When Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance by cross-pollinating pea plants and observing the results he defined a series of rules that farmers through the centuries had discovered on their own while observing nature and in trial and error. Genetically modified (GM) crops, however, are very different than those created through selective breeding. In
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Biofuel Isn’t Something New Humanity discovered how to control fire hundreds of thousands of years ago with wood and dung our primary fuel sources. Tens of thousands of years ago our ancestors discovered that wood could be converted to charcoal. Peat fires to this day are still a principle heating source in parts of the
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Humanity has engineered plants and animals since the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution, selecting seeds from the best plants, and cross-pollination to create new plant and animal varieties. Humans used observation and experimentation to achieve improved crop yields and better livestock. Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel provided the foundational science behind what we know of
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Humanity has relied on biofuels since first mastering fire. Until the Industrial Revolution peat, wood, charcoal, whale oil, and plant oils represented the biofuels of choice. Fossil fuels began with coal. Fossil fuel crude oil and oil byproducts were a 19th century technical achievement. The automobile and internal combustion engine turned gasoline, formerly a discarded
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