Thought For the Day!

Dr. Bruce Ames (a biochemistry professor at the University of California) pointed out in 1987 that we ingest in our diet about 1.5 grams per day of {natural} pesticides. Those foods contain 10,000 times more, by weight, of {natural} pesticides than of man-made pesticide residues.

More than 90% of the pesticides in plants are produced {naturally} by the plants, which help protect them from insects, mites, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi. Those natural pesticides may make up 5% to 10% of a plant's dry weight, and nearly half of them that were tested on experimental animals were carcinogenic. Americans should therefore feel unconcerned about the harmless, infinitesimal traces of synthetic chemicals to which they may be exposed.

The highly publicized traces of synthetic pesticides on fruits and vegetables worried some people so much that they began to favor "organically produced'' foods, thinking that they would not contain any pesticides. Most people are not aware that organic gardeners can legally use a great many pesticides, so long as they are not man-made.

They can use nicotine sulfate, rotenone, and pyrethrum (derived from plants), or any poisons that occur naturally, such as lime, sulfur, borax, cyanide, arsenic, and fluorine.

'GMO Free USA' Attacks World-Famous Biochemist Bruce Ames

By Alex Berezow — September 21, 2018  

 

Microbiologists and toxicologists are quite familiar with the Ames test. It is literally textbook science that is taught to students all over the world.
 

The Ames test is brilliant in its simplicity. It was designed to assess how mutagenic (and therefore, potentially carcinogenic) a chemical might be. The test uses a bacterial strain that was purposefully mutated so that it is unable to grow on Petri plates that lack a particular nutrient. Every once in a while, bacteria spontaneously mutate back (so called "revertants") and are able to grow again. This is the natural background rate of mutation.


In the Ames test, this natural background rate of mutation is compared to what happens in the presence of a specific chemical. If the chemical is a mutagen, it will increase the rate of mutation; if it is not, the mutation rate will not change. And it's easy to see if a chemical is a mutagen: More bacteria will grow.
(See figure. Credit: Wikipedia/Histidine)

As mentioned above, this test is so well-known, that it is taught to students and employed in laboratories all over the world. The inventor, biochemist Bruce Ames -- who was once an advisor to ACSH -- is a world-famous and award-winning scientist who helped lay the groundwork for modern carcinogenicity studies. As a result, he is one of the most cited scientists in the world. He never won the Nobel Prize, but he probably should have.

GMO Free USA Attacks Bruce Ames

None of that matters to the anti-GMO crowd, however. A man who is internationally lauded for his contributions to science is entirely written off. "We aren't impressed by industry apologists," GMO Free USA said.

Industry apologist? What did Dr. Ames do to deserve that smear? Nothing. He believes that people shouldn't worry about trace chemicals in their food or the environment. He once wrote a paper underscoring this: 99.99% of the pesticides we eat are made by the plants themselves.
For the crime of using evidence-based science to tell people to calm down, he's been painted as a villain by the anti-GMO movement.

Do Not Debate the Deliberately Ignorant. Defeat Them

It's one thing to debate a person who doesn't know any better. At least in theory, they can be convinced once they are shown the error in their thinking. But it's an entirely different matter debating a person who is deliberately and maliciously ignorant.

How do you debate somebody who insists against all evidence that 2 + 2 = 17, vaccines cause autism, and GMOs cause cancer?

I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that it is simply not possible. Some people are entirely immune to facts and knowledge. They cannot be reasoned with. So, the solution is not better science communication or more education funding, as is commonly asserted.

No, the solution is just to defeat them. Defeat them politically, and defeat them financially. In the arena of ideas, we must ensure that anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, and other anti-science activists are resoundingly humiliated and their lies tossed into the dustbin of history.

Bruce Ames on Cancer Causing Chemicals

Observations From the Back Row

The Dose Makes The Poison

Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction

Bruce N. Ames, Lois Swirsky Gold

Academia Nuts: The Left's Bias Against Conservatives Is Real - Education: A new study finds leftist bias all too real in academic hiring. Campus radicals not only run colleges but admit they discriminate against conservatives. So much for "tolerance." Why should voters foot the bill for this? Looking at just one branch of social science, researchers at Tilburg University in the Netherlands found that almost a third of social psychologists — nearly all of whom are leftists — admitted in a survey they'd discriminate against conservatives in hiring decisions and grant proposals….. This isn't exactly earth-shaking news, of course. Everyone knows leftists control universities with no accountability. It does raise questions, however, because higher education has grown bloated and the public is picking up an ever more onerous tab.

Parasite responsible for shrimp sex-change problem, says scientists - A gender-bending parasite has been discovered which is believed to be responsible for turning male shrimps and other crustaceans into females.....

My Take - As you read this you will see that they just can't help but blame modern chemistry in some form.

Balkan drought highlights years of farm neglect - As crops wilt and die in the Balkans, farmers struck down by a particularly harsh drought this year are ruing the region's failure to upgrade irrigation networks and invest in a long-term agricultural strategy. Hot, dry weather in eastern and southern Europe has piled pressure on world grain markets already reeling from huge drought damage in the United States. The toll in Bosnia, where surface soil temperatures in the south have hit 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit), is estimated at almost $1 billion - a huge blow to a country where the farming sector accounts for 20 percent of employment and about 10 percent of economic output. The cost to neighboring Serbia, where agriculture last year accounted for about 12 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), is around $2 billion, and up to $250 million in Croatia, where yields have also been halved….

My Take – This is what happens when we abandon common sense or we adopt socialism as a ruling concept. The reality is that people froze to death in Eastern Europe when they had a terribly cold winter and now they will certainly have serious economic issues because of the stupidity of central planning schemes that never worked. One thing for sure; this is what would occur worldwide the world adopts greenies policies. Dystopia!

Busted! Leaked emails snag global-warming alarmists - 'Skeptics will be all over us – the world is really cooling' - While NASA climate alarmist James Hansen insists record summer heat and drought are caused by man-made global warming, leaked internal emails from just three summers ago reveal that he and his colleagues expressed alarm that the planet was inexplicably … cooling.....In an Oct. 12, 2009, email to Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, fellow warming alarmist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., asked, “Where the heck is global warming?” ....“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”.....Ignoring the record-breaking 2009 cooling period, Hansen recently argued that the evidence for human-made global warming is “overwhelming.” “We can say with high confidence that such extreme anomalies would not have occurred in the absence of global warming,” he said. Left unexplained, however, is the 2009 cooling anomaly..........

To Be Green is to Be Immoral

By Rich Kozlovich,

J. Johnson is has been a long time Green Notes reader from the British Isles. I would like to thank her for sending a number of articles to me, including this article by Jim Lacey, who decries the idea that the left, particularly the green left, occupies the moral high ground. He states clearly:

"The day has long since passed when the Right needs to concede the moral high ground to the Left on any issue. Yes, we may be able to win most of the great debates on the merits of our ideas; but as a wise man once explained to me:

"What I believe rationally is open to debate and change. What I believe emotionally cannot be changed by reason. An emotional belief can only be changed by an emotional argument.”

The Left has known this for decades. That is why the those on the left never misses a chance to brand those on the right with the most contemptible slurs they can think of. We need not descend into the gutter and trade personal insults, but we should never miss a chance to point out the vile results of the policies the Left is pushing. In every sphere of public debate, the moral high ground belongs to the Right. Claim it!”

It is gratifying to see someone support something I have been saying for some time. This is a war that is being fought on two battle fronts. We win the battle of facts; we always have. They win the battle of emotion; they always have. Emotion will trump facts and logic every time. In order to win the war we must win the battle of facts and the battle of emotion. Admittedly we are at an disadvantage because when your position is based on facts and logic you have to stand by those facts, and you have to wait for them to emerge before you can develop a logical argument.

When you win on emotion you aren’t necessarily concerned with logic or facts, nor do you have time constraints. This gives the greenies the ability to say anything that will advance their cause. Truth not withstanding! In short; they lie. The goal of the green movement is to get the “truth” out and they don’t care how many lies they have to tell to do it. Including their lies about pesticides.

They have falsely claimed for years that pesticides cause cancer based on high dose rodent testing. 

Dr. Bruce Ames defends the broad use of pesticides from a number of angles in this article and believes that the lack of pesticides is the real cause of cancer because of poor nutrition.  The theory is:  

"that, as a result of recurrent shortages of vitamins and minerals during evolution, natural selection developed a metabolic rebalancing response to shortage," he said. "Rebalancing favors vitamin- and mineral-dependent proteins needed for short-term survival and reproduction"

If one has any doubt that the green movement is devoid of any claim to the moral high ground please take note that Greenpeace has now turned forty years old and here is their legacy.  One of the writers outright asks why these people aren't charged with crimes against humanity. 

Please follow the links as their is so much more in these three articles. RK

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Observations From the Back Row: 5-9-11

...
“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

Dr. Bruce Ames (a biochemistry professor at the University of California) pointed out in 1987 that we ingest in our diet about 1.5 grams per day of {natural} pesticides. Those foods contain 10,000 times more, by weight, of {natural} pesticides than of man-made pesticide residues. More than 90% of the pesticides in plants are produced {naturally} by the plants, which help protect them from insects, mites, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi. Those natural pesticides may make up 5% to 10% of a plant's dry weight, and nearly half of them that were tested on experimental animals were carcinogenic. Americans should therefore feel unconcerned about the harmless, infinitesimal traces of synthetic chemicals to which they may be exposed. The highly publicized traces of synthetic pesticides on fruits and vegetables worried some people so much that they began to favor ``organically produced'' foods, thinking that they would not contain any pesticides. Most people are not aware that organic gardeners can legally use a great many pesticides, so long as they are not man-made. They can use nicotine sulfate, rotenone, and pyrethrum (derived from plants), or any poisons that occur naturally, such as lime, sulfur, borax, cyanide, arsenic, and fluorine.

Light Bulb Clarity: New Electric Politics Someone from Ireland named Panta Rei (this is his nom de plume, which I think is a take on the Greek meaning “everything flows”) posted a comment last week on this site regarding the governments of the world losing their minds regarding light bulbs and used the above link. I find this site difficult to read because of their sentence construction, but this site has a lot to offer and is worth the exploration. RK

Oregon Trails: Bucket Brigade Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of what many say is the biggest act of civil disobedience ever in Southern Oregon, and perhaps in the state itself. It was the 2001 "Bucket Brigade" in Klamath Falls, protesting a federal cutoff of irrigation water to Basin farmers in a year of severe water shortage. Ten years ago, veteran Klamath Basin farmer John Prosser dipped water from Klamath Lake as part of a massive protest against what many in the Basin felt was criminal mis-application of the Endangered Species Act. Thousands passed those 51 buckets through town to the "A" Canal, one for each state and the District of Columbia, to symbolize disdain for a shutoff of irrigation water a few weeks earlier. It happened just as many were planting crops.

Thompson, Wolk agree with delta panel Two Yolo County-area politicians agree with a panel of national scientists who reported this past week that a sweeping plan to restore California's ailing freshwater delta and build a pipeline or canal to carry water to the south is missing critical information. The National Academy of Sciences found in its review that the draft plan to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta lacks clear goals and a scientific analysis of the plan's potential impact on the delta's diverse plant and animal species. ….. Estimates for building a canal around the delta range as high as $9 billion, while an underground pipeline/tunnel could cost as much as $11.7 billion, according to the state Department of Water Resources. Environmental groups said Thursday the review confirmed problems with the planning process. To date, about $150 million has been spent in developing the plan, a process which started in 2006 and has involved hundreds of meetings among state and federal agencies, local water districts, and environmental and conservation groups.

My Take - All for a bunch of smelt that as far as I can tell vary only slightly from other smelt….and live in the Delta. Is this the only species of smelt in the world? The answer is; there are a lot of smelt in the world. So since there are a lot of smelt, then I still want to know this; what is so different from this smelt and any other smelt? If they are so biologically incompetent that this delta is the only place in the world they can survive?   Then that can only mean one of two things; either they don’t matter because they are biologically incompetent and will disappear anyway, or the difference between them and other smelt is genetically meaningless except to those who embrace the irrational concepts of the ESA.  In the meanwhile farmers will go out of business and food will cost more.

This seems to be much like the issue regarding the snail darter. They only difference between them and the other darters in that river were that they liked eating snails. I have one more point. What did they have against snails anyway? Since the only darter in the river the greenies wanted to protect was the one that ate snails, I have to ask; did anyone ever ask the snails how they felt about it? After all, there was a lady that talked to the honeybees to try and determine why the nests were dying, do I am surprised they didn’t find someone to try and contact the snails to see if they wanted protection from the snail darter. As for the delta smelt; I think that is an inappropriate name. I think bait would be more appropriate.

House looks at Endangered Species Review By National Association of Wheat Growers, A bureaucratic process meant to ensure pesticides will not harm endangered species is broken and in need of reform, witnesses and Members of Congress concluded at a Tuesday hearing. The hearing was held jointly by the House Agriculture Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee, prompted by concern over pending lawsuits that allege the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn’t properly consult on pesticide registrations with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), EPA is required to complete a consultation process with wildlife agencies in addition to its review under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which itself takes seven to 10 years and considers the effects of new chemistries on wildlife. EPA hasn’t completed a consultation since 1999, because, while NMF is completing biological opinions, its scientists and EPA’s can’t agree on the underlying scientific data needed to reach the standard for a full consultation. This has created an opening in which pesticide opponents can sue based on the consultation process itself versus alleging harm to the endangered species.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

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