Swedish Professor: We may need to rethink cannibalism and begin eating human flesh to save the planet from climate change.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that lately.

To paraphrase: "We're all frightened over something we have no control over". Solution: "Let's start eating each other".

According to what I have read about cannibalism, the people who have done it say humans taste like pork. If so, what part taste like bacon?

“Food of the future: Worms, grasshoppers or human flesh?”

Basically, he wants us to eat worms and grasshoppers, and includes the third option to freak us out, and coerce us into one of the first two. He is, after all, a prof in consumer behavior (i.e. marketing tricks).

Tell me what I'm missing, here: If climate change is real and is as serious as some people are predicting, it will kill off a massive portion of the population. That massive die-off will then result in decreased human environmental impact. The problem fixes itself, no?

It seems to me that nature will keep itself in equilibrium.

Elvin wrote:

Tell me what I'm missing, here: If climate change is real and is as serious as some people are predicting, it will kill off a massive portion of the population. That massive die-off will then result in decreased human environmental impact. The problem fixes itself, no?

It seems to me that nature will keep itself in equilibrium.

My thought exactly. Nature is a self correcting mechanism.

I love modern academia.

Meanwhile, CNN ran ads for Golden Corral "Juicy Endless Sirloin" during their Climate Crisis town hall.

How is that the necessary change action to save us?

He's more right than he realizes! It is the natural state of humans to live in small tribes of a dozen or two and think nothing of killing and eating members of other tribes, and maybe using their skull as a decoration too. For hundreds of thousands of years, hunger was one of the primary incentives to murder.

Only the advent of agriculture and concentrated populations required a change to make this taboo. Ag societies often face hard times and famine, and you can't have the people viewing each other as a food source when that happens, or chaos results and civilization falls apart. Instead the people are supposed to just die quietly of the famine.

Elvin wrote:

Tell me what I'm missing, here: If climate change is real and is as serious as some people are predicting, it will kill off a massive portion of the population. That massive die-off will then result in decreased human environmental impact. The problem fixes itself, no?

It seems to me that nature will keep itself in equilibrium.

I always pose this question to people: If climate change was man made, what caused the great lake that once stood over the Bonneville salt flats and most of Utah to dry up?

That said, there is a little problem with your logic. Climate change is very slow. So , you won't see large swaths of the population die off. They will move. So you would have more people populating ever shrinking land masses. Obviously this would happen over thousands of years, but it could be an issue.

Using the rising ocean example, all the coastal cities will be wiped off the map. But it won't occur with large tsunamis overnight. It will happen inch by inch over many years. So the coasts will essentially be pushed inland. Everyone living on the coast will just move a few houses down. Then 100 years later, another few houses down. And so on.

Using the ice age example. There won't be all of a sudden half the globe covered in -100 degree F unlivable ice. It will be slow. Every year the cold will drift further south and the north will get colder. Over hundreds of years those living in the north will be forced further south. After several hundred years they will be able to move back north.

This could potentially be a problem. But think about the time scale here. If the oceans are currently rising about 4mm per year. After 100 years that's 0.4 meters. After 1,000 years that 4 meters. 4 meters can be devastating. But that's after 1,000 years with everything else remaining the same. 1,000 years from now we will likely be inhabiting another planet. Or figured out an energy source that produces virtually zero pollution. Or we'll all be dead from a nuclear holocaust.

I think too many people forget climate change is far slower than we think. The cycles are over thousands of years. Not decades. We only have data for about 100 years. Maybe a little more but it's spotty. There's no way to guess cycles that last thousands of years with only 100 years of data.

Now I really want to go to that Official LRC Meet up in Manhattan!

sbeefyk2 wrote:

But think about the time scale here. If the oceans are currently rising about 4mm per year. After 100 years that's 0.4 meters. After 1,000 years that 4 meters. 4 meters can be devastating. But that's after 1,000 years with everything else remaining the same. 1,000 years from now we will likely be inhabiting another planet. Or figured out an energy source that produces virtually zero pollution. Or we'll all be dead from a nuclear holocaust.

I think too many people forget climate change is far slower than we think. The cycles are over thousands of years. Not decades. We only have data for about 100 years. Maybe a little more but it's spotty. There's no way to guess cycles that last thousands of years with only 100 years of data.

Way ahead of this cat, I eat snatch on the regular.

If the need arises, we could eat dogs and cats long before we get to humans.

Plus, folks are starting to cultivating kelp (seafood) as a profitable and edible crop. More things like that could be done.

baconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbacon wrote:

According to what I have read about cannibalism, the people who have done it say humans taste like pork. If so, what part taste like bacon?

Cöck

Professor Lecter is a bit nuts. Of course you have to consider this is coming from the same people that eat Surstromming. Compared to that, human flesh might seem appetizing. Of course there is the whole spongiform encephalopathy thing to consider before you go eating brains...

Elvin wrote:

Tell me what I'm missing, here: If climate change is real and is as serious as some people are predicting, it will kill off a massive portion of the population. That massive die-off will then result in decreased human environmental impact. The problem fixes itself, no?

Nobody is worried about the planet, or life on earth, dying out; cockroaches and sharks are going to be fine whatever. It's the survival of the human species which has always been at stake (plus maybe a few hundred thousand other species)!

The price of oil will render those doomsday scenarios obsolete. A lot of the easy oil has been extracted, as we increasingly rely on harder to extract reserves (tar sands, heavy oil, shale oil, etc.) the price of oil will increase to the point that alternative fuels and electric vehicles make more sense.

What we really need to do is genetically engineer some mammoths and reintroduce them to Canada and Russia.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-bringing-back-mammoths-stop-climate-change-180969072/