Being a Progressive is supposed to be about basing your opinions facts and science. Whereas Conservatives take a faith based approach, and moderates try to find a middle ground regardless of where the facts are.

We Progressives on the DailyKos - including front page writers - have spent a fair amount of time ridiculing those on the right for their anti-science, faith-based ideology, especially regarding climate change. And for good reason: being anti-science can result in some very catastrophic consequences (i.e. global warming, anti-vaxers). Could the vast majority of scientists and research be incorrect? Sure. But it is not good policy to base decisions on highly unlikely events for obvious reasons (see 1% doctrine/Iraq war).

Now you can't know everything about everything. Heck I'm ignorant about a lot of things, but when I am presented with overwhelming evidence I change my position because I live in the real world. And I don't think I am being unreasonable to expect fellow Progressives, or those claiming to be Progressive, to operate in the same fashion. And the preponderance of evidence with regards to GMO, climate change, and vaccines is decidedly one-sided and overwhelming.

It is when you intentionally obfuscate the scientific one-sidedness of the issue or conflate it with other tangential issues (i.e. patent law, corporate malfeasance, pesticides, small farmers' rights) then you cross the line. At that point you become deserving of ridicule because you are doing something that is intentionally harmful rather than unintentionally so.

Then why should GMO truthers be treated any different from other truthers? Their actions can and has in the past caused terrible results:



SOUTHERN AFRICA'S food crisis is set to be the worst in a decade. Around 14.5m people are dangerously hungry, and many have been reduced to eating wild leaves and pig food. One might, then, expect food aid to be welcomed. But Zambia is refusing to accept American donations because much of its corn and soya is genetically modified (GM). Zambia's president, Levy Mwanawasa, calls the stuff “poison” and refuses to import it, despite a warning from the UN World Food Programme, on September 16th, that relief supplies in his country could run out in two weeks. Africans have two reasons for being wary of GM food aid: one silly, one slightly less so. The silly reason is the suggestion that GM foods are a danger to human health. Americans have been chomping GM maize and soyabeans for seven years, without detectable harm. And compared with the clear and immediate danger posed by malnutrition, the possibility of being poisoned by Frankencorn seems rather remote. The more sensible reason for being wary of GM foods is that there are people who, not being in any danger of starvation, are precious about what they eat. They are called Europeans. And their tastes matter enormously in Africa because countries such as Zambia earn much of their hard currency from agricultural exports to rich countries, so any plausible threat to this trade has to be taken extremely seriously. GM food aid is such a threat because if a Zambian peasant were to plant GM seeds from an aid shipment, these might pollinate (or, as Greenpeace puts it, “contaminate”) neighbouring fields. Before long, farmers might no longer be able to convince European buyers that their products were GM-free—making them harder to sell.

Most ironic is the self-fulfilling critique that many activists now use. Greenpeace calls golden rice a “failure,” because it “has been in development for almost 20 years and has still not made any impact on the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency.” But, as Ingo Potrykus, the scientist who developed golden rice, has made clear, that failure is due almost entirely to relentless opposition to GM foods—often by rich, well-meaning Westerners far removed from the risks of actual vitamin A deficiency. Regulation of goods and services for public health clearly is a good idea; but it must always be balanced against potential costs—in this case, the cost of not providing more vitamin A to 8 million children during the past 12 years. As an illustration, current regulations for GM foods, if applied to non-GM products, would ban the sale of potatoes and tomatoes, which can contain poisonous glycoalkaloids; celery, which contains carcinogenic psoralens; rhubarb and spinach (oxalic acid); and cassava, which feeds about 500 million people but contains toxic cyanogenic alkaloids. Foodstuffs like soy, wheat, milk, eggs, mollusks, crustaceans, fish, sesame, nuts, peanuts, and kiwi would likewise be banned, because they can cause food allergies.... Now, finally, golden rice will come to the Philippines; after that, it is expected in Bangladesh and Indonesia. But, for 8 million kids, the wait was too long.

Furthermore, GMO is a developing technology and may one day help alleviate world hunger, but the anti-GM hysteria caused by GMO truthers is making it very hard for this to be accomplished:Obstructing science is a big no-no in my book, and hopefully most Progressives' books. If conservatives were doing this we would be outraged. However, since it is Progressives that are doing it criticism is muted. I'm of the opinion that if we are going to be hard on Conservatives for being anti-science/anti-facts we should be equally hard if not harder on Progressives for doing the same thing because the stakes are no less dire.

I thought this quote from Paul Krugman on Obamacare explains how I feel about this debate:

"I fairly often receive mail pleading with me to take a more even tone, to have a respectful discussion with people on the other side rather than calling them fools and knaves. And you know, I do when I can. But the truth is that on most of the big issues confronting us, there just isn’t anyone to have a serious discussion with."



http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...