I like being able to see the stars in the sky more than I want man made glowing plants. I think something that naturally glows is all together different. I do see how a glowing tree would be much prettier than a street light. I hate street lights. I also hate driving on a curvy road I am unfamiliar with that has no street lights so what are ya gonna do! Just worries me because if it became invasive it wouldn't be the first time one of our creations got out of hand and ruined our environment in some way.

I put some info about recent genetic engineering techniques into another thread, "Pollen Drift" . It's verbose, but if you're interested, here's the link:

The thread "Pollen drift" in All Things Gardening forum

Thanks for the link .. very interesting! I remember reading about a farmer in England somewhere that was forced to pay royalties to Monsanto because his field was pollinated by GMO pollen from another field over a mile away. Something very intrinsically wrong with that.

Nothing, absolutely nothing will ever convince me that we should be involved in genetic manipulation in any way shape or form. At this point in time, humans are way too irresponsible and arrogant to use this ability wisely.

Here is one of my favorite dialogues from Jurassic Park:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well...

John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.

That says it all.

Honestly, the creators aren't responding to people's questions and nobody to date owns a glowing plant, this could be a good hoax.

>> they didn't stop to think if they should.

Yup! Although, scientists do now think about social responsibility 5-10 times more than they did in the 1950s, after seeing so many consequences and growing up in a decade more attuned to "Silent Spring" and "napalm" than to "better living through chemistry". More, but maybe not enough.

Even worse, in corporations, the top managers deciding and controlling whether or not to do something are practically sociopaths who think first and foremost about their short term profits and their own careers - not global consequences or how much it will help poor people.

The scientists and engineers are in love with their gadgets and theories (and egos). Everyone wants to take their love out dancing and show him or her off. Everyone deludes himself and sees the hoped-for benefits of their life choices more than they see the possible downsides.

Not many researchers will choose to bring their career to a halt by telling their boss' boss' boss that the program he just invested 3 million dollars in "might hurt something and should be halted".

P.S. Climatologists shoot themselves in the foot and trashed their credibility very early on by saying more about climate change than was yet proven.

Just a few exaggerated warnings, or insufficiently-qualified-warnings when the uncertainties were large had the effect of making them vulnerable to charges of being "activists" rather than impartial researchers. Now 30% of this country thinks they're still exaggerating.

It's such a new science and the models and measurements and realities are so complicated that demanding PROOF is unreasonable. I wish that, instead, people were demanding PROOF that current trends will NOT destroy agriculture and make some regional climates intolerable, and take action UNTIL we are reasonably sure that the hole we're digging is shallow enough that we can get out of it.

By saying "we should be careful about climate change" a little too loudly, a little too soon, they made it even harder to get political change. In that instance, being too wise too soon had an unanticipated effect.

The latest IPCC report goes too far in the opposite direction (I think), bending over backwards to stress that we still aren't SURE about details.

When ever I hear someone say our climate isn't changing I think, "If you have a yard full of trees, and you are in it on a hot sunny day, it is much cooler than a yard with no trees, right? So how do people not see that cutting as many trees down as we do in this world will make it warmer!? " I mean seriously it is common sense. Asphalt radiates heat so if we keep making more and more of our earth asphalt it is going to retain heat and radiate it back at us. I just don't get how any one can argue that this isn't making our climate warmer than it would be if we left everything au natural.

kqcrna said:But on the other hand, one of these in my family room would probably be brighter reading light than those stupid, expensive, squiggly CFLs that the light bulb police have mandated.

Karen

CFL were suppose to be a SHORT TERM stop gap while we converted to better lights like LED...sadly the industry doesn't understand what short term was suppose to mean! CFL contain mercury and should never have been this immensely produced. Yes they use less energy but I still don't consider them "green"...any time you break one you expose yourself to toxic mercury and most people that use them do not realize this and toss them in the garbage then releasing the mercury into the environment as a whole....

Anyhow... /off topic

The GMO stuff is downright scary...and yes there are some regulations for the food industry but nothing to stop anyone from playing around with 'ornamental' just for fun...I fear we are in the age where if we want to keep things non-gmo we need to keep them separate and carefully pollinate in a controlled environment to prevent contamination....depressing if I think about it to long.

Re: mercury: When I took high school chemistry, we always played with balls of mercury on those long black lab tables, shooting them back and forth. I mean every day, during lectures.

When I was a young nurse we used mercury thermometers. They were accurate. When one broke we cleaned it up. Then they were banned by the mercury police and replaced with electronic ones that aren't even close to accurate.

I'm not fond of big brother.

Karen

When I worked as a prison guard the whole world came to a standstill when some mercury was spilled on the lobby floor of the entrance to the prison. No one could go in or out until the hazard team came to clean it up. Yep, in the 'olden days' I could have slipped a sheet op paper under the balls of mercury and we could have got back to work. I also played with mercury as a child and I 'ain't dead yet', as they say.

In the movie industry they used entire tubs of mercury when they wanted to film a scene of an actor sticking his hand through a mirror, kind of like a 'through the looking glass' thing. But the health and safety police outlawed that practice.

I am wondering how they determine the life expectancy of these light bulbs? About 4 1/2 years ago I replaced every bulb in my house (all 6 of them; I have a small house) with the new bulbs. Yep, right on cue every bulb burned out within a 24 hour period last week. Who plans this stuff? Gotta go to Home Depot and hope they still take the old ones for safe recycling.

Home Depot (at least the ones in Minnesota) will recycle CFLs (compact florescent lights). These are the ones with their own ballasts permanently attached. Long tubes cannot be accepted, because as a business, they are charged four to five dollars for each tube that is not theirs. As a consumer, you can recycle them for free at your city or county's yearly (or twice a year) hazardous waste round-up.

Greene, it's more likely that your house's electricity had a surge or some sort of anomaly that damaged the ballasts and made them all go at once. You don't strike me as a person that turns on all your lights on and off all at the same time all the time. Surely, some must get used more often than others.

And veering back to light bulbs, the LEDs are now readily available and fairly reasonable. I paid about $7 each for some 40W equivalents and I swear they are much brighter than the 40W incandescent bulbs I used to get. And my new addition has a two light fixture on one wall. I tried putting two of the 40's in that fixture and it was waaaaaaay too bright. So I got two 25W equivalent LEDs (at a princely 3 watts apiece) and they light up the whole room. Nice.

Yeah, I used to play with mercury, too. It was fun stuff!

Meredith79 said:When ever I hear someone say our climate isn't changing I think, "If you have a yard full of trees, and you are in it on a hot sunny day, it is much cooler than a yard with no trees, right? So how do people not see that cutting as many trees down as we do in this world will make it warmer!? " I mean seriously it is common sense. Asphalt radiates heat so if we keep making more and more of our earth asphalt it is going to retain heat and radiate it back at us. I just don't get how any one can argue that this isn't making our climate warmer than it would be if we left everything au natural.

My town cuts all the trees down in our neighborhood near the street. Got rid of trees over 100 years old that were huge and provided shade. Now my house is hotter than ever in this heat and there's nothing I can do to cool it off the sun and asphalt make it an oven.

That is so sad! I'm sorry to hear that!
I'm not sure if you have any room but a fast growing shade tree in the right spot could help in the future. I know it's no solace for your current situation!

Why did they cut down the trees? Around here they only cut them when they're a threat to power lines.

Not everyone buys into global warming.
http://online.wsj.com/articles...

Karen

What a lot of people don't buy into is the human factor - anthropomorphism - that humans are responsible for global warming. Climate is cyclical and we are entering into a warming period along with geological instability which is cyclical too. There is even indications that our magnetic poles are in the process of switching which is cyclical too, possibly fueling the geological instability.

http://www.collective-evolutio...

Sometimes, during these climate cycles which are driven by our sun, a dramatic decrease in sunspots can trigger something called a Maunder Minimum - literally a mini ice age. The last one occurred around 1645 and continuing to about 1715. It's a very interesting phenomena:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Sunspots are at a low and it is thought we might be entering a Minimum.

kqcrna said:Why did they cut down the trees? Around here they only cut them when they're a threat to power lines.

Not everyone buys into global warming.
http://online.wsj.com/articles...

Karen

Too many houses and wires and tiny streets so to make room or have less worries in a storm. Honestly now we should be more worried, no shelter from heavy winds and now more flood chance. I hate they do it without considering how we living here are negatively affected. That's New York for you!

Well, imagine how your neighbors would be affected if your giant tree brought down the power lines. When my neighbors lost power due to my weeping willow being struck by lightning, my neighbors were not happy without electricity. I understood. We were young when we bought this house and planted that tree. I know better now.

Crews are trimming trees in our neighborhood now. I'm glad. I don't like being without electricity.

Karen

keithp2012 said:

Too many houses and wires and tiny streets so to make room or have less worries in a storm. Honestly now we should be more worried, no shelter from heavy winds and now more flood chance. I hate they do it without considering how we living here are negatively affected. That's New York for you!

This problem could be solved by buried powerlines! It also makes our communities look much nicer. It costs a lot of money to send out tree crews, why can't leaders get smart and put the money toward things that benefit us and the environment? I think trees are very important since they create oxygen and all!

kqcrna said:Well, imagine how your neighbors would be affected if your giant tree brought down the power lines. When my neighbors lost power due to my weeping willow being struck by lightning, my neighbors were not happy without electricity. I understood. We were young when we bought this house and planted that tree. I know better now.

Crews are trimming trees in our neighborhood now. I'm glad. I don't like being without electricity.

Karen

Sorry but I don't think there is anything wrong with planting a tree even if it may bring down a powerline in the future. I would rather enjoy the 50 years that the tree doesn't bring down the power line, I had my power out for a week due to a snow storm just before Halloween bringing down large numbers of trees and limbs a few winters back and I still choose trees! They had tree crews out for months after trying to prevent the problem from happening again in the future.
I say the tree would never have been a problem if they buried powerlines! Put the money towards that instead of tree crews.

Planting trees is great! I love trees. But if people aren't smart enough to avoid planting them under power lines, they shouldn't complain about trimming when the tree is overgrown. Moreover, if the property owner is responsible and has the tree professionally trimmed himself, so that it avoids power lines, it's not an issue.

When my tree was struck by lightning, and brought down power lines, knocked out power to other houses, I felt terrible. I'd loved that tree, but felt terrible that my friends lost power because of my youthful stupidity is planting such a big tree under the lines. I never made that mistake again. I've lived in this house for 31 years, and my neighbors are my good friends for a reason.

Karen