Mark's The God Species was one of the things that changed my mind about nuclear power. I remember emailing him and saying something like: okay, you've got me thinking, but I'm not 100% of the way there yet. What's the smartest and fairest negative review you've gotten? To which he replied "Ha! Good question" and recommended one
Impressed the hell out of me. How many people would do that? How many people these days would even understand the question?
I'm sympathetic to the author's point overall, but he isn't being honest about nuclear power. It's not "ompletely ecologically benign." All that radioactive waste has to go somewhere, for one thing. Second, "he worst that happens" is NOT "that a lot of people get very scared . . and people have to evacuate from certain areas for a certain time." The worst that happens is that an ENTIRE REGION becomes UNINHABITABLE for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Quite different.
It is pretty interesting that neither your or Mark's position on GMO failure incorporates the utter squandering of the credibility of institutions which speak for science, while hand-waving the corruption rife through the agribusinesses that dominate the world of GMOs.
This is an issue one never hears being spoken of in the hand-wringing of the rejection of science. Science privatized itself and subordinated its ends to class warfare.
That credibility is gone. The loss of trust is generational at least. Why not even glance at it? Ethics anyone?
Lynas doesn't deny the problem of corruption of agribusiness. What is dishonest, is pretending that GMOs are inherently bad because of the reality of the potential of such corruption. The corruption question is separate. GMOs themselves have tremendous potential for corruption and for good. These things need to be teased out and debated.
I agree that people who pretend that ought not to.
This of course is not the same as the point I made, which is that it doesn't matter if there are benign aspects to GMOs if those that seek to promote GMOs have destroyed their ethos by decades of neglect, conflicts of interest, and the appearance(s) of conflicts of interest.
It isn't potential corruption, it is that plus historic corruption, which extends to the present day. It isn't speculative.
Mark's The God Species was one of the things that changed my mind about nuclear power. I remember emailing him and saying something like: okay, you've got me thinking, but I'm not 100% of the way there yet. What's the smartest and fairest negative review you've gotten? To which he replied "Ha! Good question" and recommended one
Impressed the hell out of me. How many people would do that? How many people these days would even understand the question?
I'm sympathetic to the author's point overall, but he isn't being honest about nuclear power. It's not "ompletely ecologically benign." All that radioactive waste has to go somewhere, for one thing. Second, "he worst that happens" is NOT "that a lot of people get very scared . . and people have to evacuate from certain areas for a certain time." The worst that happens is that an ENTIRE REGION becomes UNINHABITABLE for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Quite different.
It is pretty interesting that neither your or Mark's position on GMO failure incorporates the utter squandering of the credibility of institutions which speak for science, while hand-waving the corruption rife through the agribusinesses that dominate the world of GMOs.
This is an issue one never hears being spoken of in the hand-wringing of the rejection of science. Science privatized itself and subordinated its ends to class warfare.
That credibility is gone. The loss of trust is generational at least. Why not even glance at it? Ethics anyone?
Lynas doesn't deny the problem of corruption of agribusiness. What is dishonest, is pretending that GMOs are inherently bad because of the reality of the potential of such corruption. The corruption question is separate. GMOs themselves have tremendous potential for corruption and for good. These things need to be teased out and debated.
I agree that people who pretend that ought not to.
This of course is not the same as the point I made, which is that it doesn't matter if there are benign aspects to GMOs if those that seek to promote GMOs have destroyed their ethos by decades of neglect, conflicts of interest, and the appearance(s) of conflicts of interest.
It isn't potential corruption, it is that plus historic corruption, which extends to the present day. It isn't speculative.