Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

Some GMO Cheerleaders Also Deny Climate Change

Author:     TOM PHILPOTT
Source:     Mother Jones
Publication Date:     Mon Oct. 15, 2012 3:03 AM PDT
 Link: Some GMO Cheerleaders Also Deny Climate Change
Stephan:   When I was writing a research paper on science deniers in climate change, evolution, and nonlocal consciousness I noticed the same names tended to come up over and over in all three denier categories. They also tended to be defenders of sugar intake, or tobacco before that, and I wondered about GMOs. Here's the answer. I realized then, and this report just confirms it, that there is a cadre of PhDs for hire who will defend anything, or attack on commission, if funded. They are a shoddy and sorry lot, but they do an enormous amount if mischief, because most people in the media can't distinguish the peanut butter from the BS as it comes off the PhD fan, a lack of discernment that serves their need for false equivalencies to create conflict in their written or video pieces.

GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left,’ declares the headline of a recent piece by Keith Kloor in Slate. The argument goes like this: Just as certain conservative writers flout science by denying the urgency of climate change, there are progressive writers-he named me as a prominent example-who defy an alleged scientific consensus by criticizing the genetically modified crop industry. We’re hypocrites, the charge goes, because we thunder against the denial of good science when it comes to climate, but indulge in denialism when it comes to GMOs.

I think Kloor’s critique is nonsense. Sure, there are wackos who campaign against GMOs, but not all GMO critique is wacko. In a 2009 roundtable in Seed Magazine, I debunked the idea that there’s a scientific consensus around GMOs analogous to the one around climate. I also ruminated on that theme in this 2009 review of Michael Specter’s book Denialism. I plan to return to the theme of scientific consensus and GMOs soon, but to make a long story short, I’ll quote my Seed piece:

The consensus around climate change developed in spite of a multi-decade campaign by some of the globe’s most powerful and lucrative industries-the petroleum […]

Read the Full Article