Your ignorance behind your own food is frightening, but indicative of most of the modern world.
I'm getting tired of being called ignorant by you. Can't we just a have a calm discussion about this WITHOUT YELLING. It's exhausting...these threads are all my mind has been thinking about when I'm not on the forum.
A slow, long term process that can only work if there's a reduction int the pollution in the first place. I've seen it at work, I've seen the tanks, the algae, the entire process from start to finish. If you don't add more pollution to the already polluted water, then it can work, but soil-based chemicals will do nothing but constantly add to that pollution.
Not if they sequester the the pollutants. They literally eat the chemicals and break them down into less harmful chemicals. We have enough from all the polluting we've done the past century, we don't need more to be able to use algae. Soil-based chemicals can help to end world hunger and depending on the chemical, it might not even hurt the environment. Everything is made up of chemicals, you have to talk about which ones in specific are toxic and at what levels. Every human has a bit of uranium in us yet nothing bad happens. Why does "chemical" when mixed with "food" bring about negative connotative thoughts.
Let me start with large, old-growth trees in the US are in short supply. No one (especially a former wildland firefighter) will deny the vegetation in the countryside is increasing, but the large trees have been stunted by small shrubs and overgrown grasses thanks to laws passed in the US in the early 1900's committing the government to fight any fire sighted in the wild. Natural fires (lightning strikes) haven't been allowed to burn and clear out the underlayer - unbeknowst to most people a fast-moving grass fire will not burn down an old, solid tree. But a few shrubs don't replace the 100 foot tall deciduous forests that have been destroyed for years.
I understand that these trees hold loads of carbon in them. Some of these trees hold as much carbon as any one person does in a lifetime. But I don't hear about people cutting down old growth trees. The biggest area of old growth trees are in Washington State and Oregon and I think they're owned by the government. The danger with cutting down old growth trees is that they release a lot of CO2 in the air when cut. The effects of CO2 on the environment is a whole different issue though.
Second - the most oxygen producing trees in the wold aren't located in the US, they're in the tropical zones/rainforests. Those areas are being destroyed daily by local farmers to plant, guess what... GMO crops!
Would it be so much better if they were organic? What if the organic pesticides used are more harmful than the synthetic ones? Is it really so bad that we chop a few trees down so that we can live there? Certainly we aren't going to cut every last tree down...we don't need that much room. After all, the way humans have adapted is to mold our environment. Many native tribes burned down entire forest and cut down trees to make space for cabins and we're still here.
Third - since primordial days, the number one oxygen producer in the world has come from the oceans. In fact, most physicists will agree that's the reason our atmosphere even has oxygen to begin with. This just amplifies the consequences of water pollution.
Considering that life started out in the ocean, that's not overly surprising that oxygen came from there. Oceans are also the largest carbon pools.
And if we get most of our oxygen from the ocean, is that not an excuse to cut down more trees? We're not running out of oxygen anytime soon, we're surrounded with vegetation. Even if it's not as good at converting CO2 into O2, I'm not suffocating down here at sea level. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere during the Cambrian explosion maxed out at over 7000ppm. That's not a typo.
You took Biology? Where do plants get their nutrients from? Remove the soil or quality of that soil and what happens to those nutrients... and the plants? Of course you can add fertilizer... and continues with the pollution of the water table.
They get their nutrients from the soil. I understand the basics. But if we can invent ways for these nutrients to replenish themselves quicker through methods like GMO, why is it so bad to use in our food so long as there are no negative side-effects. And the way you're using pollutant is very broad. Pollutant has negative connotations to it that aren't always true. Again, you have to talk about what chemicals and how much of them before you talk about toxicity. If I try to smoke as much crack as you can weed before you pass out, you would die. A little bit of pollution here or there doesn't hurt and we can't just assume because it's a big amount that the world will end. We have to think through things rationally and let science come up with the answers. Sulphates generally don't do great things for the environment in any quantity but we can figure out ways to replace them.
Try growing a garden in sand or clay, void of biological matter. Try watering the garden with chemicals that seeped into the water table from pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Or watch that video I already posted "Dirt".
Wouldn't the fertilizer residue help my garden if it's healthy fertilizer? You can't grow a garden in sand or clay and I don't know who is trying to nor do I understand the connection to GMO. If we can produce things that will let us plant plants and trees in places with no rainfall, we can get the water cycle going again. I read somewhere that they can get the water cycle going fully within 20 years just by planting a few trees.
"You are what you eat" and personally, I'd rather not eat a bunch of toxic chemicals with each meal.
I'm not going to argue tastes and preferences with you. If you really like doing these things, I'm all for you dong them. Different strokes for different blokes. But if the science says something other than what you're saying, then at least admit that. There was a Penn and Teller about GMO's and they were outside a grocery store where Greenpeace was handing out flyers saying how bad GMOs are and how they're not tested by the government. Then some random guy who wasn't even a part of the show chewed them out and talked about how the FDA regulates GMOs and studies their effects intensely. The EPA regulates their environmental concerns and there's another big branch that regulates something else, but it's slipping me at the moment.
Another ignorance argument.
Read food labels - Soy Lecithin, soybean oil, soy protein, not to mention the 80%+ of the crops that go towards livestock feed. No more soy in a world dependent on soy, that's owned primarily by one single company is going to be just a small problem for the 1% of vegans only, right?
Idk if my food has any of this. But these are all derivatives of soy. The reason they use soy I'd imagine is because it's really easy to mess with the chemical structure. If something bad were to happen, I'd imagine we would survive. But, if anything, this is a case for GMOs because we can make them resistant to these sorts of things. GMO can ensure that there are no more famines.
We've destroyed more of the biosphere on this planet than our science has even bothered to research. Species have gone extinct before they could even be studied. And if you recall, it's been thanks to a naturally occurring and growing mold that we've been able to produce some of our most potent antibiotics. If those organisms went extinct before they could be researched, where would be be right now?
If our science hasn't bothered to research all of our biosphere, how can you be sure about how bad things are? We don't fully understand these systems yet and giving up things that make our lives better and safer in the name of some cause that hasn't been proven isn't the answer: it's hysteria.
Extinction and evolution are two separate things. Evolution hasn't caused an extinction of another species, but the extinction of one has caused the extinction of another. Millions of years ago a large rock hit the Earth and caused a reaction that killed off some of the smallest organisms on the planet that were dependent on temperature and sunlight. The effect cascaded up to the top of the food chain and killed off the top predators at the time.
Extinction and evolution are a part of the same timeline. But because some extinctions have caused others doesn't mean that we will go extinct if we don't "save the planet".
We're doing the exact same thing to ourselves, only we're bypassing the luck factor of an asteroid and just spewing out ways to kill off some of the smallest, most beneficial organisms on the planet. And for what? The luxury of being able to eat berries in the winter or have a t-bone steak ever week?
Exactly! Do you want to starve to death because of going back to the ancient methods of organic farming that cost countless lives because of famines caused by crops that fail for no apparent reason? We're not trying to kill these organisms on purpose, we're trying to create better living conditions for ourselves.
If you want to buy non GMO food, go ahead. If you want to live in a commune, then go do it. By all means, do what you want, I don't care and nobody should ever stop you from doing what you want. Be the change in the world you want to see. I'm not being condescending here, I honestly believe that you should do what you preach if you believe so passionately about it. And I know you live by many of these beliefs because I've seen pics you've posted of your dinners. But I'm going to do what I want as well and if the science says its safe, then I have to go by it. I'm not going to question science because it's convenient or fashionable. GMO food has already saved lives and will continue to in the future. It can end world hunger and ensure that everybody goes to bed full at the end of the day. Alternative methods simply cannot do this for the world.