Sunday, September 30, 2012

Human engineering to shrink humans' carbon footprints?

Just caught Matthew Liao speaking on a replay of one of the week-day morning programs.

Some believe it is too late to do anything about AGW, so the way to go to reduce our carbon footprint is to make humans adapt, for example, making humans smaller, and also to make some kind of allergy so that more people would not be able to eat meat.

The latest science suggests that it is too late to prevent human-induced climate change. Technological optimists are now turning their minds to mitigation through techniques of geo-engineering, like giant space mirrors or seeding the oceans with iron to prompt carbon-absorbing algal blooms. But projects to alter the entire planet will expose all life to massive risk. So, why not address the source of the problem and engineer humans to reduce our environmental impact and adapt? Genetic engineering could make us smaller...
That he believes there is a problem with carbon dioxide really makes me wonder what kind of scientist he is.

The quantity and quality of proteins from meat far outweigh those from plants.

Truly, it's time for the AGW con to be destroyed and relegated to the realms of terror/fantasy forever!

FODI link.

Update:
More found here on The Conversation of 16 April 2012, where Clive Hamilton states that this bioengineering idea "trivialises" the "dire social problem" - I suspect he means climate change!
They seem oblivious to irony, since their own proposal takes the technofix to a sublime plane, one made possible by an intensely individualistic understanding of the world, which sees the failure to respond to climate change as arising not from political, institutional and cultural forces but from a lack of personal willpower.

Rarely in intellectual history has such a dire social problem been so trivialised by this kind of psychologism.

The authors are keen to stress they would never compel people to produce small children or grow cat’s eyes, which only raises the question of why anyone who is unwilling to buy a smaller car or switch to green power would be willing to genetically engineer their children.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi kae,
I thought we started out small to begin, with and as our diet improved we increased in size.

No need for any intervention, all it needs to shrink us again is to go back to a poor diet. Give it a few generations and anyone over 5 feet will be considered a giant.

marc

Mr. Bingley said...

They simply want to kill millions of people.

For Gaia.