
The pesticide that caused bee colonies to collapse is killing birds now - notRobot
https://www.salon.com/2020/08/18/the-pesticide-that-caused-bee-colonies-to-collapse-is-killing-birds-now/
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OneGuy123
This clearly shows that you cannot believe companies when they say that there
pesticides/GMOs/etc... are "safe".

You can only see this when enough population is affected, by then it might be
too late.

To assume that this applied to human food is not poisonous is also a fallacy:
you cannot say "yeah we fed humans for 3 months with this food and they are
still ok".

The human body is extremely resilient, so obviously nothing bad will happen in
3 months.

But accumulate this shit for many years and bad things will happen, you also
can't know how it affects children.

Scientists and companies are arrogant, they don't understand that interactions
in a complex system cannot be predicted, it is NOT POSSIBLE TO PREDICT THEM,
no matter how low your p-value goes.

~~~
ChrisLomont
Despite what Salon implies, neonicotinoids are not believed by the scientific
community as the cause of colony collapse disorder. It may be a factor, but
even that is still not completely known.

"A large amount of speculation has surrounded the contributions of the
neonicotinoid family of pesticides to CCD, but many collapsing apiaries show
no trace of neonicotinoids." [1]

>To assume that this applied to human food is not poisonous is also a fallacy:
you cannot say "yeah we fed humans for 3 months with this food and they are
still ok".

GMOs and pesticides are used to enable large scale food production to feed the
planet. We do know that people without food for 3 months die. The vast
majority of what you're complaining about is about tradeoffs between known and
absolute downsides and trying to reduce them.

> , it is NOT POSSIBLE TO PREDICT THEM

Not predicting all outcomes to 100% does not mean mankind cannot predict
vastly widespread outcomes with very high liklihood. So it is possible to
predict them, just like every science, with very good error bounds and
certainty.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder)

~~~
rbecker
> many collapsing apiaries show no trace of neonicotinoids.

And 'many' (notice the weasel word) car crashes are caused by drivers that
show no trace of inebriation. More to the point: "Most academic and
governmental bodies agree that neonicotinoids have had a negative influence on
bee populations.":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid)

As for GMOs, they may well be safe (for consumption, let's ignore any
invasive-species like effects, or toxicity to insects, or the potentially
catastrophic combination of both...), but is our incentive structure ready for
them? So far corporations are limited in how much they can tinker with food,
but once they have the ability, what are we more likely to get - vitamin-
enhanced rice, or vegetables that are as healthy and addictive as Twinkies?
And what will the effect on food sovereignty be, when the only way to compete
is with GMOs, control of which is concentrated in at most a handful of global
companies?

As for the common "well how is GMO different from selective breeding done
since antiquity?" objection, it's different in one very important way - in the
evolutionary Red Queen's race, it's _much faster_ , and non-engineered life
cannot keep up.

~~~
ChrisLomont
>when the only way to compete is with GMOs

Already the case, and in the US many crops like corn are 92+% GMO, as selected
by farmers during planting season.

We can undo it, and we can also go back to a fraction of the current yield per
acre and to people paying significantly more of their budget on food. We can
price the poor even more out of getting enough food by making it all costlier.

Food was around 25% of household spending in 1930 in the US. It's now around
7%.

Corn yields were about 25 bushels/ac from as far back as we have data (1800's)
till about 1940 when we started applying modern science, and is now around 160
bu/ac [1], an astounding ~7 fold difference. Most crops saw similar gains.
This has massive realworld implications on food. A significant part of that is
due to GMOs [2] (note the study also demonstrates reduction in toxins since we
can engineer more carefully for pesticides desired).

Thankfully mankind has used tech to increase yields drastically, lowering
cost, and thus freeing lots of money for other things like housing, medicine,
entertainment, and social programs.

>are we more likely to get - vitamin-enhanced rice, or vegetables that are as
healthy and addictive as Twinkies?

Once we reach that level of design, why would we not engineer all sorts of
beneficial items in? Even now there's published evidence that GMOs are
healthier for people than alternatives since it allows us to tailor which
pesticides and how much we need to reach yields sufficient to feed the planet.

>on food sovereignty be

This has been one of the goofiest non-arguments ever. People keep claiming
somehow no one will able to grow food - there's so many non-GMO places to get
any seeds you like, and even many GMOs are off patent protection and fully
able to be used as anyone likes. The most you can worry about is not having
the latest 20 or so years of seeds. So for free all farmers and people are
getting more seed options, not fewer.

>it's much faster, and non-engineered life cannot keep up.

There is no law of physics that cannot mutate things slowly or quickly, so
this assumption that there is some magical limiting rate of evolution is also
not science based.

Things can wildly mutate in one generation, it's been seen, and things mutate
when there's selection pressure. It's the case, for example in viruses, that
they mutate faster to keep up with things we do to them.

And the point is to beat things out that destroy crops, like rusts, disease,
water shortages, etc. As global warming increases, there will be significant
needs for more drought resistant crops, and GMO is delivering on that in a
manner that no selective breeding can do quick enough. GMOs will likely save
billions of lives in the coming decades.

[1]
[https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTren...](https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTrends.html)

[2]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2)

~~~
rbecker
Most of your counterarguments either barely make sense, or don't even address
the arguments I made. But I'll try to clarify and spell things out for you.

> Once we reach that level of design, why would we not engineer all sorts of
> beneficial items in?

Why would we not engineer all sorts of beneficial items into Twinkies? Why
wouldn't we maximize visibility of healthy food in supermarkets, instead of
junk food? Because it reduces profit. PR efforts such as golden rice will give
way to profit maximization as soon as there's wide acceptance of GMOs. This is
what _already happens_ with other food that corporations are able to totally
engineer, but you think they'll suddenly find their conscience and do what's
best for the consumer once it's GMOs they're engineering, not cookies?

> So for free all farmers and people are getting more seed options, not fewer.

They get more seed options just like they have the option of hand tilling the
soil instead of using tractors - they'll go bankrupt unless they plant the
most optimal seed. Even if the gain is only 5% or less, profit margins are so
thin that can make or break a farm. This is only "goofy" if you completely
ignore economics.

> There is no law of physics that cannot mutate things slowly or quickly, so
> this assumption that there is some magical limiting rate of evolution is
> also not science based. [..] GMO is delivering on that in a manner that no
> selective breeding can do quick enough.

Those sentences contradict each-other.

~~~
ChrisLomont
By your reasoning every product we produce would converge to a single super
Twinkie of maximal profit, and we’d make nothing nutritious. Since this is
clearly obviously false, being a straw man, there is no reason we’d not also
engineer many varieties of food.

You also keep repeating that somehow seed control is going to make things
expensive, despite decades of it doing the exact opposite, hence vastly lower
consumer expenditures.

So, once you stop avoiding actual economics as demonstrated econometrically,
your arguments fall apart.

> Those sentences contradict each-other.

No, they don’t. You think extremely black and white, missing important nuance.
Certainly selective breeding could randomly in one generation create anything,
but the odds are too low to make it practical, thus GMO, by increasing the
odds, improves the _expected_ outcome, which is what we care about. And
certainly mutation could make our changes irrelevant in one generation, but we
hope that it doesn’t. There’s no one size fits all rate of evolution that
supports your simplistic claim that one has to outpace the other. We only
engineer in the hopes that it doesn’t.

If you really want everything explained this carefully so you don’t inject
extreme positions I’ll do it.

There’s no reason to continue if you’re more interested in repeating the same
claims regardless of evidence. If you want to continue please cite some decent
evidence to back your claims.

~~~
rbecker
> Since this is clearly obviously false, being a straw man, there is no reason
> we’d not also engineer many varieties of food.

And yet tomatoes are getting more and more tasteless.

> You also keep repeating that somehow seed control is going to make things
> expensive

Nowhere in my posts did I claim that - the terms "seed control" or "expensive"
aren't even in my posts. I claimed that the requirement to use GMO seeds to
remain economically viable will concentrate the control over the food supply
into a handful of corporations. If you take the smallest glance at
agribusiness, you'll see consolidation is exactly what's already happening,
and GMO will make it worse.

> No, they don’t. You think extremely black and white, missing important
> nuance. Certainly selective breeding could randomly in one generation create
> anything, but the odds are too low to make it practical, thus GMO, by
> increasing the odds, improves the expected outcome, which is what we care
> about.

So.. genetic engineering _is_ vastly faster than natural or artificial
selection? I.e. my original claim? Oh, sorry, I forgot to add the important
nuance of _on average_.

------
f1refly
Breaking news: Poison that was found to be killing animals is now, after some
time, indeed still killing animals.

...I mean what did they expect, it's still a poison after all...

