Fear of Science Will Kill Us

[Fraggle145]

This was a pretty good talk. I like TED talks. Anyway, please check it out.

To see the talk that he gives go here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/13/specter.denying.science/index.html?hpt=C1


Fear of science will kill us
By Michael Specter, Special to CNN
April 13, 2010 9:38 a.m. EDT

Editor's note: Michael Specter is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of "Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens our Lives." TED, a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading," hosts talks on many subjects and makes them available through its Web site, http://www.ted.com/


Read more about Michael Specter at www.TED.com (http://www.ted.com/speakers/michael_specter.html)

(CNN) -- American denialism threatens many areas of scientific progress, including the widespread fear of vaccines and the useless trust placed in the vast majority of dietary supplements quickly come to mind.

It doesn't seem to matter how often vaccines are proved safe or supplements are shown to offer nothing of value. When people don't like facts, they ignore them.

Nowhere is that unwillingness to accept the truth more evident than in the mindlessly destructive war that has been raging between the proponents of organic food and those who believe that genetically engineered products must play a role in feeding the growing population of the Earth. This is a divide that shouldn't exist.

All the food we eat -- every grain of rice and kernel of corn -- has been genetically modified. None of it was here before mankind learned to cultivate crops. The question isn't whether our food has been modified, but how.

I wrote "Denialism" (http://www.michaelspecter.com/) because it has become increasingly clear that this struggle threatens progress for us all.

Denialists replace the open-minded skepticism of science with the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment. It isn't hard to find evidence: the ruinous attempts to wish away the human impact on climate change, for example. The signature denialists of our time, of course, are those who refuse to acknowledge the indisputable facts of evolution.

Nowhere has the screaming been louder, however, than in the fight over how we grow our food. If you are brave enough to set a Google Alert for the phrases "genetically modified food" and "organic food," you will quickly see what I mean.

The anxiety is certainly understandable. When it comes to food -- the way we produce it and particularly the way we consume it -- we have a lot to worry about.

One third of American children are overweight or obese; for adults, the numbers are higher. Our addiction to mindless consumption has made millions sick and costs this country billions of dollars. The financial toll comes in terms of time lost at work and money spent treating and supporting people with diabetes, heart disease and many cancers, who, had they followed a better diet, would never have fallen ill.

Nonetheless, better eating habits have nothing specific to do with organic food, which provides no nutritional advantage over more conventionally raised products. Opponents of genetically modified food constantly argue that it is unsafe. There has, however, never been a single documented case of a human killed by eating genetically modified food.

If every American swallowed two aspirin right now, hundreds of us would die today. Does that mean we ought to ban aspirin? Of course not. It simply means that there are risks and benefits associated with everything we do and with every decision we make.

When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies -- Monsanto is the most famous of them -- control so many of the seeds we grow.

Those are all legitimate complaints, but none of them have anything to do with science or the way we move genes around in plants to make them grow taller or withstand drought or too much sun. They are issues of politics and law. When we confuse them with issues of science, we threaten the lives of the world's poorest people.

We are doing that now. By 2050, we are going to have 9 billion people to feed, a huge increase over today's 6.8 billion. It's not a figure about which there is much dispute. To feed that many will require nearly 50 percent more food than we produce now.

It's not enough to simply say we waste food and consume too many calories, so that if we distributed it more intelligently everyone could eat just fine. Not in sub-Saharan Africa, where drought is nearly permanent.

Many of those people subsist on cassava, the basic potato-like staple in the region. It lacks most protein, nutrients and vitamins.

You cannot survive for long without them, so a team of international scientists funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Bill_Melinda_Gates_Foundation), is engineering vitamins and micronutrients into cassava.

They are engineering success into a failed crop. It will save and prolong many lives; that is farming and genetic modification at their best. Who could be opposed to that?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Michael Specter.

[49r]

Whatchoo got against 'merica BOY!

I don't need no egghead professor tellin ME what to do!!!

[JohnnyMack]

Lemme rant on TED for a minute. About a year and a half ago I was in Long Beach the same week as TED. I was staying in the host hotel for TED in fact. I have never, in my 11 years of traveling to countless convention centers for trade shows, in just about every imaginable city in these here United States been around a more insufferable, arrogant, egotistical pile of dickwads as when I was around the TED attendees.

Carry on.

[1890MilesToNorman]

Science has been wrong more times then I can count, at least as many times as it has been right. Arrogant is not the word for most of them, closed minded jackasses comes to mind.

Carry on.

[SoonerJack]

Pretty good read, Drunky. I learned something.

[NormanPride]

This guy doesn't know what he's pissed about. He says that people are mad about hormones and antibiotics and crap like that in food, which is true, but then he goes on to say that's not what science does. What? People hate that stuff, not the fact that you're making chickens produce more meat or that you're engineering corn that produces more... corn... I mean, the guy rails about how people hate "non-organic" food, then talks about food that would be considered organic.

Dude, just don't add pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics and people will be happy. It's not about science, it's about corporate irresponsibility, dumbass. This guy is a TED speaker? What a moron!

[sooner59]

Lemme rant on TED for a minute. About a year and a half ago I was in Long Beach the same week as TED. I was staying in the host hotel for TED in fact. I have never, in my 11 years of traveling to countless convention centers for trade shows, in just about every imaginable city in these here United States been around a more insufferable, arrogant, egotistical pile of dickwads as when I was around the TED attendees.

Carry on.

Apparently you ain't been around PETA. :D

[Fraggle145]

This guy doesn't know what he's pissed about. He says that people are mad about hormones and antibiotics and crap like that in food, which is true, but then he goes on to say that's not what science does. What? People hate that stuff, not the fact that you're making chickens produce more meat or that you're engineering corn that produces more... corn... I mean, the guy rails about how people hate "non-organic" food, then talks about food that would be considered organic.

Dude, just don't add pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics and people will be happy. It's not about science, it's about corporate irresponsibility, dumbass. This guy is a TED speaker? What a moron!

I think he would agree with that. I think he was trying to say what you just said... he just sucked at it. I didnt like that part.

[Fraggle145]

Science has been wrong more times then I can count, at least as many times as it has been right. Arrogant is not the word for most of them, closed minded jackasses comes to mind.

Carry on.

Science has been wrong more times than it has been right... that is sort of the point. That's how you find out what 'right' is...

[Fraggle145]

Oh and I saw this today and thought it was funny.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd041210s.gif

[47straight]

Dude, just don't add pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics and people will be happy. It's not about science, it's about corporate irresponsibility, dumbass. This guy is a TED speaker? What a moron!

No, people will still be pissed if the food is genetically modified. That's what he is saying, dumbass.

[Harry Beanbag]

Lemme rant on TED for a minute. About a year and a half ago I was in Long Beach the same week as TED. I was staying in the host hotel for TED in fact. I have never, in my 11 years of traveling to countless convention centers for trade shows, in just about every imaginable city in these here United States been around a more insufferable, arrogant, egotistical pile of dickwads as when I was around the TED attendees.

Carry on.


That doesn't surprise me in the least.

[sooner59]

Science has been wrong more times than it has been right... that is sort of the point. That's how you find out what 'right' is...

That's typically how it works. Even if you find that something doesn't work, at least you know and can cross that off the list and move on to the next thing. Its still progress. If everybody just stopped after the first thing they tried didn't work, we wouldn't have computers or the internet to be discussing this.

[goingoneight]

I thought this was going to be a thread about evolution.

[NormanPride]

No, people will still be pissed if the food is genetically modified. That's what he is saying, dumbass.

You're telling me if hippies hear about how some new strain of corn can feed half of Africa they'll be mad because it's not mother nature's creation? No. I shop with hippies all the damn time and all they care about is that it doesn't hurt anything. If it's cruelty free and doesn't harm the environment by being made then they love it. Chickens with huge tits that are free-range and their crap is disposed of properly? Couldn't be happier.

It's not the science, it's the application in business that irks people.

[MR2-Sooner86]

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/science_it_works.jpg

[47straight]

You're telling me if hippies hear about how some new strain of corn can feed half of Africa they'll be mad because it's not mother nature's creation? No. I shop with hippies all the damn time and all they care about is that it doesn't hurt anything. If it's cruelty free and doesn't harm the environment by being made then they love it. Chickens with huge tits that are free-range and their crap is disposed of properly? Couldn't be happier.

It's not the science, it's the application in business that irks people.

Yes they would be mad. And they think GMOs hurt everything. I'd suggest that those "hippies" up there are little behind on the self-righteous power curve. (Dumbass.)

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Whole-Foods-GMO-Statement.htm

http://www.happyhippie.com/articles/foodfight.htm

http://greenparty.org/non-GMO.php

[yermom]

it's cool, no corporation would choose profits over safety. that never happens

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html

[lexsooner]

American science helped win WWII for us and cured many diseases and made us the only super power in the world thanks to the science and technologies developed at our research universities. However, these eggheads also believe in global warming and other such nonsense, so accordingly science is a bunch of hogwash practiced by arrogant small-minded individuals who are wrong all the time and should listen to the intelligence of the common man. That's it, that's the ticket. ;)

[Jacie]

Science and the associated benefits that we derive from it has the same effect on people today as the belief in magic did in the Middle Ages. For as much as most understand about the workings of things they depend on it might as well be magic. People lost touch with technology even before the world changed from analog to digital.

For the record, people were afraid of magic, too.

[Okla-homey]

I prefer Penn and Teller who do the "Bullsh1t" series on Shotime.

They completely debunked the fraud that is the "organic food" industry. Plus, they always work in topless hotties. Which is nice.

[royalfan5]

Dude, just don't add pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics and people will be happy. It's not about science, it's about corporate irresponsibility, dumbass. This guy is a TED speaker? What a moron!

Says the guy not taking the financial risk to produce the food. You take those out and everyone will be upset that food costs an arm and a leg.

[Ike]

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/science_it_works.jpg

I used to have that on a shirt.

Nobody outside of the lab got it. :O

[Leroy Lizard]

You're telling me if hippies hear about how some new strain of corn can feed half of Africa they'll be mad because it's not mother nature's creation?

Yes.

If some large corporation stands to make a profit.

[GottaHavePride]

You're telling me if hippies hear about how some new strain of corn can feed half of Africa they'll be mad because it's not mother nature's creation?

Not the hippies. The religious zealots. And the original article's point was that ALL domesticated crops and livestock are already genetically modified through countless generations of human-directed intentional cross-breeding and hybridization. And now they want to get all uppity because scientists found a more direct method that doesn't involve putting a bull in a pen with some cows and saying "HEY! Get to ****in'!"

[Fraggle145]

Not the hippies. The religious zealots. And the original article's point was that ALL domesticated crops and livestock are already genetically modified through countless generations of human-directed intentional cross-breeding and hybridization. And now they want to get all uppity because scientists found a more direct method that doesn't involve putting a bull in a pen with some cows and saying "HEY! Get to ****in'!"

I still get upset about Monsanto. But that GMO is for the specific use of round up as a pesticide, which although effective has been proven to have negative effects on lots of organisms besides just weeds. On top of that because it is intellectual property they can control the seed and farmers can no longer reclaim their seeds and have to buy every year from Monsanto or face lawsuits that they basically win because the farmers cant afford to fight em. This is made worse because farmers that have elected not to use Monsanto still face lawsuits because they cant control for hybridization and cross polinization between Monsanto seed and unmodified seed. Hence Monsanto can come after them. That is the darkside of GMO.

I really think what he was trying to say is that there will be people who get all up in arms about a GMO kasava with all of the nutrients added just because it is GMO. And people that do this are just retarded in my opinion.

[I Am Right]

Dr. Roy Spencer's New Book
April 20, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Speaking of global warming, I gotta get in a plug here for Dr. Roy Spencer and his new book. He's our official climatologist. It's a great cover. The cover of this book is just superb. It's called The Great Global Warming Blunder. About half of the book is a nontechnical description of the peer-reviewed and soon-to-be-published research that Dr. Spencer is engaged in which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold, and that is that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system, not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Now, this book is surprising in a lot of ways in what it reveals about the so-called scientific community and how they are revered, when in fact they're idiots. My word, not Dr. Spencer's. He doesn't refer to colleagues in such terms. (Publicly, anyway.)

But believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming means it may just be a cycle. What is so hard to believe about this? We've had ice ages, and we've had ice ages become warm periods, and there hasn't been one thing humanity has done to create either. Yet scientists reject the cycles, just like Obama and the regime are now trying to reject and end cycles in business. Believe it or not, this natural explanation for recent warming -- just natural cycle -- has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored it is that they cannot think of what might have caused it. It's natural, yeah, but what's causing it to get warmer? There has to be something causing it, and they focus on us. You see, climate researchers are rather myopic.

They think that the only way for global average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced externally by a change in the output of the sun (which they've rejected) or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occurred external to the normal internal operation of climate system. But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior. And as Dr. Spencer has traveled the country, he has found that the public instinctively understands the possibility that there are natural climate cycles. Unfortunately, it's the climate "experts" who have difficulty grasping the concept. So this is why Dr. Spencer has written the book. He's taking his case to the public.

The climate research community long ago took the wrong fork in the road. Dr. Spencer is afraid it might be too late for them to come back so he's written the book. He's not under any illusion the book will settle scientific debate. In fact, he's looking to genuinely start it, because what has transpired to date is not debate. It's been political propaganda and indoctrination. So the gook is The Great Global Warming Blunder. I know you can order it off Amazon. I don't know if it's actually in stores now or will be this week from what I'm told. It's a great cover here. Let me zoom in here on the book. This is going to be tough. I'm going to zoom in here. For those of you watching on the Dittocam, there is a printed version of the cover. That's a giant iceberg. Most of it's submerged is what that is. It's just a great, great, great cover -- and, of course, what's between the cover, front and back and also superb as well. The Great Global Warming Blunder by Dr. Roy Spencer, official climatologist to the EIB Network.

[GottaHavePride]

So... according to this guy, global warming is probably caused by "natural cycles" because that's what makes sense to most average people?

If we listened to what makes sense to "average people" the earth would still be flat, the sun would revolve around the earth, people's hearts would be their thinking organ, the brain would be an elaborate cooling mechanism, eclipses would be caused by dragons eating the sun and then crapping it back out again, and illnesses would be cured by removing your excess blood.

[yermom]

that cover does sound interesting

[Pricetag]

So the gook is The Great Global Warming Blunder.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f312/Tonito44/ThatsRacist.gif

[TopDawg]

For those of you who couldn't wait to see this amazing cover...here it is:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41kXzAejHGL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I wish I could zoom in there on the cover. But it's too tough. For those of you reading on your iPhone, this is a digital image of the cover. That's a giant iceberg. Most of it's submerged is what that is.

[TopDawg]

This seems like as good a time as any to announce my upcoming book: The Great Rush Limbaugh Cover Description of The Great Global Warming Blunder Blunder.

In it, I describe how Rush Limbaugh incorrectly describes the cover of the book The Great Global Warming Blunder. He describes the image on the cover as a giant iceberg that's mostly submerged while, in fact, what is on the cover is what appears to be a manipulated version of the composite image called "The Essence of Imagination." It appears they took a manipulated image and manipulated it even more.

http://snopes.com/photos/natural/iceberg.asp

[Pricetag]

Wrong or not, it's a valid point.

[Jacie]

The immediate cause of Global Warming is that our planet is taking in more energy (radiation, which converts to heat) than it radiates or reflects (two different processes) back to space. We know this is happening because we can measure it directly with satellites and sensors located on land and floating on the ocean's surface.

The atmosphere is a complex system, one that taxes the most advanced computers to accurately model. However, that there is an imbalance between energy coming in versus energy going out is not in question. The only explanation that makes sense is that this is due to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 causes solar radiation to reflect back down where it is then absorbed by the surface of the Earth. The CO2 in the atmosphere makes up less than 1% of the total, but that is why the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and wood can cause enough of a change to tip the scales away from equilibrium.

Of course, some don't think there is any Global Warming at all. I guess they expect the atmosphere would heat up uniformly across the planet at the same rate.

Actually, climatologists cannot account for the excess energy being absorbed by the planet, only about half of it. It is the unknown that worries those who know enough about this stuff to, well worry about it. The belief is that the excess energy in the form of heat is going where instruments are not in place to measure, the deep ocean (instruments can and do measure energy intake of the shallow ocean). They don't know how long this process can go on before there is a feedback effect that becomes noticeable on the surface. What they do know is we really don't want to reach that point because if there is no where for the excess to go, everything on the surface is going to start warming at an alarming rate.

[TopDawg]

Wrong or not, it's a valid point.

Thank you.

[Fraggle145]

Heh I saw this today. Just for when people want to complain about how much money science and research gets... 1.9% of the budget.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd041410s.gif

[Ike]

Ya know, stuff takes up more of that budget than I thought it would...

[Fraggle145]

I thought stuff would take up more...

[sooner59]

We are America dammit! We need more STUFF!!