"There is no evidence to support that."

[Gravekeeper]

Burning celery...possibly an anti-bug chemical the plant naturally produced migrating accidentally to the stem?

No, turns out some fruits and veggies make your skin more suspectable to ultra violet light which can result in an inflammatory "burn" upon exposure to sunlight. Celery is one of them. The more sensitive your skin, the worse it can be. Specifically, its contact with photo-sensitizing chemicals in the plant. ( Science! )

So saying someone made a crop of celery that burns the skin is bogus. Because celery naturally does that to begin with and anyone that already has a sensitivity or allergen to celery will suffer a worse affect. Lemons, limes, even carrots will do it too.

Its the same story with the death potato claim. Potatoes are already poisonous. The dosage is just so low that it doesn't generally bother us and cooking them destroys a lot of the poison in question. So all potatoes are toxic, its just a matter of degree and new strains of potato crop are tested for toxicity levels to see whether or not they exceed a specific guideline amount. Crops that exceed the guideline are discarded.

Also, there has not been a case of potato poisoning in the US in 50 years and what rare cases occurred before that were due to people eating the fruits/roots or drinking teas made from them. As most of the poison is concentrated in the fruit, stems, etc. Which is why we don't eat them. -.-

So again, its another dubious half truth that sounds scary but is ultimately meaningless in the face of a cursory fact check. Too toxic strains of potatoes are always discarded ( and even if you did eat one, you'd basically just get the runs ). Its not some surprising thing that just suddenly happened once due to scary gene modification. It can and does happen fairly regularly with cultivation.

[s_stabeler]

There is ZERO safety testing done on any crop other than Transgenic crops, conventional hybrids ARE NOT TESTED(they're assumed to be safe, if the original two strains were), Transgenic crops are tested for a minimum of 5-10 YEARS before being approved for use.

Try again.

There have been two cases of note with traditional cross breeding-potatos that were toxic due to unregulated gene transfer, and celery that caused skin burns.

In the EU, where I live, ALL new crops are tested. The US has been trying to get that declared an illegal restriction on trade. I agree that a crop that has been tested should be allowed in.

[LewisLegion]

my apologies. my sarcasm detector goes on the fritz when i'm tired.

No worries It's all good

[Gravekeeper]

In the EU, where I live, ALL new crops are tested. The US has been trying to get that declared an illegal restriction on trade. I agree that a crop that has been tested should be allowed in.

The US does have a guideline for acceptable potato toxicity levels. Yes, there are legitimate concerns to address in regards to GM foods. However, they're not on the same level with some of the hysteria that surrounds them. Gene modification is still working with the parts already present just like plant husbandry would. You can't cross a white chicken and a black chicken then suddenly end up with a badger. No more than you can cross two kinds of carrot and suddenly have it produce flesh eating acid.

Then you have pesticides. One of the goals of GM foods is actually to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides. Modern pesticides however are much safer than the shit we use to use and are a necessary evil. Unless you want your groceries to cost four times as much while suffering from malaria, you're going to have to accept pesticides.

Every $1 spend on pesticides saves $4 worth of crops.

[s_stabeler]

a) I live in the UK. we're too cold for malarial mosquitoes.
b) I said I have a problem with bioaccumulative pesticides. What the issue is is that they kill the bugs, then their normal predators eat the bodies. Those predators get a higher dose, with the dose building up, possibly in humans. THAT is what I have a problem with.
c) The problem is that the EU has stricter safety standards than the US. The US has been saying that those higher safety standards are an illegal restriction on trade. AGAIN, I am saying that if GM foods pass the existing system for being imported, then they can be imported and grown in the EU. IF, however, it requires the lowering of safety standards, then I have a problem with that.

[Gravekeeper]

a) I live in the UK. we're too cold for malarial mosquitoes.

That was just an example of controlling disease vectors.

b) I said I have a problem with bioaccumulative pesticides. What the issue is is that they kill the bugs, then their normal predators eat the bodies. Those predators get a higher dose, with the dose building up, possibly in humans. THAT is what I have a problem with.

I wasn't addressing you specifically, I was going to back the emergherd pesticides cause food allergies thing. I agree with you, but, necessary evil unfortunately.

[Andara Bledin]

Because it happens to be topical:

Italian scientists determine that GMO foods are no more or less safe than traditional crossbreeding. However, since you can't grow crops in isolation, it's possible that many of the benefits will end up becoming obsolete.

So, as for point 2, not only is there "no evidence to support it," but all available evidence actually refutes it.

[HYHYBT]

Unless you want your groceries to cost four times as much while suffering from malaria...

Can't the groceries suffer from malaria for free?

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

[ben_who]

Tube TVs do wear out; trouble is, they don't necessarily break before becoming unwatchable. I had a 15 year old tube TV that was quite blurry by contemporary standards, but because the damage was done slowly over time, instead of the set just going pop one day, it was hard to notice.

It leads to this issue of people clinging to the ancient as long as there's a whisper of life left in it. A new TV might have features the old one lacks, like EnergyStar compliance. I never studied whether this would result in a net energy savings over the life of the unit, but it's a valid question.

My mother and my former brother in law both held onto cars that were waaaaay past their useful operational lifespan for this reason. Didn't matter that the old models had no safety features, drank oil, polluted like a diesel locomotive and got eight miles to the gallon, as long as a gasp of life persisted, it was "wasteful"'to replace them.

[smileyeagle1021]

Ben who... for the TV example, something that you left out that is worth more than any measure of energy efficiency or material waste or anything else like that, and that of course is your eyesight. You only get one set of eyes, and while yes, a blurry TV might not harm your vision, but it sure as hell ain't pleasant and is going to cause a lot of headaches. I read a lot as a child because watching TV gave me a headache, it wasn't until I was a teenager that we got a new TV and holy hell, I could actually watch without getting a headache. I had the same thing with a computer monitor recently, it was a LCD, and it still probably had several years of life left in it, but it was beyond its useful life because it was developing a flicker that was causing eye strain.
And, if you are talking about an ancient tube TV versus one of the new energy star certified LCD/LED ones, then it actually probably would be a net savings in resources. I don't know the break even age for TVs, but I know for refrigerators it's about 10 years old where you'll use less resources replacing it than maintaining it.

Now, for the used cars paragraph, I would like to point out that a diesel locomotive is probably not a very good thing to use in your analogy, as diesel locomotives are actually one of the cleanest ways there is to move freight and passengers (with the cleanest of course being an electric locomotive using a renewable power source). Yes, they put out a lot more exhaust than a car or truck, but when doing a ton by ton comparison, the exhaust per ton moved is a fraction.

[HYHYBT]

Yes, but if your car, which is just carrying you, is polluting as much as a diesel locomotive, something's wrong

[s_stabeler]

Um, HYHYBT, if your car is burning fuel that fast, I'm not sure you would get out of the gas station.

[protege]

Depends on the car. Some Soviet Bloc vehicles had horrible emissions, mainly because of how they were designed. Many companies behind the Iron Curtain relied on two-stroke engines. The West had abandoned them by the 1960s and had moved on to designs that were more powerful and more efficient. In the Soviet Bloc though, things were different. There simply wasn't money to develop products, and old designs persisted until the Wall came down.

Anyway, because a two-stroke requires its lubricating oil mixed in with the fuel, it can spew out huge clouds. Especially if you do what many Trabant owners did. In efforts to make their cars last (remember, they had to wait 10 years or so for a new one!), they'd add twice as much oil into the the fuel. End result was huge blue clouds.