turkish van said:
Ok, the scientific papers will have to wait till later, although I'm pretty sure there are some which refer to GM and adverse effects on the environment. ...
The only major study was the British one, which found that GM crops were less friendly to wildlife than conventional. But that does not equate to harm, that's just relative friendliness. There is no evidence at all that GM is in any way harmful to people, or anything else, in a medical sense. But when land is in short supply, then perhaps it is better to farm intensively on less land than it is to farm conventionally on more land. That way, you can set aside land for other things, like conservation, rather than having all virgin forest etc converted to more inefficient conventional farming.
turkish van said:
Or at least the inability to prevent them spreading and breeding with wild plants, which, if I remember rightly, was the main reason Mexico banned them at the end of the 90s....
You're conflating one example (maize, i think, in mexico) with all GM here. Growing GM potatoes, say, in the UK, carries no problem for genes getting into wild plants - there aren't any wild relatives to affect. The same with many biofuels, which are non-native. The 'superweed' thing is a bit overblown - so what if a GM gene gets into a wild brassica if it doesn't cause any problem? We don't worry about wild plants hybridising all the time - eg cowslip/primrose/false oxlip.
turkish van said:
What I was really referring to was the fact the biofuels (GM or not) are extremely unenvironmentally friendly, ....
Really, how exactly? And I thought your beef was because GM, specifically, was harmful? You can't shift the goalposts now!
turkish van said:
and are no where near even being carbon neutral. ....
And you think 341 30m turbines are?! How much concrete and fuel do you think is needed to produce them, and how long do you think it will take to cancel that out at normal functional operating capacity (not optimal capacity, which will hardly ever happen)? We're talking relative evils here.
turkish van said:
They also (GM or not) require huge areas of either new land - ie land which was previously covered in virgin forest or some equally important ecosystem - or agricultural land, leading to competition between food for poorer countries (where they will inevitably be grown, at least at first, on a larger scale than they are already), or fuel for us rich folk.....
So GM is therefore ideal, as it limits the necessary amount of land you need, as you can grow it at higher desnity. Great for poor countries, if only ideologically self-indulgent greens in the West would let them have it! They could then establish national parks in the virgin forest areas, rather than having to fell them to put 300 turbines in there or to grow maize (of which 30% is lost to pests/disease which GM could prevent). Again, it's relative evils - do you want some agri land set aside for GM elephant grass for biofuel, or do you want 300 turbines on Lewis and elsewhere or a new reactor at sizewell on something the size of a few footie pitches?
turkish van said:
Zac Goldsmith and the rest are David Cameron's new best friends. Lucky him - I wish they were mine...
Zac Goldsmith left Eton early with no quialifications. He has no education in enviornmental issues (eg no degree or anything), and is editor of a very little-read magazine called The Ecologist that has literally nothing to do with the actual science of ecology - it's an opinion-driven 'green issues' anti-capitalist bandwagon type thing. Why on Earth he's now some sort of authority has much more to do with his looks, charm and family money than it does his knowledge in this area.
