Tuesday 13 March 2012

Red Meats Climate Change & Human Engineering

The 'lead story' in the print edition of today's Daily Telegraph is that red meat is now being blamed for one in ten early deaths, with the Department of Health being urged last night to review its guidance on red meat after a study found that eating almost half the daily recommended amount can significantly increase the risk of dying early from cancer and heart disease.


Oh no, thought I, not another 'scare du jour' designed to deflect our attention from matters more important, matters such as will Cameron ever get his leg over another horse. Then of course we note that just a year ago women were being cautioned they could be put at greater risk of iron deficiency if they followed new advice to eat less red meat. C'mon chaps/chapesses, I thought, make your minds up - but then I find that eating red meat is considered by some to be detrimental to the environment. I kid you not.


A recent paper published by S. Matthew Liao (New York University), Anders Sandberg (Oxford) and Rebecca Roache (Oxford) argues that that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change. This would involve the biomedical modification of humans to make them better at mitigating climate change. Go read it, do.


It would seem that it is indeed a mad, mad, mad world in which we live.
 

7 comments:

john in cheshire said...

And the press are as insane for giving space for this rubbish.

The Gray Monk said...

Ah, the wonders of modern science ... We can prove anything about anything using statistics and computers modelling - it just depends on who's funding us and what they want the report to say ...

DerekP said...

From the first sentence of the introduction in 'recent paper':
"Anthropogenic climate change, or climate change for short..."

Well, straightaway, willfully confusing the two like that indicated it was not worth reading.

However, I persevered up until the prediction: "The risks of the worst impacts of climate change can be lowered if greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere can be reduced and stabilised."

Greenhouse gas levels were much lower hundreds of years ago, yes? And we had many fewer people living on the planet then (as those who wish to cull humans sometimes point out).

So the technologies which reputedly bring risk have actually resulted in many more lives, and I would guess overall longer lives, and measured by health, leisure and productivity probably better quality of life.

Of course, with higher densities of population it does mean that higher numbers of people are at risk in any threatening event, but at the same time that higher number is not really a greater proportion of the overall human population at risk. Having large numbers of humans well spread out is a way of mitigating disaster.

But their idea is that we should do away with technologies that have proven benefits for the majority of humans, and instead embrace their ideas and fund them with massive amounts of money?

I think we should make such 'scientists', ideologues and politicians flush, but not with money.

Anonymous said...

One sure way to reduce Climate Change is bioengineer warmists. A quicker way is to hire experts to de-programme people who have been incorporated into the Warmist cult.

Anonymous said...

Jeeeezus. How on earth did these people ever get there hands on the levers of power or have the ear of those who hold the levers of power? More of us better wake up damned quickly!

David

Anonymous said...

"I thought, make your minds up - but then I find that eating red meat is considered by some to be detrimental to the environment."

It's rather odd, that there is never any research that shows that being governed by a bunch of fascist twats, leads to an early death through unnecessary stress, I s'pose it must be good for us.

But anyway, I digress; what I really wanted to say was, that should this and all of the other research which bilges from the pages of our MSM, be proved correct….

Would we want to live forever in their Utopia?

There we would be, freezing cold (or boiling hot) due to no electricity, not able to smoke, drink or eat anything because of the health risks… Not able to question anything that we are told by our fascist dictators….

…..

….

WitteringsfromWitney said...

jic & TGM: True.

DerekP: I deliberately did not critique this - did not want to spoil commenter's fun.

DP111: Agreed.

Anon: Very true - but will they wake up?

r_w: nice comment.