I thought we could use some news about good people doing good things in regard to climate change. And I wanted to clear out my mammoth files, LOL
I know, I’m obsessed with the idea of bringing back the woolly mammoth – but I believe the research is leading to hopeful solutions for the de-extinction of more recent ecological disasters, as well as making people more aware of the crisis in the permafrost.
The science is pretty interesting, but there are also groups who are not waiting on a giant pachyderm. They are reintroducing reindeer, Yakutian horses, musk ox, and European Buffalo among many others. One of the best known is Pleistocene Park, pretty much the project of one amazing man – more info and a full movie at HERE
From the archives: With Arctic permafrost thawing too quickly, scientists in Siberia are considering drastic measures. See this week’s full 60 Minutes interview with George Church, here: https://cbsn.ws/34ZhuTs
Deep in the frozen north of Russia’s Sakha Republic lies a place where time is being reversed and a once extinct environment is being brought back to life. How is something like this possible and what impact could it have on our world? All their resources for the video are listed at this link.
Mar 24, 2024
Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based biotechnology company, says it has developed the technology necessary to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction. NBC News’ Morgan Chesky reports on the opportunities this new technology could bring as well as the concerns some scientists are raising.
Jun 8, 2022
In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves. Thanks to Julio Lacerda ( / juliotheartist ),Roman Uchytel (https://prehistoric-fauna.com), and Dmitry Bogdanov for the mammoth art featured in this episode!
There’s a longer video on the science and techniques for bringing back extinct species here.
Okay, I think I’ve covered all my mammoth info here. It is part of the bigger picture of rewilding to enhance carbon capture. A necessary step in solving the current climate crisis -but also in making a healthier environment all around.
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Here is Mossy Earth – which leads extensive efforts in rewilding (see all their videos here) – on rewilding Iceland and why it’s important:
Aug 4, 2022We are helping reforest Iceland with our latest rewilding project! This is a special place to plant trees as they help fight against desertification and help with the much-needed habitat creation.
I looked for a follow-up video because I read a story on how the entire “planting trees movement” is not based in science and many of the areas where thousands of trees were planted have resulted in very little long term growth – most trees die in the first few months from neglect, poor soil and climate issues.
These folks seem to be doing it right – here’s an update on the tree planting, a year and a half later:
Dec 18, 2023We’ve decided to broadened our Icelandic projects to include restoring deserts and wetlands and in this video we lay down the plan for the coming years.
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That’s enough for today. I’ve gotten that entire mammoth thing out of my system (ok, not really, but unless one is born, I think we’ve covered the topic, LOL). Now I can move forward on more rewilding success stories, some cool EV and battery stories and on and on. Plenty of good news coming out of the climate solution community to share.
Climate Scientist Michael E Mann & historian Timothy D Snyder:
Doomerism is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.
It is how authoritarians win. Let’s try to fight the doom
This is a doom and gloom (and election) free thread.
Post any good climate news you have in the comments and I’ll check it out.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Scientists worked so long and so hard to figure out if we could, they never stopped and thought whether we should…
Jackie
“This is a doom and gloom-free thread.”
Just a reminder…
Thanks, TaMara!😊
sab
With global warming it would be cruel to bring back the woolly mammoth.
ETA And I would love to have the woolly mammoths back as a herd.
159 for the sta,ps.
@sab: My thoughts exactly. It is hard enough when there is severe drought for the animals already here to survive.
trollhattan
Heard a BBC story today about how swathes of former Iron Curtain territory are forested because Soviet era ag policies disincentivized land development. Happy coincidence?
After enduring July so far I’m explicitly anti global warming. It fucking sucks. CA’s power consumption remained well below that of Texas, because we’re evidently a LOT more efficient here.
Did they get the lights back on in Houston?
scav
In some of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books there are descriptions of the reintroduced mammoth herds. Talk about garden pests. . . .
SW
I suppose that they would occupy a completely different ecological niche but it is far from clear that we are going to be able to restrain ourselves from wiping out the elephant.
sab
OT : We are moving. Generator was installed yesterday and new neighbor thinks it is unsightly, and over the property line. She “doesn’t have an issue but it impacts her property value.”
So we get to spend $400-800 to prove it is on our property.
Meanwhile her out of control poison ivy could land me in the hospital.
Well we know where we stand on that side of the property.
CaseyL
I recently read a wonderful scifi/murder mystery taking place in a “Pleistocene Park” – a massive experiment in recreating that ecosystem, funded by running it as a nature retreat for oligarchs. There turn out to be many flies in the ointment (shocking, I know), but it’s a very good read: “Extinction,” by Douglas Preston.
sab
@sab: And we would have to find multiple sources to clone so they are not all imbred like cheetahs.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@trollhattan: apparently not completely:
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/infrastructure/2024/07/11/493251/half-a-million-centerpoint-customers-will-still-lack-power-by-monday-executive-tells-puc/
raven
@trollhattan: The DMZ in Korea has become a phenomenal nature preserve!
DFH
Wow, I am bookmarking this post for all the wild outdoor stuff in videos. REwilding is a cool concept, not that I know much. Seeing what some dedicated people have done…pretty amazing. Thanks!
WereBear
Incredible mammoth stuff!
NeenerNeener
@CaseyL: Douglas Preston’s books are always a fun read.
Have you checked out the ‘Agent Pendergast” books he writes with Lincoln Child? They’re addictive.
raven
I’m not sure why the author calls the North Korean DMZ??
Rare look at the wildlife thriving in North Korea’s DMZ
trollhattan
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Poor folks. Hope they get things sorted.
trollhattan
@raven: Good point, considering the article states “The DMZ was created as a buffer zone to e distance between North and South Korea and help prevent further conflict and maintain peace following the ceasefire.”
In any case, something good out of something bad. Legit surprised the entire thing isn’t wall-to-wall landmines.
WereBear
@NeenerNeener: Seconded.
Nukular Biskits
@sab:
Poison ivy/oak/sumac is the devil.
I hate the stuff. Like you, I’m highly allergic. I destroy it on sight.
Tony Jay
I was reading today about how the ancestors of the horse and the camel originated in North America and made their way to Eurasia via the reverse Bering Strait route, where they thrived and evolved while their cousins were exterminated by whatever the holy fuck happened to most four legged megafauna in North America about 12000/10000 years ago.
1) What goes from temperate North America via the arctic into the Sahara and survives? Damn you, camel. You’re amazing.
2) This is all clearly example Alpha x Infinity of how much more civilised and welcoming to outsiders Eurasians are than the barbaric North Americans.
3) I’ll get my coat, shall I?
laura
Personal climate related weather report- I had to put a very light jacket on this morning to walk the dog. Sheer heaven. After what seems like a forever string of well above 100° days and not cool enough nights, and who knows yet how many deaths and heat related illnesses, the temps are alleged to max out at 90° today.
Rachel Bakes
Mossy Earth seems like a great organization. I was obsessed with their videos over the winter. Soothing to watch, intriguing, inherently optimistic. Leave Curious is a similar and overlapping group. Both seem to be operating on the right side of science.
reintroducing some big ungulates (not mammoth) back in New England where they would eat the deer-resistant invasives would be great. I’m also in favor of some larger apex predator here to cull the deer more than cars do.
Rachel Bakes
@Nukular Biskits: spend hours at work teaching kids to recognize poison Ivy. Further sign of climate change as it’s growing faster with increased CO2. Dammit
trollhattan
@Tony Jay:
Eohippus. You’re welcome, rest of the world!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eohippus
Now who wouldn’t want a 12-inch tall horse as a housepet?
TaMara
@sab: Ugh on the poison ivy. I’m terribly allergic and the worst case I ever had was hugging a Golden Retriever who had run through a huge patch of it.
trollhattan
@Rachel Bakes:
I would not recognize the stuff on a dare, but poison oak? You bet, even though it’s a real chameleon of a plant.
IIUC they both share the “leaves of three, let it be” mantra.
trollhattan
@laura: Wow, what’s that like?
It’s State Fair time so the heat is legally binding.
Rachel Bakes
@trollhattan: poison Ivy I know. Sumac looks like sumac so I can’t recognize that one, not that it’s common. Interestingly, in thr last couple years I’ve seen an increase of jewelweed (poison Ivy antidote, if that’s the right word) growing right near the poison Ivy. Convenient that
Nukular Biskits
@Rachel Bakes:
Not only growing faster but increasing in potency:
NPR “Morning Edition”: Why poison ivy loves climate change
Rachel Bakes
laura
@trollhattan: You so Silly! The East end of T street is cloud covered and there’s a gentle zephyr of a breeze. Our sole goal for the next couple few days is to open the bedroom windows at night.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
Said the little Eohippus,
“I am going to be a horse!
And on my middle finger-nails
To run my earthly course!
I’m going to have a flowing tail!
I’m going to have a mane!
I’m going to stand fourteen hands high
On the psychozoic plain!”
Nukular Biskits
@TaMara:
Living in a rural area with several cats & dogs, I had that happen several times.
It won’t affect them but the oil from the leaves will remain on their fur for hours.
CliosFanBoy
Reviving the mammoth would be cool. The big problem with Jurassic Park was cloning predators! Don’t clone any animal that looks at you and thinks “lunch.” Or even worse, “bite-sized.”
kindness
I used to have to get a series of 4 shots every spring for poison ivy when I lived back east. It was bad. West of the Mississippi they don’t have poison ivy. Here in CA they have poison oak, which supposubly has the same acidic oil that causes irritation. I don’t know that that’s true. I can roll in poison oak and get nothing. If I so much as look crossways at the ivy I break out. Weird
@CliosFanBoy: Oh come on. I’ll bet infant T-rexs are adorable beyond description. Teen agers or adults however….
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne: 💕 this.
New Deal democrat
@Tony Jay: In re: horses and camels originally being from North America, the most likely explanation is that unfortunately, the first humans in the Americas were just as good as humans everywhere else at hunting megafauna to extinction.
ETA: if it can be done, I would be in favor of bringing any such species back (including, e.g., all the North African ones that the Romans hunted to extinction for their entertainments in the Coliseum).
Nukular Biskits
@kindness:
Poisonous Plants: Geographic Distribution
Here in the South, we have all three. Lucky us.
And I’m allergic to all three. Lucky me.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan
I want ten!!! Imagine the riz achieved by simply having them pulling my chariot.
Harrison Wesley
Here in Florida university researchers successfully recreated one of homo sapiens’ forebears. Unfortunately he got loose and ran for governor.
trollhattan
@kindness:
What little I know about poison oak is summarized here:
Depending on environment and time of year, it can be an enormous shiny green bush, red-leafed twigs, door #3. On the coast and in the Sierra foothills, it takes very different forms and in cold places, drops its leaves in winter so you just have the stalks.
Somewhere I have pics of poison oak growing from a 10′ stand of prickly pear cactus, nature’s version of “Nuh-uh, you’re not going in here.”
Hilariously, this was at Garrapata State Park on the coast. Garrapata is Spanish for tick.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Yes, must do this.
I’m imagining the clatter of their tiny hooves on the kitchen floor at dinnertime. Okay, they had toes but they’d still clatter, I’m sure.
Tony Jay
That’s what tiny clogs are for!
The My Little Pony fandom alone will be fighting to fund this. Fortunately the Supreme Court’s recent ruling will make it impossible for regulatory authorities to stop Herr Doktor Fraekenshpauner from creating whatever he likes in his recently purchased Allegheny mountain castle.
Kristine
Oh, thanks for sharing these links. First time I’ve watched a 60 Minutes episode in years.
I’ve been on a cosmology /black hole kick of late. Can heartily recommend the Crash Course podcast’s current series on the universe featuring Dr Katie Mack and hosted by author John Green. https://youtu.be/L5YO9nmojo4?si=HmRDO_LGTt1qB9ND
Not climate science-related, but at least it’s a story about something we can’t break.
West of the Rockies
@Harrison Wesley:
Florida Proto-man becomes governor… hilarity ensues.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: James Michener writes about those horse ancestors in Centennial (1976?). That’s one of the books where Michener starts out a hundred million or so years ago and brings the reader forward to modern times. Early on small horse-like creatures show up on the Northeast Colorado landscape where the novel is set, but then they disappear. Then, some millions of years later, their larger equine cousins return.
TerryC
I’m a tree planter, my wife and I have planted more than 17,000 baby trees in the last 10 years on my 17.5 acres (same as Mar-A-Lockup) most of which was farmed in crop rotation up until 20 years ago. Even better, the new woods is shaped as two 18-hole disc golf courses.
Long term plan is to let acreage go fallow/rewild when I am too old to maintain it all. We decided that would start this year with one 9-hole course, our longest course, that we have not mowed yet this year and may never again. We are mowing walking trails through it and it is gorgeous.
CaseyL
@NeenerNeener: I’ll lhave to check them out.
The only beef I have with “Extinction” is the solution and denouement of the mystery, for reasons I won’t go into because spoilers.
But Preston’s writing is excellent, and I’ll be happy to check out his other work.
Doug R
I agree on bringing back the Wooly Mammoth but I think good practice would be bringing back the Dodo. Fairly harmless, flightless, actual cells available and we kinda owe them.
sab
@Doug R: Furry pavhyderms are the best. Only many, since they are social.
Kristine
@CaseyL: He and Child have another series featuring Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson, two characters from the Pendergast series. The first book was a mystery concerning the Donner Party, but the next three are based in the Southwest. Heavy on history and archeological details. Mysterious events in the area.
S Cerevisiae
@Geminid: I IRC Hawaii began even earlier, I always got a kick out of that- “ok have some serious backstory “
The Lodger
@SW: Does this mean mammoth ivory farms are coming back? Fur? Steaks?