Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops On Pesiticide Use

The opening paragraphs of a November 2009 report commissioned by The Organic Center Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops On Pesiticide Use in the United States: The First Thirteen Years:

This report explores the impact of the adoption of genetically engineered (GE) corn, soybean, and cotton on pesticide use in the United States, drawing principally on data from the United States Department of Agriculture. The most striking finding is that GE crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the U.S. over the fi rst 13 years of commercial use of GE crops (1996-2008).

This dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides applied swamps the decrease in insecticide use attributable to GE corn and cotton, making the overall chemical footprint of today's GE crops decidedly negative. The report identifies, and discusses in detail, the primary cause of the increase -- the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.

The steep rise in the pounds of herbicides applied with respect to most GE crop acres is not news to farmers. Weed control is now widely acknowledged as a serious management problem within GE cropping systems. Farmers and weed scientists across the heartland and cotton belt are now struggling to devise affordable and effective strategies to deal with the resistant weeds emerging in the wake of herbicide-tolerant crops.

But skyrocketing herbicide use is news to the public at large, which still harbors the illusion, fed by misleading industry claims and advertising, that biotechnology crops are reducing pesticide use. Such a claim was valid for the first few years of commercial use of GE corn, soybeans, and cotton. But, as this report shows, it is no longer.

An accurate assessment of the performance of GE crops on pesticide use is important for reasons other than correcting the excesses of industry advertising. It is also about the future direction of agriculture, research, and regulatory policy.

PDF full report download

Fair dinkum, you're a bit of a political b*tch aren't you Kristina!

With something of a carefully stage-managed publicity blitz Kristina Keneally launched herself as NSW Premier late last year.
She faced the meeja on taking office and promised a government focus on five main issues - one of which was the "most vulnerable members of the community".
Now it didn't take long to see that this touchy-feely sentiment was going to be a load of hot air.
You can't get much more vulnerable than those Aussies living on or below the poverty line but I didn't see the new premier rushing to roll back the former Rees Government decision to take a big bite out of the Federal Government's one-off basic payment increase for quite a few single pensioners later this year, and this week the state government she heads is defending its Solar Bonus Scheme levy which will see those families on very low incomes and pensioners without assets subsidizing the cheaper power supplied to people rich enough to be able to install solar power throughout their houses.
"Effectively, the costs of the feed-in tariff paid to a customer with a solar PV system will be spread across all customers on the network."
This on top of the fact that the NSW Government is about to give the nod to yet another hefty increase in electricity pricing (after a plump increase in 2009) so as to cover the black hole it allowed to develop in power supply infrastructure which needs to be quickly papered over if government wants to sell-off state energy assets.
Yeah, Kristina - that's really governing for the vulnerable that is!
I don't care how small the buyback levy may or may not be for the average family - it's the bl**dy principle.
Why should the interests of silvertails still rule in New South Wales and a hypocritical blow-in premier dare to act as if that's a really bonza state of affairs.

Pic from KKK's scrap book of media images

If you thought the number of natural disasters was growing you're probably right

Does it sometimes feel as though there are more natural disasters occurring around the world rather than just more events being reported in the media?
Perhaps that vague feeling is more accurate than previously thought.

Since 1988 the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) has been maintaining an Emergency Events Database EM-DAT. EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the WHO and the Belgian Government.

This database now has a number of graphs and maps of natural disaster trends including country profiles.

Australia rates in the highest number of instances category for drought (1976-1985), windstorm (1974-2003) and in the second highest for flood (1974-2003).

Click on graph to enlarge

Or another way of looking at similar data can be found at UNEP which gives more weight to improvements in information access affecting results.

Munich Re calculates the losses incurred due to severe weather-related natural disasters at an estimated US$ 1,600 billion since 1980. The Times reported at the end of 2009 that Natural catastrophes have left the world’s insurers with a claims bill totalling $22 billion (£13.7 billion) this year as the number of disasters linked to climate change increased markedly and insurers met $770 million in damages and repairs in Australia last year.

National Geographic natural disaster information including videos

Slippery Slope 101: this is what happens in a country with voluntary Internet filtering

If this is what happens in a country with voluntary ISP-level Internet filtering, (and where government is not actively participating in blanket domestic Internet censorship) what on earth can we expect from our own increasingly rabid Rudd Labor Government?

Below is the transcript of a message displayed when attempting to access a COP15 spoof site which had been taken down at the request of the Canadian Government:

Website suspended

Serverloft blocked the IP-range for this server because of the content of the client's website and would only unblock the IP-range if we suspended the website. The website was used in a spoof by The Yes Men.

Serverloft blocked the IP-range without a warrant and without calling us and thus affecting servers hosting 4500 of our customers' websites until we ourselves discovered the problem, and convinced Serverloft to unblock. Serverloft did send us an email explaining that they would not unblock the IP-range until the websites were taken offline. The email was sent 5 minutes after they cut of the access to the mail server, so we only received the email after the 4500 websites were back online.

Convincing Serverloft that their systems had blocked access on purpose was hard because Serverloft frontline support claimed that all their systems were working fine and they therefore assumed that the problem was a configuration problem on our server. They refused to help troubleshooting the issue.

Serverloft could simply have called us and asked us to deal with the situation. We would then have asked the Canadians for a warrant. If the Canadians had shown us a warrant we would have taken down the site immediately. As others have pointed out the Canadians could probably just have gone through CIRA and have the domain suspended, which would not have affected any of the other 4500 websites.

As we cannot go through every single page that our customers put on their websites we anticipate a similar situation may arise again. We have therefore asked Serverloft to revise their procedures so we at least would get a phone call before they cut our connection. They have so far refused to do so. They have answered:

your net was blocked because of hosting phishing sites. I've attached the information, we have, below our signature. I'm sorry, but we cant call every costumer for abuse. In some cases we've to respond very fast and have to block the net or server.

While I appreciate Serverloft respond fast, it is no good if the collateral damage is more than 1000 times as big. Had they called I am sure we would have found an arrangement that would satisfy both of us.

For more information: contact Ole Tange ole@tange.dk

The HuffingtonPost on the story

Google cache of Environment Canada spoof site.

The Yes Men post on website takedown.

Snapshot found at aviary.com