not sure there are any or many drought resistant GMOs actually grown. The usual "breakthroughs" are announced, but often these plants compete less well with drought resistant varieties developed with conventional breeding methods. Can you provide a link on how millions of people have accessed drought resistant GM crops? As for the scientists, they are people doing their jobs and getting handsomly paid by their employers. Just as the engineers at VW. I am not anti-GM in itself, but rather the corporate control it is subject to. The agricultural sector wreaks havoc in the environment and this techno-centrist approach promoted by Monsanto and the likes might be great for their stock, but hardly for the planet. Glysophate resistant crops in the US have seen a surge of Glysophate resistant weeds in the past years, which in turn increased the amount of pesticides used. So if you can reduce esticide use for 10 years but then have to apply double the next decade it is not a huge improvement, and in fact you now have to contend with superweeds. In a nutshell I dont think we will ever win an arms race against nature. As for drought resistance, bring it on. Only it seems GMOs are slower to develop, more expensive and really outcompeted by non-GM breeding methods. Same for nutritionally enriched crops. The famous vitamin A rice is not prefered by farmers as the varieties they grow perform better under their climatic conditions, have better yields and at the end of the day they prefer the taste. So if I am getting 2.5 tons of traditional rice per hectare, why grow vit A rice for 2 tons per hectare? I can simply use the money from that extra 0.5 tons to buy or plant carrots and more importantly the FAT that is needed to absorb vit A. Tech fixes can seem cool. But hunger and malnutrition are economic (poverty), political (war, deprivation) and social (cray food culture in the US/UK, spreading fast to the world). And if agriculture does not address KEY issues such as soil, water contamination, Co2 intensity etc, then a seed will not fix the problem.

Well, it was alleged that he was misoginistic. As you say he aknowledged the words and added that there was a context to them. It was still alleged that he is misoginistic and should be removed. After the entire transcript appeared, it surfaced that he clearly intended it as a joke and that he had praised women's role in science. So the allegation originally made that he made this comment as a disparaging to women is unfounded. ESR's comments on the other hand are a disgrace.

Well, have not gotten into the details, but surely a laser for changing the orbit of space junk would not be the kind of laser that you could use to say, fry a plane or a boat or a city. I think that the atmosphere would interfere and make that a very difficult endeavor. Also, being hosted at the ISS would mean there would be international supervision on it. So yes, I think it is exciting that we might be coming closer to the implementation of actual solutions to reduce space junk. And it's done with lasers, so yes, exciting stuff. So we should not pursue any scientific "thing" as you call it? Seriously, what are you doing here?

Not sure I understand it well, but the use of laser would create heat which would affect the orbit and therefore causing the junk to burn on reentry? That s my guess. Exciting stuff if you ask me!