Wednesday, September 30, 2015

"To Stop Climate Change, We Must Genetically Engineer Humans"

"A lot of researchers are thinking about how to genetically engineer crops and food animals to help them withstand post-climate change heat and parched conditions. But what about genetically engineering humans to slow our constant carbon contributions?"
The first proposal we cover is night vision — the idea that we could genetically engineer humans to have more rods so we could better see at night, and thus reduce our dependence on electric lights. The problem here is that there are only so many spots for rods and cones in our eyeballs, and our particular balance of the two is a tradeoff. Humans are day creatures, so they have more cone cells. Animals like cats are night creatures, so they have more rods. So during the day, humans can actually see motion about 10 to 12 times better than a cat. And many experts think that cats don’t see the same number of colors we do, although they’re divided over whether cats see in mostly blues and grays, or whether they see more like dogs where everything is less saturated. So if we want night vision, we might have to compromise some of our day vision to get it.
Another modification that Liao proposed was an induced allergy to meat, to help people reduce their consumption of animals. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States 14.5% of all greenhouse gas pollution comes from livestock. So the idea here is to make people allergic to eating meat. The problem is that there’s no real way to control the severity of the allergy, and the two proteins that Liao talks about targeting (BSA and alpha-gal) are both found in all kinds of places like milk, eggs, dogs, cats and pork. People allergic to alpha-gal seem to be able to eat poultry and fish, but if they were to eat pork or lamb or beef the allergic reaction includes everything from hives to gastrointestinal upset, to anaphylactic shock. Not something most people would want to sign up for.
Next we talk about breeding people to be shorter, something Liao says could reduce our carbon footprint. Smaller people require less energy and use fewer resources, Liao argues. But selecting for height genetically would be a nightmare, according to the most recent paper that Maxmen found there are 697 genes involved in height. Since there’s not a good way to select for height genetically, another method Liao talks about in his paper is using treatments that cause babies to be born light — to have a low “birth weight.” But that comes with a set of very real dangers to the baby, and few mothers would opt to take that risk. Not to mention set their kid up for society’s bias against people (particularly men) who are shorter.
Via Rush Limbaugh radio show

16 comments:

bagoh20 said...

Maybe we could engineer people to not worry about shit unless it's really a problem and is actually solvable. That would create a far better race of people on many levels, not to mention cut political rhetoric by 90%.

We could also fund Planned Parenthood at maybe 10 times it's current level to reduce mankind's aggregate footprint.

bagoh20 said...

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I got it. We engineer people so they can't reproduce unless they take a pill. Like birth control in reverse. Both parents would have to actually want children for it to happen. Spooge Stooges only need a little help here to save mankind.

edutcher said...

Well, those experiments with the mulatto and the publisher's "daughter" from IL worked out well.

deborah said...

Everything's gonna be alright, rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye.

deborah said...

Hey, we HAVE to be smaller in order to get away in lead-lined space-ships...

bagoh20 said...

Seriously though, as reproductive rates decrease, and technology improves and spreads with ever increasing efficiency and cleanliness, carbon dioxide emission will be on decline in the future with no crazy, ineffective, and corruption laden enforcement ideas needed. That's our trajectory.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Ok, I'm game...

Why don't we engineer humans to breathe carbon dioxide like plants?

Why are they so special?

deborah said...

Right on Bago. Problem is we may end up with uber and under classes. Or worse, a thoroughly sanitized race of I don't know what.

Leland said...

So what do we do with the specimens that don't show improvement for mankind? Is their a final solution to that problem?

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Is their a final solution to that problem?

I guess we would have to engineer a Hitler to take care of it?

Just thinking out-loud ;)

Amartel said...

The real threat to humanity is the climate change maniacs themselves.
Literally, they want to re-engineer humanity to adapt to their government-funded science fiction. Remember, almost all data used for climate change models is faked and fictional. And they want to imprison you if you're skeptical and re-engineer you in order to keep the hoax going. Oh, no, no, that's not crazy at all.

Amartel said...

I'm not strictly concerned that this will actually occur (for now) but the fact that it is discussed openly and confidently (like, gee, here's a thought: Prison for nonbelievers? Who's with me?) is frightening. It's like they're way more interested in person control than climate control.

Methadras said...

These ideas are no different than the Great Purge. Leftists always repeat themselves whenever they are confronted on their bullshit. Their modus operandi is oppress, suppress, repress, and failing that, kill.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Or we could persuade [heh] climate change believers to kill themselves.

Amartel said...

I'll believe they're serious when they re-engineer themselves?
[The icky part of this is that some of them will draft the more retarded among their number to actually do that.]

Leland said...

It's like they're way more interested in person control than climate control.

Looks that way.