From Frontiers in Physiology and the “why Kenyan Olympic runners from hot Africa beat the cold Norwegians” department comes this ludicrous claim.
We may have reached our maximum limits for height, lifespan and physical performance; environmental changes, including climate change, could see these decrease.
Humans may have reached their maximum limits for height, lifespan and physical performance. A recent review suggests humans have biological limitations, and that anthropogenic impacts on the environment – including climate change – could have a deleterious effect on these limits. Published in Frontiers in Physiology, this review is the first of its kind spanning 120 years worth of historical information, while considering the effects of both genetic and environmental parameters.
Despite stories that with each generation we will live longer and longer, this review suggests there may be a maximum threshold to our biological limits that we cannot exceed.
A transdisciplinary research team from across France studied trends emerging from historical records, concluding that there appears to be a plateau in the maximum biological limits for humans’ height, age and physical abilities.
“These traits no longer increase, despite further continuous nutritional, medical, and scientific progress. This suggests that modern societies have allowed our species to reach its limits. We are the first generation to become aware of this” explains Professor Jean-François Toussaint from Paris Descartes University, France.
Rather than continually improving, we will see a shift in the proportion of the population reaching the previously recorded maximum limits. Examples of the effects of these plateaus will be evidenced with increasingly less sport records being broken and more people reaching but not exceeding the present highest life expectancy.
However, when researchers considered how environmental and genetic limitations combined may affect the ability for us to reach these upper limits, our effect on the environment was found to play a key role.
“This will be one of the biggest challenges of this century as the added pressure from anthropogenic activities will be responsible for damaging effects on human health and the environment.” Prof. Toussaint predicts. “The current declines in human capacities we can see today are a sign that environmental changes, including climate, are already contributing to the increasing constraints we now have to consider.”
“Observing decreasing tendencies may provide an early signal that something has changed but not for the better. Human height has decreased in the last decade in some African countries; this suggests some societies are no longer able to provide sufficient nutrition for each of their children and maintain the health of their younger inhabitants,” Prof. Toussaint explains.
To avoid us being the cause of our own decline, the researchers hope their findings will encourage policymakers to focus on strategies for increasing quality of life and maximize the proportion of the population that can reach these maximum biological limits.
“Now that we know the limits of the human species, this can act as a clear goal for nations to ensure that human capacities reach their highest possible values for most of the population. With escalating environmental constraints, this may cost increasingly more energy and investment in order to balance the rising ecosystem pressures. However, if successful, we then should observe an incremental rise in mean values of height, lifespan and most human biomarkers.” Prof. Toussaint warns however, “The utmost challenge is now to maintain these indices at high levels.”
###
I might agree w/that. Prb’ly peaked around the 1940s – 50s before the cultural Marxism started taking hold.
No, I think we’re only now approaching peak stupidity.
Pseudo-intellectualism has evolved into pseudo-stupidity. And at psuedo cocktail parties there is no limit to stupidity masquerading as intelligentsia.
Approaching peak stupidity “assymptotically,” Bill.
“We may have reached our maximum limits….” says it all.
Next weeks report; CAGW makes humans bigger. They already did this with frogs, one report making them bigger, one smaller.
Well this new paper is at odds with a paper about new life extending breakthroughs that claims that the first person to live to 150 years old, is already over 50 years old.
It also claims that the first person who will live to be a thousand years old has already been born.
So a clash of life claims.
G
They expect that it would take a long time for their predictions to be disproven so it is hard dot argue with their claims.
This is like the report the other day that days over 90 deg F during human gestation will lower the earning power of the baby when it grows up. DO they not realize that EVERY DAY IN THE WOMB IS A 98.6 DEG F DAY! JEEZ! They also seem to ignore air conditioning, but I guess they already assume that the UN has done away with that unsustainable A/C.
I never realized “Limits to Growth” was about people’s hight.
~¿~
And what will happen to humans that leave this planet, as must happen for humanity to survive beyond about a billion years and avoid the true global warming catastrophe from the increasingly hot and eventually much larger sun?
oz4caster
The aliens that spawned us will come back and rescue us, silly.
As Ted Kennedy would say, “We’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it.”
“Humans may have reached their maximum limits for height, lifespan and physical performance.”
May as well close the Patent Office too, because there is nothing new left to ever be invented.
good one
Club of Rome redux
My thought, too. Are they going to recycle Ehrlich, as well?
We can all get rich with bets!
Ehrlich? No, he starved to death decades ago, along with the countless other millions of victims of our greed and exploitation.
We may well have reached our physical limits, so what?
The technological revolution might mean that one day, we no longer need the fragile shell our spirits occupy (OK, I’m getting as daft as they are here) in several generations time and we’ll be able to flit between the stars with no horrible effects from solar radiation, lack of gravity, food, water, taking a poo etc.
Lets see where life leads us instead of wringing our wittle handsies over it.
Propaganda couched in sciency jargon.
The only fact-based assertion is that poverty (socialism and/or war driven?) in Africa will stunt one’s growth and lifespan. The solution? Deny Africa inexpensive energy that would otherwise raise standards of living, increasing height and lifespan.
“Propaganda couched in sciency jargon.”
That’s my opinion, too.
And throwing CAGW in there as one reason is just ridiculous.
But necessary for future grant money, TA.
I blame mobile phones, social media, dumbing down of education, McDonalds and television. There is however some light at the end of the tunnel, careful research reveals that although my electricity bill is at an all time high it is very unlikely to be anywhere near its eventual peak.
The Reverend Badger
Your eminence, permit me to comment?
I was told TV, the Beano, sport, pop music, disco’s, fast cars, Penthouse magazine, and self abuse would turn my brain to mush and make me blind.
It has, hehe, done, hehehehe, nothing, hahahehehehehohoho, of the sort, wahahahahah!
Where’s my stick?
The light at the end of the tunnel is a 25 watt bulb over a sign that says, “This way to the rest of the tunnel ➔”
With escalating environmental constraints,..
Humans have been expanding into supposedly inhospitable zones for the last 10,850 years. Environmental conditions have been favorable for millennia.
A lot longer than that.
gosh…and I just read an article not too long ago……about how they are transplanting brains so people can live forever
Latitude
There are some learned people out there who need a brain transplant to get through today.
Mmmmmmann, that was nasty! Sorry.
🙂
…the best jokes have an element of truth 🙂
I understand that, according to some engineers, dinosaurs couldn’t possibly have grown to the size they were unless gravity was substantially less than it is today. e.g. necks far too long to support even the pea brain at the end of them.
Perhaps there are some engineers out there who would care to offer an opinion?
Call it evolution in action.
Are these the same engineers that also gave proof that breaking the four minute mile was physically impossible?
Brian McCain
Good point, although I think they are a bit more informed than earlier engineers. However, with all their computer models, Einstein still reigns supreme. Did he even have an abacus?
And bumblebees cannot fly.
Or travelling faster than 30 mph would cause humans to suffocate.
Tell that to Roger Bannister.
Tom in Florida says “And bumblebees cannot fly.”
[. . . and means, Of course they can.]
One of our plants has many yellow flowers (Siberian Pea Shrub).
A small grist of Bubblebees shows up when the shrub is blooming.
They don’t mind being watched, and doing so is entertaining. Sometimes one will leave a blossom and tumble back and down a few inches, then right itself and have another go at a new blossom.
That’s fantastic flying, if you ask me.
The plant, Caragana arborescens, has prickles or thorns so you might want to plant them off your normal path, but plant some you should. Then watch.
IMNSH, the notion of differing gravity is a bunch of wapoo. More likely, the difference is in oxygen levels, i.e., 30% instead of 20%. Species breathing higher O2 concentrations can grow bigger and probably stronger, as well, When O2 levels dropped to 20%, the bigger animals gradually went extinct, because, all else being equal, O2 requirements go by the cube of animal height; ability to breathe goes roughly by the square, assuming proportional lung surface areas.
not true.
Lungs are fractal structures with surface proportionate to their mass, so ability to breathe also goes roughly by the cube. It is not a special feat to breath in 20% oxygen instead of 30%, and with pretty small and quickly appearing racial adaptation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_humans ) people can even at altitude where oxygen content is equivalent to 12-15%.
The drop from 30% to 20% oxygen content was nothing for animal to adapt to, if need was. Any combination of faster air movement, larger volume breathed, higher hemoglobin affinity to oxygen or higher concentration would have done the job of increasing the flow 1.5x to compensate for 2/3 reduction.
Big animals like whales obviously have no breathing problem, so much so that they can literally hold their breath for hour.
Yes and Bumble Bees can never fly
An engineer that believes that gravity changed is a very strange kind of engineer.
An engineer that wonder at a ~10 m cantilever spar mainly made of bones and deem it impossible without a lower gravity is also a very strange kind of engineer.
Here a an interesting graph. Note the position of bone relative to wood and steel, two materials there is no question can be made into tens of meters long spar with relatively small diameters and heavy weight at the end.
Pumping blood up higher dinosaur head was surely an issue, but can be done, as giraffe show.
Certainly when policy is constrained by harmful and counterproductive measures addressing alarmist concerns, lifespans will eventually revert to where they were before technology.
Are you talking Methuselah? I could deal with a few hundred more years of watching this crazy crap continue.
Interestingly, the maximum proven human life – 122 plus years – Jeanne Calment, France – ended in 1997.
Since then, nobody has approached it – 119 years 97 days is the best; Sarah Knauss, USA (died in 1999).
And, at the end of the Twentieth century there had been two more ladies in recorded history who has reached 117 (but not 118). [No men].
We have – according to the Gerontology Research Group – see, for example – http://www.grg.org/SC/SCindex.html – had at least four more 117-year-olds in the last three years – with one – Nabi Tajima born August 1900 – still alive as I write.
The fall-off in athletic world records might, possibly, conceivably, be related – at least in a minor way – to doping in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s – and perhaps beyond.
See – for example – this site, http://www.alltime-athletics.com/ [You need to click thorough!); and look at the dates of the best performances . . . . . . . .
Hmmmmmmmm – /SNARC on Steroids (purely coincidentally) for these two paragraphs.
It WAS the drugs wot dunnit!
I note that the population – of active athletes – appears to be increasing – look at the range of countries winning Olympic medals now [2012 or 2016], compared with – say 1964 or 1984.
Auto
Is nature infinitely diverse with no limits?
thomasjk
Who knows?
Irrelevant to this discussion.
I must agree that politicized climate change will cause peak mental capacity to occur. You can already see the degradation taking place in the advocates, media coverage, and political promoters of climate change…..and in the IQ of Al Gore.
Resourceguy
Errrrr……what IQ of Al Gore?
Did I miss something?
Yes, an object has to possess a property before you can measure it.
But – don’t we do nano-tech nowadays??
/Snarc
Auto
So stop politicizing it.
Climate skeptics never ask politicians to act (to fix what is not broken). CAGW proponents did.
Perpetual Debbie Downer Syndrome, ie, nothing good could ever possibly come from climate change. Which means that we are now living in perfection, because climate will always change..
Bullocks! Evolution didn’t pack up and go home just because a bunch of left leaning panty wastes got their carma in a knot over the latest Armageddon fantasy. Changing climate, and changing everything else natural is what drives evolutionary change. Pretending that humans are the main cause of any of this is an extension of the superhero fantasy that most of us shed in childhood.
Andy Pattullo
“the superhero fantasy that most of us shed in childhood.”
Hah! The Pattullo minion scoffs. Let me sweep aside my cape and show you what a real hero is made of!
Whoops! Who forgot to remind me to put my tights on?
Sorry sonny.
🙂
@Andy P.
One could argue that the rate of human evolution has been creeping to a standstill since the rise of civilization.
Perhaps, but how do we explain Hollywood? It appears to me that the base rate of random mutations may have even increased.
Did the home for twits release some of its inmates?
No, the Home for Twits appointed the rubber room denizens to their board of directors. The man who thought he was Napoleon was CEO until a year ago.
who is the current CEO? Lew?
The capabilities of the human animal are far greater than we can imagine. Time and again people under stress and atrocious conditions rise above them and win. We are limited in most ways by ourselves and only when the chips are down and we’re cornered into having no other options, do most of us show what we’re really made of. This pattern is shown in many venues and situations but perhaps is most evident when wars were fought involving masses of people. Then large numbers of people do things and survive events they could never have imagined they were capable of.
Pictured L’Uomo Vitruviani has been castrated, no wonder population peaked.
Here’s the ‘original’ jpg.
Yes, the format of images here for featured images is 16:9, so book pages don’t fit well.
I meant literally. The #metoo stuff.
The Reverend Badger
Your eminence, if I may be permitted to comment.
I was assured as a 60’s/70’s child, bubble gum, TV, comics, butter, discos, pop music, smoking, alcohol, fast cars, Playboy magazine, and self abuse would rot my brain.
So far ~twitch~ I’ve survived pretty well.
Barmy site tonight. I had to repost a comment, that didn’t appear, then they both appeared in different places.
Must be climate change.
Hotscot
And I was told that playing video games like pacman as a kid would affect us greatly. If that were true, we would have ended up in dark rooms listening to repetitive electronic music and munching on little white pills!
Oh, wait….
“… We may have reached our maximum …”
I’ve heard that a couple of times before, regarding Athletics/Track & Field, but still new records keep coming …
It is highly probable that living in any of the modern societies around the world has halted natural selection. Not that I am complaining, I have enough physical deficiencies that I most likely would have been killed off a couple of decades ago.
Not halted, but seriously affected on its outcome.
Tom in Florida
“It is highly probable that living in any of the modern societies around the world has halted natural selection.”
Isn’t that natural selection in itself?
No mainly do to modern medicine.
Tom in Florida
Isn’t modern medicine natural selection?
HotScot December 6, 2017 at 4:34 pm
“Isn’t modern medicine natural selection?”
No. Natural selection would cause persons with certain defects to die early on therefore preventing reproduction and passing on the defects to another generation. Modern medicine allows those with deadly defects to continue to live and reproduce so the defect is not eliminated over time and stays in the gene pool.
modern medicine obviously changed the parameters of natural selection of human (and, even more so, widespread contraceptive), but it still apply.
Wasn’t this the basic premise of Eugenics? i.e. Since our society and technology prevent nature from weeding out the “inferior genetic traits”, superior people needed to “humanely” prevent reproduction of the inferior. Many intellectual elites supported this movement right up to WWII.
While genetics clearly has a part to play in intelligence so does culture as Thomas Sowell has shown (believe it was his book Race and Culture). When I was a kid Pollock jokes were quite common. The jokes origin was based on early Polish immigrants not being to awful bright. Dr. Sowell documented (through military IQ test) that decedents of Polish immigrants IQ scores went up for each generation until they were indistinguishable from the general population. He attributes this differences in the two cultures and succeeding generations becoming more Americanized. He of course has many more examples.
Eugenics, like climate change, was based on a simplistic singular cause. As humans we are prone to accept a simple, easy to understand, bogeyman. We like things to be black and white. Hero’s and villains. The world is never that simple. Like Eugenics, climate change achieved mythological status where for many people it is as much a fact as the sun rising in the east. I had a opportunity to visit the Holocaust museum some years ago. They have perhaps thousands of news clippings on Eugenics. I was absolutely floored by the similarities they had with articles you read today about climate change. It’s like there is some journalistic template for ‘were all going to die’ if our betters don’t do something. If anything, the human race will peak because were collectively fools that will buy into the next ‘were all going to die myth’ simply because we weren’t alive for the last ‘were all going to die myth’.
Various groups performance on IQ test were largely an artifact of the tests themselves. Being literate in English and acculturated were a very large influence on the scores. The tests were reasonable in measuring children who all went through the same school system from an early age, if they had proficiency in the language of instruction, but fell apart on testing non-English speaking immigrants.
The recent developments in Climate Science and the rise of cultural Marxism shows that there could be some truth in the theory that the human race has peaked, but it has not been caused by Climate Change but by the rise of Left socialism.
ntesdorf
Nice theory, unfortunately with one fatal flaw.
Socialism never peaks, it just declines, on and on, down it’s own toilet.
Venezuelans have reportedly dropped 30% in weight as a society. Their babies will also likely remain small throughout their lifespan due to lack of early child nutrition.
So yeah Socialism, when it runs out of OPM, will do that.
Joel,
You see, socialism can cure the obesity epidemic!
joelobryan
According to research, presumably.
Scotty hotty,
Here is one article I’ve found. It claims 19 lbs average loss.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-weight-loss-average-19lb-pounds-food-shortages-economic-crisis-a7595081.html
I’ve seen others that claim up to 30% average weight loss when the overweight section of the population is accounted for due to diminished calorie intake.
Change is what drives evolution. But evolution doesn’t care about subjective improvements like height, lifespan, or even intelligence. It only cares about what is needed to survive and propagate the species. Larger people who live longer will put added stress on the food supply, and therefore is not objectively an improvement. The only intelligence required is enough to find a mate, not get eaten, and to avoid putting forks into electrical outlets. Modern medicine and food production is what has stymied evolution. Now nearly everybody survives no matter how defective their DNA is. That will just lead to an amassing of random genetic variations. Evolution as a process requires the destruction of inferior species.
Hoyt
“Evolution as a process requires the destruction of inferior species.”
I would prefer, if I may –
“Evolution as a process requires less-well suited individuals to fail to breed much, if at all . . . .’
No destruction needed – just failure [for whatever reason] to breed healthy off-spring in that environment.
Auto
Thanks Auto,I knew it sounded harsh, but I was in a hurry.
All those random genetic variations just haven’t found their utility niche. In the long run, the more the better because it’s more likely someone or some group will carry key genes through Thermageddon.
Yep, then we will have evolution.
Hoyt,
“avoid putting forks into electrical outlets”
A fork will not fit in a US style electrical outlet. However, my parents told me that as a young child I discovered that a key will fit. Haha.
I should have said toaster, but glad you’re still with us Ray.
Interestingly after reading that headline, I feel compelled to pay more taxes….hmm….isn’t science amazing?!