Introduction
Back in 2006, a well-respected ecologist Dr. Eric Planka made a bold statement that to save the Earth, 90% of the world's population should be culled. He even went on to propose the best method of doing this, by deploying air-borne Ebola virus.
Of course, this was only a thought experiment and not really a mad scientist in the making (I hope). But I remember reading about that statement when it came out. It blew out in the news (environmental news) that "MAD SCIENTIST WANTS TO MURDER 5.8 BILLION PEOPLE!", "THE GREAT CULLING HAS BEGUN: VACCINES, GMO, AND INFERTILITY PROGRAMS" while quoting sources with doubtful reliability.
I've been reading this book The God Species: How Humans Really Can Save the World that was written by a journalist who has in the past been, as he puts it, a Green. Like many other "Environmentalist", he was against Nuclear Energy and Genetically-Modified Organisms before making a big 180°.
Source OMG! Look at all the pollution they put out! - it's steam genius
Why I put the "...." around "Environmentalist" that these Greens call themselves is because, more often than not, they end up being more harmful to the environmental cause that helping it. They actually slow down scientific innovation by biologists, ecologists and environmental scientists and engineers (which I majored in but somehow ended up in the IT and education field) than help them by these petitions.
So, here I am wanting to dispel some myths about these specific technologies that uninformed "environmentalists" make.
Nuclear Energy
The biggest boogie man around Nuclear Energy that people often quote most recently is of the Fukushima disaster claiming that such a disaster could happen with any other nuclear plants. This uproar actually caused Germany to announce shutting down 17 nuclear reactors.
Source *Greenhouse Gas Emission by Source
This is a huge blow to the global warming effort as each nuclear power plant is able to off-set. In 2011, nuclear energy produced 2518 Billion kWh of electricity. Were this to be produced by current sources, it would have put 2581 million tons of CO2 (Lignite) / 2163 million tons of CO2 (Coal) / 1773 million tons of CO2 (Oil) / 1183 million tons of CO2 (Natural Gas) back into the atmosphere.
Another argument against Nuclear Energy is that "it's damaging to the environment and the people around it!". We are being radiated EVERY SINGLE DAY by the biggest nuclear plant in our vicinity - the Sun.
This happened to Mr.Burns who live next to a Nuclear Plant. It could happen to any of us!
The radiation from a nuclear power plant only constitutes 0.005% of the average American's yearly radiation dosage - National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement
I took a nuclear energy class back in college and these were some fun facts my professor shared with us.
(1) You get more radiation sleeping next to a banana than having your house next to a nuclear power plant. All sports enthusiasts know that bananas are rich in Potassium - Potassium is a pretty radioactive substance. But this doesn't mean bananas are dangerous.
(2) Living next to a nuclear power plant irradiates you as much as eating one banana A YEAR.
(3) You get exposed 200 more times to radiation just by flying on a plane for about 8 hours as you are closer to the sun.
This list for nuclear energy can go on-and-on. I wanted to talk a lot more about it, but I've received feedback before that my posts are super long. To the next section!
Farming and Agriculture
If the same entirely organic and fertiliser-free farming methods were used today as it was used in 1900, the current 1.5 billion hectares of farmland would only feed 2.9 billion people - the world's population today is 7.6 billion.
People love attacking GMOs and inorganic fertilisers while eating Sunday brunch or going through the grocery store not appreciating how much these horrible, horrible technologies have done for us as a species to grow. These technologies have allowed us to increase our total food yield by 135% while only increasing land use by 27%.
This is what bananas originally looked like before we domesticated it
Are they harmful to the environment? Yes. Are they dangerous? Yes. But the benefits outweigh the cost. Us humans as a species have been eating genetically-modified food for centuries when our ancestors learned to pick stronger strands of certain organisms and breed them further. In fact, the pugs and bulldogs we've come to love and go "'awwww" over are the results of us human beings genetically engineering them.
The only thing our modern technology has allowed us to do is to speed up this process by millennia. Well...that's not completely true. It's also allowed us to cross-breed different species of plants which I think is pretty cool. Those mad scientists in Monsanto added fish genes into tomato, as a result tomatoes can no withstand and grow through winter months! Stop eating pizza or Italian food during winter if that disgusts you so.
The biggest achievement (that I know of) is by the Golden Rice project. Every year, millions of children and pregnant women get ill or die from Vitamin A deficiency. Golden Rice is a new type of rice that contains beta carotene, a source of vitamin A. Golden Rice is being developed as a potential new food-based approach to improve vitamin A status. This was only made possible with the availability of genetic engineering technology.
Source
Conclusion
If my post sounded a bit snarky it's because it annoys me to no end when people make uninformed decisions. Science progresses through well-researched and well-documented facts and proof. Scientists and engineers spend decades of their life working hard to progress humanity only to be hindered by a mass of people who spend 10 minutes on Google just because "it doesn't sound right".
Science and the masses have always gone head to head. But science continues to do the good work they do for centuries. The people wanted to hang Galileo for going against the church and declaring the Sun being the center of the universe. Today, we understand that as truth and fact.
Ironically, this article was not written primarily for the ignorant. This article was written primarily for people who call themselves environmentalists and "greens" such as those in organisations like Greenpeace. They are the ones causing the most harm to the environmental scientific effort by being a wolf hiding in sheeps clothes. Worse of all, they don't even know they're the wolf!
As and environmental scientists myself, we've learned that technology should be used to improve the livelihood of humanity and help human civilisation progress. While we definitely want to curb issues such as global warming, turning off your lights an hour a year is not going to solve that. Neither is forcing yourself to be vegetarian. There is no progression if we have to sacrifice our quality of life for the sake of it.
MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS
