41–50 of 231 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are alternatives, like the release of genetically engineered male mosquitos.
That still remains to be seen, right? Wasn't the first release of gmo mosquitos only recently in Florida?
I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…
Bees are dying from neonics getting into the pollen. You willing to bet the biosphere that you’re right, and nothing bad will happen?
Dengue is a serious health threat in Singapore. Fogging (1) is pretty common. Now, the Singapore government says fogging should be used judiciously, not routinely. But, that doesn't seem to be the case. Many condos will fog once a week, year-round. Supposedly all operations must be submitted in the an "E-fogging Submission System", but as far as I can tell, there's no visibility into this. Singapore has also recently…
Dengue fever is a serious disease and it’s not rare in Singapore, there were 40,000+ cases in 2020 which is pretty high for a population of 5M. If they stopped their mosquito control efforts it would be disastrous for human health.
I feel like they are quite drastic initiatives, but it's good to at least have a desire for change. I'm interested in any opinion from knowledgeable people on the subject!
¹ https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/202106... ²https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/202106...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. Isn't this the good old "naturalistic fallacy" though? Would you eat a poisonous mushroom because the poison is "natural"? You can at least wash some pesticides off. I'm not a biologist but I'm sure there is a difference between crossing different varieties of peas versus introducing a non-pea (or maybe non-…
Different means to the same ends. DNA is DNA no matter what organism it is in. Many genes are conserved through most orders of life.
I'm neither pro-pesticide nor anti-GMO but we should refrain ourselves from a blanket "GMO is natural, hence better than chemicals" statement.
I work on developing pesticides based on RNA, which should significantly reduce adverse impacts on the environment (including soils) if commercialised and adopted. Biodegradable and highly species specific. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-rnai-based-products-sustainabl... Still more development to be done, but there are alternatives to existing synthetic pesticides on the horizon.
Does anyone have sources for suggestions about what we should do? I read these articles, and worry, and wonder what can I do. It's not clear to me that buying organic mono-cropped bananas at the mega mart is in anyway better or worse than buying non-organic mono-cropped bananas. I'd really like to just build up some more understanding on what I can do in my daily life to make things not worse.
There's a ton individuals can do. The societal solutions to this has been around from decades, if not centuries. Look up the documentary called Kiss the Earth for a good intro that covers this and more. As far as individuals goes, you can look for food sourced locally using regenerative agriculture -- agroforestry, permaculture, etc. The farm is usually operated as a diverse ecosystem that is designed to grow the soi…
People stopped doing this because of parasites, prions, and other pathogens like salmonella.
Bees do touch soil. Quite often they like to collect water from rich, wet soils and dirty water. It's thought that they enjoy dirty water over clean water due to minerals.
If you kill the bees, no food, but kill the wasps and you have more pests to deal with.
I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…
> We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. Isn't this the good old "naturalistic fallacy" though? Would you eat a poisonous mushroom because the poison is "natural"? You can at least wash some pesticides off. I'm not a biologist but I'm sure there is a difference between crossing different varieties of peas versus introducing a non-pea (or maybe non-…
This is the exact same insecticide used by certified organic growers. Plant breeders have just engineered the plants to produce it in their leaves, not in the corn itself.
For thirty years objections have been raised, scientific research has been done disproving the objections. Yet Bt corn is still banned in a large part of Europe.
I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…
> We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. Isn't this the good old "naturalistic fallacy" though? Would you eat a poisonous mushroom because the poison is "natural"? You can at least wash some pesticides off. I'm not a biologist but I'm sure there is a difference between crossing different varieties of peas versus introducing a non-pea (or maybe non-…