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24 Nov, 11 tweets, 2 min read
@heleninsomerset I've read the article, and it's the same old guff and false argument i.e. sophistry about GM.
First the article starts of by falsely claiming that GMO's are safe. All GMOs are different and there is no general rule that can be used to generalize them. Natural organisms range from staple foodstuffs, to the most deadly and poisonous of organisms. GMOs can be more varied.
Therefore, there is nothing general you can say about the safety of an organism based on it being genetically modified.
Often the dangers of natural organisms aren't discovered for a very long time after they have become staple foodstuffs. The example I use to illustrate this is the Grapefruit.
Grapefruit has been grown as a fruit for eating since the 19th Century. It is a widely eaten citrus fruit on sale in every supermarket everywhere.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit
Yet quite by accident it was discovered in 1989, that Grapefruit, or some it's compounds had dangerous interactions with prescription medication.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefrui…
My point about Grapefruit is if the side effects of natural cross breeds are not discovered for over a 150 years of being eaten, means health effects of GMOs might take some time before they are discovered.
As I say, each GMO is unique. It is absurd to suggest that because no health effects of the few GMOs on sale now have not been discovered, that problems won't arise.
GMOs can have the same range of properties as natural organisms, or far more. Natural organisms can be some of the most toxic things known to humankind, or the deadliest diseases.
The arguments presented in this article are self-evidently false. Potentially huge profits can be made for large companies, so they want the green light to go ahead.
I cannot overstate the danger of a general green light, because GMOs could have a massive range of characteristics, and each needs to be evaluated separately. But that would be an obstacle to the profit agenda.

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Stephen Barlow Profile picture
24 Nov
1) @GeorgeMonbiot is entirely correct about humans having a weakness "that makes us highly susceptible to charlatans". I have spent a life time, 50 years of my life, thinking about this very deeply and I have a fully worked out explanation consistent with the evidence.
2) Here I will lay out this explanation in this tweet thread. It's obviously in abbreviated form and I can't provide all the supporting evidence here because of the format.
3) Let me first outline a basic thinking tool I've developed for thinking about this. I imagine the whole of history (not just written events), but everything that's happened, on a timeline like that of a video, which you can rewind, replay etc.
Read 40 tweets
Stephen Barlow Profile picture
18 Nov
1) This isn't even greenwash, it is green tokenism. As @GretaThunberg points out, we have only about 8 or so years of our total carbon budget left to avoid more than 1.5C of warming.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
2) What the remaining carbon budget means is the total carbon we have left to emit before that level of warming becomes locked into the system. The time remaining means at the current rate of emissions, how many years left before all this budget is used up.
3) It doesn't mean that at the end of that time period we have to start reducing our emissions. It means at the end of that period we couldn't burn any more fossil fuels at all, and would have to produce zero emissions, not net zero.
Read 23 tweets
Stephen Barlow Profile picture
4 Nov
1) Regardless of the outcome of the US elections, we need to have a hard deep think about what democracy means. We have developed a form of democracy, which allows rich liars to get power by force of lies and creating fear and hatred.
2) This is not about one side or one ideology winning power. In fact I argue that both political parties and ideologies are the problem not the solution. In fact the very term "winning power" sums up the whole problem. Representing the public interest should not be about power.
3) Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. No person is capable of wielding such power, without it corrupting them.
Read 32 tweets
Stephen Barlow Profile picture
14 Oct
A common misconception amongst those with no background at all in science, is that they can understand science with common sense reasoning alone, and without understanding anything about science. This is profoundly mistaken as science does not operate on common sense.
It's not me saying this. This is what Professor Lewis Wolpert, the biologist explained in 1992 - "SCIENTIFIC laws run contrary to common sense."

Read the article.
independent.co.uk/life-style/boo…
Our modern societies are in a complete mess, with us facing an existential threat to our civilization from the climate and ecological crisis, and the irrational response of our governments, to the COVID-19 pandemic. Caused by non-scientist politicians pontificating about science.
Read 16 tweets
Stephen Barlow Profile picture
13 Oct
The important point people are missing about this story is that it is not just about Dominic Cummings being let off the back council tax he owed. It is that Cummings appears to have misled the public in his Downing Street press conference.
In Cummings' Downing Street press conference, he said this about where he stayed. '“The point about it was not that it was some nice place to be. If you have been there, you would see that it's sort of concrete blocks,” he said.'
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
Dominic Cummings' clearly tried to imply that he stayed in some sort of run down outbuilding that was not "a nice place to be", rather than it being his purpose built holiday cottage.
Read 9 tweets
Stephen Barlow Profile picture
13 Oct
Please read and retweet @joshual951 important tweet thread.
UK peatlands contain far more carbon that all the rest of the vegetation in the UK put together. An old JNCC reference used to say 100x more. Emissions from damaged peatlands could cancel out all tree planting.
bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
You see, when wet, with an active peat forming surface of Sphagnum peat bogs store carbon, potentially forever. However, when peat bogs dry out they start to release carbon and contain absolutely massive amounts of carbon far bigger than that all the rest of vegetation.
Read 5 tweets

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