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No trolling here. I'm pointing out scientific facts that are contrary to your opinion. And my mention of 'screaming' was used metaphorically. That is to say, y

No trolling here. I'm pointing out scientific facts that are contrary to your opinion. And my mention of 'screaming' was used metaphorically. That is to say, your bias was evident from your posturing. Not that you or I were _literally_ screaming about one opinion or the other.

carapace 8y ago
> No trolling here. Ok, cheers. > I'm pointing out scientific facts that are contrary to your opinion. I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. What you're pointing out is one article that contradicts my own lived experience (on which my opinion is founded.) I love Science. I've got a copy of Linus Pauling's "Chemistry" on my desk that's I'm reading for fun. But a scientific study that shows that "Organic" food is no better than (let's call it) "Conventional" food in terms of nutrition and health? Friend, I just laugh. To even get my attention such a study would have to have at least three groups: one eating only organically grown food, one eating conventionally grown food (same diet), and a control group that eats what everybody else eats. Then you'd have to keep it up for several generations! Which brings me to my main scientific objection to conventional agriculture: it's new. We know, thanks to science, that the living system we are a part of is approximately 3.5 to 4 billion years old. The primary constituents of the system (microbes and viruses) have a life-cycle measured in hours. This system evolves. Along comes the naked ape sprinkling fixed nitrogen on his crops and patting himself on the back. One of the apes puts on a lab coat and gives the rest a thumbs up, "It's just as good!", while another sprays nerve toxin on the crops to kill the "pests". Meanwhile Gary in the back is starting to ask, "Hey, where are the bees?" The word I'm looking for is "Hubris". Now then, the pragmatic argument against modern conventional agriculture is that it's unnecessary. We now know, again thanks to science, that soil is not a passive receptacle or matrix for chemical nutrients. It's a living dynamic system comprised of tens of thousands of species on all scales from the virus to the mole, and that has more in common with a vast city than a pile of minerals. We know that micro-rhizome interconnects plants in huge networks that shuttle water, nutrients, and chemical signals (often involving the same molecules that occur in humans as neurotransmitters and hormones) between them. We've also learned that we ourselves host a "microbiome" and it's obvious that, in a healthy relationship with your local gardens, your microbiome is effectively an extension of the soil into your system. (And back out again. Feces are ~80% microbes.) (As an aside, given the above it should not be surprising that it's possible to taste the difference between home-grown organic food and store-bought conventional food.) The way to grow healthy food is to garden the soil, the plants grow themselves. You can't really control plant growth too well. It's easy, however, to improve the soil, which then affects the growth of the plants. One amazing example of this is a project that was done in Jordan. Agriculture had been practiced on the site until salt had gotten so bad that nothing would grow there. It was a patch of barren salty desert. Using applied ecology ("Permaculture") they were able to establish a nascent ecosystem. Within two years it was producing figs. The soil regenerated, mushrooms appeared. There's a short video about it, "Greening the Desert" with Geoff Lawton. "You can solve all your problems in a garden." as he says. Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgF9BU4uYMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgF9BU4uYMU Main page: https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-now-on-youtube/ https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-... The bottom line is, if you practice applied ecology you can grow all the food you need in a garden without any artificial inputs at all. It's cost effective and it will make you and the world around you healthy. It's also soundly scientific.
- FuckOffNeemo 8y ago
  I wish I could engage you further here, I'd love to dive more into your argument but time is not forgiving. Thank you for your response however, it was very informative. I only have one comment to make from the above: I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. What you're pointing out is one article that contradicts my own lived experience (on which my opinion is founded.) For some one who's embedded and has a solid understanding of the scientific process, you're contradicting the scientific community here by saying your opinion and anecdotal evidence proves otherwise?
  - carapace 8y ago
    Well met! Let me say that, while I have huge respect for science and the Scientific Method, my faith in science is weakened as one departs from physics. To be specific, before I could credit (believe in) a scientific paper purporting to show no appreciable difference between "organic" and "conventional" produce there are a lot of boxes I'd have to check off. For example, how long after they were picked were the vegetables tested?

carapace 8y ago

> No trolling here. Ok, cheers. > I'm pointing out scientific facts that are contrary to your opinion. I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. What you're pointing out is one article that contradicts my own lived experience (on which my opinion is founded.) I love Science. I've got a copy of Linus Pauling's "Chemistry" on my desk that's I'm reading for fun. But a scientific study that shows that "Organic" food is no better than (let's call it) "Conventional" food in terms of nutrition and health? Friend, I just laugh. To even get my attention such a study would have to have at least three groups: one eating only organically grown food, one eating conventionally grown food (same diet), and a control group that eats what everybody else eats. Then you'd have to keep it up for several generations! Which brings me to my main scientific objection to conventional agriculture: it's new. We know, thanks to science, that the living system we are a part of is approximately 3.5 to 4 billion years old. The primary constituents of the system (microbes and viruses) have a life-cycle measured in hours. This system evolves. Along comes the naked ape sprinkling fixed nitrogen on his crops and patting himself on the back. One of the apes puts on a lab coat and gives the rest a thumbs up, "It's just as good!", while another sprays nerve toxin on the crops to kill the "pests". Meanwhile Gary in the back is starting to ask, "Hey, where are the bees?" The word I'm looking for is "Hubris". Now then, the pragmatic argument against modern conventional agriculture is that it's unnecessary. We now know, again thanks to science, that soil is not a passive receptacle or matrix for chemical nutrients. It's a living dynamic system comprised of tens of thousands of species on all scales from the virus to the mole, and that has more in common with a vast city than a pile of minerals. We know that micro-rhizome interconnects plants in huge networks that shuttle water, nutrients, and chemical signals (often involving the same molecules that occur in humans as neurotransmitters and hormones) between them. We've also learned that we ourselves host a "microbiome" and it's obvious that, in a healthy relationship with your local gardens, your microbiome is effectively an extension of the soil into your system. (And back out again. Feces are ~80% microbes.) (As an aside, given the above it should not be surprising that it's possible to taste the difference between home-grown organic food and store-bought conventional food.) The way to grow healthy food is to garden the soil, the plants grow themselves. You can't really control plant growth too well. It's easy, however, to improve the soil, which then affects the growth of the plants. One amazing example of this is a project that was done in Jordan. Agriculture had been practiced on the site until salt had gotten so bad that nothing would grow there. It was a patch of barren salty desert. Using applied ecology ("Permaculture") they were able to establish a nascent ecosystem. Within two years it was producing figs. The soil regenerated, mushrooms appeared. There's a short video about it, "Greening the Desert" with Geoff Lawton. "You can solve all your problems in a garden." as he says. Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgF9BU4uYMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgF9BU4uYMU Main page: https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-now-on-youtube/ https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-... The bottom line is, if you practice applied ecology you can grow all the food you need in a garden without any artificial inputs at all. It's cost effective and it will make you and the world around you healthy. It's also soundly scientific.

FuckOffNeemo 8y ago
I wish I could engage you further here, I'd love to dive more into your argument but time is not forgiving. Thank you for your response however, it was very informative. I only have one comment to make from the above: I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. What you're pointing out is one article that contradicts my own lived experience (on which my opinion is founded.) For some one who's embedded and has a solid understanding of the scientific process, you're contradicting the scientific community here by saying your opinion and anecdotal evidence proves otherwise?
- carapace 8y ago
  Well met! Let me say that, while I have huge respect for science and the Scientific Method, my faith in science is weakened as one departs from physics. To be specific, before I could credit (believe in) a scientific paper purporting to show no appreciable difference between "organic" and "conventional" produce there are a lot of boxes I'd have to check off. For example, how long after they were picked were the vegetables tested?