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10ebbor1025 karma

Brexit and Trump were within statistical margins (+- 3.5%)

Le Pen has to overcome a far larger gap.

10ebbor1020 karma

They're 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

IIRC, part of their allegations are that the use of "super-thermite" to melt support beams created lakes and puddles of molten steels that could not be explained by the airplane scenario.

10ebbor1017 karma

Yeah, that was a combination of the US voting by State, and those journalists not understanding how polls work. If you look at the popular vote numbers, you'll see that the result was within the margins projected.

Basically, they thought each state election was independent. So, if Trump had 40% odds of winning 1 state, and he needs to win 4 states, his odds of victory are (40%)4 = 2.5%.

However, the elections are not independent. Something that convinces people to vote Trump in state A can also convince them in State B,C and D.

The above is simplified of course, but that's the gist of it.

France uses popular vote though, so the polls are far more reliable.

10ebbor1015 karma

Thing is, those statistics present an overly rosy view.

The headline statistic is a clear example of lying with statistics. The US leads only if you look at absolute numbers. Obviously, in that case the biggest country is going to have a huge advantage. Much more sensible would be to calculate the emissions reduction in percentage, or emission per-capita or per GDP.

The second issue is that they pick their reference point to be in 2005. That just so happens to roughly coincide with the point where US emissions peaked. It thus ignored 15 years or rising emissions past the Kyoto Protocol reference date.

10ebbor109 karma

Well, to go over the 2 issues mentioned above.

Cross pollination can impact on wild plant populations

This here is possible concern, but it's mostly pointless. THe first thing that needs to be realized is that cross pollination is not an issue unique to GMO. There's nothing special about GMO genes, it's only the function that matters.

So, if a GMO spreads pesticide resistance to a wild plant, then that's no worse than a non-gmo spreading pesticide resistance.

More importantly, the vast majority of engineered traits are utterly useless to wild species. So, they'll quickly die out.

and also on farmers who want to grow non gm crops.

This here is a circular concern. Farmers are afraid that GMO will contaminate their crop, which means that it can lose it's GMO-free certification which means that they loose money.

But the only reason that the GMO-free certification exists is because there's exist an unfounded fear that the GMO is bad. So, in absence of having a real reason for the existence of the GMO free certification, it's not a real concern.

You can also reverse the logic. Imagine I have a farm with 100% industrially engineered plants. Would it be alright for me to demand that nearby organic farmers cease farming because their organic plants may contaminate my engineered ones?