Now on YouTube, the first Bold Scientists video interview. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrErg0E56LE&feature=youtu.be.
Category Archives: Ecology
New GM Crops: fields of insanity
A definition of insanity: If something clearly doesn’t work, do it again. And again…
Photo: Aurora Cooperative
The corporate leviathans that brought us GM crops promised no pollen spread. Fact: Any place these invasive crops are planted they spread pollen as far as wind and bugs can carry it, making it impossible to grow non-genetically manipulated crops for miles around.
The industry promised that GM herbicide-tolerant crops would need less chemicals to suppress competing weeds. Nature laughed. Fact: Very quickly, weeds developed tolerance to the most widely used herbicide, glyphosate. The resulting ‘superweeds’ already infest an estimated 70 million acres of US farmland, and they’re spreading rapidly. It’s being called an agricultural crisis. Another one.
The corporate solution to the new problem: Throw more chemicals at it. No surprise, chemicals induce dependency and generate enormous profits. The pushers are pushing hard – not that it takes much pressure – to get US government approval to sell the highly toxic 2,4-D herbicide/defoliant, infamous as a weapon of mass destruction in the US war on Viet Nam.
At the same time, the industry plans to release GM crops.2, corn and soybeans genetically manipulated to tolerate repeated dousing with multiple herbicides, including 2,4-D. Details here, in Wired: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/new-gm-crops/.
For a saner path, stop in for a visit with Ann Clark, plant physiologist and post-oil farmer, in Bold Scientists, chapter 2, Digging thistles. Read an excerpt here.
“They cannot stop me from talking.”
Scientists Biased, Talk Too Much: Confidential government memo.
Details here, in Blacklock’s Reporter: minding Ottawa’s business, August 11, 2014.
Tar sands, Alberta, Canada. Photo: The Nation.
The primary target of the confidential memo, John Smol, is a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, a widely acclaimed paleolimnologist (fathoming the life stories of lakes), and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change.
Why does the Harper government want to silence John Smol and his co-researchers? Because they know too much. The current regime in Ottawa is an aggressive booster of the enormously destructive tar sands colossus, and is determined to keep Canadians strictly on message: tar sands = good for Canada, with minimal harm. Period. Trouble is, their message keeps getting shredded by the findings of honest science.
Why won’t John Smol shut up? He knows too much:
“The huge problem is that many environmental problems are long scale. They can take years, decades to show up – or longer, sometimes I work in centuries, even millennia. But politicians think in terms of four years, at best. Look at the tar sands – go ahead, pump it out as fast as you can, we’ll be out of here in four years, what do we care? Industry is even worse, they think in quarters, 90-day intervals. Costs for the future are horrendous, but they’re not in this fiscal cycle. When things go extinct, they’re extinct forever. You destroy a river system, it’s gone. Destroy a fish population, it’s gone. How do you gauge what that’s worth?”
Delve into John Smol’s research, paleolimnology, and why he speaks out, in Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science. Available September 4, 2014, in print and e-book from Between the Lines.
Greta Garbo
Photo: MR, August 18, 2014
This morning, a Great Spangled Fritillary visited our garden. Probably a female, according to The Butterflies of Canada, which says males are bright orange, females subtler. (I’m open to correction.)
Although I kept a respectful distance, at least ten feet, each time I shifted to a better angle she disappeared. Then finally she permitted a single photo. I call her Greta Garbo.
Yesterday a Monarch visited. Only one, but given their perilous state, one is 100% better than none. I watched it feed for almost an hour on Brazilian verbena, verbena bonariensis.
A tip: Though it rarely appears on how-to-attract-butterflies plant lists, these tall, dignified plants with tiny purple flowers draw many more visitors than any other plant in our garden. Brazilian verbena self-seeds lavishly, but doesn’t crowd its neighbours.
Perhaps the monarch will return. And Greta Garbo.
For more on how gardens illuminate our ambiguous place in nature, science and power, see Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science. Available September 4, 2014, from Between the Lines.
The wisdom of webs
On a summer morning walk with the dog, she gallops, I walk into a dew-laden meadow – and stop, abruptly.
Hundreds of freshly spun spider webs glitter between blades of grass, traced in silver by the rising sun. I’ve seen this graceful display before, but today I notice for the first time that all the webs are set in exactly the same orientation, each one in parallel to the others.
Why?
Are they set at right angles to the wind, for maximum flow of air, and thus of airborne insects, food? Not enough wind this morning to tell.
In fact I have no idea.
But clearly the spiders know.
Explore Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, coming September 2014 from Between the Lines.
Michael Riordon 