Does Opposition To Genetic Engineering By Groups Like Greenpeace Amount To A Death Sentence For Millions?

The pop-environmental movement has a long history of supporting public policy approaches that, when implemented, end up causing irreparable harm to the environment, and, often, millions of premature deaths, especially deaths among children. 

As just one example, this blog examined, some time ago, the tens of millions of deaths brought about over several decades as the result of Rachael Carson’s misguided attacks on the chemical DDT and the subsequent soaring in the death rates from malaria in much of the tropical world. http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8791618495827652206#editor/target=post;postID=7534575162541163376

In recent years a technology labeled “genetic engineering” has come to the fore as a weapon in the fight against hunger, disease, and other ills suffered by mankind.

Some think this will be the result of genetic engineering

Always a reliable rider on any environmental bandwagon with the capacity to create big dollar donations, the group, Greenpeace, has leaped aboard the anti-genetic engineering wagon with enthusiasm.  In New Zealand, where the discussion regarding genetic engineering has been spirited, in part because of a public relations campaign mounted by a number of organizations allied with Greenpeace, the organization’s website declares, “Greenpeace is opposed to the release of genetically engineered organisms (GE organisms) into the environment and the food chain. Greenpeace is also against the patenting of life.”http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/en/campaigns/genetic-engineering/

Others Think This Is An Appropriate Place For Genetic Engineering

On the other side of the discussion, a November 26, 2012 article published by National Review Online asks the question, “Is Opposition to Genetic Engineering Moral?  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333980/opposition-genetic-engineering-moral-henry-i-miller

The subtitle to the piece comments that, “Sentiment and bad science are killing the world’s poor.”

As summarized by the National Center For Policy Analysis, a free market based think tank dealing with many policy issues, including the environment, the National Review Online article addresses a number of new advances demonstrating the potential for saving lives and/or creating significantly enhanced quality of life for the citizens of the world including (bold is mine): http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22636

“Biopharming.

This is a new way to fight diarrhea, the number two killer of children under the age of five throughout developing countries, accounting for around 2 million deaths per year.

• Since the 1960s the standard care for diarrhea was the World Health Organization's formulation of a rehydration solution. However, this treatment does not lessen the severity.
• Research reflects that reinforcing oral rehydration solution with two proteins, lactoferrin and lysozyme, decreases duration and recurrence of diarrhea.
• Biopharming synthesizes the large quantities of necessary proteins.

Dengue fever.

• A British company, Oxitec, uses genetic engineering techniques to create new varieties of the mosquito species that transmits the disease.
• Oxitec's approach introduces a gene that produces a protein that stops mosquitoes' cells from functioning normally.
• The modified males, once released, survive long enough to mate with wild females, but the offspring die.
• This approach has reduced the infected mosquito population by 80 percent in the Cayman Islands and by 90 percent in Brazil.

The third example is the medical breakthrough called Golden Rice.

• Rice, a staple for billions of people, lacks specific micronutrients needed in a complete diet.
• Vitamin A deficiency is prevalent among poor people whose diet consists largely of rice.
• Every year, about half a million children go blind as a result of the deficiency, and 70 percent of those die within a year of losing their sight.
• The introduction of Golden Rice -- rice groups that are biofortified by the introduction of genes that construct vitamin A -- holds promise for public health.

Other examples exist by the dozens, if not hundreds.  In an article written by myself and soon to be published in an American magazine dedicated to crops a product called Bt is discussed as a natural substance allowing growers to avoid using much harder insecticides.  Bt is a natural bacterium important to the American corn and cotton industries.  Bt can be sprayed onto the surfaces of crops to provide temporary protection against insect pests or, can be genetically engineered into crops to protect plants for the lifespan of the plant. 

Bt has been in used for most of 100 years.

So, what is right, and what is wrong when it comes to genetic engineering? 

If millions of lives can be extended, hunger can be reduced, quality of life can be enhanced, and the environment improved, can it ever be right to withhold the results of genetic engineering from a world in harm’s way?  And, if millions die as the result of withholding the benefits of genetic engineering, who is responsible for those deaths?  Will we ever see Greenpeace stand up and say, in a forthright manner, “We think a world free of genetically engineered foods is worth giving up a few million lives for?” 

I doubt it.

More on this in a future blog.

The Green Jobs Myth

Anyone interested in accurate assessment of environmental policy issues should track the work of an activist environmental organization headquartered in Montana; the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC).http://perc.org/

Green jobs?  Sure.  Envrionmental enhancement.  Not when conventional power plants have to be built to cover the power needs of the community when the windmills are down due to lack of wind!

PERC has, over the years, been a stalwart in promoting Free Market Environmentalism (FME).  The group proclaimes itself to be the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through FME and in providing the complete, and documented, research regarding the many issues the company addresses. 

One would be hard pressed to find an environmental organization of any kind presenting discussion of environmental policy issues in a more straight-forward and honest way than PERC demands of those publishing under the organization’s name.    Perhaps the only flaw in the organization’s approach is that one can wonder why donations to a group dedicated to the free market are tax deductible meaning each and every citizen of the U.S. helps pay for the group’s work, like it or not; but, as I seem to be the only public policy wonk in America concerned about that nicety (Even the Ayn Rand Institute is a tax supported charity these days) PERC can be forgiven that little inconsistency.

According to PERC, FME “Is an approach to environmental problems that focuses on improving environmental quality using property rights and markets” 

One of PERC’s offerings, the PERC Policy Series http://perc.org/articles/types/policy-series consists of several dozen longish essays, issued at a pace of a few per year, designed to inform journalists, educators and others regarding issues of the day from a point of view most environmental organizations will not touch.  

Paper #44, published in 2009, deals with an issue much in the news recently: green jobs.  Titled 7Myths About Green Jobs,

http://perc.org/articles/7-myths-about-green-jobs-no-44

the paper examines the idea, much touted by the Obama Administration idea that a “…massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with ‘green jobs.”

In fact, the authors of 7 Myths About Green Jobs put forward, “…these claims about the wonders of green jobs are built on a number of myths about economics, forecasting, and technology.”

PERC points to a number of obvious problems with the approaches the Obama Administration, along with other pop environmental groups pursue. 

For example, myth one is put forward as being, “Everyone knows what a “green job” is.”

In fact, according to the paper, “No standard definition of a “green job” exists in the green jobs literature,” so the billions of dollars already spent, and proposed to be spent, on so called green jobs, cannot be rationally justified because there is no standard to measure success by. 

A log conventional sawmills would reject.  The lumber in the background, sawn from logs like this do not qualify for LEED certification because they do not come from a healthy, growing forest certified as such.  Weird isn't it?

For example, imagine a truck driver picks up a load of lumber from a small local sawmill.  The lumber is milled from large limbs recovered from a fallen tree near the town library.  The driver delivers the lumber to a home across town for use as flooring.  Had the lumber not been milled the limbs would have been sawn up for firewood. 

Then, the truck, driven by a different driver picks up a similar load of lumber at the local lumber yard destined for the same house.  The lumber was shipped in from two hundred miles away, the nearest wholesale yard with LEED certifiable lumber harvested from a healthy forest.   

Which driver would be considered to have a “green job?”  Why, to the pop environmental movement, of course, the driver transporting the lumber processed from healthy trees cut down in the healthy forest two hundred miles away!

A second myth PERC points to hold that, “Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.”

In fact, according to 7Myths, “Green jobs estimates include huge numbers of clerical and administrative positions that do not produce output.”

In the case of the example I’ve put forward above, the private mill owner loaded the boards onto the truck, created an invoice and delivered the lumber. 

Certified lumber, on the other hand, is more a function of paperwork than actual environmental enhancements.  Beginning with the need to register the forest and document actions required to grow the trees, green lumber has to have “chain of custody” documentation every time it changes hands.  Lots of jobs but no added value, unless government decides to choose winners and requires certified wood in lieu of lumber produced to higher environmental standards.

According to PERC, the idea that “Green jobs forecasts are reliable,” is a myth as well.  In fact, “Green jobs studies make estimates using poor models based on dubious assumptions.”

By way of example, my home county, Whatcom, is an area containing or adjacent to many millions of contiguous acres available for hiking, biking and, walking trails.  Still, the pop environmental movement recently contended that adding less than ten thousand acres of land to the multimillion acre base already available would result in hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of new green jobs; a number outlandishly out of sync with the jobs produced by already existing acres.

Popular in recent years is the idea that “The world economy can be remade by reducing trade, relying on local production, and lowering consumption without decreasing our standard of living.”

Not a single iron deposit of any size in Whatcom County nor, for that matter, in Washington.  Basically, nothing in the computer I’m using could be produced locally.  For that matter, Whatcom County simply does not have the ability to feed itself, much less…  Ah, come on, is there a more disingenuous argument on the face of the planet? 

New environmental initiatives based on solid approaches to solving environmental problems do have the potential to create significant numbers of green jobs in our future.  Unfortunately, when government gets involved in environmental issues, decisions are made based on politics, not economics.  When government tries to choose the winners and the losers, the result is almost always jobs lost, money squandered and, a degraded, rather than enhanced, environment.

Swan Song Or Environmental Swindle?

Living in Northwest Washington State in the United States, I get an annual chance to observe a quintessential example of the pop environmental movement’s approach to manipulating public perceptions of an environmental issue.

The opportunity comes because three of the state’s northwestern counties as well as portions of the lower British Columbia mainland near Vancouver provide the wintering grounds for several thousand Trumpeter Swans; North America’s largest waterfowl.  Each year, in my area of Washington, the birds can be seen stalking through the fields of the area, gobbling up goodies they find in the mud.

 Swans glean a Whatcom County seed potato field 

Grounds for the opportunity to create hysteria in the public mind are provided by the fact that each year 250 or so of the birds die while visiting the southern climes north of Seattle and south of Vancouver, B.C..

Trumpeters are pretty birds and we would all miss them were they to disappear, as they nearly did in the 1940s when only 69 birds were counted south of the Canada/U.S. border.  Today, nearly 4,000 come down to visit northwest Washington alone each year and the number grows.  A website run under the auspices of Washington State University’s Island County Extension office describes the birds, their annual migration and, in angst ridden verbiage, the threat to the swans lead pellets once fired from hunter’s shotguns represents.

First, the plight of the swans in the ‘40s is noted as well as the recovery, “Hunted to near extinction, by 1940 there were only 69 swans south of the US-Canada border, with a small population discovered in Alaska.  Over the past half-century, through many conservation efforts these splendid swans are slowly recovering and re-occupying areas they have not been found in for decades.  Today, the Alaska population is approximately 13,000 swans.”

The recovery of the swans over the years, both in northwest Washington and in other areas of the nation is impressive, a recovery everyone should be proud of; but then we get to the overstatement necessary to garner continuing financial and other support for the various activist groups, bureaucracies and others making a living off the swans.

Notice how large Trumpeter Swans are compared to the Canada Geese in the background, large birds in their own right

A Swan Lead Poisoning Information Sheet is cited to demonstrate that “Since 1999, Trumpeter and Tundra Swans wintering in northwestern Washington and southwestern British Columbia have experienced high rates of mortality. Most of the mortalities have been due to the ingestion of lead shot pellets.”

The analysis contained in the document claims, in fact, that 77% of swan deaths each year are “lead related.”

So now we get to the crux of the issue.  We have a population of good looking wild animals once driven into near extinction and, according to the material put forward each year by means of websites like the Washington State University Extension Service, the Trumpeter Swan Society and others is now threatened by a man made problem, lead shot in the soil the animals pick through as they find food through the winter season: a perfect situation demanding fund raising efforts, grants, involvement by state and federal bureaucracies and an annual public information campaign regarding the implied crisis.

Here’s the problem.  Trumpeter swans can live to the ripe old age of 20 – 30 years.  Assume for purposes of calculation a 25 year lifespan on average.  That would mean that under any circumstance, if every bird lived to be 20 – 30 years old, about 4% of the animals would have to die every year of plain old age.

But, of course, in the world of wild animals, or tame ones for that matter, predation, disease and other factors lead to premature death.

Based on the studies cited it is difficult to tell how many of the birds out of which populations actually die each year as the figures put forward mix populations but, based on the Washington State website the number of birds dying each year would not seem to be outlandishly outside the number of deaths to be expected as the result of simple old age and the stresses of having to live through the sometimes harsh conditions seen in even northwest Washington winters.

So, if the annual number of swan deaths is within an expected range when old age and natural factors are considered, how can 77% of the deaths be lead pellet related, especially since hunting with lead pellet loaded shells has been banned in most of the swan’s range for more than 20 years?

An associated question revolves around the fact that between 1940 and 1990 trumpeter swans made an extraordinary comeback in the lower 48 states in terms of winter populations.  Those were years when nearly all shotgun shells used by hunters contained lead shot.  If lead shot is threatening the swan population then how did the swans make such a comeback during those years?

The answer is found in the very study used by swan advocates to demonstrate a threat.  According to the Swan Lead Poisoning Information Sheet cited to incite concern, “The Pacific Trumpeter Swan population as a whole is not at risk because of the lead shot mortalities. Although an average of 285 swans have died annually in the Sumas-Whatcom County area since 1999, both the local winter population and the larger Pacific Coast Trumpeter Swan breeding population have continued to increase.”

Depressing news for those who need a crisis to raise money, justify jobs and create concern and so, news to be mostly ignored.  After all, jobs, fund raising and grants are more important to the pop environmental industry than stupid old facts are.

Coal May Be Our Most Important Future Energy Source

It’s interesting to watch the pop-environmental industry flail about regarding the issue of energy derived from coal.  Coal, according to the pop-enviros, is the big, bad devil monster hiding under the bed, waiting to leap out and devour us all with greenhouse gasses, sooty pollution and other noxious emissions likely to lead to the end of society as we know it.

Once America's Transportation Network Was Coal Powered.  Perhaps In The Future Coal Will Power The World's Industry

It’s equally interesting to watch the more or less ineffectual responses the coal industry mounts to the foamy mouthed invective hurled at it by the pop-enviro community.  If corporations were as powerful and skillful as they are reputed to be by the 99 percent crowd, one would think an industry like that centered on coal would do a better job of messaging.

In fact, regardless of the vociferous braying of the one side and the meek, “I’d better pull my head back in the shell” responses of the coal industry, coal may have the potential to bring about massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions along with many other social benefits.

Here’s some of what the U.S. Department of Energy has to say about its investigations into the coal issue:  “Hydrogen from coal research supports goals of increasing energy security, reducing environmental impact of energy use, promoting economic development, and encouraging scientific discovery and innovation by researching and developing novel technologies that convert the nation’s abundant coal resources into hydrogen. The use of coal — America’s largest domestic fossil energy resource — offers the potential to economically produce hydrogen and capture carbon dioxide emissions for the generation of low-carbon electricity.”

As has been pointed out in an earlier blog on this site, using hydrogen to power America’s vehicle fleet has been a dream for decades.  The primary emission from burning in an engine is good old water.  If the claim that much of the man made pollution leading to global warming… er… I mean climate change, and other damaging impacts is due to excess emissions from automobiles then, much of that pollution could be removed if we switch over to hydrogen as a primary power source.

Until now that’s been difficult because it takes too much energy to produce hydrogen but, again, from the Department of energy, “Hydrogen can be produced from coal by gasification (i.e., partial oxidation).  Coal gasification works by first reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high pressures and temperatures to form synthesis gas, a mixture consisting primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.  The synthesis gas is cleaned of impurities and the carbon monoxide in the gas mixture is reacted with steam via the water-gas shift reaction to produce additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide.  Hydrogen is removed by a separation system and the highly concentrated CO2 stream can subsequently be captured and sequestered.  The hydrogen can be used in a combustion turbine or solid oxide fuel cell to produce power, or utilized as a fuel or chemical feedstock.”

Further, “Gasification of coal is a promising technology for the co-production of electric power and hydrogen from integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) technology.  However, there currently are no commercial demonstrations of these joint power and hydrogen plants.  Conceptual plants have been simulated using computer models to estimate technical and economic performance of co-production facilities.”

Clean coal technologies based on producing hydrogen and other valuable materials from raw coal and then using the char, or remaining byproduct in materials like aggregates for making bricks or other useful materials may well be the wave of the future. 

Because coal may have the potential to so dramatically reduce climate change gasses and other emissions to the atmosphere one can only wonder at the knee jerk responses to the shipping and use of coal so evident today.  Surely something with so much potential for cleaning up the earth's evironment deserves serious consideration?

We Can Have Our Carbon And Eat It Too

There’s an old expression in English, “He wants to have his cake and eat it too,” used to describe someone who wants to enjoy each of two contradictory things.  The saying might apply, for example, to someone who is a spendthrift throughout his life but also wants a handsome retirement fund at the end or, a government imposing confiscatory taxes on business but, wanting a vigorous economy as well.

In the environmental world a product exists, biochar, that may allow earth’s citizens to “Have their cake and eat it too.”

Biomass from thinning the forest for health and fire reduction could be used to create biochar, synfuels, and other products.

Biochar is hardly anything new.  Most famously the use of the material to enhance poor soils is attributed to the indigenous natives of the Amazon basin who are said to be responsible for some of the deep, rich soils found in some areas of the basin.

Biochar is produced by heating biomass in a very low, or even a, no oxygen, environment, an environment in which combustion does not occur.  The process is called pyrolysis.  In the pre-industrial world biochar was created both deliberately and accidentally (shovel a pile of dirt over a still burning camp fire and some biochar will result. 

When the conditions necessary to create biochar are present oils and syngas are produced.  The material left after the volatiles have been driven off is called “char.”

In an uncontrolled setting the oils and gasses are emitted to the atmosphere or absorbed into soil as what we today call pollution but, in an industrial setting the oils and gasses can be captured and used to create a host of high value products.

But the real “magic” in the process comes because the char can be worked into agricultural soils as an amendment capable of significantly improving productivity and, research seems to show, working over time to actually capture greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

In short, the research seems to show that creating biochar is actually a carbon negative process.  Oils and syngasses are captured and utilized in place of fossil fuels like petroleum while the char, worked into the soil, eventually captures more carbon than was contained in the biomass in the first place.

The implications are obvious.  In the forests of North America, for example, several hundred million acres of trees grow in overcrowded forests prone to massive fires.  In Washington State this year climate change gas emissions, toxic chemical and elemental emissions and particulate emissions to the atmosphere may have resulted in pollution exceeding all the industrial and auto related pollution created in the entire state for a year or more.

But what if the forests were to be thinned, as most professionals believe necessary, with the biomass used to create synthetic oil to fuel our vehicles, natural gas substitutes to heat our homes, and biochar to absorb the carbon emissions that must occur in the course of man’s living on the planet?  What if, in nations where most of the wood grown ends up fueling home fires, the fuel could be diverted to produce biochar with the resulting oils and gasses heating homes and the char going into the soil to enhance food production?

The pop-environmental community appears to prefer this.

Stunningly, there is little impetus among the pop-environmental community to press forward with investigations into the many benefits bio-char appears to offer.  One would think, if people who think of themselves as environmentalists were really interested in environmental enhancements, there would be massive pressure on the governments of the world to step up research and, if the conclusions are as favorable as initial investigations appear to indicate, to begin large scale production.

But then, there’s not much money for activist groups in actually solving problems.  In fact, resolving a large scale environmental problem is, in terms of the climate change discussion, revenue negative, for the pop-enviros so, don’t expect to see much excitement about a potentially paradigm changing solution to carbon emissions in the environmental community.  

We can only hope that someday we will actually get serious about environmental enhancement. 

Between about 1861 and 1906 American satirist Ambrose Bierce published a series of satirical definitions skewering the conventions of his day.  Eventually published as The Devil’s Dictionary, Bierce’s work is still read today; albeit the definitions are dated by the passage of time.

I’ve been working for some time on a work titled,The Devil’s Dictionary Too.  Updating a few of Bierce's definitions and, creating some of my own.

I thought you might enjoy a few of the definitions I’ve come up with regarding political and environmental issues.

Hopefully the book will be published next year.

Enjoy.

 Abnormal, adj.  One who thinks before accepting the precepts of an activist organization; especially an organization dedicated to environmental causes.

Usage:  Ann’s insistence on proof that the red whales of Mars really are an endangered species was seen as abnormal by fundraisers for the Save The Red Whales Of Mars Society.  “Not a single red whale has ever been found in the oceans of Mars,” the society scientists put forward in answer to Ann’s inquiries.  “Proof that global warming has endangered an entire species and that Ann is not quite normal in questioning our ethics.”

Bush’s Fault, n.  A geological feature recently discovered beneath Washington D. C. with branches running beneath both the White House and the nation’s legislative chambers.  The feature is commonly considered to be the source of all social, political and geophysical disruption worldwide (See Climate Change). 

Usage:  The discussion surrounding the size of the national debt caused seismic disruptions  (attributable to Bush’s Fault) in the ability of Congress to do business as usual.

Checks and Balances, n.  The American system of assuring all citizens have a chance to participate in their government.  Congress writes the checks and taxpayers are expected to provide the balances. 

Climate Change, n.  1. A meteorological phenomena many attribute to Bush’s Fault.  2. A rainmaker for fundraisers raising money to support the efforts of political parties and pop-environmental groups. 

Usage:  The recent ice age ended as the result of climate change brought about by the invention of coal fired power plants and the subsequent shipment of coal from Wyoming to China by Cro-Magnon man. 

Global Cooling, n.  1. A meteorological phenomena many attribute to Bush’s Fault.  2. A rainmaker for fundraisers raising money to support the efforts of political parties and pop-environmental groups. 

Usage:  First identified in the 1950s (but still the result of Bush’s Fault) as the likely end to life as we know it in North America due to the mile deep sheet of ice predicted to cover the entire continental plate sometime near the end of the century.

Global Warming, n.  1. A meteorological phenomena many attribute to Bush’s Fault.  2. A rainmaker for fundraisers raising money to support the efforts of political parties and pop-environmental groups. 

Usage:  First identified when fundraising to fight global cooling became difficult, global warming is seen as the likely end to life as we know it in North America due to the one mile rise in ocean depth created as the result of Bush’s Fault and predicted to cover the entire continental plate sometime near the end of the century.

Hybrid, n.  An automobile powered by electricity created mostly by the burning of fossil fuel invented to replace automobiles powered mostly by the burning of fossil fuel.

Usage:  As Gwen plugged in to the publically subsidized battery charger she sneered at the common rabble across the street filling the gas tanks of their own automobiles at their own expense and, incidentally, paying an extra tax for the free energy Gwen was making use of. 

Snail’s Pace,   The speed at which a legislature considers a tax reduction.

Usage:  The snail’s pace at which the house and the senate had been considering the tax reduction bill was slowed even further by a lunch break featuring well seasoned escargot as the main course. 

Speed of Light, n.  The speed at which a legislature approves a tax hike.

Usage:  The House and the Senate approved the tax increase at just over the speed of light allowing the increase to be assessed retroactively.

Wheel, n.  A device invented by Cro-Magnon man to permit the shipment of coal from Wyoming to Pacific Rim nations.

Usage:  The shipment of coal from North America to nations of the Pacific Rim by trains of wagons resulted in increased emissions of methane to the atmosphere as the result of Mastodon’s passing gas as they toiled. According to atmospheric scientists the resulting warming of the biosphere accounts for the sinking of Atlantis and the destruction of its civilization.

Wind Energy, n.  An electric atmosphere created in a room full of environmental activists while discussing, at great length, the success of the latest fund raising letter.

Usage:  At two hours in length Mitch’s report regarding fund raising to allow the reestablishment of the banana slug in the Gobi Desert electrified the crowd when he reported $24 million had been raised.  A motion was made and passed to use the initial proceeds to fund a cruise/caravan for interested members of the Gobi Desert B.S. League to the site of the proposed reintroduction.

Dangerous Game - A Blatantly Self Promoting Blog

So, my book, Dangerous Game, which has been kicking around for awhile on Kindle, is now available as a paperback on Amazon as well as electronically on most of the various platforms.