Sciencedebate.org sent all the presidential candidates a list of 20 questions about science policy, and most of them have sent in their answers. Gary Johnson didn’t bother. Jill Stein did, but I admit, I didn’t bother reading her answers; I have no intention of voting for her, so I don’t really care, although she did seem to take the questions seriously and had some lengthy answers. I skimmed Trump’s answers (it was easy; they’re short) mainly as a point of comparison with Clinton’s.
Hillary Clinton gives substantial answers to every questions. Sometimes they aren’t very specific, but even there she hints at positive attitudes. For instance, the question on scientific integrity isn’t very good — of course every candidate supports scientific integrity, or at least says so! — and Clinton doesn’t hit on any specific points, but does say she supports “public access to research results and other scientific information”, which is a good thing. But on the question of immigration, she immediately proposes specific bills to assist qualified people in the tech sector. On climate change, she’s going to set ambitious goals.
Generally, my impression was that she (and her staff) made a serious stab at explaining her policy, with enough details that it’s clear she really has plans. This is what I want from a serious candidate.
Trump, on the other hand, had nothing. He’d too frequently wave his hands (his tiny, tiny hands) at “market solutions” providing the answer to everything. He dismissed serious issues: his reply to the question about climate change begins, There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of “climate change.”
Yes, he actually put it in scare quotes. Fuck him.
OK, I decided I wasn’t being fair to Stein, who put almost as much effort into her answers as Clinton did — I can definitely say she’d be a better candidate than Trump. So I looked at some of her longer answers. She lost me with her strategy for protecting biodiversity: Label GMOs, and put a moratorium on new GMOs and pesticides until they are proven safe.
. Nope. Sorry. Does she even realize that GMOs are a fantastic tool for reducing reliance on pesticides?
Holy shit, some of Donald Trump’s answers are pure gibberish:
WTF? Perhaps this, perhaps that, or perhaps the completely different other thing?
On biodiversity:
How is that even remotely relevant?
The rest of his answers are less gibberish I guess but not less stupid.
One of Drumph’s typical replies:
-embolds added to note the repeated use of “should”. Never saying what he would do, just “perhaps, should”. Unexpected from someone who was always so proudly asserting what he will do, without giving any specifics, just “I will do it”. *mic drop*
—
further down the page Stein gives the usual scaredy-cat hippie response to nuclear power. saying flat out, fission is unsafe and the waste fuel is too dangerous. While not recognizing how safe our reactors are designed to be, with multiple redundancies and safeties, and how miniscule the waste is in proportion to tha amount of energy delivered. Mining uranium is less harmful than mining coal or drilling fracking for oil, and the waste of spent fuel rods is fractional compared to the waste ash from coal.
“label GMOs” is an automatic red flag, because the person either has some weird mad science gene-splicing idea of what GMOs are, or is pandering to people who do. ALL of our modern food stuffs, plant and animal alike, are GMOs. They have been selectively bred and modified for millennia. That we are now able to accomplish this faster and with more specific details in mind does not make modern GMOs any more modified or dangerous than the others. When someone ignores very real problems associated with GMOs like bad farming practices (overuse of pesticides in particular) and bad IP practices (over-zealous enforcement of patent laws) and instead rails about labeling GMOs so people can know they’ve been “modified” [insert ominous crash of thunder], that screams “I don’t know shit about GMOs, but they sound scary”.
You’re still not being fair to Stein. Most of her answers were actually better than Clinton’s and you cherry-pick one absurdity as your sole comment.
I’d take Stein’s anti-GMO nuttery over Clinton’s complete inaction on global warming any day, and even that is a false choice since Stein would never actually manage to get any anti-GMO nuttery through Congress.
Slithey Tove:
“Mining uranium is less harmful than mining coal”
Here in New Mexico we see many TV commercials for home care health professionals that specifically help those that got sick – I assume it was lung cancer due to the radon – mining uranium.
In general I agree with your points, but I think all mining involves health and environmental risks.
She’d never actually manage to get anything done in Congress. Have you noticed a strong Green faction in the Senate or House?
Funny how some people think the US President is a dictator with vast powers. The US has a weak president, who is dependent upon Congress to get anything done. Any overreach of executive powers will be reined in by the Courts and Congress, along with possible impeachment for repeatedly overstepping their authority.
“She’d never actually manage to get anything done in Congress. Have you noticed a strong Green faction in the Senate or House?”
This implies that the sausage that comes out of congress is worth eating…
How is getting something done in a financially corrupt institution a good in itself?
Sorry, but GMOs are not “a fantastic tool for reducing reliance on pesticides.” The precise opposite is the case — actually existing GMOs are specifically designed to be used with pesticides. Let’s at least get our facts straight.
To vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson is to vote for Trump and his damn Republican enablers. Nothing else. The Democrats need to win by a landslide for the US to be able to start making some sensible policy again and that is something all outside the US need as well.
I don’t like Hillary Clinton, I dislike like an awful lot of Democrats, but they are our best chance to not have a world wide cluster f#ck of epic proportions.
A very concerned Dutch citizen.
This kind of dishonest bilge really doesn’t help your case. “GMOs” has a specific meaning; it refers to the use of biotechnological methods developed over the past few decades. If that term were not used, we’d need another, unless the aim is pure obfuscation.
I do know shit about GMOs, and I prefer to have them labelled precisely because of the very real problems – bad farming practices and IP practices – associated with some GM crops.
So far, GMOs (I notice PZ doesn’t use the “all crops and farm animals are GMOs” bullshit here) have decreased the use of insecticides but increased the use of herbicides. Their purpose, of course, is neither: it’s to increase the profits of the corporations manufacturing them, and their control over global food markets.
cervantes@9,
Some are, some aren’t – Bt corn incorporates an insecticide, so spraying is unnecessary. See the article I linked to @11.
Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say GMOs reduce the application of pesticides. The most popular GM trait in the world is Bt, which drastically reduces the amount of insecticides needed to be applied. In addition, Stein didn’t and doesn’t restrict her opposition to GMOs to just those engineered to be used with a particular herbicide, which isn’t even unique to GMOs anyways. There are traits that are conventionally bred to resist a particular herbicide as well.
KG @11
The weight of herbicide applied went up, but I reject the idea that weight of herbicide applied, when comparing two different herbicides, is a useful metric.
Except when it comes to waging war. Then the President can do whatever they want to do, and count on Congress to roll over for a tummy rub.
No you are being dishonest.
Look at grass. Look at modern wheat. Same for corn an rice. Big differences between the ancient natural versions, and the modern versions. Due to genetic modification. Same for animals.
The only difference with modern methods is that it is more specific. Doesn’t alter the fact that the genome underwent changes with time.
KG, if some GMOs are associated with problematic practices, how is labeling all GMOs informative? If you just want to maintain your nutritional purity you can use the existing label of certified organic.
No we don’t need any new terms. The new “biotechnological methods” do not make the plants any more dangerous than plants modified by older methods. The problems are purely a matter of irresponsible chemical use by farmers. The GMOs themselves are not inherently dangerous.
And what exactly does labeling accomplish, aside from perpetuating the falsehood that there is something weird or dangerous in the foods themselves? The average consumer is going to see that kind of a label as a warning that there is something strange with the GMO itself, which is false. If any kind of congressional action is necessary, it’s regulation of pesticide/herbicide usage. Limits on frequency and quantity of pesti-/herbicide use and monitoring/enforcement (but we can’t have that, because communism or something). Labeling the foods themselves doesn’t do anything productive, but is very popular among the GMO conspiracy crowd that thinks Monsanto killing us all with mutant plants.
GMO refers specifically to organisms targeted with specific gene modifications. If we loosen it so much that it refers to ANY genetic difference, then I’m a GMO.
@6 Myers:
Why would she need a “Green faction?” I know that Republican obstructionism seems the norm these days, but it used to be the case (and still is in most countries) that people who generally agree on principles will work together to enact them regardless of official party registration.
If the Democrats are progressive, they will be willing to work with Stein in passing progressive policies.
If the Democrats are not progressive, we should not support them.
@10 Entropy101:
And here’s the Clinton-or-bust moon logic again.
If you want to claim that a ballot marked “Jill Stein” is actually counted by voting system as a vote for Tump, you’ll need to provide some evidence. Electoral fraud on that scale is at least vaguely plausible, but you can’t simply assert it happens.
And here’s a PRATT used as an excuse for the actions of conservative Democrats— whenever the Democrats do something really really stupid or evil, simply declare that they didn’t win their elections by a large enough margin, because winning by less than a substantial supermajority makes Democrats get all jelly-legged and forces them to start acting like Republicans.
Gore wins the 2000 election but concedes to Bush before taking office? He only won by a slim majority— it just felt rude to move into the White House without a substantial supermajority saying he should.
Democrats win complete and absolute control of government in 2008 but refuse to do anything without Republican approval? Well sure, they may have had complete control of the government but the powerless Republican minority wasn’t quite small enough so the Democrats had no choice but to govern according to its dictates.
And now we have the excuse being set up preemptively for 2016— if the Democrats win big and inevitably sign the TPP, approve of DAPL, start new wars, and spend the next 2 years asking the Republicans to set their agenda for them, you’ll be proclaiming: “Well, they may have won, but they didn’t win an uncontested landslide victory so they had no choice but to act like Republicans!”
And here’s the acknowledge-minimize-dismiss routine. “Yes, the Democrats aren’t perfect, but if I don’t mention their flaws in detail then you might not notice how bad they are, and in any case there is no alternative to blindly supporting anything and everything the Democrats may do.”
A dual citizen? Dutch citizen residing in the US? Because you seem unusually familiar with the argument tropes and routines of pseudo-liberal American voters.
Having the government testing engineered crops or animals would be definitely a good thing, though. You can’t expect a for-profit organisation to have the best interest of their customers in mind. I’m not saying they will make evil conspiracies to mind control everyone using GMO chemtrails, but cutting corners in QA doesn’t do any immediate harm, and coverups and/or downplays for potentially harmful products happen all the time.
Challenge: read his answers without reading the questions they are attempting to answer. Try to figure out which question matches each response.
At least Stein left out the part about GMO foods affecting our DNA.
“evidence is now showing that once these foods reach our digestive tract, they can affect our very DNA.” (From a fundraising email.)
Why should they pass the illogical policies of an idiologist? Stein doesn’t have coherent policies that will pass the will of the PEOPLE. Stein is an extremist.
Fortunately, Stein is still polling the low single digits, and she should be dismissed from any talk about being elected. It won’t happen, except in the wacky-backy pipe dreams of her followers.
Talk about a Stein presidency should stop. It won’t happen.
#20 / Jake:
Many of us are exceedingly well-informed. Not to mention suave, debonair, and almost painfully attractive. The election’s fairly big news over here; there have been articles in the paper I read about the potential third party candidates.
That said, Entropy / #10, you’re not quite right. That’s because the US model, unlike the Dutch one, is state-by-state and winner take all. Thus, in a state like Massachusetts, where Clinton is outpolling Trump by almost twenty percentage points (according to 538), quite a few people could vote for Stein (or Johnson) without risking those 11 electoral college votes. It’s the swing states – Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and a few others – where a different voting strategy makes sense. For the non-cloggies, over here you vote for a party in the national election and parties get seats in the Tweede Kamer (think Congress) based on the percentage of votes they get. No geographic representation at the national level (still not sure if that’s a good thing or not), no winner-takes-all.
The reason it might make sense to vote your conscience is that if a candidate gets over a certain percentage of the vote (10 or 15, I forget which) they’re then eligible for federal funding in the next election, which could finally break the two-party system in the States.
Attaching H1-B visas or green cards to degrees rather than jobs would be a massive improvement over the current system, which exploits immigrants and depresses the market for everyone to the benefit of employers.
The Donald’s using the old dodge of “Why fix this problem while there are still other problems?”
It’s very useful: “Why go to Mars while there are still starving children here?” “Why spend money researching solar/wind power when are schools are so bad?” “Why combat climate change while Al Gore is still fat?”
Of course, the people using that dodge to avoid fixing a problem never intend to fix the other problems either.
KG:
“GMO” has a specific meaning in the same way that “glory” means “a good knock-down battle”… or that “organic” has been coopted for expressly political and financial-advantage reasons. It is not a definition, but a somewhat dishonest redefinition by people who reject other fields of knowledge, by taking existing technical language from a large field and redefining it for archly political/financial-advantage reasons so as to obfuscate its context.
I don’t eat rocks. With the exception of the water I drink and the salt I occasionally sprinkle on my food, therefore, my diet is entirely organic — a technical term coopted from chemistry studied by sophomores across the American university system. And, just like “GMO,” it reflects a specific classist and antiscientific/antiintellectual bias (tinged with just a hint of underlying potential racism) when it is applied as a broad-brush label. The reification and worship of the millenia-old methodology of blind selective breeding (with all of those culls we just don’t talk about) that has led to the “breed-standard” German Shepherd is just one appalling and obvious example; more to the point, the large-breasted turkey that can’t fly is not a laboratory-created GMO, but it sure as heck is a GMO.
It’s not that there aren’t abuses in laboratory-modified agriculture: There are. However, the public debate over “GMO” (and “organic”) has really disturbing echoes of the nineteenth-century treatment of the Irish (and, more particularly, the so-called “Black Irish”) as unworthy of the right to stand for themselves. Indeed, by adopting both the tactics and facade of inaccurate labelling as a substitute for actual examination, this kind of labelling is setting back actual consideration of the real problems… most of which are far more related to the issues raised by monocultures than by the particular crops/creatures used to establish a given monoculture, but that’s an argument for another time.
There is a debate to be had over the commercial and application practices associated with (but not caused by!) laboratory-based genetic modification of food sources without adequate long-term testing. Archly labelling food sources as “GMO” (or “organic”) — perhaps while twirling one’s moustache, perhaps while noting that few of those furriner migrant workers are employed by the major organic-food purveyors — is not a debate, however: It IS the “dishonest bilge” of linguistic appropriation of terms. By definition (irony intended).
The question that led to Stein’s minirant was ill-formed, precisely because it invited that minirant. The real problem is that it expresses a complex issue for soundbite and in isolation, and a simplistically expressed solution for complex, nuanced issues almost always has side effects of its own (remember “Just Say No”… and, more particularly, the race/class/relgious-based fallout?). So be very, very careful of what y’all wish for in public debate — at the “this is appropriate for national policy” level, there’s almost nothing that is both simple and easy that has no unintended (if all too often predictable) side effects.
I’m just going to recommend Kevin Folta’s Talking Biotech podcast. Among other things, he has a whole episode just on the Bt trait (episode 28).
Remind me again of the consequences faced by Bush / Cheney…? The vaunted ‘checks and balances’ against presidential overreach have long since been eroded to the point where stalling is about the only thing that works against a president, and even then only if the senate is dominated by the opposition party.
If something is passed by congress, then let it be judged by the merits of that thing. It is not automatically a bad thing just because congress made it. Also, there is no alternative but to use the system available.
Your statement ‘GMOS are specifically designed to be used with pesticides’ does not refute the statement to which you are replying. Making a crop tolerant to pesticide A means farmers can switch to it from pesticide B, which may seem net neutral at first until you remember that pesticide B may have implementation difficulties / environmental issues / expenses associated with it which pasticide A avoids. If pesticide A has some benefit over B but can’t be used with a desired crop, making that crop resistent to it is a net gain.
Also, you are forgetting that some crop modifications have nothing to do with pesticides at all.
Nonsense. If a vote for e.g. Jill Stein is considered a vote for Trump on the basis that it deprives Clinton of a vote, then it is equally a vote for Clinton on the basis that it deprives Trump of a vote. It is therefore a vote for Trump and Clinton to exactly the same degree; and since the vote was for neither of them that degree is zero.
But what you don’t realise is that the term ‘GMO’ as it is currently used is the obfuscation that needs to be removed. There are multiple methods of genetically modifying an organism, but calling only one of those methods ‘Genetic Modification’ implies that the other methods of genetic modification are actually not. Treating one method out of several as if it were the only one that modifies genes lends itself very well to those that would demonise modern genetic methods, and so I agree with your conclusion: change the terminology.
Artificial genetic modification via selective breeding, irradiation, hybridisation and … let’s say, gene translocation? Now it is abundantly clear that they are all non-evolutionary genetic modification, they all produce ‘GMOs’ and the terminology also informs which method is being discussed. Clarity over obfuscation.
I’ll remind you that Bush got permission from Congress prior to Iraq. They gave him war powers. Once given, they are to take away politically.
Permission obtained by deliberately lying to congress. Any consequences for their lies? Or for starting an explicitly unconstitutional torture program? Or for Obama’s continuation of that program? Anything at all?
Oh dear No-God, the STEMlords are out in full force.
#2, slithey tove:
Hippie is the SJW before there was SJW. Don’t ever forget that.
Just too bad those “miniscule” amounts of waste have that quirk of staying radioactive for millions of years, isn’t it? Here in Germany our governments touted for decades the line that the “final” depositories are Safe(TM). Guess what? They leak radioactive material into the groundwater. Do we have a Flint situation here where thousands or millions of people are poisoned by isotope-contaminated water? Well, we can’t say because research into the affair is blocked from the Bundestag down!
Fuck your “safe, clean” nuclear power and fuck your apologia.
#3, themadtapper:
AARGH
That antediluvian canard will come to bite GMO cheerleaders mightily once anti-GMO forces get wise to it. We live in a world where labs can produce tomatoes with jellyfish genes and goats with spider genes. Pray tell, whenever were breeders capable of doing something like that?
If you want to market yourselves as the “faction of science,” then please be so kind as to actually stick to the science, okay?
Jake Harbin,
What color is the sky on your planet? Clinton’s answers were far more detailed than Stein’s, and far, far more realistic.
Just stay home, Jake. Get drunk. You’ll accomplish just as much and have a better time doing it.
And what’s with Gary Johnson–is he still too busy trying to figure out what Aleppo is to answer the questions?
Hey applehead, ever lived downwind of a coal-burning power plant?
And are those the kind of things we’re talking about? The kind of GMOs that Monsanto has been putting out into actual use? This is what I’m talking about. People getting a false impression that Monsanto is secretly feeding them mutant plants with jellyfish DNA in them.
I wouldn’t mind some jellyfish DNA. Personally, I’m looking forward to the day when pork chops grow on trees.
@Troll, 24:
I once joined a forum that seemed innocuous in its surface but, due to poor moderation, became infested with a swarm of alt-right types. You’re really sounding a lot like one of them— in your little world, every liberal is an “extremist” and a “communist.” You denounce liberal candidates without even knowing what they say, because you believe there’s no point in listening to any position other than your own. And then you cover your repugnant beliefs with a thin layer of concern trolling.
At this point, I’m giving you three options:
(1) Admit that you are a right-winger and you oppose Stein because she is a liberal.
(2) State that you are a liberal and that you support Stein.
(3) State that you are a liberal and offer a viable alternative to supporting Stein.
If you post anything that does not entail the acceptance of one of those options, I will ignore it or simply repost the options and ask you to try again. By your own logic, attempting to respond to my posts using anything but one of those options is therefore “throwing your post away.”
@Derek Vandivere, 25:
Familiarity with America’s elections does not imply familiarity with the specific arguments used by one particular sub-group of nutjobs with respect to the elections.
@Holms, 30:
Remind me again of the consequences faced by Obama?
There’s no atrocity committed by Bush that wasn’t also committed by Obama, yet those on the left (or at least, the pseudo-liberals here on Pharyngula) are willing to give him a complete pass simply because he’s a Democrat.
And then they wonder why I’m not willing to vote for another of their deplorables.
@Troll, 31:
No he didn’t. The Republicans never had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate under Bush, so if Bush managed to get war powers enacted, one of these must be true:
(1) The Democrats supported Bush, meaning they are just as bad as the Republicans.
(2) A “filibuster-proof” majority is not required to enact legislation, meaning that the Democrats held absolute and uncontested control of the federal government in 2009 and 2010. That they enacted Republican policies proves they are just as bad as the Republicans.
As before, you must accept one of those two options.
@applehead, 34:
That’s not actually a thing.
Genes are not branded with the name of a species on them. A spider’s genome does not have a disclaimer that says: “Not for individual use by tetrapods.”
Any gene currently present in a spider can arise in a goat by random chance, and once it arises it can be artificially selected by breeders. It might take a long time, but it can be done— directly splicing genes simply cuts down on the wait time.
So if you’d have no objection to selectively breeding goats which, by chance, have a gene previously found only in spiders, then there’s no basis to object to skipping the wait.
Oh my, there’s a scary threat, if I ever heard one.
Watch out, humans have a lot of scary chimp genes.
We also totally have tomato genes, or, in other terms, tomatoes have human genes.
Note that this is only true if you hold “x gene that animal y has” to mean a “y gene”, which Jake pointed out is really silly.
#36, microraptor:
No, I live surrounded by clean, safe wind turbines and solar panels. And after the deadend known as nuclear power has seen its deserved death, everybody will.
#35, a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
Don’t waste your energy. Jake’s a card-carrying Bernie Bro, he’s divorced himself from reality a long time ago.
I have no issue with GMOs other than the agenda of the people making them.
While a wild blackberry is not a GMO, it is in fact a huge pile of reckless mutations brought about with no oversight or concern for human health. The only reason we eat them is we haven’t seen anyone die from them yet. And they’re tasty :) .
However Monsanto et al creating our food is a lot like Exxon or Microsoft creating our food. They want a monopoly, with 100% slavish consumer dependence on them alone, and nowhere else to run. After that is accomplished quality and safety won’t even be in the top 50 of their priorities.
@35, a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
First question, how to encourage innovation.
Clinton says: Ensure government funds for education, ensure government funds for research and the magic of the free market will spread technology to the masses.
Stein says: Ensure government funds for education, ensure government funds for research, make sure that the research has goals other than killing people, and address poverty because merely allowing access to education doesn’t help if people are crushed by poverty.
Point: Stein. Both recognize the necessity of science funding and education, but Stein recognizes the multiple factors involved in getting people into STEM fields and understands that while military technology often has useful byproduts (like the internet), it would be preferable not to use “better ways to kill people” as the primary goal. Meanwhile, Clinton offers some almost Trumpian prattle about businesses.
Second question, encouraging research.
Both candidates say they support it with scant detail. Stein seems a little more cognizant of the realities of the political process, but it’s basically a tie.
Third question, climate change.
Clinton says: Set a few half-assed goals for increased clean power and reduced oil usage. However, Clinton is notoriously cozy with oil interests, so it’s highly unlikely she’ll even remember those goals next January.
Stein says: Implement a clean energy program on the scale of World War 2 mobilization. Switch to 100% clean energy by 2030. End corporate control of the energy system. Make an active effort to ensure minority communities aren’t screwed over by the transition. Also an offhand reference to “organic” agriculture bullshit.
Point: Stein. Global warming is one of the biggest threats we face, and Stein is the only candidate who has any intention of doing something about it.
Fourth question, biodiversity.
Clinton says: She supports it.
Stein says: She supports it, as long as it doesn’t involve “GMOs” whatever those are.
Point: Clinton.
Fifth question, the internet:
Clinton: Supports SOPA/PIPA/CISPA/whatever they’re calling it now. Supports mass surveillance. Supports telecom monopolies and price gouging. Opposes encryption. Opposes net neutrality.
Stein: Supports free and open internet. Supports net neutrality. Supports public broadband.
Point: Stein. In fact, on this question Clinton is actually worse than Trump who at least claims to oppose mass surveillance.
Sixth question, mental health:
Clinton says: Make sure people with mental illnesses have access to the same spotty and unreliable health care as people with other illnesses. Launch a national initiative for suicide prevention. Train cops to stop murdering mentally ill people and focus on offering treatment rather than sending mentally ill people to prison. Improve access to jobs and housing, and research new treatments.
Stein says: Make sure everybody gets access to health care, including coverage for mental illness (not the “Obamacare” bullshit). Make it easier to apply for disability benefits. Make some half-assed reforms to the court system to ensure that mentally ill people aren’t screwed quite as badly as they are now.
This one could go either way depending on your individual case and preferences. The fact that Stein supports disability benefits and Clinton doesn’t means I’m going to call this one for Stein since that could mean the difference between life and death for me, but if you’re willing to commit to paying me the benefits I would have received under Stein then I’ll be happy to call it for Clinton.
Ignoring the last one, among the first five questions there is 1 where Clinton is better, 1 where they’re basically identical, 2 where Stein is better, and 1 where Stein is not only clearly better than Clinton, but Clinton isn’t even better than Trump.
I think that’s enough to prove that either you didn’t actually read their answers or you are so divorced from reality that further evidence would be futile.
@44 applehead:
Wow. You managed to tell four lies in just six words.
(1) I’m voting for Stein, not Sanders.
(2) I don’t support Sanders. I was certainly willing to tolerate him as the lesser evil, but I never liked him.
(3) “Bernie Bro” refers to men who support Sanders because they object to the idea of a woman being President. This is a lie because I’m voting for a woman (see point 1). It’s also a lie because…
(4) I’m not a man.
Combined with your whinging about GMOs above, you certainly make irony meters spike when you accuse someone else of being divorced from reality.
Incidentally, if you agree with Stein on GMOs and nuclear power, exactly what about her do you not like?
When nuclear power plants are gone, people won’t live near coal power plants? Well, that’s a fairly bold prediction I guess, but also a stupid one.
multitool @45
Oh come on, we aren’t a bunch of cartoon villains twirling our mustaches tucked away somewhere trying to figure out the best way to poison people.
Jake Harban @ #35:
(1) That’s essentially the “but I have a black friend!” argument.
(2) People of any gender can be misogynists.
(3) My country had a female president recently and I know many deeply sexist people who rallied behind her nonetheless.
Uh no, they are different terms applied to different groups for different reasons and carrying different meanings.
You don’t get to issue that remonstrance with any credibility, given the rest of #34 is pure anti-science scaremongering of the ‘frankenfoods’ genre.
Read my #32; Obama is included in my criticism.
I think applehead believes it possible to live in an entirely renewable-sourced energy market. “And after the deadend known as nuclear power has seen its deserved death…” haha wow.
@50, Kreator:
No it isn’t. The “I have a black friend” argument is an attempt to distract from evidence of racism by pointing to a non sequitur— if the evidence of racism is, say, support for “tough on crime” laws that are used as a pretext to harass black people, or lukewarm (at best) support for Black Lives Matter, or wanting to build a wall to keep brown people out of the country or ordering drone strikes to kill brown people in other countries, then the existence of a black friend does not address the evidence in question and instead merely hopes to divert attention away from it.
In this case, the claim that I’m not willing to vote for a woman is the sole evidence of alleged misogyny on my part; the fact that I did vote for a woman in 2012 and will again in 2016 debunks it. Since no other evidence is offered, the claim that I am a misogynist is unsubstantiated.
Yes, but in the absence of any evidence that I am, applehead’s accusation is still a lie.
Again, this is not relevant to the issue at hand.
Applehead made the claim that I oppose Clinton solely because she is a woman. The fact that I support Stein disproves that claim.
@51, Holmes:
Sorry, I missed that when I quoted #30.
In any case, the fact that most of the Clinton Crowd happily gives Obama a pass for committing the same atrocities they denounced under Bush does not speak highly of their moral character or their ability to rationally choose a President.
applehead:
Fuck you too for focusing only only the dangers of nuclear waste and disregarding risks of ash from all other sources of energy. PV is best, yet requires far more acreage than a single nuke. (and producing a PV panel is not that safe either)
Mining uranium is indeed hazardous but the danger is well recognized and attempted to be safeguarded. I doubt perfectly, nor optimally, but there is far more attempt than coal mines. I may be anti-coal biased but I’ll admit so before anti-nuke. F.U.
#52
You might like Mano Singham’s thoughts on that subject.
It is possible, but that’s different from claiming that once nuclear is gone (if it ever is), coal will be gone. That doesn’t follow. Applehead may not be that stupid, but I guess their trolling is about conflating those issues, to make nuclear power seem equivalent to burning coal.
Jake, So, green, then?
Do drop us note here on planet reality sometime.
#28 made me laugh. When I’m berated for not always buying certified organic (by California state law) foods, I respond, “Feces and oil are organic, too. Want me to make you a s**t salad with crude dressing?”
Monsanto’s GMO seed is running smaller farmers out of business. I avoid GMO crops solely for that reason, but I understand the argument that by labeling such products, we might lend credence to the anti-science crowd. That happened with removing ethylmercury from vaccines. Speaking of which, let’s hear from Stein on GMO’s and vaccines, straight from her own mouth:
“As a medical doctor, there was a time where I looked very closely at those issues, and not all those issues were completely resolved,” Stein said. “There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant, the toxic substances like mercury which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed.”
To applehead
And how many people are going to be injured by these “leaks”? About zero. How many people have been injured and will be injured by lead in the Flint water supply? Lots and lots. It’s the dose that makes the poison.
It is clean and safe when compared to all alternatives, including solar and wind. Demonstrably so. For example, not a single person in the United States has ever died from radiation poisoning from nuclear power plant waste nor from radiation poisoning from an accident at at nuclear power plant.
(For anyone who is about to cite Hanford at me – please stop being lazy or dishonest. Hanford is a waste site for waste from plutonium weapons manufacture, which produced an entirely different kind of waste that is really nasty to deal with.)
I assume you live in Germany. Let’s do a quick comparison to nuclear France.
– Germany has far more human deaths from power production. Airborne particulate pollution from coal alone kills a quarter million people every year in Europe, and Germany is one of the biggest lignite coal users in Europe.
– Electricity prices. France has far cheaper electricity prices.
– CO2 release per person. France has far less CO2 release per person.
Wind and solar are a pipedream with current tech. The termodynamics simply do not allow it. See:
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
Also see:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
Unfortunately her plans are ineffective and will fail. One cannot fight thermodyamics.
Here’s a question I’d like to answer:
What SPECIFIC basic-science projects do you think are most important? Can you name a particular researcher who most typifies the sort of work we should be emphasizing?
Here’s one right answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_G._Schultz#Research
OOPS I meant to say “Here’s a question I’d like to ask the candidates.
PZ, maybe you should put in a feature to allow commenters to edit after posting.
mysteriousqfever @57
Can you explain what you mean by this? There are many misconceptions about the use of GMOs amd how it supposedly hurts small farmers, but I have not seen good evidence of what happens and how.
I interact pretty frequently with farmers online, who specifically repudiate the notion that Monsanto is bad for them. I’m curious what you are referencing.
@ 61
I do not know what the specific reference is but it might be the use of patented seeds, holding seeds back for next years crop that he was referring to.
The farmers have to come back and by new seeds each year adding to cost which puts small farmers who are on a slim margin even more precarious.
uncle frogy
#61
But this is more than paid for by increased yield, reduced pesticide, reduced lamour…
Holms @63,
Not only that, but If it were the case for any individual farmer where patented seeds were not paying off, the farmer is under no obligation to keep on buying those patented seeds year after year. That would be dumb. They can buy any seed they want, patented or not, at any time that they want.
I also don’t think this is a good argument against GMOs in general, or Monsanto in particular because every seed company patents the seeds they develop, whether they are GMO or not.
@ #62
Since hybrid crops became the norm throughout the 20th century, farmers haven’t saved seeds for most crops, since hybrid seeds generally will not breed true. Hybrids have so many advantages in most crops that farmers buy seeds every year and have for a very long time.
I admit I see a lot of people fixate on GMOs because they’re rather virtue signal about “Frankenfood” and elaborate agribusiness conspiracies than cut meat out of their purchasing habits. I mean you can certainly avoid both but becoming vegetarian is going to put such a bigger dent in the human footprint than avoiding GMOs. If you’re worried about the impact of industrialized agriculture on farmers, the environment, labor, corporate America and the whole basket of progressive and sustainable development issues, stop buying meat. The differential impact of GMO/”Organic” farming practices versus “factory farming” are so minuscule in comparison.
I understand why someone like Stein might not say this. For some reason you can be an antivaxxer and rule the left-wing world, but suggesting people not eat hamburgers would mark her a crazy person. Funny that.
I get that GMOs are often wrapped up in certain business models and that using them might “hurt small farmers” (a bad thing I guess?), but there is no necessary link between a agricultural product being a GMO, being patented, and being a tool of rentiers.
So are folks settling that PZ is a GMO, then? We’re only serving to divert the argument to semantics.
I’ve said it here before. It’s dishonest and distracting to intentionally confound GMO crops (i.e. transgenic/cisgenic crops) with conventionally bred materials. It is different from conventional breeding (and mutagenesis). It is a novel technology. And most importantly, there is no evidence that these crops are unsafe for consumption. It reflects poorly on proponents of biotechnology when we refuse to genuinely acknowledge the concerns of others.
sigaba:
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the argument that that is by itself a bad thing is very straightforward. I think that assumption is partly about people wanting things to be the way they think they were in “the good old days” (scare quote alert). There may be some sensible reasons for it, but it’s at least not clear why we should have a preference for smaller farms.
There are billions of people on the planet to feed (and other agricultural goods to make for them), and larger producers may be able to do so more efficiently in some sense. On the other hand, if for example they were more prone to using the same monoculture crops throughout their larger share of the industry, that poses a larger risk. I know it isn’t totally under the control of each and every small farmer, but my first guess would be that more people making such decisions semi-independently tends to bring about more diversity.
There are also regulatory requirements, concerning land use/pollution/food safety/etc., which smaller farming operations may not be able to meet satisfactorily (not without public support at any rate, which they could get when it’s actually needed). But again, on the other hand, being a large agricultural corporation means that these few producers can afford to be much more influential about which regulations are in effect, simply to make a larger profit next quarter or next year (which obviously doesn’t need to translate into anything like better/cheaper products that the public will benefit from somehow). They certainly aren’t struggling to get by like a small farmer often is, and lining a CEO’s pockets isn’t something that interests me — making them even more profitable so they can be even more influential is even less interesting. However, if the public were going to take it seriously that the public interest of having safe/sustainable food is the goal here, not the profit-making interests of a large corporation, then the corporation’s ability to lobby more effectively than a small farmer would be rendered irrelevant. Since we don’t actually see the public taking these issues or their responsibilities seriously, the result is more or less the clusterfuck that we have now.
I see no reason to go along with the definition of GMO used by anti-science cranks just because another possible definition would be ridiculous.
Vivec, your logic is flawed. If another definition would be ridiculous, then that itself is a reason (and not a bad one, either).
—
In passing, it’s interesting how ofted (as in this case) comment-threads settle on an incidental aspect of the OP, no?
KG had a good objection, PZ acknowledged it, and snodorum has summed it up nicely.
I think I poorly stated my point, then.
I see no reason to accept the anti-science crank’s definition of GMO just because a particular alternative definition would be ridiculous.
If I defined tomato as “anything red and kinda round”, that’d be a stupid definition. That doesn’t provide a reason to accept another, equally stupid definition.
It’s also worth noting that the massively arduous regulatory hurdles a GMO must face before going into production for sale makes it very difficult for any but the largest of research and development companies to do serious work on them – and be able to absorb the loss in case of a failure.
Anyone seriously advocating for opening up GMO development to smaller companies must realistically be for reducing the regulations surrounding them.
Vivec, fair enough. But, still — the reason is not “just because a particular alternative definition would be ridiculous”, because it’s also apposite — and I think everyone understands the intended meaning of the term and its referent. And, more directly, your phrasing implied that the term was not ridiculous.
Anyway, perhaps you prefer snodorum’s (better, but more recondite) term, transgenic?
Yes, absolutely.
What is ridiculous is “Frankenfood”.
@kiethb #5,
Not hardly, radon’s common in any area where the bedrock is granite, large parts of Pennsylvania have high radon counts, due to the granite bedrock and uranium daughter isotopes breaking down to radon. Actually, radon’s still not a biggie, it’s the polonium, bismuth and lead isotopes that are short half life isotopes and are absorable/bioavailable.
As for GMO’s, my only real concern about GMO crops is that of biodiversity of cash crops, lest we lose the current diversity (such as it is) in our current crops. That’s just a question of proper husbandry via segregation of heirloom and secondary cultivars from the GM crop (which some GM crop seeds having contracts requiring that anyway).
We really should learn our lesson, with single cultivar cash crops, there’ve been problems with Cavendish bananas (try to find a non-Cavendish banana) and Panama disease.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35131751
Citrus greening in Florida.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/florida-without-oranges/384774/
To name two.
As for nuclear, I’m far from fond of the long lived waste of our current uranium plants, however, thus far, India’s ahead of us in regards to thorium plants, which can burn the waste from uranium plants as part of their fuel cycle, reducing the amount of long lived nuclear waste and the added bonus of thorium being far more plentiful and the current generation of nuclear plants being designed to be “walk away safe”. That beats the hell out of this:
http://wncn.com/2016/02/02/nc-coal-ash-spill-clean-up-continues-2-years-later/
As for the perfect candidate, there is none, there never has been and frankly, whenever one presents him or herself, I know that I just have a really good liar.
For, Otto von Bismarck said it best, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best”.
And Simone Elkeles had the right of it as well, “Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one but they think each others stink.”
Put the two together, you get a room full of politicians with at least one opinion per politician, see von Bismarck for how to make that mess begin to work.
@LykeX #29, thanks for adding Dr Folta. I’m a regular on his blog as well, great information over there and I’ve learned a few new things as well! It’s a shame what kinds of crap the extremist, clueless set have been putting him through. Once I’ve got things finished being set up here, I might set up a few traps for his office – at least the next time it’s burglarized, there’d be pictures on the server farm of the burglars (having a camera is all well and good, concealing it and placing it in the right place is what’s critical ((as well as seeing to it that the imagery is stored off site) once my household goods are finally shipped here, I’ll have a few spare cameras to donate to a worthy cause).
Every time something like this comes up, I am reinforced in my belief that some sort of election reform is needed. You don’t have to go all preferential like us Aussies, but there must be some alternative to “if I really don’t want A to win, I have to vote for B instead of C, since B is more likely to win than C”. I’m not judging anyone saying that, say, voting for Stein is a waste of a vote (or a vote for Trump), but rather saying that “it shouldn’t oughta be.”
Quick erratum: my #63 was in reply to unclefrogy’s #62; it makes little sense in reply to #61. Also ‘lamour’ was meant to be ‘labour.’
I realise this is becoming a largish thread so I’m not surprised you didn’t read the lot, but I reply to this exact point in my #30. I think I make the case reasonably well that calling it ‘GMO’ is actually deceptive, playing into the hands of anti-science demonising. I tentatively put ‘gene translocation’ forward as an improvement, but perhaps there is a better term still.
#39/ Jake: You seem to be implying that he’s more likely to be pretending to be Dutch than to be a well-informed Nederlander. To say that only “one particular sub-group of nutjobs” use the argument that third party candidates can mean that a major party’s candidate loses the election is just completely ridiculous. I can only assume you consumed no mass media during the whole kerfuffle in 2000.
By the way, here’s a little clip from Trouw (that’s the newspaper I read) about Johnson:
Bibbers
Onbeduidende kandidaten kunnen Democraten of Republikeinen soms flink de bibbers geven. Zo denkt menig Democraat dat de kandidatuur van Ralph Nader (de Groenen) Al Gore in 2000 het presidentschap heeft gekost. Hij kreeg ongeveer 2,8 miljoen cruciale stemmen en snoepte die af van Gore, denken de Democraten.
@78 Holms
You’re right. I missed your statements. Sorry!
I agree that there are more perfect terms than “GMO”. However, in practice, when I encounter the “everything you eat is GMO” argument, it is often used as a way to dismiss the concerns of someone or to highlight their ignorance. In that context, making the distinction seems to come from a desire to win an argument rather than to communicate more effectively. (That is a bit of projection on my part, I admit)
When communicating with the public, I often take “shortcuts” and use imperfect terminology. I discuss the herbicide chemistries with common or trade names (e.g., Roundup, Liberty) or the crop and weed’s common names. I even try to use terms like “sticky” in addition to “viscous”. I am simply trying to convey the pertinent information from my research to these folks. If I were preparing a manuscript, things would be different, of course.
I think you’re on the same page that “GMO” could potentially refer to a lot of things. But I’m willing to accept the public’s general understanding of the term and work from there.
Whoops, accidentally hit send to soon. Translated:
Third party candidates often give Democrats and Republicans the shivers. Lots of Democrats think that Ralph Nader’s candidacy cost Al Gore the Presidency in 200. Acording to them, he took about 2.8 million votes from Gore.
Jackson @45
You work for Monsanto? That’s fine, I worked for Microsoft.
Almost everybody at MS was a nice person, but of course everything we did was always to get more money.
This is common sense for a business, but it meant that we routinely made really crappy engineering decisions just to force our lower-revenue products to have dependencies on our higher-revenue products. E.G. we were writing a hospital information system that should have prioritized speed, accuracy, and footprint, but instead management chose to build it (unnecessarily) on top of Sharepoint and MS Office extensions. The result was like using an aircraft carrier to deliver pizza; it was a gigantic, sluggish gargoyle of an application which IMO didn’t belong anywhere near an emergency room.
So Monsanto wants to be the Microsoft of food. What could possibly go wrong?
Sorry I meant Jackson @49
Multitool @82,
I don’t work for Monsanto, I work for a non-profit that in part develops GMOs to be given away for free to farmers in developing countries making less than 10k per year. I work on 3 traits: 2 viral resistance traits and one biofortification trait.
I agree that Monsanto is not a charity, and what they do is geared towards making money. They want to sell as much seed as they can, so they develop seeds that farmers want to buy so the farmers choose to buy their seed from Monsanto. I find this to be neither surprising nor nefarious.
‘so they develop seeds that farmers want to buy so the farmers choose to buy their seed from Monsanto.’
Well yes this is how a market should work, when there is competition.
The motives for a monopoly are more perverse though. Product quality becomes less important than simply shutting out alternatives. Historically this happens a lot, and I’ve seen it first hand from the inside.
I wouldn’t call it surprising or nefarious either. Businesses are like amoebas, they aren’t evil or good, they just reach for the most opportunities available. No mustache twirling.
But I’m not going to trust them to have my own interests in mind when they are no longer accountable to me.
I’m actually pro-GMO, but that’s like being pro-steel. You can make plows or you can make guns, so human incentives are the bigger issue.
I wish your organization good luck, and that the non-profit approach grows to dominate GMO technology.
multitool, you appear not to know that non-profit crop research is already a big force in the field, either working on their own projects or in concert with for-profit driven research.
@79, 81 Derek Vandivere:
On the contrary. I was simply pointing out that I found it odd that a Nederlander would know minor details of one brand of American nutjob’s response to an American election. It’s not exactly an international issue.
The idea that third parties can “steal” votes from major parties is absurd, but widespread enough to be generally known internationally.
However, I doubt the same is true of this:
The idea that whether a Democrat keeps their campaign promises or betrays them utterly is determined by the magnitude of their win is an argument I’ve only ever heard from Pharyngula’s Clinton-or-bust crowd. I’ve seen occasional references to the idea of a “filibuster-proof majority” elsewhere, but never have I heard the claim that Clinton needs to win by a landslide to make good on any of her promises, or that Gore wouldn’t have conceded the White House if only he’d won by a more decisive majority.
If you want to claim that most well-informed people around the world are intimately familiar with the idea that a Democrat needs 51% of the vote to win the election but 65% to remain liberal afterwards, then maybe you’re right but I actually live in America and the idea is (relatively) new to me.
Did you? Third parties had absolutely nothing to do with it— Gore barely won, Bush almost won, Bush claimed almost was good enough, Gore agreed and conceded the White House. Nader was a footnote at best during the kerfuffle; afterwards, he was made a scapegoat by the sorts of people who insist no Democrat can ever do anything wrong.
The idea that third parties can “steal” votes from major parties is at asinine, but widely believed enough to easily make the international news. My comment about obscure arguments from nutjobs centered around the margin claim as mentioned above.
@ #87
“Third parties had absolutely nothing to do with it— Gore barely won, Bush almost won, Bush claimed almost was good enough, Gore agreed and conceded the White House.”
Amazing. Are you ever right about anything?
50%+1 is not generally equal to 50%. Also, the electoral college elects presidents, and it isn’t “the vote” in the sense of the popular vote.
In a representative democracy, liberals can’t make unilateral decisions: if there is a large enough contingent of conservatives (among the populace or the representation) who who can obstruct a liberal law/policy/etc., that does not imply the liberals who are being obstructed are not liberals. It’s true that Obama, for instance, isn’t liberal dictator — I will let you claim that this is a true statement, as pointless as it is. The simple fact that he didn’t live up to all of his campaign promises doesn’t mean that he’s not liberal, but it does mean he’s not a dictator who can one way or another ignore/suppress obstruction/dissent from opposing factions. I don’t think Obama is especially liberal, but the point is that you can’t use your (seemingly endless) misunderstandings about how the government actually works as evidence of that.
Sorry, it isn’t equal to 51% either. So stupid that I didn’t bother to pay attention.
@89 consciousness razor:
Do you seriously need me to spell this out for you?
51% is a colloquial term for a majority. You already know this.
The 2000 election was decided by Florida’s electoral votes. Florida’s electoral votes were decided by Florida’s popular vote. Florida’s popular vote went to Gore by the slimmest of margins. You already know this.
The remainder of your post is just mansplaining about government which is entirely irrelevant. Rather than dissect it line by line, I’ll simply ask you to provide evidence that Barack Obama issued a pardon to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. That’s something any liberal would do if they had the chance, and it’s something a president has the authority to do unilaterally. I eagerly await your lengthy mansplanation about how I’m “misunderstanding about how the government works” by thinking that the presidential authority to issue pardons applies to Obama in spite of Republicans existing.
“Florida’s popular vote went to Gore by the slimmest of margins.”
Sure, if you want to use your own numbers instead of the official vote. The final certified tally showed Bush with more votes. 537 more votes to be exact.
Were you not following the news in 2000? That the official tally did not actually represent the popular vote was kind of a big deal at the time.
Yeah, I did follow the news, and the news was that Bush had more votes and won the election. Not because Gore conceded, or anything as stupid as that, but because in this form of government you’re bound to obey the official vote counts and live with the results. You can’t just declare that it’s wrong and you want it to be different.
You clearly didn’t remember much of it.
That’s just legal fundamentalism. More people in Florida voted for Gore than for Bush. Florida fraudulently certified Bush as the winner, and Gore did virtually nothing to challenge it.
cervantes @ 9
Nope. Even when excluding ornamentals, cover crops, rootstock, and turfgrasses, GMO crops were and continue to be developed for increased pest and disease resistance (and not just in conjunction with pesticides), drought and salinity tolerance, the lengthening and/or delaying of flowering and fruiting seasons, increased adaptability to new or changing microclimates and soils, desirable facets (including size, color, and taste) of fruit, to improve the general habits or growth rate of the plants themselves, increased nutritional content, etc., along with increased tolerance or more efficient use of applied pesticides. These are the actual facts.
mysteriousqfever @ 57
How is it possible to avoid purchasing produce grown by companies pushing out smaller growers when the vast majority of self-styled organic and non-GMO labels are owned by those very same corporations? How are you verifying that the produce you’re buying at farmer’s markets and local greengrocers are not varieties grown from seed or cuttings produced and controlled, again, by those same corporations?
# 95
The Supreme Court made a decision, I’m sure you know. You wanted Gore to take up arms against the US government? Against Florida? What exactly do think he could have done?