigorous investigation. I only hope the authorities have learned their lesson, for otherwise, where does it all end? Hardly any drinkable water left, bloated populations that cannot feed themselves, superweeds growing everywhere , oil depletion, unemployment, and debt. You never know, maybe the Tunisia / Egypt effect will spread north.
Oh yes, I must be completly mad!
"I am sorry sir you cannot have any drought resistant crops because it upsets some people thousands of miles away who have enough money to buy so much food that they can be obese."
Let's have your list of reasons why we should not use GM plants.
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Nice to read that you have integrity. Just out of interest, would you kindly follow your comment up with your view on how the general Danish public and their state representatives should now relate to the manufacturers of the pesticides that have quite literally poisoned the Danish wells that supply our drinking water. The scenarios concerning the manufacturers in this connexion are few; they either didn't fully know what they were talking about when they applied for permission to sell their toxins for spraying all over the place, or, they witheld information that would count against them, or, perhaps they deliberately misled the authorities. Or perhaps it is a bit of all three? What do you think Hiya? You have the details above, so can we have your opinion please? If you are reluctant to comment, then perhaps at least you will advise us how we might avoid this sort of thing in the future, knowing now what we know about pesticides and groundwater.
No I would not like to comment, why? Because I don't know anything about groundwater, or who said what to whom. I am a published research scientist, I know about the science of genetic engineering, I feel quite comfortable explaining that to the public. Talking about the politics or the companies who sell the stuff and misdeeds they are supposed to have done is not my place.
If other people on this forum are happy to talk about things they don't really know about then that is fine.
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Well, as this thread is about In the News, presumably the lack of news where there ought to have been some belongs here too. I don't recall seeing headlines advising us that rigorous testing has been carried out on wide-ranging GM applications, and the results welcomed by the relevant authorities. On the contrary, it seems evidence in support of GM foods is dubious, which in light of experience in similar developments these last 60 years or so, is why the EU is far more cagey about GM than the USA. Take that dubious evidence, and couple it to the indisputable groundwater disaster we have here in Denmark - the facts of which are totally and disgracefully contrary to what the chemical industry told the approving authorities - there is overwhelming reason to reject GM food until there is reasonable consensus among suitably knowledgeable and disinterested public officials that GM is completely safe.
Regarding conflicts of interest, realseeds.co.uk started their business - which remains very small - out of their belief that ordinary people like me should have available to them the species and varieties that hundreds of generations before us have bred by selection, and that we too can save seed from plants in our garden, without the risk of the wind, bees and other insects carrying into our plants what seems to us Frankenstein pollen. If I have correctly understood what seems to me your implication, then it an unwarranted smear to imply that the proprietor is motivated by financial gain. The realseeds proprietor withdrew in disgust from the lucrative techno-agricultural industry, and as far as I know has given up trying to change things from within.
I am not interested in talking about politics, only science. There is no point in judging science on the reactions of various political groups and governments, they do what suits them and if that disregards scientific advise - "oh well."
Yes that was what I was implying. Conflict of interest when presenting scientific data is actually quite a serious matter and must be taken into account, when you publish a paper for peer review you have to declare that sort of thing. I didn't need to mention that, he discredits himself enough with the misinformation on his page.
I have said it time and time again, people can put any rubbish they want on the internet for whatever reason they want.
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Well not entirely, I am a retired naval architect. But this guy studied the topic at Cambridge, and he convinced me.
http://www.realseeds..._is_a_scam.html
By the way. His seeds far surpass anything else I have bought. i particularly recommend his beetroot, Sanguina.
Oh, and by the way, I live on an intensely farmed island, where about 25 years ago, the local water company was the first in Denmark to be ordered to install exceptional purification facilities because of the excessive levels of pesticides that had accumulated in the groundwater. Today, I read on Danish media a complaint from the water company that supplies Copenhagen, that the Ministry of Agriculture has quite simply not acted on warnings, and now no less than 40% of all Danish wells must be exceptionally treated. A good number of wells have been closed as they are no longer drinkable no matter the treatment, and it is looking worse for the future. Glyophosphate is the new scoundrel, if we do not mention farmers that spray their rape with it, the consultants who recommend it, and the manufacturers. And regarding the consultants who recommend this poison, my best friend's brother, an agricultural consultant, died recently with horrendously scarred and disfigured legs, which the doctors suggested was a result of wandering for year after year through crops sprayed with this stuff. At least, in my profession, all I got was piles from sitting on cold steel plates. Perhaps some will say this has nothing directly to do with GM, but I disagree. The authorities go along with big business, at least until it is time to fine them, as with BP in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jeez. When will people wake up
Probably not before it is too late.Ok, perhaps I was a bit mean to say that, you are obviously a professional person with qualifications, you are entitled to your opinion.
That website is presumably the source of your previous misinformation. The author gives no evidence to back up his claims, no name to check his claimed qualifications and has a conflicting concern in that he runs a website selling "real seeds." Terms like "poison gene" don't really stand up very well in a scientific debate.
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So who's right?! Doesn't the naturally resistant (for eg) potato have more toxins or whatever, which then become increased in the one it's been "fused" with? Something has to make the new strain more tolerant,right ? Maybe you're both right,in a roundabout sorta way? Probably a different mechanism which incurs immunity specifically to blight,but you know what I mean !
Maybe someone could make a new thread and move these posts across?
There are two different ways to get rid of potato blight, either we poison it with fungicides or the potato kills it with its immune system.
There aren't any "toxins" involved in the potato blight example I gave. The new strain of potato has a gene (from the resistant potato) which makes a protein which will recognise the potato blight fungus, stick to it and alert the plants immune system that it is being attacked and it will then fight the blight off in the same way we fight a cold off.
When you eat the GM potato you eat this new gene and protein, however it cannot harm you. Your body just digests it like any other of the millions of protein's you eat.
Which potato would you rather eat? The one sprayed with fungicides or the one which naturally fought off the blight?
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The fact is that GM food has a lot in common with banks:
1) Some huge companies have created a market for something we don't need
2) Neither they themselves nor the regulating authorities fully understand where the proposals will take us
3) When it gets out of hand, we are all affected, most of us badly.
It is simply wrong to claim that plant for plant, GM gives bigger crops. A normal plant can put 100% of the light it receives into making tissue, while a GM plant must use some of that energy to create toxins, which by the way, we would have to eat. That is what GM does, makes the plant create toxins so we don't have to spray with pesticides. This way, we cannot even wash the filthy stuff off before eating it. :wacko:
*off topic but either his post gets deleted or I am allowed to say my piece*
See that isn't really true. I bet you don't understand genetic modification. Now you've gone and said that and laserguy believes you, now he will tell his friends and family, and so the misinformation spreads.
To take the example of last night’s television show, potatoes resistant to blight do not "produce toxins" ie the fungicides which we spray on them. (I know this seems logical to the general public.) What actually happens is that you take a few genes from another member of the potato family which is naturally resistant to the blight and put them in the ordinary eating potato. This potato is now resistant to blight also. Therefore you don't need to spray it with these nasty toxins anymore.
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Sorry GW, haven't got time to look into that now - you know me, I'm a picky, pedantic mare so in order to satisfy myself, I've got to check all the science before going off the deep end. For now, that study doesn't claim to be anything other than postulating an idea.
Does anyone know anything about Current Science, apparently the pre-eminent Indian science journal? Is it on a par with the likes of Nature? Came across this, which sounds interesting but no idea how valid it is as I've no idea how reputable the journal is.
You can check the reputation of a journal by looking at its impact factor. Google it to find many lists of these, compare with other journals in its class.
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Your claim is incorrect. Bunk patent claims have been created, as is mentioned in this piece about scientific snake oil:-
Do you have evidence that this is a bunk patent apart from that created by you not understanding the science behind it or how biotechnology patents are created?
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This sounds too good to be true:-
http://blogs.howstuf...ce-has-arrived/
The fact that they refuse to explain fully how their technology works, or expose it to peer-review or studies on EROEI...makes me skeptical.
How much energy exactly is used to generate the chemical processes which lead to the production of fuels? How much CO2 does it actually consume? And how much CO2 does the burning of this synthetic fuel produce? Has the process been verified or replicated by other scientists? Has the process been documented in peer reviewed journals? That the answer so far is 'no' or 'i don't know' to those questions doesn't lend any credence to the claims being made. Big claims require big proof. So we'll have to wait and see what transpires from this. Otherwise i'm all for trying to find viable technological solutions. Perhaps there's something in this, perhaps not - i'd like to know more, beyond the hysterically happy ravings of the author of this article.
The patent describes some of the process in detail (albeit my questions above remain):-
Very interesting, I shall read that over lunch.
To explain some of your questions you need to understand how biotech patents work. You have to be very, very careful if you want to submit and article to a peer review journal then hope to patent something mentioned in the artcle. Nor do you go about "fully explaining" your technology to anyone. During the patent process the office will hire relevent academic consultents to review your work, then it is published on the patent database like above in enough detail that anyone can read it and object to it.
If it went through patent it must do what it says.
Edit: it comsumes enough carbon dioxide to make the hydrocarbons, then that carbon goes back into the atmosphere when you burn them. Carbon neutral, like trees.
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Can't believe our guys are not totally stunned by this event???? Many northern countries have a 'special' sun day to mark the return of the sun, schools have a days holiday etc. for this to be blown away because the Sun is up 2 days early is totally 'unheard of'. If you look at the Inuit oral traditions this event has never occurred before (and their traditions must cover many ,many generations).
If one event was ever to highlight the scale of climate chaos we are in then this surely would be it?
I think you hit the nail on the head when you asked "did this really happen?"
I'm sure someone with some time to spare could calculate the angles and figure out how much ice was lost in 1 year in order for this to happen. Fairly simple I should think.
Then explain why it only happened this year.
And no this is not a defining event because the layman doesn't understand what climate change has to do with the sun coming up earlier and thinks they are being lied to or deceived.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8437703.stm
As we know , we had better keep an eye on these deposits esp. if we're content to see the Arctic 'ice free' over summer months?
How much of that gas reaches the surface?
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Not sure of where to put this, but seems as good a place as any!
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So all this talk of 'growth' is not true?
Average?
In an average there generally tends to be numbers above and below the average value over a given period, yes it is on the average just now.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Look at the anomaly line, if we were to calculate a new average from that the average value would increase and the anomaly line would shift downwards. Since the sea ice in Antarctica is increasing:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
So the average increases and there will be a greater probability of a negative anomaly just through ordinary variation. Yet I bet you still crow about below average.
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On a related point is it possible that the strengthening Arctic
> Amplification could have influenced the record Arctic Oscillation we
> saw this past winter? (warmer air in the polar atmosphere leading to
> lower atmospheric pressure than we're used to up there?)
The winter Arctic Oscillation is not strengthening any more. There was
an upward trend in the strength of the
Arctic Oscillation from the 1970s through the mid 1990s. However, since
the late 1999s, the index has been
bouncing back and forth between positive and negative phases, but with
an extreme negative phase this past winter. In a very simple
way of thinking, one might argue that with an especially warm Arctic,
there will be weakening of the high latitude westerlies which might be
expressed as a negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation. However, I
stress that this is a very simple way of thinking. See the paper
by James Overland in "Tellus" that discusses recent circulation changes
in the Arctic and how they relate to sea ice loss
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The above is part of a conversation I had with Mr Serreze in Aug last. I am with the view that we need look no further than the Arctic Amplification to find reason for both the record poor ice 'extent' and the type of 'Air mass migration' we have fallen foul of the past 2 winters (and across the Eurasian theatre since 02')
You need to look at it from the layman's view as well. If the coming summer was to see a record breaking hot month nobody in the media or climate change research would have any qualms in letting loose with the "global warming strikes" lines. Over the last 15 years there have been many, many predictions on the effect global warming would have on the UK, and the problem is that many of them are completely contradictory, eroding away the reputation of the people who make them.
I take the example of the met office who have on the record in the last few weeks talked about the influence of the solar minimum but yet on the frontpage of their website you can still see a banner that declares "It was the sun - myth" in reference to climate change. If they are willing to accept the idea that the sun can cause a record cold month, why not a record warm month?
There has been something akin to a scramble to affix the recent downward trend in temperatures in northern Europe to something that was caused by a warming trend. In my view it is a tad too late, we have had the cause and the effect, now it is a case of pinning one to the other. We had the cause years ago, if someone had published a prediction about the effect it would have had a lot more credibility. Although (tongue in cheek) I doubt a paper on how northern Europe was going to get colder would be received fairly.
It is Dr Serreze btw.
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Was a CET day record broken a few days ago?
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_act_graphEX.gif
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Roughly -2.7c
Could be a record cold month for Scotland then, record being -2.4 °C Feb 1947.
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*snip*
I use IR spectroscopy regularly
Cheers, SS
Always good to hear a fellow scientist's take on things, you put it across nicely.
I don't have an IR, after reading your posts in the last few days, use of your IR will probably give you enough data to tackle some things from the bottom down. If I had access to one I could think of a few simple experiments which might put things in perspective.
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The response article borders on laughable. The graphs published of global temps in 1917, 1936 and 1938 comnpared to 2010 only goes to show how warm the world is today. Similar synoptics yet look at the temperature difference. Looking at his graphs only reinforces the poor state of the arctic today.
Evening Skiwi!
I did wonder (and mention my wondering) about the second article, I can only think that J' skimmed instead of reading it?
I think both of you two need to read the article, instead of accusing other people of not reading it. A picture tells a story all in itself but you both have the jist wrong and have both come to the conclusion "that chart isn't good evidence for what he is trying to say."
Take graph 1 of temperature in Greenland, clearly a very low starting point for today’s warming. If you had already accepted that temperature had "bottomed out" when taken over 10k years, why would you bother hiding that in an anomaly chart? Of course it is going to be warmer, there has been warming, he doesn't deny that, in fact gives a nice graph in support of that. But that isn't the point of the article either. The point is that the pattern of the positive temperature anomaly in Arctic Canada/Greenland and negative anomaly in continental US is not unusual, and indeed similar magnitudes have been witnessed in the past, even taking a static point of reference and a background warming trend.
I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with his analysis of the data.
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Okay some background.
Interest in atmospheric ozone began with O. M. B. Dobson, a British meteorologist. Studies of meteor trails led to the discovery of a region in the stratosphere at a height of about 50 km which owed its high temperature to absorption of ultraviolet radiation by ozone. Dobson invented a spectrophotometric method of measuring its total amount in the air column and in the 1930s set up a chain of ozone measuring stations. Systematic measurements using the Dobson instruments at Argentine Islands (Faraday) and Halley Bay (Halley), were begun in 1957. Measurements were also made at other lGY Antarctic stations including Little America. The interest was that ozone, being produced photochemically at heights of between 20 and 50 km, mostly at low latitudes or, in the summer only, at high latitudes, could be used as a tracer of atmospheric circulation at high levels. It was found that a major increase in total ozone occurs in the course of breakdown of the Antarctic winter stratospheric vortex. Long-term trends, however, seemed to be small, less than those at lower latitudes.
Meanwhile concern had been growing about effects of human activities on the ozone layer which might result in penetration of damaging amounts of ultraviolet radiation to ground level.
The science behind the causes of the depletion I’ll leave to Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia....Ozone_depletion
Wondering about whether it has happened before is irrelevant. IMHO that is.
I have made mention of this some time in the distant past but comparison of the ozone depletion and AGW is like scientific chalk and cheese. About the only similarity is that they both happen in the atmosphere!
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He's not using 6 data points, he's comparing every data point through each century.
Yes he is. He is using the instances of a given occurence in 50 year intervals to generate 6 new data points. He could have used 20 year intervals, or 15 and generated more data points. The sample size isn't big enough to infer the conclusions he would like to make, especially since the subject - climate - is known to be dynamic. Plot up those 6 points and you get graph 1:
The conclusion is that number of instances of <8.99C CET years will remain very low in the future.* However your data set is too small to come to that conlusion, take graph 2 for example:
That is my own backwards extrapolation of a possible dataset from which the data for graph 1 could have been taken from. Now go back and look at your conclusion for graph 1, is it still valid? Does anyone who has read this think that graph 1's 6 points is enough?
* He used the >10C data, but I didn't notice until after I had made the excel sheet with the other data, however I presume that since trend of >10C is "very worrying" the <8.99 will also be similar.
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10.0C>
1700>: 3
1750>: 5
1800>: 6
1850>: 3
1900>: 7
1950>: 12
2000>: 8 (only a decade in)
8.99<
1700>: 14
1750>: 22
1800>: 23
1850>: 17
1900>: 8
1950>: 6
2000>: 0
What this shows, is that we began having an abnormally warm number of 10C+ years from 1900 while we began losing abnormally cool years of 8.99C- from 1900 also. Conclusion – the last 100 years have seen a massive upward shift in terms of UK temperature, most worrying being that if the trend of 8/10 10C+ years persisted, by 2050, 40/50 years would have seen CET values of 10C+.
Very worrying.
I am not sure you can draw a valid conclusion with 6 data points like that. Perhaps 20 or more would be more appropriate to determine trends and extremes?
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Not really new but certainly a new appraisal....
The Livingston & Penn theory of sunspots possibly disappearing from view by 2016 has been looked at by other solar physicists, attracting favourable reviews:
"It is a very interesting sequence of observations," says solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The researchers "have carefully analyzed their data and the trend appears to be real," he says.
Solar physicist David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, agrees but with a caveat. "It's an important paper," he says. But the sunspot magnetic field calculations don't take into account a lot of small sunspots that appeared during the last solar maximum. Those sunspots have weaker magnetic fields, which, if not included, could make the average sunspot magnetic field strength seem higher than it really was.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/say-goodbye-to-sunspots.html
That is exceptional praise for a paper which was rejected for publication!
Probably not before it is too late.
In The News
in Climate Change
Posted
Or maybe carbon dioxide isn't the reason why it was warmer then?
You have to look at all sides!