If you’ve ever wondered whether water improves with age like a fine wine, wonder no longer: The answer is “nope.” Scientists found water in Canada that had been trapped in veins of rock 1.5 miles underground for at least a billion and possibly as much as 2.64 billion years. In the name of pure research, one of the discoverers took a taste. It was gross. Mystery solved.

Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a geologist who coauthored the Nature paper on this antique H2O, is not having any truck with “floral notes” or “full body.” Her professional opinion: “It tastes terrible. … You would definitely not want to drink this stuff.” Apparently the color and texture aren’t too appetizing either:

What jumps out at you first is the saltiness. Because of the reactions between the water and the rock, it is extremely salty. It is more viscous than tap water. It has the consistency of a very light maple syrup. It doesn’t have color when it comes out, but as soon as it comes into contact with oxygen it turns an orangy color because the minerals in it begin to form — especially the iron.

But while this does not represent a new gastronomic frontier for water, it’s still a very cool scientific discovery, especially if it turns out to contain microbial life. Finding out whether it does is Lollar’s next project, after she rinses the taste out of her mouth.

As a journalist, it takes a lot to really piss me off: I’ve found that most scandals aren’t really scandals if you dig past the screaming headlines and into the wonky details. And, though I grew up a corporation-hating liberal, in nearly every story I’ve reported I’ve found that for the most part, businesspeople act honestly and honorably. The companies actually trying to make the world better often make easy targets, because when you are grappling with genuine complexity — which is what corporations do — you are bound to make mistakes.

And then, every once in a while, I come across a true scandal, and it tips me back toward cynicism.

That said, now I’m pissed off: Monday morning we learned that the ag-tech corporation Syngenta paid millions of dollars in a covert effort to protect its herbicide atrazine and discredit critics. (The story, put out by Environmental Health News and 100Reporters, is worth reading in full here.) It’s a solid case study illustrating the lengths a company will go to influence the scientific debate. And, usefully, the documents show who Syngenta was paying to shill for them.

Here’s what happened: Since 1997 Tyrone Hayes, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, has been running experiments suggesting that atrazine causes sexual deformities in frogs. The Environmental Protection Agency disagrees that there is a problem with atrazine, based on two major studies (see the section on amphibians at the bottom). It’s worth noting, however, that Syngenta itself performed these studies. This isn’t a reason to throw the studies out, in my opinion, but they need to meet a higher standard.

So far, this looks like the normal exercise of scientific risk management — with one wrinkle: Somewhere along the line Hayes started venting his anger at Syngenta in verse, emailing its representatives aggressive rap takedowns, full of sexual imagery. A mild example:

Tyrone b hayes is hard as hell

battle anybody, i don’t care who you tell

you object! you will fail!

mercy for the weak is not for sale

This is either indicative of derangement or Bulworth-style hellraising, depending on your perspective. Either way, it doesn’t have much to do with the science. It seemed that Syngenta was patiently jumping through the regulatory hoops, and doing the studies that would show if its product was dangerous. At least before yesterday.

The breakthrough came when a water-management district in Illinois filed a lawsuit to force Syngenta to pay for the cost of removing atrazine from drinking water. That lawsuit was eventually settled out of court, but during discovery, the court forced Syngenta to turn over mounds of documents.

Those documents include memos showing that the company hired private detectives to dig up dirt on both Hayes and a judge working on the case. They show that Syngenta funneled money to the American Council on Science and Health, to the Hudson Institute (where Alex Avery of the institute’s Center for Global Food Issues attacked Hayes), and to Steven Milloy, publisher of junkscience.com and president of Citizens for the Integrity of Science. In return, the company got supportive blog posts and editorials.

“These are great clips for us because they get out some of our messages from someone who comes off sounding like an unbiased expert. Another strength is that the messages do not sound like they came from Syngenta,” wrote Syngenta’s head of communications.

None of this affects the science surrounding atrazine. But most people don’t actually read scientific papers — we rely on experts or journalists to interpret the results of studies. The Syngenta revelations suggest that if you believe large corporations play dirty to manipulate the public perception of science, you’re not a cynic at all — you’re a realist.

It’s hard to balance out the evidence when one heavily moneyed hand is pushing down on the scale. In a field like agriculture, where most of the money for research comes from corporations with a strong incentive to guide public opinion, it seems worth paying extra attention to independent reports from the likes of Tyrone Hayes – whether they comes in rap verse or not.

When dozens of police officers in riot gear raided the occupied Hayes Valley Farm in San Francisco early last Thursday morning, it seemed like the end of the road for this garden space. Activists from around the Bay Area had moved in on June 1 with the hopes of holding off the developers set to raze the farm and replace it with 182 condo units, retail space, and a parking garage. But after the early raid, a handful of arrests, and one activist falling 30 feet from a protest platform hung in a tree, it looked like time had run out.

That was before everyone met the Allen’s hummingbird.

After developers moved in and began toppling trees, someone alerted them to nesting hummingbirds on the land, and the project was put on hold while biologists and wardens from the Department of Fish and Wildlife investigated.

The Allen’s hummingbird is hardly endangered — it enjoys a pretty significant West Coast population in California and Oregon. Nonetheless, it is protected under the 1918 Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act along with, well, all other non-pet birds. It’s not illegal to destroy migratory bird habitat — otherwise no condos would ever get built! — but it is illegal to destroy their eggs and nests.

“The developers might get a fine, or the project might be on ice for now,” said farm activist Effie Rawlins. The Department of Fish and Wildlife didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Could a little bird really slow San Francisco’s epic apartment construction boom? Probably not for long: It may be springtime now, but those cute little Allen’s all migrate south to Mexico for the winter …

Taylor Shellfish Company, an oyster hatchery in Quilcene, Wash., is trying to combat ocean acidification by putting a sodium carbonate solution in the water. First having drugs in the water was bad, and now it’s … good? Jeez, Nature, MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

Oyster hatcheries are dropping the equivalent of Tums and other antacids into water to make it easier for naked mollusk larvae to build their shells… [O]cean waters [are] turning ever more corrosive as they absorb a fraction of the carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the atmosphere. The acidification, in turn, makes it harder for oyster larvae to build their shells.

So we create pollution, oceans get acidic, and the solution is not to push for businesses and people to cut their emissions (or eat fewer oysters), but to dump some heartburn meds in the water? Right. How could THAT go wrong? (Coming up next: How multivitamins can stop the NSA from reading your email.)

Marine ecologist George Waldbusser earns today’s “YA THINK?” award for admitting it’s a less-than-perfect solution:

“Ultimately, at some point,” he added, “they have to be able to address the bigger global CO2 problem.”

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

We have a bountiful selection of summer fruits and vegetables at lots of local farmers markets. My problem is my wife is obsessed with organic ONLY. I want to support organic but I also very much want to support locally grown products. In the last week, my wife has chosen organic tomatoes from Mexico and organic red peppers from Holland over locally grown versions. I’m having a problem buying produce shipped thousands of miles versus the same non-organic product raised less than 10 miles away. Help! Which is the better choice?

Jim H.
York, Penn.

A. Dearest Jim,

The real question is not which is the better choice, but can this marriage be saved?!

Spoiler: It probably can.

You are not the first to be plagued by this supposed either-or conundrum, and you and your wife both have good instincts. Your wife is presumably sold on the notion that organic produce is better for the land and better for your health, and perhaps also wants to send a signal to the local grocery. Her dollars support an industry worth an estimated $27 billion in 2012, according to the USDA, up from $11 billion in 2004. (Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But organics still make up only 3.5 percent of U.S. food sales.)

You, meanwhile, are attracted to the idea of supporting farmers in the York area, putting money into the local economy, and knowing where your food comes from. You are lucky to be within reach of “lots” of markets. That’s not the case for many of us, although farmers markets are sprouting faster than radishes: Last year, nearly 7,900 had sprung up across the country, compared to 3,100 a decade earlier. These markets account for about 20 percent of local food sales in the U.S., an industry currently estimated at $7 billion. (The rest of the local-food sales are to restaurants, distributors, and the like.)

Here’s the thing, Jim: If you have access to lots of local markets, I am absolutely sure you have access to food that is local and organic. This is not an either-or situation. You and your wife can both be happy.

The trick is, you are not going to see many “organic” labels at the farmers market. So my suggestion is a little culinary couples counseling. Go to the market together (talk about a hot date!) and ask the farmers where and how they grow their crops. It just so happens that there are plenty of small farmers who use sustainable methods, but cannot afford the money or time it takes to pursue certification. You will not be the first who has asked questions like this, and you’ll learn a ton. If you’re feeling shy, start with the USDA’s farmers market locator tool, which indicates whether a market sells organic products — but you will probably still have to poke around and squint and ask questions when you get there.

If your wife thinks all this probing is weird, you could gently tell her there are important things to know about capital-O organic, the kind you find in the grocery store. Organic is important and worth supporting. But this term does not automatically mean chemical-free. Organic producers are allowed to use organic pesticides, aka those derived from natural ingredients. (Though pesticide residues on organic produce are still lower than on non-organics.) Second, “organic” tells you nothing much about where your food comes from, or how the workers are treated, or other things conscientious consumers might like to know. Many organic growers do use better practices than their conventional counterparts, but when one buys, say, tomatoes from Mexico, there’s no easy way to find out. And you are right, of course, about the shipping impacts [PDF], although the way food is produced can have even more of an impact on the planet than how it gets to you.

Of course, when winter comes you might be facing another marital meltdown, depending how deep this commitment to local goes: Can you guys get by without fresh tomatoes in January? That’s for you to decide, and at that point those Mexican imports might look like an excellent option.

Whatever the season, it all parboils down to this: Buying local is the only way to really know what you’re eating, but buying organic matters too. So you’re both right! Best argument ever!

Go forth and have a plump, ripe, juicy summer. And if you want to make your wife really happy, offer to do all the shopping while she takes a nap.

Harmoniously,
Umbra

Foie gras is a controversial topic. It’s one of the most delicious foods on the planet, but conventional foie gras comes at the price of force-feeding ducks and geese. Pateria de Sousa is doing things differently. By reviving old techniques, his family farm in Spain has managed to produce the much sought-after delicacy in a humane and sustainable way.

From bee-killing companies pretending to love bees to researchers frantically trying to create a disease-resistant superbee, it’s been kind of a rough week for bees, who have already been having a rough couple of years due to dying off left and right. But why should you care? It’s not like bees are delivering your mail or making you dinner or sewing your clothes, Cinderella-style.

But bees DO pollinate a bunch of shit that you probably like to eat. Need a visual? Check out these before and after pics from Whole Foods that illustrate the amount of produce that would vanish if all the bees died off:

According to Whole Foods:

One of every three bites of food comes from plants pollinated by honeybees and other pollinators. Yet, major declines in bee populations threaten the availability of many fresh ingredients consumers rely on for their dinner tables.

To raise awareness of just how crucial pollinators are to our food system, the University Heights Whole Foods Market store temporarily removed all produce that comes from plants dependent on pollinators. They pulled from shelves 237 of 453 products – 52 percent of the department’s normal product mix.

Freaky, right? At least we’ll still have chili-cheese Fritos.

Yum, genetically engineered corn and cotton.

That isn’t what most people would think. (Especially the cotton bit. And especially the GMO bit.)

But a growing number of pests appear to share this sentiment. They’ve developed immunity to corn and cotton crops genetically engineered to contain the pesticide Bt, so they’re now munching away with impunity.

As of 2010, five of 13 major pest species had become largely immune to the Bt poisons in GMO corn and cotton, compared to just one species in 2005, scientists write in a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

“Three of the five cases are in the US, where farmers have planted about half of the world’s Bt crop acreage,” reports Business Standard. “[The study] indicates that in the worst cases, resistance evolved in 2 to 3 years; but in the best cases, effectiveness of Bt crops has been sustained more than 15 years.”

The scientists, who analyzed 77 studies conducted on five continents, also found that other species appear to be developing resistance.

Perhaps as alarming as the growth in the number of Bt-resistant species is the growth in the amount of land upon which Bt crops are planted. From the paper:

So not only are farmers wasting money on GMO seeds that don’t perform as advertised, but they are then spraying their crops with more insecticides to help overcome bugs’ growing resistance. Meanwhile, nobody really knows what those Bt genes are doing to other animals that eat them. Such as pigs. And us.

OK, everyone have a seat and take a few deep breaths. Go to your calming place. Ready? Good. Because I’m about to talk about a new study that suggests that eating genetically modified crops might not be the best thing for us.

OK, another deep breath. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Tom, didn’t we settle this issue already?” After all, as the “plant science” industry group CropLife — you know, the one that hates First Lady Michelle Obama — likes to say, “more than 150 scientific studies have been done on animals fed biotech crops and to date, there is no scientific evidence of any detrimental impact.”

You’ll remember, I’m sure, the recent brouhaha over a French study by scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini that purported to find evidence that a GMO-based diet caused tumors in rats. Critics immediately raised significant questions about that study and the consensus quickly became that it was poorly conceived and executed. It was also the study that caused several science writers to conclude that anti-GMO sentiment was the moral equivalent of climate denial. Good times.

So is this new study [PDF], as the critics are already asserting, “L’affaire Seralini” redux? Let’s take a look.

Australian scientists, working with an Iowa farmer and U.S. veterinarians, studied 168 “commercial” piglets as they were raised and fattened for slaughter. Half of the pigs received non-GMO feed and another half ate feed made from GMO corn and soy. Researchers made sure that the GMO feed contained multiple kinds of genetically modified grains that are common in livestock feed; one grain was raised from seed that is herbicide-tolerant, for example, and another from seed that expresses its own pesticide. (One of the complaints of past GMO feeding trials is that they did not reflect actual feeding practices and thus couldn’t account for any potential “synergy” from exposing animals to more than one of these so-called “transgenes.”)

The vets who examined the pigs post-mortem didn’t know whether they were looking at an animal raised on GMO feed or not — to preserve the “blind” nature of the study.

The results, as reported by Reuters:

Researchers said there were no differences seen between pigs fed the GM and non-GM diets for feed intake, weight gain, mortality, and routine blood biochemistry measurements.

But those pigs that ate the GM diet had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation — 32 percent of GM-fed pigs compared to 12 percent of non-GM-fed pigs. The inflammation was worse in GM-fed males compared to non-GM fed males by a factor of 4.0, and GM-fed females compared to non-GM-fed females by a factor of 2.2. As well, GM-fed pigs had uteri that were 25 percent heavier than non-GM fed pigs, the study said.

So what are we to make of this?

Some critics, like crop scientist Anastasia Bodnar, co-director of the nonprofit group Biology Fortified, take serious issue with a lack of attention to ensuring the feeds were truly equivalent except for their GMO status. As she told me via email, “ideally, a feeding study like this would have controlled growing environments, genetic isolines, and component testing” so that researchers could isolate any effects they may have found. This study did not.

And there are legitimate questions about how the researchers analyzed the data they collected. While it’s true that researchers did find “statistically significant” differences in the incidence of “severe” stomach inflammation among the GMO- and non-GMO-fed animals, they didn’t use the ideal techniques that can help identify the possibility that the findings were the result of random chance. One scientist, an agronomist and statistician who is often critical of anti-GMO studies, observed in a blog post that different, potentially more defensible statistical techniques would have found no differences between the animals.

Nonetheless, even critics of the study agree that it was conducted in a rigorous way, and the findings are intriguing and worth pursuing. The researchers did, after all, find high rates of severe inflammation. As the study’s main author, Judy Carman, observed in a response to critics, all commercial pigs raised in typical hog barn conditions experience gut inflammation to a degree. The point is that the severity was much worse for GMO-fed pigs.

But instead of calling for independent, rigorous science to explore the questions the study raised, critics dismiss it as “junk science,” biased by Carman, who is a professor at Flinders University in South Australia but has produced commentary critical of GMOs. They also point out that that the farmer involved in the study is a provider of GMO-free feed. This, despite the fact that this study was funded by the Australian government, not an advocacy group (or the biotech industry, for that mater). The takeaway for scientists who might be interested in studying the effects of eating GMO crops is that it’s not worth the trouble.

I’ve written about this effect in the past and I should add that research produced by the companies that make these products, which represents almost all of the research done on GMOs, does not prompt the same response. In fact, government agencies use this science when deciding whether it’s OK for companies to put these products in our food.

In the wake of the Seralini backlash, François Houllier, the head of France’s agricultural research agency, took to the pages of the journal Nature and endorsed more research on GMOs, not less. He said:

I believe that we need to publicly fund more risk–benefit analyses of GM crops. We also need more interdisciplinary studies of GM foods, especially on health impacts in animals and humans …

Second, research must always follow proper academic standards. In my opinion, any breach in the rigour and traceability of the scientific workflow … could, I fear, lead to a lack of trust … The more unexpected the results, the more rigorous this workflow should be…

As scientists, we must champion the multiple concerns of society, even when they make a contradictory call for more innovation as well as more precaution.

These are not the words of someone who has dismissed out of hand the very possibility that GMOs might produce unknown harms. It’s not as if harmful effects from industrial products are always immediately understood (see: DDT, BPA, PCBs, etc., etc., etc.). We now have an entirely new field called epigenetics that is just beginning to explore how substances we are exposed to may affect us. And then there’s the notion of our microbiome, which opens an entirely new frontier for research.

Critics of GMOs are accused of letting ideology trump science. But watching the scathing, knee-jerk reactions to any new piece of research that shines a less-than-positive light on GMOs, it makes me think that the shrill has found itself on the other foot. As Michael Hansen, senior scientist of Consumers Union (the policy and action arm of Consumer Reports), put it to me: “This is something that needs to be followed up. It’s consistent with other findings. The critics of this study want to assume GE is safe and then try to tear down any study showing otherwise … This is an ideological position, not a good scientific one.”

So let’s all take one more breath. Houllier has it right. We need more rigor, yes, but also more science. And screaming down every scientist who claims to have found that GMOs are not as great as their proponents would have us believe is not the way to get it.

Tip: When attempting any technically not-legal tactical endeavors, it helps to start with a checklist. For some rebels, I imagine this list would include items like spray-paint and rotten eggs, maybe an iPod stocked with mood music by the Sex Pistols. Me, I’m taking a greener approach with my list: potting soil, water bottle, trash bags, low-maintenance plants, and one classic terra-cotta planter.

I assembled these items one recent evening in preparation for my first attempt at serious guerrilla gardening (that’s reclaiming a piece of underused public land by planting it, to you). I’d dropped a few wildflower seed balls around the city, sure, but those little bombs are a bit of a crapshoot. This would be the first time I’d leave anything undoubtedly living and green in my wake. And besides, seed bombs are easy to fling unnoticed; an entire pot brimming with succulents is a bit trickier to assemble in secrecy. Better add “nerves of steel” to that checklist.

My chosen site could certainly do with a little extra love. Located along a long pedestrian staircase linking a major bus route to the neighborhoods on the top and sides of a hill, the spot was overgrown with weeds and littered with bottles and granola bar wrappers. Ugly black construction netting encircled two sinkholes next to the stairs; the only decoration was the graffiti crawling up the sidewalk and across the site’s lone bench. If there was another spot within a two-mile radius of my apartment that needed some horticultural refinement more, I sure hadn’t found it.

So I loaded up my pot, my plants, and my soil, convinced my fiancé to ride shotgun, and set out to guerrilla garden the hell out of that neglected site. Or at least, leave it a little nicer, a little greener, than it was before.

I’d picked out the plants earlier that day, scanning a local garden center for anything that fell into the “hard to kill” category: you know, hardy, doesn’t need to be watered much, pruned, or sung to sleep with botanical lullabies to thrive. Luckily, a few pretty succulents with orange and yellow flowers on the sale table seemed like just the ticket. “Drought tolerant,” a tag promised. “Go ahead, step on them!” bragged another. “I’ll take five,” I told the cashier, adding the soil and pot to my haul.

We set out just as the commuting hours were winding down. I know, I know: I thought dressing up in that black catsuit left over from sophomore-year Halloween and sneaking out to plant my unauthorized planter under cover of darkness would’ve been great fun, too. But on second thought, during my scouting mission I’d noticed several signs that someone (or someones) was sleeping there: lots of extra clothing, for one, and a worn, flat hollow under a nearby bush. Suddenly, sneaking over there in the dead of night didn’t seem like the best idea — for safety, and because, as a rule, I don’t like to barge into other people’s bedrooms unannounced.

So it was still plenty bright as we unloaded the supplies at the top of the staircase and headed down, lugging the bag of potting soil and the planter down in our arms. A few runners and people in business suits passed us — clearly, this incipient act of guerrilla gardening would have some witnesses. “But that means it’ll also get noticed,” I told Ted brightly. “Why bother planting a garden without permission if you don’t want anyone to see it?”

A few more steps, and the site came into view. It was just as it had been during my scouting mission — trash everywhere, overgrown weeds — except someone had beaten us to the site. A man sat on the bench, head down, fingers fidgeting with the buttons on his shirt. He looked like he’d been there a while, and judging by the few personal items he’d arranged on the bench, like he was in no hurry to leave.

“I don’t want to disturb him,” I whispered to Ted. “Maybe we should pot the plants right here and just carry the finished product down?” So that’s what we did, squeezing our operation off to the side of the staircase above the landing. Several more commuters gave us curious looks as I filled the planter and nestled the succulents inside, but nobody gave us any trouble. Lesson one: If you simply act like you have the authority to prepare a terra-cotta planter on the edge of a public staircase, people will treat you as such. Lesson two: If your transgression is actually kind of pleasant — planting flowers, say, or giving away neck rubs without a license — no one is going to object.

It took less than five minutes to get the planter in shape. We’d planned to pick up the litter at the site and rake away some of the accumulated dead plant material before settling it in place, but that kind of intrusion was out of the question now. Instead, we placed the planter right on the edge of the landing, across from the bench, where anyone coming or going could see it. I unscrewed my bottle and gave the planter its first (maybe last) official watering, and we started back up the stairs. We were three feet away, but the man never even looked at us.

Glancing back at the landing, my planter suddenly looked pitifully puny. What were a few little succulents in a kitchen sink-sized pot against the garbage and the smell of that site? We should have come out with a planter — no, three planters — 10 times the size and filled them with something big and showy. We should have raked out all the rocks and trash and planted a field of rose bushes. That might have really changed the look of this place. Now there was just a small pot with a few orange and yellow flowers where there had been nothing but concrete; it was a little nicer, a little greener, than it was before. Not enough, maybe, but something.

Thus ends my miniseries on urban guerrilla gardening; tune in next time for more tales from the edges of green living.