But then again, the causual web could be very complex. Say, global warming may disrupt seasonal rhythm of bees, or enhance parasyte populations. Even if GM would not be the dominant reason most likely, the thinking has to be changed from "Is it disastrous or not?" to "What is the spectrum of possibilities?".
CCD can be a prime wake-up example that people do have a tremendously bad impact (asif the examples of Aral Sea and ozone hole could not be enough). The implicit but comfortable dogma that we can cause nothing globally catastrophic has to be shatered.
But you have to get people to believe the explanation. Otherwise they'll just say "the market will provide genetically engineered resistant honeybees". "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Corn wouldn't be affected at all, for a start, being wind pollinated. Isn't that true of most of the grasses?
And then we must talk about mounting consequences of "unintended" consequences. If you intend nothing but a quick profit, that is what you get.
I just looked up info on the other huge-tonnage crop: Soybean plants are self-pollinating, auto-incestuous creatures. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
Or was it a bad dream? Seems harder to tell these days. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
You want to prevent propagation through the greenhouse walls, not only into or out of them. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
These are some dedicated folks. I've seen pictures of guys dangling from ropes on a vertical seacliff busy with their little brushes.
the market will provide genetically engineered resistant honeybees
People do not have to be convinced beyond any doubt. Hell, the Iraq war was allowed very easily.
Simple cautionary logic is just not being applied - that's why it looks like non-starter. No one wishes to be good in repeating: Is it worth to give yet another few reckless project every convenience to prosper at dire risk to everyone. Would it be a really big problem if caution will make some "opportunites" more difficult?
Just look at education of kids today to see the modern mindsetting. Everything has to be fun: learning manners must be fun, spelling must be fun, math must be fun, taxes must be fun, elections must be fun. You don't have to do anything in life that is not fun! You don't have to do anything that does not benefit you immediately! You don't have to worry about anything, but your weekend! Everything you do can be (and must be) easy!
The standards for clinical and field trials keep being eroded on "efficiency" and "growth" [read: profit] grounds.
Look at REACH as a model: any chemical that is not demonstrably safe will be phased out.
It's not for people to show that GM is unsafe, but for the GM industry to show their product is safe. Unfortunately, "safe to humans" seems not to be enough in this case, but it shouldn't have been. After all, insecticides may be developed for a given parasitic species but may harm other useful ones. And biologists know this stuff. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Ms. ATinNM worked on antibiotic resistence transfer factors in the mid 70s. Her lab was showing the use of Tetracyline in animal food, only used to increase the weight gain per pound of food, was creating Tetracyline resistent bacteria in the human gut. The major researcher pissed someone off at the FDA and the lab was shut down.
Just as snark: the lab got its samples of environmental e. coli by swabing the tables of the local McDonald's.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
But perhaps there is some connection between making today's news (etc.) fun and making the next decade or century miserable. And perhaps I'm forgetting other non-"fun" dimensions of a life well lived. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
But it is quite fooling yourself to call everything you have to do fun. Come on, cleaning cat's corner is not the same fun as playing with mum. You clean cat's corner to have actual fun later (better smell in the room, happier and healthier cat), or rather, to keep having (perhaps diminishing) fun with the cat.
In a sense, we can bring now all desired experience to the common fun denominator because we can afford to. (So far, perhaps.) In harder times, you do things for living, not so much for fun.
Habits and prejudices can be stronger than drive for pleasure, for (mostly) good reasons.
If this really is due to pollen from GM crops, 1) how does one prove the connection
Field Biology research requires a large enough statistical universe over a broad range of climatic, weather, soils, moisture, & etc conditions. This takes 3 to 5 years. If you're lucky. If a research crop gets a Eatus Muchas pest infestation then you're screwed for that year and the whole data set from that location maybe hosed as you've lost the time series correlation to other sites. Then you start eliminating and, hopefully, come-up with a systemic constant with a high (97%+) confidence factor.
2) how does one get the GM industry and the governments to acknowledge it?
Forget convincing the GM industry. They have billions riding on their stuff and they could give a flying fart. Reducing to a previous solution we start screaming at our elected representatives, I guess.
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What is maddening is I did a study in 1991/2 comparing open field pollenated corn with commercial seed corn. Although the initial yield was lower (as much as 60% of the best commercial seed,) the cost/benefit was obvious for the open field corn. First, the cost of seed was less. Second, didn't have to purchase any more seed. Third, the corn, over time, adapted to the specific farm's soil types increasing yield over time. Fourth, the open pollenated corn was hardier to pests, diseases, fungi -- 'stress.' (Thus) Fifth, the need for additional inputs (pesticides, herbicides, & etc) was reduced to as little as 25% of previous requirements, depending on the farming practices.
The GM corn is only needed because the stupid f*ckers keep planting the same g*dd*mned cultivar which was bred solely for yield dropping dead when a bird craps on it in a field that has never been rotated to another crop long enough for pests and diseases to die off, predators on those pests are eliminated by the hundred million tons of chemicals dumped on the field, and without another hundred tons of fertilizer the damn things wouldn't grow anyway as the soil minerals were leeched out in 1957 and the last micro-organism attempting to live in the topsoil was killed in 1963.
(Only my opinion, of course.)
</rant>
If it's any consolation, mine too.
The argument, btw, of the "Green Revolution" sparked by hybrid corn from the 1950s on is being used to great effect here in France to persuade farmers that, with GM varieties, they are on the brink of a second such revolution. On the basis, of course, of yields alone.
