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Everything posted by jeskill
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Realistic Health Insurance Provided By The Federal Government
jeskill replied to Phi for All's topic in Politics
So are you talking about a national insurance program, run by the federal government, into which everyone must pay? Similar to a universal health care system? There are a lot of examples of different types of universal health care systems around the world. The only one I understand well enough to compare to the US system is the Canadian system, because, well, I'm Canadian. The system you are suggesting sounds pretty similar to the Canadian system, so I'm going to use that as my comparison to ask questions. 1) The Canadian system is organized provincially, but funded federally. That means each province has their own insurance program. I think that this might be a better way of organizing health care. Basically, you have "constitutionally" or "federal" laws regarding what types of health care must be provided, but the bureaucracy is more manageable and it seems easier to make improvements as needed at the state-level than at the federal level. For example, Ontario has made some improvements in efficiency over the last few years (without increasing costs) by changing up some procedures. But it also seems to me that the US federal government is far stronger than the state governments. Would the governments be willing to negotiate such a method of organization? What about the states? What about the constituents? Would you prefer a federally-organized or a state-organized national health insurance plan? 2) With a national insurance program, everyone pays in and everyone gets. How would constituents pay? Americans don't seem to like taxes much. Would they prefer to continue to pay a monthly insurance fee? What about people who can't afford the fee? 3) Would Americans want a tiered system, in which people could pay extra for private rooms, jumping the line, etc? -
So true! I almost feel like the anti-science rhetoric is part of a positive feedback cycle right now. Reduction in science education (or increase in anti-science sentiments in the general public) --> anti-science sentiments in politicians --> anti-science policy --> further reduction in science education or increase in anti-science sentiments in the general public --> etc. I have no scientific evidence to back up said positive feedback loop. Call it pessimism + foxnews overload. With all due respect, how can you double check "facts" about evolution when you don't have a solid understanding of what evolution is? This is not meant to be a slight on your intelligence at all -- I'm just saying that your level of understanding of the theory of evolution, based on what you've already posted, suggests that you have not been taught the basics. This severely limits your ability to effectively compare creationism and evolution.
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I would never suggest that people are incapable of learning, or that they would learn faster if left to fend for themselves. Certainly, when you look at scientific knowledge, capacity-building and access to knowledgable teachers are important. With regards to food security however, it is probably true that some areas might do better if food aid were not available simply because the food aid is an economic deterrent to growing their own food and because some regions still have the knowledge and the materials (i.e. local seeds, land, hoes, etc) to grow ecologically-suitable food in their regions. In other areas, that obviously would not work because the indigenous knowledge has been lost. I agree.
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Yes. http://biomed.brown....oevolution.HTML See also co-evolution between (there's strong phylogenetic evidence that these two clades co-evolved) There's so much wrong with that site, I hardly know where to start. Let's take this sentence: The process of inorganic material evolving into simple life forms is not part of evolutionary theory. It has it's own theory, called the theory of abiogenesis. But really, that is not the general definition of evolution -- from a simple grammatical perspective, you can't use the word "evolve" to define evolution. The general definition of evolution is (as I learned it) "the change in allele frequencies in a population over generational time". In order to understand evolution, you need to understand basic genetics first and foremost. Then you need to understand the mechanisms that can cause evolution, which include artificial selection (e.g. corn evolved from teosinte because humans selected certain traits to breed over time), natural selection, sex selection, and genetic drift. Any definition that does not include these concepts is not a useful definition of evolution. P.S. Another reason the above definition is incorrect, is because it is entirely possible for "simpler" organisms to evolve from more "complex" organism. I'd also like to point out that the website brings in the atrociously bad "Law of Thermodynamics" argument to justify creationism. Er, Apologies for going off topic.
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Reproduction is basically the act of producing a copy of an original. In order to have reproduction at the most basic level, In fact, it's been hypothesized that reproduction started even more simply than that. The RNA World Hypothesis proposes that life began with RNA, which can both store and duplicate genetic information. So to answer your question, "reproduction" didn't instantaneously appear as the complex chain of events that occurs in animals. It started off very simple as the reproduction of RNA and/or DNA and/or protein, plausibly in some primordial soup. Very slowly over billions of years, as organisms became more complex, evolving into single-celled organisms (e.g. bactera, archaea), then simple multi-cellular organisms (e.g. sea sponges), then complex multicellular organisms (e.g. worms and the rest, plants, fungi), reproduction became more complex. Instead of asking the question, "how did reproduction evolve", you might want to consider the question, "How does reproduction allow evolution to occur?" Evolution is the change in certain traits over generations -- over time weeds evolve resistance to herbicides, bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics, etc. Evolution can only occur if there's variation of a certain trait within a population. Variation, in turn, can only occur if the copying process (reproduction) makes mistakes. Edit to say: someone posted this video about abiogenesis which explains some of the theories concerning how early early early life forms may have replicated.
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On that note, I read a book by Robert D. Kaplan: Surrender or Starve. It was about the Ethiopian famine in the '80s. Kaplan contends that the less people died in Eritrea than in Ethiopia during this time because Eritreans had no aid and were dependent on themselves to provide food for themselves. Ethiopians were worse off because they were dependent on the central Ethiopian government -- who was withholding food from certain areas for political reasons -- and food aid. No point in "fertility control" until you understand the underlying reasons for population increases and decreases. It would be interesting to see how much food insecurity actually exacerbated the population increase. As discussed in a different post, the ecological model that has generally been used to describe population growth with respect to agricultural technology suggests that agrarian societies requiring large amounts of manual labor will increase their population size in the face of food insecurity in order to increase the "necessary population", even if the necessary population is greater than the sustainable population for a given technology.
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I take your point about the difficulty of understanding such a complex situation. What do you mean? Can you elaborate? I think this was the main take-home concept I got from this essay. This whole concept of food aid brings up a general conundrum. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that constant food aid is a factor that exacerbates food insecurity by breaking down local food economies (it's cheaper and easier to take the food aid than grow your own food). In the midst of a famine, food aid probably does save lives in the short-term. But if people are living in a perpetual state of food insecurity and food aid is constantly being given out, how does an aid organization help communities improve their food self sufficiency by increasing the capacity of local farmers? It seems economic factors would make it very difficult to do so.
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New problems surface with Canadian Oil Sands
jeskill replied to SheltMankleman's topic in Climate Science
But eventually it will run out. It makes no sense to subsidize and put resources into a product that has such negative effects on our health and the environment when we can just as easily be putting our money into the development and implementation of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies. This pipeline is utter stupidity. -
Another interesting article on how food aid from the World Food Program (UN)has exacerbated famine in Somalia:
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Effects Of Increasing Human Population On the Earth System.
jeskill replied to StringJunky's topic in Earth Science
Note that you said a "high consumption human population" cannot be sustained. I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. While debating it to the 2nd decimal is probably unimportant, recognizing that human population growth is logistic as opposed to exponential is important. If human population growth were indeed exponential, I'd be right there beside you focusing on population growth as opposed to measures that will improve sustainability. The reason I doubt that population growth is the main causative factor of, say, carbon dioxide emissions, is because data suggests there is no direct relationship between population growth and carbon dioxide emissions.. If ETs determined that population growth was the causative factor of CO2 emissions, then they probably wouldn't be good scientists. -
Ecological Distribution Application
jeskill replied to lukeshillabeer's topic in Ecology and the Environment
So you want to make a map showing which species are found in which countries? I've not heard of an app like that. I normally use ArcGIS to make maps -- that could be done fairly quickly on ArcGIS if you had all the data in spreadsheet form with the species in the columns and the countries in the rows. However, that does require some understanding of GIS. It also requires that your school actually has ArcGIS on their computers. -
I was under the impression that corn is overproduced in North America -- and that this is the main reason we use HFCS instead of other forms of sugar, are growing corn for ethanol, use corn as feed for cows, salmon, etc. IMO, our dependence on corn for a lot of things unrelated to healthy food is limiting our ability to eat healthy and grow food sustainably. ** Edit to respond to your point that eliminating subsidies would not necessarily mean that extra corn would be available as food ... I would hope that it's not available as food. I would hope that the land is used to grow other crops that are more sustainable and healthy. So I guess my question is, who (on this thread, anyways) would be against the idea that we need to cut out corn subsidies and mandates for corn usage? What do you mean by "Big business welfare"? Does this relate to food business or is it just a general term?
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OK. So can we say that the people of this thread agree that corn ethanol subsidies and mandated usages should be discarded?
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There's a lot of talk about the 2012 Farm Bill these days. I'd personally love to see a change in the way the US subsidizes agricultural production: - no subsidies for farms making over 250,000/year - no subsidies for corn - incentives for farmers who are growing sustainably and selling locally - more support for farmers markets - maintain the farmer's insurance program The majority of these are a pipe-dream at this point in time (esp. corn), but even policy that has the effect of slowing moving in these directions would be good.
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Is alcohol good for society? I think that depends on water quality... Seriously, I think that a culture of prohibition has far negative effects than a culture of moderate imbibation (is that even a word? Oh well.) Prohibition == more incarceration, which is, IMO, not a good use of public funds. Better to have a culture that normalizes moderate consumption. And as for those muslim countries ... Wikileaks shows Saudi wild party with Alcohol, drugs, sex and prostitutes Turkish raki is yummy and good with meze. Many Iranians seem to drink.
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Effects Of Increasing Human Population On the Earth System.
jeskill replied to StringJunky's topic in Earth Science
Actually, no. The reason that we cannot use simple ecological models to understand how humans interact with ecological systems is NOT because of religion. There are a number of other, logical, materialistic reasons why this is so. For one, most ecological models are actually too simplistic to accurately model other animal-plant or animal-animal interactions, let alone human interactions. As stated before, this is because most models can't handle the complexity that arises from non-linear dynamics. But also, human systems have added layers of complexity: we have language, complex social structures, and we utilize tools far beyond the ability of other animals. These three factors make modeling human population growth and human-organism or human-abiotic environment interactions much more complex. An example of this is actually how human populations respond to food shortages and food surpluses. First, some definitions. "Necessary population" is the number of individuals needed to maintain a given population using a given technology. "Sustainable population" is the number of individuals a given population using a given technology can sustain. This question pre-supposes that population growth is a main driver of ecological change. What if the ET scientists found evidence that technology is a main driver of ecological change, and a main driver of population growth? -
As the recently deceased Jack Layton said, "My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world." Athena: I'm going to be honest. I'm not really sure what you are arguing right now. Do you believe that forcing people in developing countries to limit their number of children will improve humanity's outlook within the next 50 years? Do you believe that we also need to work to improve our efficiency in using renewable and non-renewable materials such as phosphorus, water, etc.? Do you think that the future is hopeless? I agree that the future looks bleak. I think that a lot of people are probably going to needlessly die over the next century. But I think this because it's already happening, and it already has happened. I just disagree with the notion that the people in the developed world should sit back and force people in the developing world to "limit their population" when, let's face it, most of the environmental damage is cause by people and policies in developed countries. It's also an inefficient and ineffective way of dealing with the human tragedy of mass deaths. For example, this researcher writes about how reducing population sizes will not stop famines. From the Al Jazeera article linked to above: Seed Magazine did an interesting overview of the population vs. consumption debate that is fairly nuanced. Jonathan Foley argued, I agree that technology will not solve all our problems. However, technology, along with behavioural and policy changes, have the potential to have a stronger impact on environmental sustainability than simply policies that limit population size. This is partially because there are so many possible changes we can make from a technological standpoint (technology that's 'low-tech' probably has a greater probability of improving sustainability in developing countries). See also an article about retrofitting cities. I also think that instead of tackling overpopulation, a more effective tactic is to tackle poverty, economic sustainability and social inequity. As Donella Meadows wrote,
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Just FYI, there are already a bunch of threads that are ongoing about human populations. Also, see the last comment on this post; birth rates are declining, therefore human population growth is not not exponential.. This trend can also be shown here.
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It's a bit more complicated than that. Farmers often don't have a choice in what fertilizers they can use. They are beholden to the credit unions (at least in Canada and the US, not sure if you're NAmerican), and those credit unions tend to put clauses in their contracts that force the farmers into using certain techniques, such as synthetic fertilizers. Farmers markets are great. Good food, and good for the local economy. Apparently urine is a good source of phosphorus, and it's fairly sterile. If religion is playing a role in maintaining a high Mexican birthrate, then they're doing a horrible job. Birth rates have definitely been declining in Mexico for at least the past 10 years.. You can see the same pattern in pretty much all parts of the world.
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re: phosphorus I agree that this is a huge problem. We are indeed running out of phosphate rock to mine. But to bring it around to the original question .... how do you think we should best handle this issue? As you stated, we might have 50-some odd years left. As linked to previously, demographic models suggest that 50 years is simply not enough time to ethically (i.e. via reduced fecundity) bring the global population down to a density that would allow us to continue to sustainably harvest phosphate rock. There are alternatives to phosphate fertilizers right now, and while we might not be able to completely stop using phosphate fertilizers within the next 30 years, we can certainly scale back our usage: From the Guardian: From IFOAM: I don't disagree that yields will decline in North America as Industrial Ag becomes more and more expensive. But we over-produce crops that we really shouldn't be eating a huge amount of, like corn (actually, it's processed form is the danger -- high-fructose corn syrup). In small pockets of NAmerica, a new generation of farmers are slowly cropping up who are focused on producing fruits, vegetables, milk, cheese and meat in a local, sustainable manner. They use techniques that by and large take advantage of ecological processes, require less fertilizers and as stated before, grow polycultures, which can be far more productive per acre than monocultures. Here's the deal: Greg has been arguing with many people on the same subject. He has written a number of statements that are simply false (e.g. evolution doesn't take into consideration genetic drift; L-V equations are a "fact"). He rarely, if ever, links to supporting arguments. So although the post wasn't necessarily about the main topic of the OP, I was, actually, stating a fact. Specifically, when I specifically asked him to back up his argument that "people who think population isn't a problem have a religious agenda", he accused me of having a religious agenda. If that's not the definition of an "offensive logical fallacy", then I don't know what is. I agree that we shouldn't get off topic and start hurling insults at each other, but it's been quite frustrating to discuss this topic with someone who seems to be more focused on "winning" than actually discussing concepts. One of the things I like about scienceforums is that it forces me to read something new and think about something in a different way. For example, your point about phosphate is a good one. It's scary when you think about what is likely to be in the next 50 years if we continue business as usual.
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GM canola is cross-pollinating with wild relatives in North Dakota
jeskill replied to jeskill's topic in Science News
To summarize the arguments made in zapato's post: GM crops are good because of; 1) increased production 2) no-till farming 3) decreased pesticide applications 4) less pesticide runoff; potentially less phosphorus run-off 5) production costs for US farmers 6) same as other breeding techniques My first question: Did you check to see if they are comparing GM crops against conventional (i.e. industrial non-GM) farming practices or ecological agricultural practices? Because usually in these publications, they're comparing GM vs. non-GM industrial. In which case, I'd say I'm not a fan of either, for many of the same reasons. I am a proponent of ecological farming, which basically means I think there should be more research and support for agricultural techniques that rely less on capital inputs (i.e. pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, specialized seeds that can't be saved) and more on our knowledge of ecological systems (i.e. autonomous biocontrol, polyculture, specialized compost systems, sustainable slash and burn, conservation of intraspecific diversity to mitigate environmental extremes). This is a value issue for me, but is influenced by overwhelming evidence that industrial agriculture is ecologically damaging many ecosystems in the world. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm against the general concept of genetic modification. Rather, I think that the current form of GM foods (corporate seeds with stringent intellectual rights created for industrial agricultural systems) are not good for the environment or for society. For example, the laws concerning intellectual rights of GM genes unfairly benefit corporations and unfairly penalize small farmers. Due to the paradigm in which they are created, GM foods are also engineered to be grown in an unsustainable manner that requires monoculture cropping and too many capital inputs. Really, this is a bigger issue than "GM" for me, but "GM" is a useful example of how the industrial agricultural system negatively affects small farmers. With respect to the link you provided, GM production as it is right now cannot compete with ecological farming practices. Production: The majority of GM crops are meant to be grown as large-scale monocultures. Large scale monocultures are less productive per acre than small scale polycultures: "In polycultures developed by smallholders, productivity in terms of harvestable products per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with the same level of management." (Altieri 2008) No-till Farming: Perennial grains have the potential to improve soil retention far beyond the ability of no-till annuals Pesticide, Herbicide and Chemical fertilizer applications: A well-managed agroecological system requires little to no chemicals -- the ecological interactions are managed such that herbivores never become "pests". e.g. Landis et al. 2000. Ann. Rev. Entom. 45, 175-201 It should be pointed out that while pesticide use has not increased, neither has it decreased, and herbicide use has definitely increased since the invention of glyphosate-resistant crops. Production Costs: They differ. Industrialized agriculture costs are for capital inputs, while agroecological costs are related to labour inputs. However, when you think about how many small farmers there are in the world (the majority of the developing world is fed by small farmers with less than 1 acre), it's easy to see how this trade-off is not bad. http://monthlyreview.org/2009/07/01/agroecology-small-farms-and-food-sovereignty Impoverished farmers can't afford the pesticides, (heck, US farmers can't either -- hence the subsidies) they can afford to do the labor. Moreover, since large scale monocultures also require less manpower, farm ownership (and hence land ownership) is concentrated to a few producers. This begets problems including less jobs overall, less money going into local economies, and, in places like Brazil, more landless peasants cutting down rainforests. That's my 2 cents. Apologies -- I don't really understand the first two sentences. Could you rephrase? I think the main problem is that companies such asMonsanto have gone to great lengths sue farmers whose fields have been accidentally contaminated with GM seeds. At the same time, the farmers incur a loss (increased herbicide cost or manual labor) because companies such as Monsanto have not been able to 'control' their product -- the seed does and will escape. The lack of fairness in the system is what makes the costs of the problem such an issue. Farmers have lost their livelihoods because of accidental contamination. I'm sure some people think it is worse. I'm not one of them. I don't have a problem with the technology per se, just how it's currently used. Given the amount of private money, time and energy that goes into genetic engineering vis-a-vis hybridization, I do wonder if it's possible to have a socially just version of GM food. -
GM canola is cross-pollinating with wild relatives in North Dakota
jeskill replied to jeskill's topic in Science News
Right. But many weeds are edible. The problem with it is that farmers need to manage their systems and right now, they use large-scale equipment (i.e. harvesters, tractors) to manage their large-scale systems. Contamination due to unwanted plants, be them edible or not, will decrease the price they get. Manual weeding is time-consuming and expensive, especially when you have 1000 acres of corn you need to harvest. As edible as A. palmeri is, it doesn't have a big following right now and it doesn't allow farmers to use their equipment in the fields. I agree. I will respond to zapatos when I have a bit more time. -
GM canola is cross-pollinating with wild relatives in North Dakota
jeskill replied to jeskill's topic in Science News
Small price to pay for what? Herbicide-resistant genes haven't been the panacea they were made out to be. The ridiculously large amount of glyphosate we've been using has actually led to the evolution of at least 21 herbicide-resistant weeds. This means that even after farmers have bought the expensive GM seeds and the glyphosate, they often have to spend even more money on more toxic herbicides, or they have to hire people to manually remove the weeds. The first weed on this list (linked to above as well), Amaranthus palmeri, has such thick stems, it can destroy tractors and can only be removed manually (e.g. with a machete). All of this increases the cost to the farmer. And then there's the issue of'gene police'., who have been known on more than one occasion to sue farmers for "illegally growing Monsanto seeds" on their farmland. It doesn't much matter if said farmer didn't want the seeds in there in the first place. I could go on... I think the extra weeds is just the tip of an iceberg-sized block of socio-economic and environmental problems associated with GM seeds. I'm hoping it will be one of the last straws to break the camel's back. -
I apologize -- in the flurry of all the mini-debates in this thread, I haven't actually seen the evidence to support your case that the famine in Somalia was primarily caused by drought, rather than being exacerbated by drought. Please post it again so that I can read it. But really, why are you bothering to debate people here if you're not going to read the evidence provided?