Climate Change is Good Freeman Dyson

GMO's themselves aren't bad. We've been doing for thousands of years. A Canola oil plant is a rapeseed that doesn't produce a toxin, and we have lines of it made in the lab from genetic manipulation and ones the old fashsioned way by selective breeding.

The problem is with the patents and how they are used to drive non-compliant farmers out of business. Which is a good enough reason to be against them.

 

I have read that some climate scientists (at least) are interested in improving models, and wish that physicists would find the subject more intriguing.

Climatologists to physicists: your planet needs you : Nature News & Comment

The "settled" thing may be susceptible to misinterpretation. Settled in the sense that CO2 holds solar heat to the earth, yes. In the sense that climate sensitivity is within a range (that remains stubbornly broad), yes also.

But settled in the sense that it should not be examined any further, no. It would be hard for me to come up with people or groups that don't want climate models improved. That is, unless we attribute that idea to people who call to end/reduce climate science research funding.

 

Having been raised on a farm, growing ANYTHING for commercial agriculture not genetically modified by man does not exist. The scary part is how genetic modifications have shifted to being huge corporate operations purely motivated by quarterly profit. And that includes some mighty questionable practices.

 

Yet we need to manufacture the current amount of food and more.Is GMO is only an efficient extension of directed breeding (1000s years human history) or something quite otherwise? Wiser heads shall prevail, but Prof. Dyson is entirely looking towards GMO. Just ask him!

 

Genetic modifications for disease resistance or drought resistance is a perfectly sensible GMO goal whether the technique is selective breeding or direct gene modification. GMO techniques to develop plants that cannot reproduce so the seeds must be bought from the controlling corporation for every planting is using GMO entirely to extort money for food. It is very important to realize "GMO" enables both good and evil goals to be achieved.

 

If only the corporation did this. Instead, they put out seed than can reproduce, and drag farmers and others to civil court on the chance that their patented plant traits might be infringed.

 

But he does say

Doesn't that make him a scientist to be ignored in your eyes ?

 

disease resistant - as in bug resist .... and disease resistant sometimes because the disease is carried onto the crop via bugs ... are GMO crops bug/disease resistant - because the crop is no longer recognized by critters as being food? Like 'man-made' climate change - Is the jury still out ... and how many generations might it take, to positively prove that yes/no, GMO plants (do or don't) alter our bodies' imune system (theoretical example) or more CO2 is good/bad ... or livestock jacked full of antibiotics/hormones is ok or not.
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You are right about present day clarification. Monsanto explored the "terminator seed" genetic technology but has not sold it yet. (But why were they exploring it???) So a clarification can say the genetic technology has been considered but not that it has been applied for profit.

 

Nobody knows the full ripple effect of any present day genetic change, natural or manmade. What we do know is lack of food is a real and serious possibility due to a series of future disasters of unknown and unpredictable sort. Dying of starvation is more of a problem than risking the immune system of those starving. So the best that can be done is examine the tradeoffs (and there are always tradeoffs) and do the serious studies needed to uncover as much as possible. It is when these tradeoff or studies are subverted for corporate profit concerns we ensure many avoidable disasters will occur.

 

yep .... and yet the grain lobby insists that we turn food into gasoline - to keep demand/profits ever higher ... even as the corn belt's underground water table drops hundreds of feet - quite the pickle ... the economic machine must grow & grow & grow some more - if just to prevent the $17trillion debt from causing economic collapse. And yet with more economic growth, comes more CO2 - more problems, & more wealth, that lobbies need, to keep the status quo.

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Let's clarify. Dyson didn't say climate change was good, he said carbon dioxide is probably good outside of climate change.

This includes gmo crops that can take advantage of carbon dioxide to be more heat resistant and need less water.

Hill I think you asked a big multi part question. First part the most popular gmo pest resistant strain is bt. BT is a toxin for some insects, making the crops need less dangerous pesticide. The food part is safe for animals. This genetic modification plus less pesticide is probably safer for the environment.

Then there is some more problematic modifications like round up ready. This makes the plants be able to survive large dosages of the herbicide round up, causing more chemicals and encouraging mono crops.

Really like artificial selection, gmo is no different. Some selected plants are kept some are not. The negative effects can happen with either.

Jacked up anti-biotic livestock and factory farming, have to do with large populations of people that want cheap meat. It has nothing to do with fossil fuels. Other environmental problem I agree, but quite different than fossil fuel burning.

 

Prof. Dyson has said climate change has already been good for Greenland, but with few measurable impacts elsewhere. I think this sets aside some evidence, and is in no way 'forward looking'. But I have no doubt that grass growth has improved in Greenland.

 

We humans need to remember that we are sitting on top of a complex food chain that has adapted to climate conditions that generally change much slower than the climate changes that are now projected over the next 100+ years.

Yes, there is an occasional volcano eruption or two that cools things for 2-3 years and there have been abrupt changes to regional climate conditions (with major negative ecology effects). The projected climate changes now are at a rate many times faster than normal and the changes are global in scope and are persistent.

I object to Dyson's apparently casual indifference to the risk of food chain disruption (not for us, but for all other living things) and his casual and seemingly unqualified claims about how biodiversity will be improved.

Maybe none of this will happen or problems can be reasonably, magically mitigated somehow but that's the good luck side of the story. There is undoubtedly real risk for things to go bad and the question is how big that risk is and not whether it exists at all. It obviously does and we need to be very conservative in our handling of it (ironic choice of words, I know).

 

Well said Jeff, that human food requirements will only face stresses that can be overcome by GMO is presumptuous, whoever suggests it. But it is on the table, related to my close here.

Aside from the biggest volcanic eruptions (Toba example), they are arguably helpful to biology on long time scales. Volcanic ash makes highly fertile soils. Whether the earth would exit ice ages without volcanic CO2 is uncertain.

Exactly how fast climate changed in the past is hard to know. Paleo proxies do not yet provide excellent time resolution. There may have been centuries (hidden) in the past with more than even the 4 oC T increase that represents nearly the worse projection for this century.

What we do know is that biology managed in the broad sense. What we don't know, as Jeff points out, whether the unique human enterprise is sufficiently resilient. We simply have to make it so. If we are on board when a big rock hits, or when oceans decide to really change chemistry, that would be very bad luck!

So, I hope that all ideas from inventive minds get a fair hearing, even if they sound bad at first. This requires us to consider the ideas, not who says them.

 

The subject I corresponded with Prof. Dyson was his suggestion to make a new kind of tree with GMO that could not decompose in soil (or more slowly). This leads to carbon sequestration. Details aside, if it could be done, fungi would just break down the super wood anyway. It's what they do. They are masters of non specific depolymerization.

However people are using GMO techniques to make trees produce wood faster. New paper in Current Biology, Etchells et al., details if anyone is interested. This will work, I reckon.

 

I really don't know how many times we have talked about the CO2 fertilization effect here, but it is >0. Numbers from 13 to 20% appear in non-technical sources, and a thorough review of the subject (deserts, grasslands, agriculture, forests) would be very welcomed. I might even get a few here to read it!

In greenhouse structures it is a very big thing, and I wonder if mojo or anyone could think of some important differences between those controlled environments and 'outdoors' agriculture?

At this stage, I would not put bounds on how much CO2 man can sequester, or at what cost. Numbers have been presented for no-till agriculture, biochar addition to soils, and afforestation, but there is certainly more potential linked to innovations such as I mentioned here in #37.

There must be few indeed intending to destroy US/world economy. Certainly none of the fossil-C burners. This is why we must hope that the 600 ppm (1000?) future does not present harms outweighing the benefits.

 

I like the idea of calculating a $ value for CO2 fertilization of crops, and it should be doable. Control for fertilizer and water inputs, etc. Here is a framework that could be used. Also a highly interesting study in itself

Significance and value of non-traded ecosystem services on farmland [PeerJ]