> Maybe releasing a GM variant is a bad idea, maybe not.
What we’ve found in NZ is best illustrated by rabbits. Some Englishman 150 years ago decided he wanted a “spot of hunting” available on his farm. So he released a few pairs of rabbits. They have no natural predator in NZ, so they multiplied like, well, like rabbits.
Now there are billions of them. Weasels and stoats were imported to act as predators for the rabbits here. They have no natural predators, and they decided that they much prefer the taste of local New Zealand native animals, which are easier to catch than rabbits.
Now we have two really bad pests taking over. But it gets worse.
Someone had the bright idea to try to kill them en-masse with rabbit-specific diseases. They tried mixamatosis, and then they settled on Rabbit Calici-Virus Disease (RCD).
RCD got released surreptitiously by a farmer in South Island before it had been fully tested and approved. It killed millions and millions of rabbits very quickly. Then the rabbits developed immunities to it. Now there are super-bunnies that cannot be killed by RCD, and there are variants of RCD that may yet mutate and cross over to other animals — we just don’t know.
A similar story could be told about Possums imported from Australia because some Englishman decided that New Zealand needed a Fur Trade. Now there are billions of them and no good way to kill them all.
Or house-cats. They go off into the wild, and after a few generations go feral. No natural predators...
You see, these scientists who come up with all these bright ideas don’t really know what they are doing, or the long-term consequences of their actions: to them, the whole world is one large laboratory, and the experiment is worth doing for the experiment’s sake alone.
GM-modified crops? A brand-new toy for them to play with. They actually have no idea what they are doing, or why, or what the long-term consequences are or could be. And they do not care: they are pointy-headed intellectuals who want to do the experiment anyway.
Science and scientists are thoroughly discredited, even moreso than real estate agents and used car salesmen. Every time they say “science has proven such-and-such” then that is a good clue: wait a year or so, and science will have proven the opposite.
Scientists cannot find their arse with both hands and a flashlight: they aren’t even sure if they have an arse, but they can prove it if you let them try...
So no, I don’t really side with the Greens. But in this case I’d agree with them, that Scientists are not to be trusted with any matters of any importance to our species. Not to be trusted.
Your premise is BS. The Aedes mosquito is ALREADY THERE. All this is doing is introducing more of them with a genetic defect to make less of them. Not the same as rabbits at all.
Some Englishman 150 years ago decided he wanted a “spot of hunting” available on his farm. So he released a few pairs of rabbits...I think you've got quite an anti-science thing going on inside your head. Now before you get all angry with me, I admit, you might be right on this mosquito issue.Weasels and stoats were imported to act as predators...[you don't say by who but I suspect not by "scientists"]
RCD got released surreptitiously by a farmer in South Island before it had been fully tested and approved...
A similar story could be told about Possums imported from Australia because some Englishman decided that New Zealand needed a Fur Trade...
Or house-cats. They go off into the wild...
You see, these scientists who come up with all these bright ideas...[scientists??? what scientists!!!]
GM-modified crops? A brand-new toy for them to play with...[Finally, we get to scientists, but really how are GM crops all that different than what farmers have been doing for millenia, breeding new varieties?]
Science and scientists are thoroughly discredited, even moreso than real estate agents and used car salesmen. Every time they say “science has proven such-and-such” then that is a good clue: wait a year or so, and science will have proven the opposite.
Scientists cannot find their arse with both hands and a flashlight: they aren’t even sure if they have an arse, but they can prove it if you let them try...
So no, I don’t really side with the Greens. But in this case I’d agree with them, that Scientists are not to be trusted with any matters of any importance to our species. Not to be trusted.
But I also RESPECTFULLY suggest you look around (at diseases cured, technology developed, advances made in thousands of fields, including agricultural output [which environmentalists predicted would be outstripped by population by the 1980s]) and check your biases.
There's good science, and there's bad science, certainly.
But there's a hell of a lot of good science.