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The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

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Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#21

Post by david38 »

hoseja wrote: post #17
buescher wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A country of two million people managed to plant six million trees in one day in 2008 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE4AI49U/

Planting trees results in inferior forests. A healthy forest comes from natural forestation that goes through pioneer species stages.

Inferior forests are better than no forests.

You don’t have to take an empty field and plant 100k trees. You can go to where chestnuts used to grow, have some volunteers plant some over time, say 100 every month in an area. Over the course of 10 years, we’ll get some data.

Don’t let great be the enemy of good.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#22

Post by Suppafly »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #18
whartung wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, I just have some view of a city, or whatever, look out, quietly scan the horizon and just muse "every tree I see was planted by someone". Someone said "here, there will be a tree" and it was so. Small ones, big ones. They're just everywhere. "See that park over there? Someone put every one of those trees in the ground." Then, as a corollary, one day, a parking lot has several dozen trees. Next day, they're…

This is definitely an odd take, given the 150+ saplings I pull from my meager backyard every spring. I'm still killing off the root system of some Elm trees that were destroyed in 2021 during the big freeze here in Texas. If I didn't keep that in check I'd have dozens of elms at this point.

There definitely is a weird dichotomy between intentionally planted trees and the ones that just randomly show up. Maple trees grow like dandelions here in the midwest.

Hell I've had a little cottonwood tree growing in the corner of my truck bed for 3-4 years. It never gets any bigger but always produces new leaves every spring.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#23

Post by Suppafly »

mikewarot wrote: post #14
whartung wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, I just have some view of a city, or whatever, look out, quietly scan the horizon and just muse "every tree I see was planted by someone". Someone said "here, there will be a tree" and it was so. Small ones, big ones. They're just everywhere. "See that park over there? Someone put every one of those trees in the ground." Then, as a corollary, one day, a parking lot has several dozen trees. Next day, they're…

I've had health issues for about 5 years, my back yard is a dense forest because I'm not outside editing it back to my preferences. Trees definitely do not need us.

>Trees definitely do not need us.

Until they do. Eventually bugs and diseases would kill off huge portions of them. Trees would still be around, but it'd definitely be a different mix than we have now. Right now every ash tree in my state is either dead or dying due to beetles, all the chestnuts died when I was a kid, the native oaks mostly only live where they've been planted because anytime one dies a faster growing maple replaces it.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#24

Post by kwhitefoot »

bagels wrote: post #11
kwhitefoot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of them survived more than a year?

Many of them. Do you have information about it that the rest of us don't? "Fifty million trees planted- the government said in 2014- with a success rate of 61% compared to the average European planting success rate of 35%."

> Do you have information about it that the rest of us don't?

No, that's why I asked. I was aware of the less than perfect record elsewhere wondered if they had done better.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#25

Post by rulalala »

pfdietz wrote: post #12
rulalala wrote: post #4

IMHO this is a romantic effort, no one can plant a tree species at such a scale.

So, how many do you imagine need to be planted for the species to be self-sustaining?

I mean surely populations would exist, bit the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone.

And, for how long do we want to believe that environmental change (including fungus) can be frozen in a specific time moment that should be preserved?

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#26

Post by waldothedog »

rulalala wrote: post #25
pfdietz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, how many do you imagine need to be planted for the species to be self-sustaining?

I mean surely populations would exist, bit the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone. And, for how long do we want to believe that environmental change (including fungus) can be frozen in a specific time moment that should be preserved?

Isn’t all the writing about the American chestnut indicative of some on-going cultural significance?

Wasn’t the blight and panic that wiped them out largely a result of human activity?

I think this is one environmental change that happened VERY fast, in which we see our own hand, and that we believe we might still be able to turn back.

But I sense that you see some down side which I don’t see?

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#27

Post by Georgelemental »

rulalala wrote: post #25
pfdietz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, how many do you imagine need to be planted for the species to be self-sustaining?

I mean surely populations would exist, bit the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone. And, for how long do we want to believe that environmental change (including fungus) can be frozen in a specific time moment that should be preserved?

> the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone.

If it's ecologically competitive, it will spread again in the fullness of time, no?

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#28

Post by bluGill »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #19

So this group wants to propagate a GMO to "save" a tree species? Which is of course impossible with current mechanisms. Although it seems that producing a near replacement tree is likely within reach. But they can't even seem to be sure what edited organism they are trying to propagate? This is why I do not trust GMO stuff. I have no special credentials (just an undergraduate degree) but even at that level it was cle…

how is GMO different from normal breeding where we hane no clue what mutations happen. Normal breeding doesn't even attempt toestudy for safety.

Yes the science should have been better done but the worst case of GMO is the same as everything else.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#29

Post by causality0 »

bluGill wrote: post #28
sidewndr46 wrote: post #19

So this group wants to propagate a GMO to "save" a tree species? Which is of course impossible with current mechanisms. Although it seems that producing a near replacement tree is likely within reach. But they can't even seem to be sure what edited organism they are trying to propagate? This is why I do not trust GMO stuff. I have no special credentials (just an undergraduate degree) but even at that level it was cle…

how is GMO different from normal breeding where we hane no clue what mutations happen. Normal breeding doesn't even attempt toestudy for safety. Yes the science should have been better done but the worst case of GMO is the same as everything else.

For some reason, when you take a process that has traditionally been done with a baseball bat and start doing it with a knife, suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork to talk about how your knife is too dull and it should either be done with a scalpel or not at all.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#30

Post by interroboink »

causality0 wrote: post #29
bluGill wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is GMO different from normal breeding where we hane no clue what mutations happen. Normal breeding doesn't even attempt toestudy for safety. Yes the science should have been better done but the worst case of GMO is the same as everything else.

For some reason, when you take a process that has traditionally been done with a baseball bat and start doing it with a knife, suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork to talk about how your knife is too dull and it should either be done with a scalpel or not at all.

Just to tap the brakes for anyone wanting to take your analogy too far: a lot of objections about GMO in general are about the accelerated rate at which the changes can be made, relative to traditional methods (such as breeding). The worry is that we might be introducing altered genomes at a rate faster than we can observe and understand the downstream impacts.

So in those arguments (which are the majority, in GMO debates I've encountered), it's not about the knife being too dull, but being too sharp.

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