Reader Jamie, via email;
Last night I watched this TVO interview with a scientist from McMaster U who was promoting the virtues of “de-extincting” the woolly mammoth. I’ll paraphrase the first four minutes:
(a) (presumably spontaneous) climate change 11,000 years ago caused vegetation change, which
(b) isolated populations of woolly mammoths enabling easier predation by (presumably non-aboriginal) humans, leading to
(c) their extinction, and then
(d) mosses and lichens took over because there are no more woolly mammoth turds to support deep rooted plants, so
(e) greenhouse gasses escaped from the arctic soil and further warmed the planet, therefore
(f) if we genetically engineer herds of woolly mammoths and re-introduce them to the land of mosses and lichens the arctic savannah will magically return and the release of evil CO2 will be halted.
It gets better. From the 17:00 to 18:25 minute marks he addresses the ethical arguments against de-extinction…I’ll leave that as a surprise.
Jesus H. And not a shot of whisky in me house.
It turns out that most large mammals have been extinctified by nice aboriginal people. Rather admirable, really – can you say “Megafauna Crash”? As for the rest – maybe our present aboriginals should start running down and killing the enviros – we could put a bounty on enviro scalps. “Abo against eco”, match of the century. I’d be happy to donate a few (quite a few) bucks to the abo who produces the most scalps.
It is interesting what humans can do. We are not very strong but we (well, aboriginals) have great endurance. I remember an article in Maclean’s in the early `50s about a hunting party of Innu who ran down and killed a polar bear – it took more than 24 hours. Again, Plains indians who wanted a horse (after they had been reestablished) would pick out the one they wanted and run it down.
Funding fetishes should be voluntary – another good reason to privatize schooling (note: “education” is something altogether different or otherwise increasingly coincidental).
The last straw for many of the Pleistocene megafauna was probably the Younger Dryas. About 10,000 years ago, we were coming out of an ice age, things were warming up, and abruptly things cooled off into another little ice age. This was very abrupt, probably caused by a meteor impact. It also was the end of the Clovis people in North America.
Who’s going to explain this to the Eskimos and polar bears?
I can’t explain Jamie watching this without whiskey. A shot in the dark though, if he’s been watching the Ontario debt clock or Iran’s return to planet earth. (runs for cover) that’ll clean out most men’s whiskey supplies.
and then, we’ll get “Mammoth National Park” which will be about a million square miles and thousands of federal public civil service employees in the park to ensure you’re not starting fires without a federal permit or using barbed hooks in a stream.
*of course, I keep a special bottle of Bushmills in the back of the cupboard for the Castro’s formal announcement of death(s).
sigh.
Saw this little film about baricle geese a polarbear the cuddley crittter for all those eco-wackos/granola munchers was eating little goslings then some skuas and arctic ternswent and attacked and run off the cuddley little polarbear a special Message for all those who watched dumb mvoes like A Arctic Tale
As God is my witness, I never expected to hear the words “mammoth + fetish” arranged like that, ever. Well, at least not outside of a Pride Event.
Proving yet again, you just cannot make up s**t like this.
Michael Crichton must be spinning in his grave.
*sigh*
But don’t wooly mammoths release the green house gas methane when they release their mammoth sized farts? And isn’t methane a worse gas? AND smell worse?
As a scientific achievement, cloning mammoths would be interesting. As to having their turds save the planet, I am not convinced.
“De-extincting.” What could go wrong?
Avoid using any tree frog or blowfish DNA and whatever you do, never, ever use raptor DNA to fill out the mammoth genome.
The video says mammoths were grass feeders. If they are reintroduced into an environment of moss and lichen, what will they eat?
The fellow is a flake.
He is concerned with ‘global warming’ yet wants to re-introduce mammoths to achieve that end. His take on animal ‘welfare’ is plain goofy.
IMHO, it is a bunch of;
” Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro
Matty told Hatty about a thing she saw…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcguLZaMelE
So he thinks he can sustain mammoth life on lichens and moss…. OK I wonder if he ever looked at the ones frozen in Siberia. Their mouths weren’t full of lichens and moss.
Smelling the familiar aroma of liberal BS even before hitting the
half way point in the video. Once you hear the repeated use of
overused buzz words like “Ecology, climate change, ecosystem,”
etc., can be assured you are dealing with a crackpot. The other
thing that caused my antenna to go up was the “Interconnected-
ness” argument that liberal nitwits are so fond of using.
The idea that Woolly Mammoth mammoth crap mitigated the release of
carbon dioxide is truly novel, like the idea of a butterfly
flapping its wings in Southern California would cause peoples
hats to blow off in Toronto. If that is the case, every time
someone fired an AK in Compton, there should be hurricane
force winds up North.
The third thing I take issue with is the idea that these creatures
existed in the millions is probably preposterous. Small scattered
herds yes, but the romantic notion of walking from horizon to
horizon on the backs of Buffalo is pure BS because they would
exhaust their supply of food. This would result in massive
die-offs and Winter kill.
Item 4, “Genetic knowledge.” Notice he said he was not sure
what the end product would look like, but that he would like
to go back 11,000 years to see if there is any difference in
the behavior of the cloned animal to the extinct animal.
All animals have a survival instinct, but DNA DOES NOT
convey knowledge!
I do not even want to get into the problems with the idea of
“Cloning” one of these creatures, but it boils down to this:
What they mean by cloning is not what we think of as cloning.
By modifying elephant DNA, you are not cloning, you are
extrapolating. Just because they can map DNA, does not
mean they know what all individual elements do.
Finally, the only way that this Mammoth crap theory works is
if there is ground to crap on. It is obvious that these
creatures existed in areas where there was a lot of snow
and ice, but what would they eat if they could not reach
it? Their food supply had to be “Mammoth,” so they could
not survive rooting through the snow for scraps of grass.
These big boys were not roaming the glaciers during the
Ice Ace, otherwise what would they eat? They had to be at
the edges of the glaciers or they could not have had an
adequate supply of flora to feed on.
Maybe it would help the ailing McDonald Corp. (Yes, Mickey D is loosing ground apparently, poor dears). In a not so distant future:
“Ummm!, eco friendly, planet saving meat! Introducing the Big Macmoth. 2 patties, organic non GMO onions, tomatoes, lettuce and pickles all grow locally (right on our restaurants roofs), our new secret sauce made with sustainable ingredients all served on a gluten free bun. Just $12.45 CDN each for a limited time (Until the loonie drops again)
.
Do your part for the environment (Dictates our UN leaders) and enjoy our new Big Macmoth”
I’M lovin it!
Oh crap, these comments are hilarious,
Please stop… can’t catch my breath..
Pride event…. lol
Aye, but there is precedence with the phrase “woolly-fetish” in the Scot’s vernacular!
…So these big fellows would roam mostly on Canadian soil…Ahh the business opportunities…Oh wait, are mammoth considered cute? Like seals or minks?…Oh wait, Ray Romano made mammoth cute with his voice in the Ice Age movies…Forget it then, they are already protected by the left before they are even engineered.
“If they are reintroduced into an environment of moss and lichen, what will they eat? ”
Why, arctic savannah grasses and sedges… lovingly planted by university students as employment…paid for by the tax-payers…for endless summers…under the careful oversight of aboriginal elders who are so-attuned-to-nature, of course.
I agree The comments are hilarious.
What is not so hilarious is that it is the likes of this fellow that are teaching our kids, and then we wonder how can so many university grads be so screwed up.
New PETA slogan: Global Warming started because cavemen wore mammoth fur.
Just when you think you’ve heard the dumbest theory coming from the Halls of Academia up pops a professor with an even dumber one. If it wasn’t for taxpayer money flowing into the education system to fund these putz’s he’d be a footnote in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, because like most leftists he sure couldn’t survive in the real world.
” but there is precedence with the phrase “woolly-fetish” in the Scot’s vernacular!”
I heard that the original version of an early Stones hit was;
‘Hey,McLeod get off my ewe’.
Academia NUTS
Liberal eco-wackos get upset when in the Garfield strips when he smashes spiders with a rolled up newspaper this always get amusing how rediculous these eco-freaks can be sometimes
Unforseen Consequence:
“We assert our Creator-given right to hunt the Mammoth freely, without government restriction, as our ancestors did.”
So attuned they buy big honking pickups called “Tundra”, and watch David Suzuki on big honking HD tvs, just before heading south for the winter to play the casinos. Perez Hilton thought you were talking about Willy Mammoths…
Really stupid but not to worry, they can’t be cloned. The only host animal would be the elephant and apparently it’s impossible to implant an embryo in an elephant.
‘at least not outside of a Pride Event’
I wouldn’t know about that because they caught me at a bad time and I missed the last couple of pride events held in our city.
We should de-extinct them so we can eat them. That’s reason enough.
Woolly mammoths must have been pretty tasty.
Er, Honourable Me, were you meaning to reference the MacMammoth, or the MacMoth? I’m sure that the greenies would prefer that we eat theoretical meat, or one of the yellow meats (do they taste better de-winged, or with extra wings for extra crunch?). As long as the patty material not a real, available, wanted, and tasty alternative they’re all over it. Of course the Mammoth will be instantly endangered when it is re-introduced (see above comments about lack of grass in their habitats) so it may be difficult to make burgers out of them.
We might be better off trying to re-engineer Sabretooths instead, and put breeding pairs in any city park that is over 2 acres. Can’t have them in the wild though, strictly an urban re-introduction until their numbers increase.
unbelievable Prog spew masquerading as “science”. The rot brained proglodyte grinding out this spew was so intellectually anorexic he had to call the aboriginal hunters who extincted the critter “Big Game Hunters” as if this was a matter of mea culpa by modern trophy hunters – to give the narrative a coating of white guilt.
Well frig you Karl, we’ll have cities the size of Barrie on the arctic circle with all the future mineral development being done.
All this proggie “de-extinction” vom is , is the buffalo commons malthusian wet dream with the Jurassic park dressing on it.
I just read one even dumber! Some Global warming nut is claiming
that three of his colleagues, who were studying “Melting Arctic ice”
were assassinated by the opposition. One fell down a flight of
stairs, another was hit by a truck while riding a bicycle and
the third (Get this) was struck by lightning! I guess the
evil right wing global warming deniers have finally discovered
how to manipulate lightning.
You cannot make this crap up! And the ultimate irony is that I
just read that icebreakers have been dispatched to Hudson Bay to
free ships trapped in ice in the hottest part of Summer!
Ahh mamoth steaks Fire up the c gand put shrimp on the BarBee
…apparently it’s impossible to implant an embryo in an elephant.
Really, even with a walk-in vagina they can’t implant an embryo in an elephant?
Yah, that was a funny one, but not as funny as the one of the suicide bomber that the Israeli police shot and killed. And then some Arab protesters picked up the body and started a protest march but were interrupted by an exploding suicide belt. That had me laffing juice out of my nose:-)))
I find it is best not to be drinking beer when I am reading about liberal
lunacy. As much as I love the world’s most popular lager, it just does not
feel good coming out of my nose!
Really Steve.
Apparently the vagina seals up after impregnation. I got that from some program that was discussing the possibility of cloning them from an intact woolly mammoth calf body that was discovered in melting ice.
Yikes. Once again we wading into the whole trans-species arena. When the offspring of an elephant and a woolly mammoth looks into a mirror – what does he/she identify with?
Haven’t we learned anything from mules and human that think they are cats?
We need a taste sample before we travel down this road.
I’m thinking some garlic mashed potatoes and baby carrots should accompany the woolly mammoth.
Probably have to tenderize this by running it over with a jeep
I won’t elaborate on this story
Woolly Mammoth?? Bet you didn’t know it had a cousin!!
https://youtu.be/7CHiUN8XTWs
Ural posted:
“Once again we wading into the whole trans-species arena. When the offspring of an elephant and a woolly mammoth looks into a mirror – what does he/she identify with?”
Well it will depend with what species of the 2 is considered:
-A minority which automatically equates to be less privileged
(We are going to have to do something about those Asian minorities though, the buggers don’t fit that mold)
When Obama, The President of the United States looks in the mirror, he thinks he is the most beautiful, intelligent…We all know that but most importantly he chooses black. After all he has that privilege.
Yeah, never understood the whole fetish for cow farts, either.
We’re told that when the white man wiped out the bison, this was bad (and it wasn’t our greatest feat, but that’s another discussion).
But somehow millions of farting cattle are bad, where millions of farting bison were…natural, so ok?
I don’t have a mammoth fetish. I just have small, tasteful fetishes.
Hey folks – we’ve updated our website, so the new link to the video can be found right here . In case you’re looking for it :).
Cheers,
Elamin A.
Social media specialist for TVO.