Greenpeace Founder to Senate: "Man-Made Global Warming Unproven"

[Danke]

http://www.goldenrice.org/Content3-Why/why3_FAQ.php

Why not eat unmilled (brown) rice?

The natural oil-rich outer layers of the rice grain—the bran and the aleurone—are rich in some important nutrients, including vitamin B, and yet rice is generally consumed in its milled form, i.e. with the outer layers removed. If not removed, the oils in those layers undergo natural oxidation processes and the grain becomes rancid, affecting smell and taste very rapidly, particularly in tropical and sub-tropical climates. Milling improves the long-term storability of rice without loss of taste.

Most people prefer to eat white rice

White rice is the most commonly consumed form of rice. Golden Rice will be more like white rice in that it will be consumed as milled or polished rice. But as opposed to brown rice, it will be capable of providing its health benefits even after milling. Golden Rice grains have a pleasant bright yellow or orange colour, although its appeal in rural areas remains to be investigated. Coloured rice landraces are eaten in many places, and coloured spices, like saffron, are often part of traditional cuisine. Sensitive social educational programs will be an integral part of Golden Rice deployment. Rice varieties with superior agronomic characteristics, i.e. that grow and yield well, will be not less important for the farmers who will grow the rice. Hence the importance of introducing the trait from the genetically modified lines into varieties grown locally by farmers in VAD areas. The trait is transferred from one rice plant to the another using conventional breeding techniques.

Brown rice may be the panacea in modern farming. I'm just stating this vitamin deficiency was solved long before GMO crops.

 

[angelatc]

Brown rice may be the panacea in modern farming. I'm just stating this vitamin deficiency was solved long before GMO crops.

Not in Africa and parts of Asia it wasn't.

 

[donnay]

Flashback:

Genetically Engineered Rice Promoters 'have gone too far'
Special report: GM debate

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Saturday February 10, 2001
The Guardian (UK)

Claims by the biotech industry and some US politicians that genetically
engineered "golden rice" would save the sight of 500,000 children a year are
exaggerated, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, which is funding the
rice's development. The project, which has been used worldwide by
supporters of genetically modified crops as a justification for the technology,
appears likely to generate only a fraction of the additional vitamin A intake
it once promised. Vitamin A helps prevent eye disease.

If consumers were on a diet of 300g (11oz) of the GM rice a day - the
average consumption of an Asian adult - it would provide only 8% of the
required daily intake of the vitamin, according to independent scientists.

An adult would, in effect, have to eat 9kg of cooked rice (the equivalent of
3.75kg of uncooked rice) a day to satisfy the required intake and a pregnant
woman would need twice that amount.

The Rockefeller Foundation says that the public relations campaign based on
golden rice has "gone too far".

Syngenta, the agribusiness company which owns many of the patents on the
rice, has in the past claimed that a single month of marketing delay would
cause 50,000 children to go blind.

The main deficiency problem is found in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines where the lack of vitamin A in a rice
diet causes childhood blindness and up to 1m deaths a year. Adding
beta-carotene to rice, which the body turns into vitamin A, turns it yellow,
hence the name golden rice.

The rice's development has provided a powerful propaganda tool for the GM
industry. The then US president Bill Clinton said last year: "If we could
get more of this golden rice, which is a genetically modified strain of rice
especially rich in vitamin A, out to the developing world, it could save
4,000 lives a day, people that are malnourished and dying."

Continued...

 

[Danke]

Not in Africa and parts of Asia it wasn't.

What?

I know people that did not have GMO crops in both continents. They are healthy and have had no cavities until moving here and exposed to our diet.

 

[donnay]

She's one of the biggest eco-grifters in India. I am surprised it's taken you this long to cite her as an expert, but I knew it was coming. If there's a some grifter fishing for suckers, you always find your way onto their hooks. And when they're advocating for a position that will kill children, you double down.

The rice is given away for free, so it's pretty hard to imagine how "short term profit" factors into it at all.




http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonenti...-celebrity-eco-goddess-or-dangerous-fabulist/

See how much you pay attention?

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...r-quack-science-fraud&highlight=Vandana+Shiva

 

[angelatc]

What?

I know people that did not have GMO crops in both continents. They are healthy and have had no cavities until moving here and exposed to our diet.

"Anecdotal evidence is real, says some guy on the internet."

You haven't seen the pictures of starving children in Africa? Seriously?

 

[angelatc]

See how much you pay attention?

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...r-quack-science-fraud&highlight=Vandana+Shiva

I do indeed try to ignore you as much as possible, but you post so much absolute garbage from the most ridiculous sources it is impossible to overlook it all.

You cling to her, you're clinging to a woman who lies about how many papers she's had published, a woman who lies about her education, woman who rewrites history and facts to suit her agenda, which is one of killing children.

Typical.

 

[donnay]

I do indeed try to ignore you as much as possible, but you post so much absolute garbage from the most ridiculous sources it is impossible to overlook it all.

You cling to her, you're clinging to a woman who lies about how many papers she's had published, a woman who lies about her education, woman who rewrites history and facts to suit her agenda, which is one of killing children.

Typical.

You're running out of steam. You have no proof other then some hit piece from Forbes.

Oh and by the way, please put me on ignore so you stop stalking me. Thanks!

 

[donnay]

One more piece of information:

Pro-vitamin A ‘golden rice’

Lack of essential vitamins and minerals causes as many problems as lack of protein or calories.
The biotech industry promises solutions to these problems with crops modified to contain vitamins
and minerals.

The most highly publicized of these GM crops is ‘golden rice’. As the ‘acceptable face’ of GM, it is
used to persuade consumers of the benefits GM can bring, even though it is still only at the research
stage. Thousands of children die every year of vitamin A deficiency. Scientists have engineered
genetic material into rice to make it rich in beta-carotene, which is converted in the body to vitamin
A. However, to reach the recommended intake of vitamin from this GM rice, 9Kg of cooked rice
would have to be eaten every day!v.

Developments such as ‘golden rice’ fail to address real poverty issues such as the lack of a varied
diet which contributes to malnutrition. They also distract from more accessible and affordable
approaches advocated by the World Health Organisation such as promoting breastfeeding, food
fortification, and eating more fruit and vegetables.

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1048102.files/may2_AgainstGMOs.pdf

 

[angelatc]

You're running out of steam. You have no proof other then some hit piece from Forbes.

!

It isn't a hit piece if it is full of facts.

Like this one:

“ I am also a scientist… a Quantum Physicist”, she writes on her Navdanya website. The speakers bureau that represents her identifies her as “a trained physicist.” Hundreds of organizations and prominent journalists, from universities to Bill Moyers toNational Geographic(which referred to her asa “nuclear physicist turned agro-ecologist”), have represented her that way. But those representations are incorrect. According to the University of Western Ontario, where she received her PhD, her doctorate is not in the discipline of physics, as she claims, but in philosophy.

Which part of that is a lie, DonnaY?

Shiva also claims to have written more than 300 papers—a factoid echoed in almost every article or news release about her, including on Beloit’s site. A query of Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science (research platform for information in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities) returns only 42 records of peer reviewed papers or publications authored by Shiva since 1980.

Which part of that is a lie, DonnaY?

Shiva subsequently abandoned her formal pursuit of philosophy, switching her focus to agriculture, plant breeding, genetics, biology, toxicology, microbiology, nutrition, social sciences and economics—subject areas about which she has no academic training and has not done any formal research.

Which part of that is a lie, DonnaY?

“The danger that the terminator may spread to surrounding food crops or the natural environment is a serious one,” Shiva has said. “The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that could eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet”.


One problem with Shiva’s argument: terminator genes have never been developed; they are a fiction of the anti-GMO movement, perpetuated by Shiva and her followers and the journalists that enable her.

Which part of that is a lie, DonnaY?

 

[Danke]

"Anecdotal evidence is real, says some guy on the internet."

You haven't seen the pictures of starving children in Africa? Seriously?

Um, I lived many years in Asia, and my brother has lived many years in Africa. He is an anthropologist.

 

[angelatc]

One more piece of mis-information:


http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1048102.files/may2_AgainstGMOs.pdf

Fixed it for you.

If you actually read what I posted, you'd already know that they do not need to reach the West's daily recommended amount of Vitamin A to prevent the roblems that the Golden Rice will prevent.

But of course you didn't, so you don't.

Here's more on the topic for you not to read:

In many countries vitamin A deficiency leads to large numbers of vision-impaired people and increased mortality due to a weakened immune system. Many more cases of ailments caused by sub-clinical deficiency levels go undetected. This map of Southeast Asia shows the regions most affected by VADD.


In the United States, the Dietary Reference Intakes are given as three numbers: (1) an estimated average requirement (EAR); (2) a recommended dietary allowance (RDA); and (3) an upper level (UL). For developed countries, the EAR —and thus the RDA (the RDA is derived from the estimated average requirement: RDA = EAR ± 2 standard deviations)— have been derived from the amount of vitamin A needed to provide four months of body stores of the vitamin to a person. For developing countries, the estimated average requirement (EAR) was established as the amount needed to prevent VAD from occurring, measure in terms of how much vitamin A would be required to prevent night blindness. The average amount to prevent a deficiency state is one-half of that needed for adequate storage in the body (which amounts to 150 μg per day).

t is expected that in countries with high per capita consumption of rice, a locally adapted variety producing less than 30 μg of β-carotene per gram of rice would be enough to maintain appropriate levels of vitamin A in the body. Bioavailability studies indicate that regular consumption of Golden Rice will be able to provide the RDA in rice-based societies.

http://www.goldenrice.org/Content3-Why/why1_vad.php

 

[angelatc]

Um, I lived many years in Asia, and my brother has lived many years in Africa. He is an anthropologist, hardly Anecdotal.

Here, let me show you a map:

 

[Danke]

Here, let me show you a map:

lol, where is Africa? Anyway, the westerner I was referring to did his study in Japan, absent from you chart as having a deficiency now. As most first world Asian countries.

And Korea, China, etc.

Why isn't India benefiting for brown rice?

 

[angelatc]

lol, where is Africa? Anyway, the westerner I was referring to did his study in Japan, absent from you chart as having a deficiency now. As most first world Asian countries.

And Korea, China, etc.

Why isn't India benefiting for brown rice?

First world Asian countries aren't the target for this rice - it is being specifically developed for use in developing nations. And nobody is claiming that it's the Utopian end to poverty - it's just a tool. Like I said above, they seem to think that the long term development of these countries will indeed need to include a lot more food diversity.

If you click the link and read it, there are a lot of answers there. India is apparently still too poor to effectively manage food programs.

Golden Rice has the potential to complement existing efforts that seek to reduce blindness and other VAD induced diseases. Those efforts include industrial fortification of basic foodstuffs with vitamin A, distribution of vitamin supplements, and increasing consumption of other foods rich in vitamin A. Those programs are successful mainly in urban areas but still around 45% of children around the world are not reached by supplementation programs. Moreover, these programs are not economically sustainable. Small countries, like Nepal or Ghana, require about 2 million dollars every year to run the campaigns, in spite of the negligible cost of the vitamin A capsules. A large country like India cannot afford to run country-wide food programs, because the costs become prohibitive. There is no guarantee that donors and governments will be able to carry on funding those programs year after year (UNICEF, Micronutrient Initiative). Biofortified crops, like Golden Rice offer a long-term sustainable solution, because they do not require recurrent and complicated logistic arrangements once they have been deployed.

 

[angelatc]

And it looks like I was wrong about Africa:

Although rice is eaten in many parts of Africa and South America, there is no active work to develop Golden Rice in those places because other staple crops such as maize and sweet potato are much more widely grown and eaten. Work to develop high beta-carotene varieties of those crops to combat vitamin A deficiency is being led by HarvestPlus.

http://irri.org/golden-rice/faqs/in-which-countries-will-golden-rice-be-available

 

[PRB]

The burden of proof is not on him.

it is if
1) it's an extraordinary claim
2) it's a claim which will affect policy
By the way, there's a difference between "I don't believe global warming is caused by CO2" and "I don't care if it is, I just don't want carbon taxes"

 

[PRB]

It is the global warmists that don't have a testable hypothesis. To them every single event is the result of global warming. higher temperature: gw. lower temperatures: gw. drought: gw. rain: gw. snow: gw. no snow: gw. hurricanes: gw. no hurricanes: gw. tornadoes: gw. no tornadoes: gw.

lower temperature, if global, and accounted for with La Nina/El Nino cycles, would be proof against global warming
drought vs rain
snow vs no snow
hurricane vs no hurricane
such comparisons would be a matter of whether the abnormalities are predicted, and whether the locality normally has such conditions.

Again, what do non-warmists predict?

 

[eduardo89]

"Anecdotal evidence is real, says some guy on the internet."

You haven't seen the pictures of starving children in Africa? Seriously?

This is what the anti-GMO crowd doesn't care about:

"It's his own fault, he should have just eaten more vegetables"

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Where did I say that?

What I said is that vitamin A deficiency is a direct cause of certain forms of blindness. Are you disputing that?

I'm sorry, it was someone else. I think Danke said it cured other things, then angelatc said it was just blindness, and I pointed out that it could manifest in other ways, and that's where you came in. If that's not your point, then I'm afraid I don't know what your point is. Are you just playing devil's advocate?