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
Kate at Small Dead Animals has a poll
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Green Khmers all over again. When we will finish ’em, the whole hell will speak green.
Juraj V. says March 13, 2012 at 7:18 am: “Green Khmers all over again.”
Good point, one I’ve often considered about the CAGW zealots.
Denier Nurembergs (show trials); Heidi Cullen’s recent climate self-criticism sessions at George Mason Univ.; and now Prof. Liao’s climate eugenics.
And so now we have the Khmer Vert.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/
Above link, shows that CAT OWNERS are likely somewhat crazy to begin with.
Now let’s deal with stereotypes…gun toting, tobaccer chewing, neandrethal climate denier: Owns a viscious dog (like Kenji !!). Liberal/Hippie tree hugger owns cats (like Peter Gliek).
Completely explains everything!
Max (Not a small amount of tounge in the cheek.)
Sadly, eugenics never really went away. It just become impolite to advocate it.
That cultural prohibition seems to be fading.
It’s over, THEY are going to win: http://sciencenordic.com/new-theory-co2-makes-you-fat
Yes, they finally figured out that the way to get the CO2 Totalitarian Scheme in place is to get all of the Fat Slobs to believe in “The Magic Bullet”
We are Doomed, Doomed!
A conversation between two women, in the future: Hey, darling, where did you get your child, from Monsanto or…?
Why isn’t the head line next to a photo of Dr. Evil?
Even Dr. Evil isn’t that stupid.
Without manure, how would we grow vegetables?
From the interview: Liao: “But, I think it’s worth remembering how fluid human traits like height are. A hundred years ago people were much shorter on average, and there was nothing wrong with them medically. And so, if people are resistant to the idea of engineering humans to be smaller because of some notion of an optimal height, they might be operating from a status quo bias.”
I guess he considers having antibiotics and good nutrition a “status quo bias”. Or, have the last handful of generations been inheriting acquired traits?
“Just because a “philosopher” says something everyone else thinks is stupid it doesn’t mean he’s not stupid.” Chris B (1953- )
What a complete ass, and with a limited imagination to boot. Why not genetically engineer human beings to be able to live underwater, or to be able to live in space?
And why not give us super powers while their at it? And ‘Dr.’ Liao has a PHD? And funding?
I am in the wrong business. But I think I’ve got a dynamite grant application idea.
Get to know some of the more strident greens and they will freely reveal an ethos that “progresses” far beyond eugenics into the realm of reduction of the human population… for everyone else, of course..
Scrape off that thin veneer of “concern” and you can begin to understand how tyranny has always flourished among men.
When I first saw this (on WUWT), just underneath the ‘Cat people’ poster was an advertisement for X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometers. I can hardly wait until we can all have our own human-engineered X-ray vision.
Actually I realise that the ‘dispose of everyone’ plan, the plan that is 1 small leap of logic away from Prof Liao genius proposal, may not be totally optimal …… actually there is a more optimal approach …
1) dispose of everyone in Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain first …. that way we immediately cure the Eurozone crisis as well as saving the planet
2) most poor people to get the chop …. might as well cos they ARE a guilt burden … but we need a few to do the menial stuff.
3) give the rest of us blue eyes and blonde hair …. based on a previous idea that got quashed before reaching full fruition.
Prof Liao ….. my total hero for opening up this entire new realm of thinking.
They are everywhere – the Sleeper Cells have been activated: http://sciencenordic.com/ten-percent-us-can-stop-climate-change
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
March 13, 2012 at 6:07 am
“Three for three, they’re on a roll!”
Four, actually – they also don’t understand the nature of money. When others are in debt, they owe you; when you are in the red, it’s just funny numbers in some ledger (they think). If one were outside of the sphere of their, hm, “experimentation”, it would be fun to watch them try to tax the ‘nets. As it is, one remembers that they have managed to have every internet in Germany user pay for state tv & radio. It’s a start…
This has to be a spoof, it can’t be real…. can it?
CO2 make you fat. Yes, they really say it.
http://sciencenordic.com/new-theory-co2-makes-you-fat
RHS says:
March 13, 2012 at 7:23 am
Without manure, how would we grow vegetables?
Petrochemical fertilizers. Without them, most of us would starve.
In 2005 a report was published in The Scotsman which claimed Josef Stalin supported an effort by scientist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov to create human-chimpanzee hybrids for super-soldiers. (See here and here). This is considered shocking and everyone loves a chance to kick Stalin; it makes us feel morally superior. But I’ll bet we are funding Dr. Liao, and just what does that say about us?
What’s the moral difference between trying to bio-engineer the perfect soldier and similar attempts to create an eco-aware, stranger-compassionate, lower-carbon-footprint future citizen? Of course Dr. Laio is not actually doing any of these things, just suggesting in an interview that they might be desirable (and by implication morally acceptable).
I firmly believe in spite of Dr. Laio’s fantasies that we simply don’t have the power to make the “enhancements” he suggests. And it’s a damned good thing because I’m absolutely certain we don’t have the wisdom.
Well that’s a new twist on the strawman argument.
Yes it’s liberty enhancing, because what we could have said is to do something that violates your liberty even more, so see we gave you more liberty by not violating your liberty as much as we could have.
Reminds me of the govt budget debates.
“We saved you a trillion dollars by only asking for 4 trillion more rather than 5 trillion.”
Tired old cliche’, I know. But the road to hell really is paved with the bricks of good intentions.
Evil always smiles at you.
As I have previously posted in Tips etc, if you post a video with no explanation, indication of how long it is or why I should watch it, you are wasting your time (as opposed to mine).
Warning – this comment may appear elsewhere. Not all of us are in basements with endless time and inclination to click on ‘hey – look at this’ blurts without further explanation.
I submit that the scenario in the novel “Logan’s Run” is superior. Everyone reports to a renewal center on their 65th birthday to be recycled. The monetary benefits for governments are enormous and immediate. Most entitlement programs like social security and medicare could be eliminated. In the USA the federal budget could be cut by 60% and and balanced. States would become solvent.
To save even more, everyone with birth defects would be recycled. So too with everyone who is or becomes handicapped mentally or physically. If further reduction is needed, selective ethnic cleansing can be employed. Better yet, focus on trouble makers like environmentalists, trial lawyers, and goverment workers who become surplus.
Some enterprising Malthusians need to model this scenario to quantify the global population and the cost to provide them with a good life following full implementation.
Swell, genetically engineered environmentalists. I can’t wait : (
What is relevant here is:
1. It is apparant that researchers are falling into the moral decay of potential cause equates to potential solutions, no matter the price.
2. Climate change is NOT to be feared. Climate has never been stable. The idea that somehow, somewhere, over the rainbow, that climate is stable just boggles the mind.
3. Moral reasoning is in short supply in the AGW crowd.
The real question is when such ideas become law, ignore the cats eyes and height as thats just wishful thinking it’s about the control over every part of your life that such ideas are about, don’t believe it can happen here in blighty they are bring in a law that will screen relationships and as the saying goes it’s a slippery slope, breeding by IQ levels anyone.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/12225/
And to bring in the total control of our lives the award winning Jo Nova has this
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/climate-coup-the-politics/#more-20749