1621

But this is silly hyperbole.
I mean, first, it could be argued that some corporations are already more powerful than some governments, but that’s neither here nor there.

Mainly though, what is the source of this great power you imagine they are going to wield with GM crops? You basically either have sterile crops which cannot produce seed (which is already something which exists without GM foods), in which case you essentially have no chance of the crop spreading… Or you have crops which can generate their own seed, which only give the producers power via patent enforcement by the government.

And finally, beyond all that, SEED PATENTS ARE NOT UNIQUE TO GM CROPS.

Seriously, this is the thing that needs to be hammered into your head. Virtually every modern crop in existence, including all non-GM crops, are covered by seed patents. So GM crops give corporations ZERO additional power.

And this is basically how all arguments against GM crops go… they’re all based on a complete failure to understand either the GM technology, or even the current state of commercial agriculture.

1622

I’d be fine with that, but bluntly they shouldn’t be allowed to displace the costs. The grid upgrades necessary for handling micro-generation should be charged to the people installing the panels. Otherwise, it’s a rich-get-richer situation where poorer people (who can’t afford the panels) see their bills rise to handle that work.

That’s free market, not allowing externalities to be socialised.

(And yes, I’m also pro-nuclear)

1623

I agree. A company that installs a relatively large-scale solar installation or (in my case) a landfill gas generator, has to get permits and pay for the interconnection with the utility. It takes over a year to wade through the bureaucracy. Homeowners don’t…they put them up, and BOOM…MONEY!. I understand the principle and agree with it up to a point. But many transmission utilities are starting to argue that they need to raise rates to accommodate the increasing amount of residential solar, and I’m inclined to agree with them…they’re supplying the infrastructure that makes it possible. I guess some disagree:

But I think more utilities do agree:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/14/3567244/utility-fees-end-wisconsin-solar/

I know in my area it’s not enough to become an issue yet. The utilities are too busy raising rates to the highest in the country for unrelated reasons…like natural gas supply constraints to the northeast, and increase tree trimming costs after the last 5 years of weeks-long power outages after storms.

1624

reads the articles

Demand metering? Ugh. Nah, that’s not precisely what I’m calling for - the $12.50 monthly fixed fee is about the very top of what I’d consider, and Arizona’s $5/month seems pretty realistic for that environment. (It also seems not to have an install charge which I’d not allow them to subsume into monthly charges)

The problem is some companies will use it as a profit centre, which in itself is anti-free market ><. I can get behind the ban on third-parties (i.e. landlords) profiting from solar, though, if you live in a house then your utility costs should have some resemblance to the actual costs.

The problem in the UK is absolutely ridiculous subsidies, and subsidy scheme;

First, you get paid for the your generation. Based on what your panels are rated for, index-linked to RPI, for 20 years.
Second, you get paid for 50% of your rated generation, regardless of actual generation, for your “export” of energy. Again, index-linked to RPI for 20 years.
Three, no additional charges, period.

(Then of course, your actual bill is lower because you’ve actually generated electricity)

Your panels can, easily, reduce your bills by 125% or more of their rated generation AND you also benefit from their production! (Electric pricing is about 11p/Kwh)

I wish, I SO wish, I was making this crap up -

(Also note this is after rates for the first bit have been lowered several times!)

edit: Did I mention the £5,600 cashback for installing solar? Which is only one scheme, there’s others you can layer on but it’s the hard minimum…

1625

This is very much a first world issue, as in it does not effect most farmers across the world. Are there many cases involving farmers using non GM seed getting taken to court for replanting? Now again the modern first world method of farming makes this less a thing, as most farmers know that from their highly-bred high yield variety of non GM seed they get better harvests buying clean seed each growing season.

In most of the developing world they are often very reliant on being able to collect seed for next planting, which is where the GM issue is pretty nasty (but not unusual behaviour from the first world to the third).

And just to hammer it into your (and other pro GM types) head, GM is mostly about control of the food chain, if it really was about the good of the world it would not have powerful private companies like Monsanto interested and championing the technology. Just knowing they are involved should be a big red warning sign that Evil™ is afoot!

1626

I am anything but pro GM, but Monsanto isn’t in it for control of the food chain. They’re in it for money. If they control the food chain as a way to get money, they’re all for that, but they’re in it for money.

The bigger problem is really around patents and intellectual property, and allowing companies to exert excessive market power. That’s got nothing to do with GM, per se, and everything to do with regulatory and market failures.

1627

Of course there have been, you just don’t read about them because it’s all pretty much established law at this point. But yes, that’s why high yield hybrids are patented, and have been so for decades. If a farmer fails to honor the agreement with the seed provider, then they go to court. It’s just not news.

In most of the developing world they are often very reliant on being able to collect seed for next planting, which is where the GM issue is pretty nasty (but not unusual behaviour from the first world to the third).

Again, the case of Golden Rice highlights that the argument you are making here is just a smokescreen, because none of this is true for those farmers. They are allowed to do whatever they want with the seed. And yet anti-GMO folks still oppose its use.

And just to hammer it into your (and other pro GM types) head, GM is mostly about control of the food chain, if it really was about the good of the world it would not have powerful private companies like Monsanto interested and championing the technology. Just knowing they are involved should be a big red warning sign that Evil™ is afoot!

No dude. This is a fiction you’ve conjured up in your head, to try and make up for the fact that when scrutinized, there is no actual SCIENTIFIC reason to oppose use of GMO crops. Since there is no actual logical argument that can be made against them, the anti-GMO folks have now decided to migrate their argument to a vague anti-corporatist platform, about how malevolent corporations are gonna take over the world by using evil mutant rice.

1628

We’re sort of going over stuff we’ve covered in the thread for the GM stuff (about the bees), and i have some related stuff in The Corporation film mention in the movie section (about Monsanto in particular) if you are interested?

Related to the Stanford story a few posts up, Harvard have a different take, that will see them in court:

‘Harvard invests tens of millions of dollars in fossil fuels despite divestment campaign’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/14/harvard-invests-tens-millions-dollars-fossil-fuels-face-divestment-campaign

Harvard has newly invested tens of millions of dollars in oil and gas companies, rebuffing campaigners’ demands to sever the wealthy university’s ties to the companies that cause climate change. The university’s refusal to withdraw an $32.7bn endowment from fossil fuels has frustrated campaigners and resulted in a law suit brought by seven Harvard students. The university – the world’s richest - is due to appear in court next month. Now it emerges Harvard increased its holdings in publicly traded oil and gas companies by a factor of seven during the third financial quarter of 2014, the latest data available. The new investments increased Harvard’s stake in oil and gas companies – including those involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and fracking – from $11.8m (£7.8m) to about $79.5m, according to an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings by campus divestment activists. Jim Recht, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and a supporter of the divestment campaign, described the new oil and gas holdings as “blood money” and said they indicated Harvard’s unwillingness to review its policies despite the growing awareness of the dangers of climate change. “That’s blood money,” he said. “It is making money out of something we see as fundamentally illicit.”

1629

Keep trying to smash heads with that hammer, as you ignore the facts about seed patents.

Aleck is right. Hell, Timex is right.

1630

‘Sea levels rising faster than previously thought says new study’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/15/sea-levels-rising-faster-than-previously-thought-says-new-study

Sea level rise in the past two decades has accelerated faster than previously thought in a sign of climate change threatening coasts from Florida to Bangladesh, a study said on Wednesday.

The report, reassessing records from more than 600 tidal gauges, found that readings from 1901-90 had over-estimated the rise in sea levels.

Based on revised figures for those years, the acceleration since then was greater than so far assumed.

The report said the earlier readings were incomplete or skewed by local factors such as subsidence.

The new analysis “suggests that the acceleration in the past two decades is 25 percent higher than previously thought,” Carling Hay, a Canadian scientist at Harvard University and lead author of the study in the journal Nature, told Reuters.

The study said sea level rise, caused by factors including a thaw of glaciers, averaged about 1.2 millimetres (0.05 inch) a year from 1901-90 - less than past estimates - and leapt to 3 mm a year in the past two decades, apparently linked to a quickening thaw of ice.

Last year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated the 1901-90 rate at 1.5 mm a year, meaning less of a leap to the recent rate around 3 mm.

The Harvard-led study said the new findings might affect projections of the future pace of sea level rise, especially those based on historical trends.

Well i was not expecting that! Shit for those invested in properties near the seafront!

1631

Scary but expected. Sea rise is most likely going to be on a sigmoid curve, so no wonder it’s accelerating. The main question is how fast it’s going to accelerate to and what’s the maximum rate? This was always going to be disastrous, but if it’s too soon, it’s going to be really, really horrible…

1632

Wow. $80M out of $32.7B? Wow. That’s almost one quarter of one percent (0.2446%, if I did the math right). Not to say it’s not important, but for a fund that doesn’t have the specific goal of not investing in fossil fuels, holy cow, they barely have anything invested in the traditional energy sector.

1633

Hey, that’s a FAR higher percentage than PBS is of the Federal budget, but Big Bird still wound up being dragged in handcuffs before Congress. This is serious stuff! (that said, if they promised then they promised).

1634

Long sobering article on Alberta’s tar sands:

1635

I think that’s the whole point: Harvard didn’t promise not to invest in fossil fuels. Stanford did.

1636

lol - my mistake, you’re right. Even more hilarious, then :)

1637

Indeed, and thanks for finding it. This is another of the big scams being run by Big Oil/Energy, and exactly the kind of behaviour that is THE problem as outlined in The Corporation film.

‘Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/15/rate-of-environmental-degradation-puts-life-on-earth-at-risk-say-scientists

Humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.

Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded “safe” levels – human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use.

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.

They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilisation has advanced significantly.

Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm.

Since 1950 urban populations have increased seven-fold, primary energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertiliser used is now eight times higher. The amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled.

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a “new state” that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

“These indicators have shot up since 1950 and there are no signs they are slowing down,” said Prof Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Steffen is the lead author on both of the studies.

“When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a massive increase in resource use and pollution. It used to be confined to local and regional areas but we’re now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability.”

1638

Related to that, danger of mass extinction event for marine life:
http://mainenewsonline.com/content/15012431-humans-causing-unprecedented-harm-oceans

But in a bit of good news, the Pope steps up:

‘‘I think we have exploited nature too much,’’ Francis said, citing deforestation and monoculture. ‘‘Thanks be to God that today there are voices, so many people who are speaking out about it.

1639

Go Pope (i’m really liking this guy, which means he probably won’t last long!). And just to say thanks again for that article, it was really well written and a perfect example of what we are all ultimately up against.

1640

‘2014 warmest year on record, say US researchers’:

2014 was the warmest year on record, with global temperatures 0.68C (1.24F) above the long-term average, US government scientists have said. The results mean that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since the turn of the century.

The analysis was published on Friday by Nasa and Noaa researchers.

Last month, the World Meteorological Organization released provisional figures that predicted the past 12 months were set to be record breakers. The long-term global average temperature is calculated from data collected between 1951 and 1980.

“This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.