{"id":2813,"date":"2014-12-11T13:56:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T18:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2813"},"modified":"2014-12-11T14:00:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T19:00:23","slug":"the-archdruid-report-dark-age-america-the-sharp-edge-of-the-shell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2813","title":{"rendered":"The Archdruid Report: Dark Age America: The Sharp Edge of the Shell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Archdruid Report: Dark Age America: The Sharp Edge of the Shell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting features of blogging about the twilight of science and technology these days is that there\u2019s rarely any need to wait long for a cogent example. One that came my way not long ago via a reader of this blog\u2014tip of the archdruidical hat to Eric S.\u2014shows that not even a science icon can get away with asking questions about the rising tide of financial corruption and dogmatic ideology that\u2019s drowning the scientific enterprise in our time.<\/div>\n

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Many of my readers will recall Bill Nye the Science Guy, the star of a television program on science in the 1990s and still a vocal and entertaining proponent of science education. In a recent interview, Nye was asked why he doesn\u2019t support the happy-go-lucky attitude toward dumping genetically modified organisms into the environment that\u2019s standard in the United States and a few other countries these days. His answer\u00a0\u00a0is that their impact on ecosystems is a significant issue that hasn\u2019t been adequately addressed. Those who know their way around today\u2019s pseudoskeptic scene won\u2019t be surprised by the reaction from\u00a0one of Discover Magazine\u2019s bloggers<\/a>: a tar and feathers party, more or less, full of the standard GMO industry talking points and little else.<\/div>\n
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Nye\u2019s point, as it happens, is as sensible as it is scientific: ecosystems are complex wholes that can be thrown out of balance by relatively subtle shifts, and since human beings depend for their survival and prosperity on the products of natural ecosystems, avoiding unnecessary disruption to those systems is arguably a good idea. This eminently rational sort of thinking, though, is not welcomed in corporate boardrooms just now.\u00a0\u00a0In the case under discussion, it\u2019s particularly unwelcome in the boardrooms of\u00a0\u00a0corporations heavily invested in genetic modification, which have a straightforward if shortsighted financial interest in flooding the biosphere with as many GMOs as they can sell.<\/div>\n
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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Archdruid Report: Dark Age America: The Sharp Edge of the Shell. One of the interesting features of blogging about the twilight of science and technology these days is that there\u2019s rarely any need to wait long for a cogent example. One that came my way not long ago via a reader of this blog\u2014tip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1840,1057,373,705,1841],"class_list":["post-2813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-bill-nye","tag-ecosystems","tag-gmos","tag-science","tag-science-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2814,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}