![]() I magine a news story about a study that detected trace amounts of an industrial chemical in a popular food. And let us not forget the most overlooked/underplayed way of dealing with limited energy: reduction in use combined with energy-efficiency! Human beings will take huge risks to accommodate their need for growth rather than simply cut back. I hope the science community, not to mention society at large, doesn’t use climate change as an excuse to turn to nuclear power, especially when so many advances are being made in less dangerous alternatives to fossil fuels. What? You cannot seriously dismiss that fear as being as irrational, say, as that of GMOs or vaccines.Īll energy sources have known as well as unknown cost-benefit trade-offs, but surely nuclear power’s costs – Fukushima and Chernobyl come to mind – are a huge trade-off for the dubious benefit of lowering greenhouse gases. ![]() “Fear of radiation that vastly exceeds the actual risk, for example, fuels opposition to nuclear energy, which emits no greenhouse gases and could help in the fight against climate change.” (Bias and vested interest are rampant in all areas.) Point well taken. I generally agree with the need stated here to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism when assessing risks, whenever it is reported without open attribution. That’s how they manufacture risk where none exists. It does not matter if it is real, it does not matter if it is reproducible or publishable. But the news calls it “Cancer Causing Herbicide in Your Food”.Įmails obtained by Stephan Niedenbach reveal Henry Rowlands (anti-GE activist) soliciting for places to detect glyphosate and his quotation was, “It does not need to be accurate, we just need to detect it.” No methods are provided, and the amounts claimed are less than 1 part per billion (a second in 32 years). There are a number of reports claiming to find it in urine, blood, beer, wine, organic food, and dozens of popular consumer products. It has been questionably rated as a “probable carcinogen” by the IARC, despite no evidence of it being carcinogenic. They feel that they can hurt the companies and farmers by ending use of this herbicide. The most egregious is the claims of detecting glyphosate, an herbicide under strong activist criticism because of its use with GE crops. These are often times improperly conducted trials, or implementation of generic techniques that provide false positives (well “signal” that is actually below the limit of detection). ![]() One of the central problems is that the “studies” are not actual peer-reviewed science with complete methods and basis for reproducibility. There are especially disturbing trends that are causing significant problems related to this topic. ![]()
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