https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/09/world/woolly-mammoth-elephant-stem-cells-scn/index.html

Another article about bringing back extinct species. The claim is that
they can help restore the arctic habitat, but that is nuts. One of the
reasons that the megafauna species went extinct was due to the fact that
their habitat was greatly reduced in a cycle where the habitat that they
liked was around for a hundred thousand years, but they had to survive
20,000 to 30,000 year periods when their habitat was greatly reduced.
My guess is that the long cycles did in the megafauna because they
needed a lot of territory to produce viable populations, and after
adapting to 100,000 years of expanded habitat they were restricted to
pockets of alpine and arctic habitat that likely could not sustain
viable population numbers for the largest herbivores. The last warm
interval it got warmer than it is now, and more ice melted. There was
less arctic habitat for mammoths and wolly rhinos. The DNA we have
recovered indicates that they had severe population crashes. The last
paper that I saw indicated that the rhino population genetics did not
recover and still looked like a population bottleneck even though
indications were that the population size had recovered very quickly
once things cooled down again, but the genetic variation didn't seem to
recover, and then they went extinct when things started to warm up
again. The Wrangle Island Mammoth were not hunted to extinction.
Inbreeding depression seemed to have killed them off.

Whatever they brought back today would just ruin the existing habitat
for the species that have made it so far. They need to think about
bringing them back when New York is covered by a mile of ice again.

Ron Okimoto

RonO wrote:

> https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/09/world/woolly-mammoth-elephant-stem-cells-scn/index.html

> Another article about bringing back extinct species.  The claim is that
> they can help restore the arctic habitat, but that is nuts.

Shit. Damn. Fuck.

I actually agree with you!

> One of the
> reasons that the megafauna species went extinct was due to the fact that
> their habitat was greatly reduced in a cycle where the habitat that they
> liked was around for a hundred thousand years, but they had to survive
> 20,000 to 30,000 year periods when their habitat was greatly reduced.

I don't think they're serious.

One reason why I have such impatience with stupidity is because
when it's obvious to me, I sometimes (usually) think it has to
be obvious to others.

"If I could figure it out, they had to as well."

No, I'm pretty certain that anyone claiming that repopulating
the world with Mammoths is going to return us to a non-existing
time of climate stability knows they're talking shit.

Best guess here? They're trying to hitch a ride on the Gwobull
Warbling wagon. "AGW" is to science what your dog's Alpo farts
are to French cuisine. The climate has NEVER been stable during
the entire history of the genus Homo, and a warmer planet would
be a shit ton better than cooling. Then there's the comparison
of the Holocene to itself AND DECLARING THAT IT DOESN'T MATCH!
Or even how none of the solution actually map to a decrease in
CO2, or that CO2 isn't a so called "Greenhouse Gas" anyway!

So, Gwobull Warbling is utter bullshit, but it is lucrative.

You want the university positions? You want the grant money?
You want public support? Tie your work to Gwobull Warbling.

Look. You want investors? You have to be labeled as "Pro
Gwobull Warbling Science" by the scammers. Then Apple can
invest $300 million into your project before crowing about
how oh so "Environmentally Conscious" they are as they cake
the planet in mind-altering lithium, choke our landfills in
ridiculous amounts of packaging & already raised "Planned
Obsolescence" to an art form, ensuring the MAXIMUM
consumption of rare earth minerals. But, hey, they pumped
$300 million into a cloning scheme so they're "Earth
Friendly."

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