Take 3 for the environment

One of the organisations represented at last week’s Oceans of Plastic event at Taronga Zoo was Take 3:

The ‘Take 3’ message is simple: take 3 pieces of rubbish with you when you leave the beach, waterway or… anywhere and you have made a difference.

Marine debris, particularly plastic, has a disastrous impact in our oceans on marine life and, ultimately, us. We can greatly reduce the amount of marine debris in our oceans by preventing it from getting there in the first place! We encourage people to Refuse disposable plastic, Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle and Respond by picking up rubbish.

We want to educate the world about this complex problem by inspiring simple actions.

It really is a simple idea that can make a big difference: visit the Take 3 website to find out more. There’s also a bunch of videos at the site if you’re not sure why plastic is such a big deal.

Oceans of Plastic - Beat the Microbeads (and more)

Tomorrow (Thursday, 20 August 2015 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (AEST)) there is a Taronga Zoo Science Week event at the zoo: Oceans of Plastic.

I’ll be helping set up through the Sydney Society for Conservation Biology and the event continues the theme of this month’s Conservation Cafe with Prof Emma Johnston, which was on human impacts of marine ecosystems. It was a really interesting morning, and I am looking forwards to learning more.

One thing that struck me that morning was how little I actually knew about the products I used and their impact on the environment. I was shamefully unaware of plastic microbeads in cosmetics like facewash, for example, which are a massive issue.

I’m even more ashamed to say that my (ex-)facewash is on the “Beat the Bead red list” as containing polyethylene (PE) microbeads. I meant to check after the Conservation cafe but completely forgot. This in turn reminded of something else I pondered that day, not just regarding plastic pollution: isn’t it time that we put more pressure on supermarkets to have environmentally aware labelling of products. We already have it for a few things, like tuna (and, sadly, the unhelpful blanket labelling of GM products), but there are so many different considerations - water, energy, waste etc. - that I feel like something more comprehensive is required.

They have asked for questions for tomorrow’s panel, so mine is this:

Could/should we have “environmental impact” traffic lights on goods in supermarkets, akin to the nutritional value traffic lights on food?

I’m not sure if it will get asked but I’ll be interested to hear the panel’s thoughts if it is.

In the meantime, Beat the Microbead have a Warning: Plastics Inside! App. The idea is that you scan or look up your products before you buy. (I tried it on my face scrub and the scan failed but it was in the lookup list.) Alternatively, just go old school and look at the ingredients! (The main ones are: polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA).)

Anyway… if you are in Sydney and looking for a fun and informative (and cheap!) evening, you can get tickets for Oceans of Plastic on Eventbrite.

Don't put plastic bags in recycling bins

Without recycling - especially plastic recycling - we're all doomed. Seriously. But what’s possibly even more tragic than selfish people who don’t bother to recycle when the service is offered, is people who go to the effort of sorting their recycling and then completely nullify their effort by sticking it in a plastic bag.

There’s some good information on why this is so bad at Planet Ark. It’s worth repeating the main points here:

Human health and our natural resources

The first level of sorting at recycling stations is done by hand.

Workers at the recycling station are sorting through tonnes of material an hour and don’t have time to open bags to find out what’s inside. Your plastic bags could be filled with recyclable material like glass or plastic bottles or aluminium cans. Or they could be full of contaminants like food scraps, plastic wrap or unwanted wine glasses. Even worse, they could be full of dirty or dangerous material like dirty nappies or medical equipment.

Since it’s too dangerous and time consuming to open and sort the bags, they have to be removed from the recycling stream and thrown into the rubbish. That means valuable resources will not be reclaimed. Instead they will be wasted in landfill.

Recycling system efficiency

The next issue with plastic bags is that they interfere with the automatic sorting machines.

Conveyor belts feed the recycling into rotating tunnels, onto spinning wheels and past magnets and eddy currents to separate the plastic, glass, paper, aluminium and steel cans. Plastic bags cannot be sorted from other materials by existing machinery. Instead, they get caught in the conveyor belts and jam spinning wheels and can bring the entire sorting station to a halt. The bags then need to be found and removed by hand - a time consuming and often dangerous process that reduces the overall efficiency of the recycling station or materials recovery facility (MRF).

The photo above shows the sign on all of the recycling bins in our building. Despite this, people still keep putting plastic bags in recycling bins! When I dropped down some recycling earlier this week this is what I found:

Being a good citizen (and without any other crap in the bin), I emptied it out and stuck the bag in the regular bin. Usually, I am not so brave.

It left me feeling angry at the laziness and/or ignorance that made someone think that this was acceptable behaviour. If you see someone put plastic bags in recycling, please tell them not to. And if you do… Stop! Put them in the regular bin or, better still, a dedicated plastic bag recycling bin at your local supermarket (if it has one).

The tragic wonder of life on Earth today

A sad post over at Why Evolution Is True today: “Last chance to see… pretty much everything, including these Dolichopodids”, reporting on the gloomy effects of systemic neonicotinoid insecticide use... plus some pretty insect pictures.

We are lucky to be alive today. It is probably the only moment in Earth’s history and future in which the technology exists to capture images and videos of creatures great and small, whilst those creatures still exist to marvel at.

It is sad to think that the next generation will not be so fortunate. It’s time that politicians paid more attention to scientists and environmentalists, for the sake of everyone and everything.

XKCD hits the spot again on climate change

A couple of weeks old but no less poignant:

Climate change deniers are quick to point out that there was still life on Earth at predicted future CO₂ levels and global temperatures. This is true. The problem is, that life did not include us, anything like us, or even anything much like most of the things we eat. Oh yes, and most of the world’s major cities being under water. :sigh:

It’s a position summed up frustratingly well by Doonesbury (via WEIT):

Is imported bottled water the most environmentally-unfriendly way imaginable to slake your thirst?

Today is UN World Water Day 2014, which aims to raise awareness of the inter-linkages between water and energy and draw attention to the fact that “768 million people lack access to improved water sources”, many of whom presumably have no safe drinking water.

Meanwhile, in the developed world, we take our safe drinking water for granted so much that we are prepared to spend ludicrous amounts of money to ship in bottled water from other countries. Ignoring the environmental cost of the plastic bottles themselves, I shudder to think what the carbon footprint is to fly water to Australia from Europe.

Sydney, happily, is making some moves with Sydney Tap^TM, which is looking to replace bottled water with tap water. There are also lots of drinking fountains around, which is good.

San Francisco recently announced that it was going one further and banning the sale of bottled water below 21 ounces from city property. Hopefully, other cities will follow suit.

Personally, I would go further than this and ban bottled water altogether. Instead, shops should be able to sell empty reusable water bottles and refills of filtered water for a small fee. I'm sure it would take a bit of getting used to but people would soon learn to carry a water bottle with them. It hardly seems like a big sacrifice for the sake of our future and would act as a constant gentle reminder about the need to avoid excessive packaging.

Badger culls were 'ineffective and failed humaneness test'

Last year, the British government started a trail badger cull despite stiff opposition from scientists, the public and even the House of Commons. The BBC have reported that those Badger culls were ‘ineffective and failed humaneness test’.

Next time, maybe they will listen to the Science. Hopefully, these millions can now be directed to alternatives that might actually work, such as vaccine development.

Forget brains, we should be throwing all our money at Climate Science

2013 saw some unprecedented levels of funding being directed towards “ambitious” (read “impossible within the budget”) projects to map and simulate the human brain, with $100 million and €1.6 billion been thrown at these challenges, respectively. There is no denying that brains are important but, only a month after the $100m BRAIN Initiative was announced, 2013 also saw atmospheric carbon dioxide levels exceed 400 ppm for the first time in at least 800,000 years.

This is pretty stark as it is when you look at the Mauna Loa data, being such a sharp and large increase that it can barely be discerned:

Or zoomed in to hit home what we have been doing since the Industrial Revolution:

Climate skeptics would have us believe that this is natural and/or doesn’t really matter. After all, they say, it’s not the highest CO₂ has ever been and life did all right back in those high-CO₂ days. The thing is, though, even if you disagree with essentially every climate scientist in the world that Climate Change is man-made, it really does matter and life may have done all right at such levels but not life as we know it. For humanity - and all the organisms on which humanity relies - we are going into uncharted territory in both atmospheric CO₂ and, perhaps more importantly, global temperature as this great infographic from the World Bank hammers home to startling effect:

I was tipped off to this image by a tweet from Alessio Fratticcioli but not yet been able to find the original.

The @worldbank has created perhaps the single most telling chart on climate change ever: http://t.co/qA5z5av3ul pic.twitter.com/lIG2J7a4hY

— Alessio Fratticcioli (@fratticcioli) December 31, 2013

Here is what they say at the World Bank Climate Change site, though:

“Climate change is a fundamental threat to sustainable economic development and the fight against poverty. The World Bank Group is concerned that without bold action now, the warming planet threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development.

The science is unequivocal that humans are the cause of global warming, and major changes are already being observed. Current global mean temperature is about 0.8° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The 12 years from 2001 to 2012 rank among the warmest since record keeping began 133 years ago. The intensity of extreme weather-related events has also increased.

Recent experience is a stark reminder that no country – rich or poor – is immune from the impacts of climate-related disasters today.

…

The World Bank Group believes a 4°C warmer world can and must be avoided. Immediate global action is needed to slow the growth in greenhouse gas emissions this decade and help countries prepare for a 2°C warmer world and adapt to changes that are already locked in.”

The picture is pretty bleak unless we do something about it fast and, worse than that, we still do not even really know how bleak it is. The East Antarctic ice sheet, for example, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by over 50m (and basically submerge almost every major city on Earth). We think it is stable (for now) but we don’t really know. (Somewhat counter-intuitively, increases in sea ice in the region could actually be indicative of more melting: freshwater has a higher freezing point than salt water and thus melted land ice can re-freeze when it hits the colder ocean.)

Having been peripherally involved in some Climate Change studies, the thing that really boggles my mind is how little funding is being channeled into what must surely be the most important questions for all humanity: is the world going to become largely uninhabitable in the near future and is there anything we can do about it? However important brains may be, I cannot help but think that such large chunks of money could be put to better use.

Saving the world, one glass at a time with Sydney Tap(TM)

In my recent post about brunch at One Six Nine Cafe, I mentioned Sydney Tap™ but I thought it deserved a post all of its own.

The website has a great animation to scroll through and discover what a difference can be made just by drinking tap water rather than bottled water but (spoiler alert!) I’ve also grabbed a screenshot of the summary data below. The data (based, admittedly, on a somewhat arbitrary 2l/day) speak for themselves, really:

Australia: a country so big that its rainfall can affect global sea level

Australia is a big place. So big, in fact, that the Climate Sciences Research Highlights in Nature a couple of week's ago reported that Australia’s record rains lowered sea level [Nature 500:504 (2013) doi:10.1038/500504a]

Australia soaked up so much rain between early 2010 and late 2011 that global sea levels temporarily dropped.

— or, as Nature World News put it: Sea Level Rise Temporarily Halted as a Result of Australia Hogging all the Rain. (The “hogging” is a bit of an exaggeration, methinks, especially given all the other countries that also had floods in 2010 and 2011!)

A long-term trend of rising sea levels was brought to a screeching halt between 2010 and 2011 when atmospheric patterns came together in such a way that much of the precipitation they carried was driven over Australia, which the continent thirstily soaked up.

“No other continent has this combination of atmospheric set-up and topography,” NCAR [National Center for Atmospheric Research] scientist John Fasullo, the lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Only in Australia could the atmosphere carry such heavy tropical rains to such a large area, only to have those rains fail to make their way to the ocean.”

As the map (from ProProfs Geography Quiz Assignment 3 created by rebeccafr) below shows, most of Australia’s precipitation does drain into the surrounding seas but there is a large catchement area - including a good chunk of Queensland - that drains into Lake Eyre.

I’m not sure how much this contributed to the “soakage” versus empty aquifers elsewhere but, either way, it’s an impressive indication of how large Australia really is.

Science, democracy and badgers all lose as the coalition cull begins tonight

In defiance of massive scientific and public oppostion, a massive no-vote from MPs (rejecting the policy by 147 votes to 28) and even the wise words of Chris Packham, the coalition cull begins today as official shooting breaks out in the night. The new Badger Trust logo says it all, really.

Beyond herbicides for weed control

Reported in last week’s Science News article, The War Against Weeds Down Under, Australian farmers have been getting creative with non-chemical warfare against the weeds that blight their island continent.

Increasingly, weeds are becoming resistant to herbicides and switching to a new herbicide often just results in new resistance after a few years. On top of this, there is generally a progression into nastier chemicals - and more of them - as favoured herbicides lose effectiveness, which is clearly not good for sustainability or the environment.

Australia has particular problems of pest plants with multiple herbicide resistance - one of the worst is a species introduced for sheep feed, Ryegrass - and have been pioneering new versions of more old-school solutions: physical warfare. One of the simplest is just burning the weeds after harvest to destroy their seeds. This is pretty effective - for Ryegrass, at least - but has some disadvantages including loss of nutrients from burning.

An alternative with particular promise is going sheerly physical and grinding weed seeds out of existence. As published in Soil Science last year, Australian farmers and scientists have converted mining equipment called a “cage mill” or “impact crusher” into the “Harrington Seed Destructor”, which is able to destroy a reported 95% of Ryegrass weed seeds. As well as being more effective than burning, all the nutrients from the destroyed chaff is put back into the soil, presumably reducing the need for fertiliser into the bargain.

“Nothing will survive in there…”

Picture from: Walsh MJ, Harrington RB & Powles SB (2012). Harrington Seed Destructor: A New Nonchemical Weed Control Tool for Global Grain Crops. Crop Science 52(3): 1343-1347.

Another advantage of physical destruction over chemical attack is that it seems more difficult for the weeds to fight back. Thanks to the awesome power of Natural Selection, it is probably only a matter of time before resistance evolves to any given herbicide. Whether they could evolve to have seeds small/tough enough to survive the Harrington Seed Destructor is less clear, especially without compromising their competitive advantage. Either way, it’s useful to have another weapon in the arsenal, even if it is a bit pricey at the moment at $A250k. It’s also good to see that future weed management could potentially be effective and environmentally friendly. Hopefully, other countries will follow suit.

Chris Packham shows his star quality in defence of the badgers... and farmers

The British Government's Campaign of Stupid is continuing in full force with the recent news, Pilot badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire approved. This is after MPs voted to reject plans for the cull last October following massive scientific and public opposition to the cull.

The issue is summed up nicely in a This is Somerset post, BBC Springwatch star Chris Packham: Face the facts, a badger cull won't work. It's well worth a read - well balanced and cutting right to the heart of the matter. This is not just about trying to save badgers - it is about ignoring scientific evidence and plowing ahead with an expensive course of action that is more likely to make things worse than actually help. That money should be going towards trying to find genuine solutions for the TB problem - such as effective vaccination and finding ways to combat the EU ban on products from vaccinated animals. And this is the big problem with politicians ignoring scientists on scientific matters - public money is wasted on solutions that do not work whilst the problems themselves do not get solved.

h/t: Neil Gostling.

Roses are red but are they green?

Although I have always known that buying roses on Valentine's Day is a romantic cliche that shows a lack of imagination, what I did not realise is that it usually also shows a serious lack of environmental awareness. Although I regularly think about the environmental impacts of food and fuel, I must admit that I've never really thought about flowers before. (OK, so I don't think about flowers too much in general but I do sometimes buy them!)

In yesterday's "60-Second Earth" Scientific American Podcast, "Roses Raise Environment Concerns", they draw attention to the negative environmental impacts of roses, from direct impacts of habitat destruction and water/pesticide usage to the carbon footprint of transport and refrigeration.

This is not news - Scientific American itself previously had an article in 2009, "Blooms Away: The Real Price of Flowers", exploring some of these issues. It is news to me, though, as is the idea that roses are particularly bad - presumably because of the excessive demand at an inappropriate (from a growth perspective) time of the year.

As with all environmental issues, however, it's also quite complicated. As the 2009 article states:

"First off, don't assume that imported roses are environmentally hostile. A 2007 study by Cranfield University in England found that raising 12,000 Kenyan roses resulted in 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms) of CO₂; the equivalent number grown in a Dutch hothouse emitted 77,150 pounds (35,000 kilograms) of CO₂. Both examples include energy used in production and delivery by plane and/or truck. The roses from Holland required artificial light, heat and cooling over the eight- to 12-week growing cycle, whereas Africa's strong sun boosted rose production by nearly 70 percent over those grown in  Europe's flower auction capital."

If you do want to give flowers then the best thing is probably to consider getting them from a company like Florverde:

"Florverde Sustainable Flowers FSF® are grown responsibly by growers. This means they follow best practices to protect the environment and their workers."

Likewise, if giving jewellery, consider a Fair trade supplier, like CRED. (Order by Wednesday for UK Valentine's Day delivery. We got our wedding rings from them so I wanted to give them a mention!)

It's not always easy to consider the environmental impact of our activities (and I could certainly do more) but when it comes to luxury goods like flowers and jewellery, I think we have a particular responsibility to do the right thing. It's the thought that counts, so spare a thought for the environment this Valentine's Day.

Prominent anti-GM campaigner becomes GM defender after looking into the science

I don't like to name-and-shame on my blog (attack the idea, not the person) but I don't mind giving a positive shout out to those deserving of praise and I think one such person is Mark Lynas. Mark is an author, journalist and environmental activist. He has written a lot about climate change (in a pro-science, myth-busting way) but was also a very active anti-GM campaigner.

The corner of Twitter that I follow is alight with the fact that, last week, he delivered a frank admission that his anti-GM stance was wrong to an Oxford Farming Conference. I've not watched the video but the transcript on his website makes an interesting and inspiring read. The first three paragraphs are particularly hard-hitting:

"I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

So I guess you’ll be wondering – what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist."

It's a pretty courageous admission to make, I think, especially given the later paragraph that gives some truth to what a lot of us in favour of a balanced approach to GM food have long suspected:

"This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it."

What changed Mark's mind?

"So I did some reading. And I discovered that one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths.

I’d assumed that it would increase the use of chemicals. It turned out that pest-resistant cotton and maize needed less insecticide.

I’d assumed that GM benefited only the big companies. It turned out that billions of dollars of benefits were accruing to farmers needing fewer inputs.

I’d assumed that Terminator Technology was robbing farmers of the right to save seed. It turned out that hybrids did that long ago, and that Terminator never happened.

I’d assumed that no-one wanted GM. Actually what happened was that Bt cotton was pirated into India and roundup ready soya into Brazil because farmers were so eager to use them.

I’d assumed that GM was dangerous. It turned out that it was safer and more precise than conventional breeding using mutagenesis for example; GM just moves a couple of genes, whereas conventional breeding mucks about with the entire genome in a trial and error way."

What's worse, is not so much the myths themselves but the unwanted consequence of perpetuating those myths:

"Before [Norman] Borlaug died in 2009 he spent many years campaigning against those who for political and ideological reasons oppose modern innovation in agriculture. To quote: “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”

And, thanks to supposedly environmental campaigns spread from affluent countries, we are perilously close to this position now. Biotechnology has not been stopped, but it has been made prohibitively expensive to all but the very biggest corporations.
...
There is a depressing irony here that the anti-biotech campaigners complain about GM crops only being marketed by big corporations when this is a situation they have done more than anyone to help bring about."

There's a lot in there dispelling some of the myths about the benefits of organic food too but, being a geneticist, I'm more interested in the Genetic Modification angle. I've already given some of my own views on (Standing up for Genetic Modification) so I won't repeat them here. I was not quite aware, however, just how much the anti-GM movement had stood in the way of progress, including the Golden Rice project that I mentioned in my previous post:

"The second example comes from China, where Greenpeace managed to trigger a national media panic by claiming that two dozen children had been used as human guinea pigs in a trial of GM golden rice. They gave no consideration to the fact that this rice is healthier, and could save thousands of children from vitamin A deficiency-related blindness and death each year.

What happened was that the three Chinese scientists named in the Greenpeace press release were publicly hounded and have since lost their jobs, and in an autocratic country like China they are at serious personal risk. Internationally because of over-regulation golden rice has already been on the shelf for over a decade, and thanks to the activities of groups like Greenpeace it may never become available to vitamin-deficient poor people.

This to my mind is immoral and inhumane, depriving the needy of something that would help them and their children because of the aesthetic preferences of rich people far away who are in no danger from Vitamin A shortage. Greenpeace is a $100-million a year multinational, and as such it has moral responsibilities just like any other large company.

The fact that golden rice was developed in the public sector and for public benefit cuts no ice with the antis. Take Rothamsted Research, whose director Maurice Moloney is speaking tomorrow. Last year Rothamsted began a trial of an aphid-resistant GM wheat which would need no pesticides to combat this serious pest.

Because it is GM the antis were determined to destroy it. They failed because of the courage of Professor John Pickett and his team, who took to YouTube and the media to tell the important story of why their research mattered and why it should not be trashed. They gathered thousands of signatures on a petition when the antis could only manage a couple of hundred, and the attempted destruction was a damp squib."

He also draws attention to another case that, having lived in Ireland for six years, was of particular interest to me:

"One final example is the sad story of the GM blight-resistant potato. This was being developed by both the Sainsbury Lab and Teagasc, a publicly-funded institute in Ireland – but the Irish Green Party, whose leader often attends this very conference, was so opposed that they even took out a court case against it.

This is despite the fact that the blight-resistant potato would save farmers from doing 15 fungicide sprays per season, that pollen transfer is not an issue because potatoes are clonally propagated and that the offending gene came from a wild relative of the potato.

There would have been a nice historical resonance to having a blight-resistant potato developed in Ireland, given the million or more who died due to the potato famine in the mid 19th century. It would have been a wonderful thing for Ireland to be the country that defeated blight. But thanks to the Irish Green Party, this is not to be."

There's a lot more in the post and I think that the lecture itself has more still, so I encourage you to go and read and/or listen to the post on Mark's website if you are even slightly convinced that blanket opposition to GM is a good thing. (The Science Museum has a fairly balanced intro to some of the pros and cons here. It is important to stress that GM is not always good nor is it the only solution to food security but it is a vital weapon in our arsenal against the duel threat of climate change and global over-population.)

The end is pretty hard-hitting too:

"So I challenge all of you today to question your beliefs in this area and to see whether they stand up to rational examination. Always ask for evidence, as the campaigning group Sense About Science advises, and make sure you go beyond the self-referential reports of campaigning NGOs.

But most important of all, farmers should be free to choose what kind of technologies they want to adopt. If you think the old ways are the best, that’s fine. You have that right.

What you don’t have the right to do is to stand in the way of others who hope and strive for ways of doing things differently, and hopefully better. Farmers who understand the pressures of a growing population and a warming world. Who understand that yields per hectare are the most important environmental metric. And who understand that technology never stops developing, and that even the fridge and the humble potato were new and scary once.

So my message to the anti-GM lobby, from the ranks of the British aristocrats and celebrity chefs to the US foodies to the peasant groups of India is this. You are entitled to your views. But you must know by now that they are not supported by science. We are coming to a crunch point, and for the sake of both people and the planet, now is the time for you to get out of the way and let the rest of us get on with feeding the world sustainably."

I think the message here goes well beyond the GM debate too. There are a lot of worthy causes to campaign for but it is always important to periodically re-visit and re-evaluate the evidence for and against any given position. (It is very rare for something to be all-good or all-bad.) Most important of all, one should always be willing and able to admit that one was wrong, as Mark Lynas has done.

h/t: Simon Singh. [Golden Rice Picture taken from the Genetic Literacy Project. (Although based on a Google search, the anti-GM lobby have all the good pictures!)]

Standing up for Genetic Modification

It's my 300th blog post and so I wanted to try and post about something that captured the essence of the blog, hence the delay! What could be better than to combine food, science and The Cabbages of Doom?

Actually, The Cabbages of Doom is a bit of a red herring for this post. Just in case there is any confusion, The Cabbages of Doom is not a negative reference about Genetically Modified (GM) foods. (It's a surreal science fiction story about some marauding cabbages from another direction invading Swansea. And only 99p! Review here.)

In fact, I could not be much further away from an anti-GM position. For me, the success of the anti-GM lobby in the UK and across Europe in the late nineties represents one of the biggest scientific, political and media disasters of the modern age. A well-organised and probably well-intentioned but horribly misinformed group of scaremongers managed to hijack the public debate over use of one of the most promising technologies ever to be developed in the history of mankind.

Let's make one thing clear from the outset: there is nothing inherently unnatural about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). For a start, many GMO just involve targeted mutations within a strain or introduction of genetic variants from related species. These could potentially be achieved by conventional breeding and artificial selection at much greater expense of time and money (and death). The more advanced GMO involve taking DNA from one organism and inserting it in another. Even these GMO are not really unnatural, even if the techniques used to create them are: although it is rare in multicellular plants and animals, "Horizontal Transfer" of genetic material between organisms - including eukaryotes - does occur in nature. (See Keeling & Palmer (2008) Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics 9:605-18 for some examples and discussion.)

It is true that the level of modification desired is unlikely to be achieved by natural mechanisms within the lifetimes of the scientists involved. This, though, is one of the key benefits of GM: it greatly speeds up our ability to generate and evaluate possible genetic solutions to environmental problems. We don't need to wait around just trying to get lucky.

Furthermore, far from being inherently dangerous, many GMO are probably safer to the environment than non-GM alternatives. Why? GM is far more precise and targeted than "traditional" methods of creating mutants for screening, which involve chemicals or radiation and produce something much less predictable. The more we understand the nature of the modification, the easier it is to both predict possible risks and also detect or mitigate them. You only have to look at the problems of "invasive species" to realise that entirely "natural" organisms in the wrong place can be an environmental calamity. By eliminating the ability to customise and refine appropriate native organisms through GM, inappropriate introduced species might be used instead. (Often it is not clear what the problems might be until they are released.) The other reason is that, done right, a GMO can permit reductions in uses of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.

Food safety is more of a concern but the solution here is not a blanket ban nor even a blanket hysteria, it is adequate food testing and common sense. If a gene has simply been removed from an organism or repressed, as in the "Flavr Savr" tomato, it is no more dangerous than a new hybrid from natural breeding - DNA is digested when we eat food, so if the product itself is not toxic, there is no obvious risk. If, on the other hand, the GMO is producing something like Bt toxin, one obviously needs to be more careful. Even here, though, it is not obviously the case that using chemicals, or even "organic" alternatives (all GMO are organic!) like spraying Bt strains of bacteria, would be any safer. Preferably, all new foods would undergo appropriate toxicity and allergy testing, whether they were the product of conventional breeding or GM. If there is a genuine problem, clearly that specific GM food should be withdrawn, just as one would do with anything containing, or grown with, new bacteria or chemicals.

So, what went wrong? One of the big problems was the old chestnut of "balanced reporting" in the media. All too often, this seems to equate to equal air time for both sides, no matter how uneven the evidence supporting the two sides was. A calm and cautious (and often already pretty balanced) scientist is paired up with a volatile and definitely one-sided activist. Clearly, this is going to end up biased towards the activist even if their position is weaker and founded on misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the science. Worse, the journalists chairing the whole thing often fail to interject when one side is just plain wrong about their facts.

The second problem was education. I don't think it would be such a big problem today because DNA and genomics is in the news so much more but, at the time, a scary proportion of the British public did not think that a non-GM tomato had any DNA in it, for example. (At Nottingham, we had a public debate on the issue and a someone had to be removed because they just kept shouting "I don't want to eat DNA!" and would not stop to have it explained that he was eating DNA in all his regular food.)

The final nail was economics. The anti-GM campaign was good enough at scaremongering that public confidence was weakened, despite (inadequate?) attempts by the scientific community to set the record straight. Supermarkets perceived that they would lose enough custom to warrant pulling the plug and so they did. GM has been largely vilified in the public domain ever since, although I think the EU has now relaxed its zero-tolerance stance. After all, if a supermarket is advertising itself as "GM free" as a good thing, GM must be bad. Right? (Obviously, the consumer desires of someone like me, who would rather eat the cheaper, tastier, less wasteful GM tomatoes, are not so important.)

GMO are not universally good and I am sure there have been situations where big corporations have used GM just to make more money or to increase herbicide resistance and thus use more herbicide, which is bad for the environment. Like any technology, the applications need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

That said, there are some clear situations where GMO can be a force for good, such as the Golden Rice Project, which seeks to use "biofortified rice as a contribution to the alleviation of life-threatening micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries". Drought- and salt-tolerance maize and other such crops could also be important in our changing world.

The sad irony is that, by resisting the development of government-funded GM crops in academic institutions, the anti-GM lobby have actually driven it all into the hands of large corporations that can get round legislation by doing tests overseas and are far more likely to create the kind of GMO that we don't actually want. (Or, even more scary, unregulated amateur biohackers.)

Whether you think it's man-made or not (it is), Climate Change is a big problem and the more we ignore it, the worse it's going to get. This is a problem so big that we need to throw every weapon in our arsenal at tackling it head-on, and that includes taking a chance here and there. There is a reason that food security is one of the major focuses of UK science funding. We have to feed a growing population on dwindling resources. It's not rocket science. (And I haven't even mentioned biofuels.) Genetically modified organisms represent one of the best - possibly the only - chance we have, short of a massive reduction in the global population. (Population crashes and extinction are natural responses to Climate Change - let's make no mistake here, "natural" is not always good.) It's time to let the genie back out of the bottle and let it be a force for good.

The badgers are safe (for now)!

Happily, following the House of Commons debate, the BBC today have reported that MPs reject government plans for pilot badger cull.

In a non-binding vote, MPs rejected the policy by 147 votes to 28, calling instead for vaccination, improved testing and bio security.

The vote is non-binding and the Environment Secretary remains committed to the mindless badger cull. Hopefully, now that MPs have been added to both scientists and the public as the people the government have to flagrantly ignore to go ahead with the plan, something will actually happen.

As revealed in another BBC piece (Analysis: The battle over brock):

Ministers say cattle vaccination is not currently an option due to EU regulations. The main problem is that a test developed by UK scientists to distinguish between vaccinated and infected cows has not been approved.

I guess this makes the EU is the next place to put the pressure - New Zealand has had a vaccination program since 2004:

Cattle can be vaccinated and their products consumed locally using a test that can tell between TB infection and vaccination, although the products cannot be exported to either the EU or the US, according to officials.
...
Field trials on cattle TB vaccines are banned in the UK, but scientists have been collaborating with countries where vaccination programmes are ongoing, including the US, Argentina, Ethiopia, Mexico and New Zealand.

It's not over yet but at least the badgers should be safe for the winter.

[Photo credit: Tim Matthews]

Cull bad government policy, not badgers

As reported on the Badger Trust Facebook page:

"It is confirmed that there will be a full (6hr) House of Commons debate next Thursday 25th October."

It will be interesting to see if they pay attention to the science or just shout at each other, like most House of Commons debates I've seen clips of. The recent letter by top scientists has obviously made some impact but we need to keep badgering them. I suggest emailing your MP.

We need to keep badgering the government about their mindless disregard for science

As it's Biology Week, I was intending to only blog about biology matters this week. I did not, however, envisage starting things off with a post about such a flagrant disregard for biology in the form of the UK government's planned badger cull.

As reported in the BBC, this "mindless" cull currently set to go ahead despite both a massive e-petition (of which I proud to be a signatory) and, now, a letter to the observer signed by 31 top scientists:

"Bovine tuberculosis is a serious problem for UK farmers, deserving the highest standard of evidence-based management. The government's TB-control policy for England includes licensing farmers to cull badgers. As scientists with expertise in managing wildlife and wildlife diseases, we believe the complexities of TB transmission mean that licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it.
...
We recognise the importance of eradicating bovine TB and agree that this will require tackling the disease in badgers. Unfortunately, culling badgers as planned is very unlikely to contribute to TB eradication. We therefore urge the government to reconsider its strategy."

These are not new revelations to the government and it is saddening to see them ignore both a large number of the population but, more importantly, such a large number of top scientists. This is not just about not killing badgers, although that is obviously important. This about a government going ahead with an inadvisable course of action that will quite probably make the situation worse just because of pressure from the National Farmer's Union.

Most tellingly, one of signatories was Lord Krebs, the designer of the original badger cull experiment, who was previously quoted by the BBC as saying:

"I have to say I've not found any scientists who are experts in population biology or the distribution of infectious disease in wildlife who think that culling is a good idea. People seem to have cherry picked certain results to try and get the argument they want."

Another was Professor John Bourne, who was in charge of analysing the data as Chairman of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, and was equally damning with his conclusions:

"As far as badger culling is concerned it has nothing to offer in terms of controlling TB in cattle, and could indeed make the situation worse."

Somewhat ironically, Defra Minister David Heath was quoted as saying:

"No-one wants to kill badgers but the science is clear that we will not get on top of this disease without tackling it in both wildlife and cattle."

The scientists are clear of "the importance of eradicating bovine TB and agree that this will require tackling the disease in badgers" but culling is not the way to do it. Even assuming that it is true that "no-one wants to kill badgers", you can't just pick and choose the things that "science is clear" about that you like (or are popular with your friends) and ignore the bits you don't. As the effects of climate change continue to be felt, we need a government that has the courage to listen to the science, whoever that might upset.

[Photo credit: Tim Matthews]

We have a bit of situation

This genius cartoon is doing the rounds on Facebook thanks to I f**king love science. It's originally from XKCD. Despite the clear parallels with the recent Paul Broun nonsense, it's actually a pretty old one.

The problem is, the Universe not caring what we believe is not always a good thing. Take Mitt Romney's poor grasp of climate change, for example. We're in big trouble whether Romney thinks that we (or, more precisely, America) should do anything about it, or not.

The USA is one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth and yet, despite this, some of its leading politicians are not only science illiterate but they seem to wear that illiteracy with pride, like some kind of badge of honour. That someone like Paul Broun can end up on the USA's House Science Committee (along with fellow Republican, Todd Akin) would be funny if it wasn't so downright disturbing.

I don't know what scares me more: the possibility of another Republican US President or the fact that it's even a real possibility that someone like Mitt Romney could end up wielding that much power. If US politicians do not wake up about Climate Change - and debate the issue at least - I fear that we are going to have a lot more than "a bit of situation".