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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………….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.”…………
Yes, and the government should decimate the population every 5 years if we don’t stop eating meat or having children. This would be better than killing one out of every five citizens and would make the nine out of ten survivors very happy, thereby eliminating the need to pursue happiness.
Now if they could work on a reason to stop that problematic free speech thingy everybody keeps talking about we could make America a “Greener” place for everyone. Yay!.
I’ve got him beat — although mine was intentionally tongue in cheek:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/09/16/nanopeople/
Somebody has toxoplasmosis.
“Professor of Bioethics” is all you need to know. Talk about a bulls**t cirriculum. One part Philosophy, one part Marxist studies, one part Sociology, beat senseless with stupid stick, pour into university faculty club.
Dodgy Geezer says March 13, 2012 at 4:00 am: “I don’t believe any sane researcher would produce these thoughts.”
Really? After decades of calls for the equally insane Denier Nurembergs, for geoengineering, for “hide the decline” and hide the data, the apocalyptic pronouncements of James Hansen, the pagan zealotry of Bill McKibben, wire fraud and identity theft by “genius researcher” Peter Gleick…..???
It goes on an on and demonstrably proves that these people and their movement are completely insane from top to bottom.
Now that they’ve reached the threshold of eugenics, I am seriously anticipating a call for “compassionate genocide” in the name of Mother Gaia.
Eugenics as “the final climate solution” was easily predictable – and in fact I did so on another blogs just a few weeks back – and serious calls for people reduction is just around the corner. Guaranteed. What else can one expect of the thoroughly insane CAGW zealot religion?
I think the great writer, Jonathan Swift, would have recognized the modest and reasonable nature of Dr. Liao.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Wow, they are discussing the idea of giving us drugs that would give us empathetic and altruistic values. In short, they are looking at giving us drugs to turn us into testosterone starved liberals.
Technocracy at its finest.
“Climate Change” now is a gateway to a rebirth of Eugenics. This all stinks of a secular religion, like the one observed by those striving to bring about a Master Race. If so, we have seen these spiritual forces before. They cost the world millions of lives.
General craziness of the week, from Germany:
Merkel’s coalition government proposed a tax on online news aggregators. Really? Germany will be taxing the worldwide internet?
WUWT does some news aggregating. How much will Anthony have to cough up? How many of the many little blogs will have to pay the German tax if they post too many links to too many news stories?
At least they’re consistent. They’ve shown they don’t understand “renewable” technology, then nuclear technology. Now they’ve shown they don’t understand internet technology either. Three for three, they’re on a roll!
It is about frickin time. I have been discriminated against all my life. Must be this tall to ride this ride. Must be this tall or weigh this much to not be required to use a booster seat. Must attach clunky loose blocks to gas pedals in order to drive. Must be at least 5′ 2″ to fit into petites. And there are no panty hose sizes that work for me.
And to not put too fine a point on this, when I was a teenager walking around in all my short magnificence, I had a pair of black cat eyes.
By gawd, this could turn me into a global warmer.
Indeed the Winkler would be pleased!
On the otherhand, the entire play structure at McDonalds is my personal playground. You tall people with your massive shoulders and long legs would have to eat my dust going down the tube into the ball pen.
From Ric Werme on March 13, 2012 at 5:06 am:
Considering the overnight and morning news outlets were blaring out the warning about how red meat kills you early and you shouldn’t have it more than once or twice a week max (of course the actual story is slightly different), I am certain there are those who will advocate, for those die-hard self-destructive masochists who refuse to go Vegan, that we would be much better off eating rodents rather than cows or pigs. So mice, rats, and chipmunks are on the menu, maybe a large squirrel for holidays.
Of course that will be much healthier than the red meat, even when served with the piles of French fries or potato chips or mashed potatoes with gravy that are traditionally eaten with the servings of red meat.
Raising rats for meat… You know, I did see a movie once highlighting the benefits of rat meat. At this rate, on the way to the Green Utopia, all of us here may long for the “creature comforts” that movie portrayed.
Suggestion: butt-tongues. Save on the Charmin.
Grant says:
March 13, 2012 at 5:50 am
When I imagine the government required to make Mr. Liao’s dreams come true, I tremble.
======================================
Well…..we’re getting there
..the first step is controlling your medical
Roger Knights says March 13, 2012 at 5:35 am: “Huxley’s best novel (artisically) was After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.”
Agreed, one of my favorite novels of all time. Preceded by Brave New World (loosely similar to Prof. Liao’s bizarre new world), and followed by both The Ape and the Essence and the Island (yet another dystopia resembling Prof. Liao’s vision). Huxley came from a family of noted biologists, and I’d guess that eugenics was never far from his mind.
Huxley was a social visionary, at least on the dark potentials of humanity. Now we see his fiction made real via the insane CAGW zealot religion.
Endgame: Vegetarian dwarfs. Passive, gentle and obedient by nature, trained to accept a strictly stratified society and a hierarchy of experts. Such are the beginnings of slavery and tyranny. It’s been done before, but not in the midst of plenty and not with such well-coordinated shams to bring in artificial scarcities and to create anxieties over nothing. Historically, the best antidote to genocidal tyrannies has been healthy, vibrant economies with cheap fuel and plenty of food, egalitarian societies with competent, smart and aggressive citizens. For now we must make sure to ridicule and humiliate, and not legitimize in any way such psychopaths like Liao, while lettting them and their masters know that if they manage to force themselves into positions of authority, they and theirs wil be trated like rabid killer dogs, quickly and mercilessly.
Whitley Strieber, has written several books concerning his abductions by aliens. He claims that the aliens revealed to him that man was destroying the earth, thus inspiring his book & moive: “The Coming Global Superstorm” & “The Day After Tomorrow”. He also revealed that the grey alien race has been genetically manipulating the human race throughout history. See … optimized human engineering not as crazy as you think.
The impossible “saving our planet” dreams
Photosynthetic skin.
Carbon skeletons.
Fur – photosynthetic fur, naturally.
Solar panel heads.
Public transportation that works…
[SNIP: a bit too far. -REP]
There is a much easier way to combat climate change along the lines of what is described. Just kill everyone. Problem solved.
It gets worse. You know it’s bad when a news reports starts with:
“No, this is not 1 April – and this is not an April Fool’s hoax.”
http://sciencenordic.com/new-theory-co2-makes-you-fat
Hell’s Bell’s Batman. CO2 makes you fat. Most likely causes cancer too.
Conspiracy or to meddle in other people´s lives with the “altruistic” purpose of improving their (our) lives, it is, as any conspiracy, a game for power, a typical childish game, a fools´game doomed to failure….however, these kids are becoming pretty dangerous and are in urgent need of a serious reprimand.
Liao: “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.”
ROFL.
The guy must absolutely freak out when he goes to a basketball game, he must fell the urge to exterminate both teams.
But it does shed the light on one critical think that is happening in the US science right now, bed wetting group think has replaced individual daring. Darwin got it wrong, it’s no longer survival of the fittest, it’s survival of group weakness. Low IQ pack mentality is destroying individualism.
Hari Seldon says:
March 13, 2012 at 1:08 am
Nit picker alert….’I welcome or new smaller climate optmized green cat-like overlords. – Anthony’
I read that to mean that Anthony is all for the Greenies applying their social engineering on themselves first and exclusively. Good plan, I say. We must push them harder to live up to their cooky ideals, and for the most parts they have been; pacifist, low energy and protein cunsuming numpties with negative population growths and over-educated in insecure economic sectors such as public service.