# Emergency! Pathogen New to Science Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops???



## Cozyacres (Jul 16, 2009)

Came across this article. Don't know what to make of it. Just wondering what anyone else thinks about it. 
Emergency! Pathogen New to Science Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops?


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## Lazy J (Jul 18, 2008)

Well Dr. Huber's letter is sure making the rounds and causing many discussions.

Unfortunately, as a scientist I am disappointed in Dr Huber's letter. It is poorly written, the science does not support his hypothesis at this time, and it simply fuels the Henny Penny "the Sky is Falling" attitude by many of modern Agriculture's detractors.

Jim


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

This guy has probably been against RR crops since they have been approved. Would be interesting to see what the markets did if all of a sudden RR corn/beans were banned.


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## Blue Duck (Jun 4, 2009)

mlappin said:


> Would be interesting to see what the markets did if all of a sudden RR corn/beans were banned.


The markets would not be near as shocking as the price of seed. If you happened to be lucky enough to find any to buy.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

I wondered about that as well. We paid for this years last year, wonder if the seed company's are legally bound to replace RR with non by who paid first? Or if we'd be SOL? Most likely SOL, seed companys would prolly replace their largest volume customers first and let the little guy get screwed again.


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## rupert0 (May 25, 2011)

Dr. Huber Explains Science Behind New Organism and Threat from Monsanto's Roundup, GMOs to Disease and Infertility

This video explains a lot about how Roundup is depleting the capacity of our crops to get manganese, which is apparently the cause of this new organism. WATCH THIS VIDEO. Dr. Huber is widely respected.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

In his defense, most people didn't know what a prion was before Mad Cow came on the scene. We discover new organisms all the time. He could be right....but then again, he could be overreacting. With Mad Cow we found that we could manage it by not feeding cows other cows....I guess it's a protein harmonic loop. Roundup may promote bugs that eat manganese, but I doubt that's the cause of the maganese deficiency in most of Michigan, yet they seem to be able to grow crops and have animals reproduce. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we don't know what we don't know....Knowledge usually comes only over time and the early prognosticators of either glorious benefits or instant doom are usually wrong. At any rate the organization pushing his views is somewhat biased.

Here are three interesting examples:

Climate Change

Those interested in grabbing political power and attempting to leverage it to control economic decisions have wielded the threat of climate change for more than two decades. Like this last Saturday's apocalypse, though, the worst forecasts from their computer modeling have failed to transpire. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the U.N. - back in 2005 - warned we'd see 50 million climate refugees by 2010:

"Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made-and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers."

In the wake of these kinds of erroneous conjectures as well as the global recession, the climate change juggernaut is now on life support as nations attempt to get their fiscal houses in order. By the time the global economy recovers, the climate change enterprise may be limited to simply continuing the entitlement to those who make a living from conference and research welfare.

Energy Independence

The notion of energy "independence" has never made sense. If applied to any other commodity or product, analysts would instantly discredit the idea that America should completely disengage from world markets. Single suppliers make little business sense.

A combination of geological and technological realities means nations in the Middle East - some of which are U.S. adversaries and support terrorists - control much of the global oil supply. This also means that Western countries, to a certain extent, are vulnerable to the whims of those governments such as the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo.

Even though the concept of total self-sufficiency is unrealistic (and arguably even undesirable), our glorious leaders can still take reasonable steps to insulate our country from these geopolitical events.

In the case of the 1970s oil embargo, Congress established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - a complex of salt domes with capacity to store enough crude to replace U.S. oil imports for 75 days (727 million barrels). What lawmakers didn't do was adopt a long-term, rational energy policy that would develop our own resources and invest in a suite of energy technologies. Even so, we have made substantial improvements in efficiency - reducing by 50% the amount of energy and carbon needed to produce a unit of GDP.

Oil Scarcity

There's a certain conceit to the argument that we'll soon run out of oil.....It implies that we have an accurate idea of the amount of existing and recoverable natural resources.

At the time of the 1973 embargo, U.S. proven oil reserves totaled about 31 billion barrels. Since then we have produced over 100 billion, but proven reserves have only been reduced to 28 billion. Such are the benefits of technology and new discoveries. The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates that potential oil reserves, which include unconventional oil, are about 150 billion barrels. We are not about to run out, although economics and technology limits might constrain how much makes sense to produce.

Given oil's abundance, versatility, and energy density, there's little prospect that the gasoline/diesel engine will become a dinosaur anytime soon. The preferred alternatives to gasoline are electric, natural gas, and biofuel powered vehicles. The problem with electrics is range and cost. The National Academy of Sciences report on battery technology concluded that the cost per KWH, given the state of technology, was about 4 times greater than needed for batteries to be cost competitive. It saw no breakthroughs on the horizon. Biofuels are similarly constrained by technology and cost. Ethanol remains in the market through subsidies and economical cellulosic technology needed for more biofuel is nowhere in sight. Natural gas is a niche transportation fuel for large, centrally fueled buses and trucks.

Pursuing a broad range of transportation technologies is in our long term interests. But for the next few decades, gasoline and diesel will remain the dominant transportation fuels and improvements in engine technologies reinforce that reality. Sometime in the near future a version of the BMW which reportedly gets 57 miles per gallon will be sold here and when I'm in Europe I regularly rent a VW Golf diesel that gets around 50mpg. I also know of at least 30 new 4th generation offshore drilling rigs that are under design and construction. These things cost between $220 MM and $600 MM and they wouldn't be needed if we were running out of oil.......we're just having to go deeper for it, in more difficult places.


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