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Thread: BBKA Pesticde Decision

  1. #71

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    Jon wrote on 21/1/2011
    What colony losses?
    UK colony numbers have increased from 40,000 to 120,000 in 30 months. That is a huge increase.
    Some individuals, especially the beefarmers, have suffered high losses from foulbrood -and those who think you don't have to treat for varroa have lost a lot of colonies. Most others I know are doing well.
    ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;
    On February 2010 Jon reported:
    "Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores".


    Hi Jon?
    What do you consider the word "dead" means? Seems to me that if the colonies are dying. No matter what the reason is they are dead! No?

    Eric

  2. #72
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric McArthur View Post
    What do you consider the word "dead" means?
    What do you get when you subtract 40,000 from 120,000?

    There will always be some colony losses and the EFB/AFB outbreak in Perthshire and beyond is surely a special case. Maybe you think it was caused by neonicotinoids?

  3. #73
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Eric

    Your co-conspirator Graham White has been posting at the Independent newspaper's web site and has revealed a rather unsavoury side to his nature.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Independent

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...0-2191260.html

    2.4 billion extra people, no more land: how will we feed the world in 2050?

    Steve Connor reveals how scientists propose a major policy shift to tackle one of the great challenges of the 21st century

    The finite resources of the Earth will be be stretched as never before in the coming 40 years because of the unprecedented challenge of feeding the world in 2050, leading scientists have concluded in a report to be published next week.

    Food production will have to increase by between 70 and 100 per cent, while the area of land given over to agriculture will remain static, or even decrease as a result of land degradation and climate change. Meanwhile the global population is expected to rise from 6.8 billion at present to about 9.2 billion by mid-century.

    The Government-appointed advisers are expected to warn that "business as usual" in terms of food production is not an option if mass famine is to be avoided .....
    And our trusty Green Warrior from Coldstream ....

    Quote Originally Posted by Graham White

    This is THE NEXT BIG THING - i.e. the next chance for the multinationals and the Science establishment to make a few £trillion by forcing GM crops and wall-to-wall pesticides on the Third World. Sir John Beddington was on the Today Programme this morning, presenting himself as the New High Priest of GM/Pesticide Solutions - the acceptable face of Bayer, Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF.

    Beddington is the Scientific High Priest who sold the Global Warming hoax to Thatcher and she gave him the Met Office and £130 million to build a supercomputer that would tell us what the climate would be in 200 years time; except it got the summer and winter forecasts wrong for 6 years in a row. Beddington then sheared off to create the UN's IPCC on global warming, but after a decade with no warming, he led the fight to RE BRAND it as 'Climate Change' - a phrase as meaningless as 'Wind Blows'. 'Rain Falls' or 'Snow falls':

    We must all fight rainfall and wind blowing NOW!!

    Anyway, climate change might fool the Islington Elite but the man and woman in the street are getting wise to this endless succession of hypothetical DOOMS: Acid rain, ozone hole, Y2K bug, global warming, climate change, dangerous climate change. So Beddington needs a NEW Hobgoblin to scare the politicans and make them give his pals another £100 billion of YOUR money. So the new Hobgoblin is GLOBAL STARVATION - and the solution is GM Crops and revolutionary pesticides and industrial monocultures, wall to wall across the Third World. And if you do everything he says, and give his pals ALL your money, he will make the big, bad scary hobgoblin go away. You have to give it to this guy: global warming; Climate Change; Dangerous Climate Change and Global Starvation - he is a TRYER!!!
    Can you now explain to us why you are aligning your self with people like that?

    Do you think that the MPs signing that Early Day Motion know that they've been had?

    Gavin

  4. #74

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    Gavin wrote:
    Can you now explain to us why you are aligning your self with people like that?

    Gavin -
    If I ever aligned myself with you and your cohorts - I could never explain that to anybody! I hear that you, as a sworn neutral in the GM issue (I of course knew better long time previously!) have jumped on the Beddington gravy train - as always looking for the winning ticket! As an aside I do subscribe to climate change. But Beddington, Monsanto, Bayer or Bill Gates and folk like yourself will only make matters worse! GM and monoculture dusted ad infinitum with poisons is a doomsday scenario!

  5. #75
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Hi Eric.
    One of the key points in that independent article was moving GM from private ie the likes of Monsanto, to primarily public ownership.
    The agribusiness stranglehold is one of the main problems I have with GM.

    Did you read it?

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...0-2191260.html

    The scientists are expected to recommend that GM technology should be shifted away from the private sector to one that is mostly funded and deployed by publicly funded bodies, in order to avoid what is seen as the stranglehold of large agribusiness companies such as Monsanto.

  6. #76
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Eric

    I think that you have always misunderstood me. Or maybe you're just mischief-making by throwing out extreme accusations.

    The Global Food and Farming Futures Report


    (go on, click it, you know you want to)

    is not about ramming GM down people's throats. It is a serious, sober, and sobering assessment of where mankind is going regarding the food supply. GM is hardly discussed - it is about *everything* to do with the looming food crisis. That is one major reason why I've called your anti-neonicotinoid campaign, in the face of all the evidence out there, shameful. No pesticide is perfect, but these ones are an improvement on what has gone before and all the evidence from field studies is that they are not harming bee stocks.

    This is the Foreword to the Executive Summary Report:

    The case for urgent action in the global food system is now compelling. We
    are at a unique moment in history as diverse factors converge to affect the
    demand, production and distribution of food over the next 20 to 40 years.
    The needs of a growing world population will need to be satisfied as
    critical resources such as water, energy and land become increasingly
    scarce. The food system must become sustainable, whilst adapting to
    climate change and substantially contributing to climate change mitigation.
    There is also a need to redouble efforts to address hunger, which continues
    to affect so many. Deciding how to balance the competing pressures and
    demands on the global food system is a major task facing policy makers,
    and was the impetus for this Foresight Project.

    GM? Have a read. Try the 44-page Executive Summary. How many times is GM mentioned? Not once!! Let me say that again - not once!

    If you are thinking that my career as a crop researcher will benefit from concern about the food supply, well, it might. But that is what crop researchers are for, isn't it? My interests are not in GM, in case you weren't aware. However what interest do I have in trying to argue against those wanting to eliminate pesticides from agriculture? Pesticides are an alternative to what I do, study genetics and help breeding. Resistant varieties are a better answer than pesticides. Do you really think that I am driven by self-interest?! I'm just very annoyed that internet idiots are trying to bring about their own particular stupidity, and apparently all for different reasons. Chandler hates any kind of chemical used in food production. You don't share that view (at least in your own beekeeping) but instead you are driven by - what, hatred of the big corporations? And White - is he just driven by hatred?! Or stupidity? You tell me, I can't work it out.

    Gavin

    PS Your accusations. No, I've always thought that GM has a place although sometimes it has been over-hyped. And I'm not busy jumping on any kind of GM gravy train.

  7. #77
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    Cracking programme on science and public perceptions of science. Largely climate change but strays into other topics including GM. The last few minutes of the programme are very relevant to this thread.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode..._Under_Attack/

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    Absolutely brilliant programme Gavin.I just loved the way Sir Paul "EXPLODED" the sceptical guys warped views.Can't we get him onto this forum ???

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    He was a lecturer of mine in my undergraduate days, but I doubt that he remembers me! Maybe he's a beekeeper ...

  10. #80
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    In the word we live in science has been so downvalued that the conspiracy theories seem to have taken over.
    lazy journalists and the internet are a big part of that problem.
    Single issue nutters can reach an audience they don't deserve far too easily.
    You read everywhere now that man made climate change is a big hoax yet 99% of the science supports the hypothesis.
    It's sad how lazy some people are. They take complete bull at face value.
    This morning I read a post on beesource from a poster who claimed that the introduction of neonicotinoids in the US coincided with the first cases of CCD - according to anything he had read!
    In actual fact neonics were first used in the US in 1992 and the first cases of CCD were noted in 2006.

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