Bizarre stuff from The Atlantic, though it seems even Bill McKibben is panning him and when you can’t sell Bill McKibben on crazy, well, you’ve entered a whole new plane of crazy. Me? I welcome our new smaller climate optmized green cat-like overlords. – Anthony
How Engineering the Human Body Could Combat Climate Change
By Ross Andersen The Atlantic
From drugs to help you avoid eating meat to genetically engineered cat-like eyes to reduce the need for lighting, a wild interview about changes humans could make to themselves to battle climate change.
…
One human engineering strategy you mention is a kind of pharmacologically induced meat intolerance. You suggest that humans could be given meat alongside a medication that triggers extreme nausea, which would then cause a long-lasting aversion to meat eating. Why is it that you expect this could have such a dramatic impact on climate change?
Liao: There is a widely cited U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization report that estimates that 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 equivalents come from livestock farming, which is actually a much higher share than from transportation. More recently it’s been suggested that livestock farming accounts for as much as 51% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. And then there are estimates that as much as 9% of human emissions occur as a result of deforestation for the expansion of pastures for livestock. And that doesn’t even to take into account the emissions that arise from manure, or from the livestock directly. Since a large portion of these cows and other grazing animals are raised for consumption, it seems obvious that reducing the consumption of these meats could have considerable environmental benefits.
…
Your paper also discusses the use of human engineering to make humans smaller. Why would this be a powerful technique in the fight against climate change?
Liao: Well one of the things that we noticed is that human ecological footprints are partly correlated with size. Each kilogram of body mass requires a certain amount of food and nutrients and so, other things being equal, the larger person is the more food and energy they are going to soak up over the course of a lifetime. There are also other, less obvious ways in which larger people consume more energy than smaller people—for example a car uses more fuel per mile to carry a heavier person, more fabric is needed to clothe larger people, and heavier people wear out shoes, carpets and furniture at a quicker rate than lighter people, and so on.
And so size reduction could be one way to reduce a person’s ecological footprint. For instance if you reduce the average U.S. height by just 15cm, you could reduce body mass by 21% for men and 25% for women, with a corresponding reduction in metabolic rates by some 15% to 18%, because less tissue means lower energy and nutrient needs.
…
In your paper you suggest that some human engineering solutions may actually be liberty enhancing. How so?
Liao: That’s right. It’s been suggested that, given the seriousness of climate change, we ought to adopt something like China’s one child policy. There was a group of doctors in Britain who recently advocated a two-child maximum. But at the end of the day those are crude prescriptions—what we really care about is some kind of fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family. If that’s the case, given certain fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human engineering could give families the choice between two medium sized children, or three small sized children. From our perspective that would be more liberty enhancing than a policy that says “you can only have one or two children.” A family might want a really good basketball player, and so they could use human engineering to have one really large child.
“We figured that if everyone had cat eyes, you wouldn’t need so much lighting”
Read the whole bizarre thing here: How Engineering the Human Body Could Combat Climate Change
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That’s like a whole bunch of crazy wrapped up in an insanity burrito. What kind of mental gymnastics allowed this person to imagine that we, as a species, have the capability or wherewithal to do something like engineer people to have CAT EYES, without that causing possibly serious issues. I can see the headline now
“All People Born with Genetically Engineered Eyes Going Blind by 25, Scientists Mystified”
“We never could have imagined this kind of an outcome, we thought we were helping!” – Random Gub’ment Stoolie.
The Atlantic is a publication like The Onion? I’m European so I thought I’d better ask.
Well fk me,what are these dudes smoking?I want some.I suppose we payed for their research? The straws they are are grasping at are getting shorter by the day.
Actually the biggest amount of greenhouse gas (methane) emissons comes from termites.Bring back DDT!
We know their battle is now lost when they revert to this absolute BS
“Jump the shark” comes to mind.
Rather pathetic actually.
Why is there a need to to make humans smaller to fight climate change anyway.
Going by the other loads of alarmist climate change drivel in the MSM. Aren’t some bird and animal species supposedly shrinking because of climate change. If that is really true evolution will naturally adapt and start shrinking humans then aswell. No need for all this eugenist control freaking of humanity to save Gaia then afterall!
Stark staring bonkers! And what were global livestock levels just 200 years ago?
Think Plains of America, Serengeti, and many other areas which experienced whole sale slaughter.
Yet global levels of CO2 were lower than today. Could it be because of all the felled timber?
Lets see, for some reason certain races tend to have taller than human average height.
Is there a hint of eugenics in this loons train of thought?
If we were all smaller, then we could cram another couple billion of us into the cities. If we had cat eyes, we could sleep all day and roam all night. Sounds like we’ve got some answers here, folks.
As far as drug induced meat aversion, Kubrick did that in “A Clockwork Orange,” but he was averring something other than meat.
Don’t those guys realize that in 20 years all meat will be grown from cells in a factory/laboratory. Behind each supermarket will be one of these meat production faclabs turning out tasty rump steak etc to the supermarket’s requirements. It won’t be manufactured meat but meat grown as it would grow on an animal. First trial production of this type has already occurred in the form of a white meat sausage, not very appealing but it will improve very quickly. Work in this field is progressing at the speed of light as the rewards are ginormous. Google “factory manufactured meat” if you have your doubts.
BBBaz above last line should read, Google “factory grown meat”
I think there might be a funding opportunity here.
let’s see, maybe we could transplant the ‘head in sand’ ostrich reponse to humans and IPCC AR’s ?
nah… been done already.
Nit picker alert….’I welcome or new smaller climate optmized green cat-like overlords. – Anthony’
Amusing. He is quick to dismiss others ideas because they might have side effects, but is immune to considering that his own might be similarly flawed.
Limit the emissions per family? How do you intend to enforce it? The only realistic method is the death penalty.
Science fiction has some great ‘studies’ of his proposals. I would suggest reading ‘Half Past Human’, by T. J. Bass, his proposal bears a strong resemblance to the ‘Nebish’.
Steve Austin is environmentally friendly?
Sorry,I can’t believe this dude is serious.Not april 1st is it?I live in New Zealand,temps here are below average.But I would like to be able to see in the dark.Could be fun.Thanks for your posts Anthony,read them all the time.Seems you have them whucked?Whacked?Woteva,What rock is Michael Mann hiding under at the mo.He’s gone real quiet.Mybe he has got his cat’s eyes and gone none nocturnal.Thanks for a great site.Billy
The Atlantic should have noted there is indeed an ongoing large scale experiment that has successfully produced smaller people that consume very few resources. It’s called North Korea.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20040214&slug=korea14
The level of medical knowledge dispatched to test the efficacy of the method is truly breathtaking:
Makes sense, as it was long ago demonstrated that giraffes gain their long necks and legs from stretching for leaves high up on trees. Being North Korea, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re trying long therapeutic sessions on the rack, however they have so far confined those experimental treatments to those confined in their prisons.
Well then, let’s all give thanks to the forward-thinking North Korean government for showing the way forward to the Green Utopia. Just restrict the nutrition intake to the young and in the womb, and you can create generations that consume far less resources and are mentally prepared to be happy Greens for all of their lives. Good work North Korea, the Green movement is indebted to you for your selfless contribution to eternal Green world peace.
Instead of making us allergic to meat, they should make us allergic to BS. That would solve a lot of problems, including climate alarmism.
Probably the most insidious element in this is the idea that people could be given drugs to increase their empathy and therefore become environmentalists. So, you want to force people to think like you?
Of course, it would all be ‘voluntary’. “Hey you! Yes, you with the SUV! you’ve just been ‘volunteered’!”
Liao? Asian?
Some Asians eat cats…
Look, they got their grant! What more do you want?
Anyway, Peter Gabriel said it first: And he nearly got the date right!
“18/9/2012 T.V. Flash on All Dial-a-Program Services. This is an announcement from Genetic Control:. “It is my sad duty to inform you of a four foot restriction on. humanoid height.”. . It’s said now that people will be shorter in height,. they can fit twice as many in the same building site..
— Genesis — Get ’em Out By Friday
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
North Korea meets Prince Phillip
This is even worse than fascism or communism. At least those dictators believed in increasing human capacity. This type of disgusting filthy ideology declares its intention to not only destroy vast swathes of the farming industry and the eco-system that relies on it, but also to stamp out mankind’s existence and turn humanity into a hobbit-like slave.
Bring that ideology near me or any of my descendants and believe me, we will raise an army of massive violence against you. I will engrain this defence of humanity in my family and make sure it is handed down to each new generation.
A note to the mods…I have been informed by William Martin that he has been ‘hacked’ and that the messages posted on WUWT and another site purported to be from him are in fact from someone else!
I’m not sure what he’s to do next, but suggest you contact him at his provided email and a) verify that what I have said is true and b) do not post any more from ‘William Martin’ until this is sorted out.