Global warming allows scientists to be one step closer to cloning mammoth

[LAGC]

AKUTSK, Russia — The thighbone of a mammoth found in August in Siberia contains well-preserved marrow, increasing the chances of cloning one of the extinct beasts, Japanese and Russian scientists confirmed recently.

The teams from the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum in eastern Russia and Kinki University's graduate school in biology-oriented science and technology will launch full-fledged joint research next year to clone the giant mammal, which is believed to have become extinct about 10,000 years ago, they said.

By transplanting nuclei taken from the marrow cells into elephant egg cells whose nuclei have been removed through a cloning technique, embryos with a mammoth gene could be produced and planted into elephant wombs, as the two species are close relatives, they said.

Securing nuclei with an undamaged gene is essential for the nucleus transplantation technique, but doing so from mammoths is extremely difficult and scientists have been trying to reproduce a mammoth since the late 1990s, they said.

In the Sakha Republic, global warming has thawed its almost permanently frozen ground, leading to numerous discoveries of frozen mammoths. But cell nuclei are usually damaged or have not been kept in a frozen state even when they have been found in a good overall condition, a Russian museum official said.
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111204a2.html

Damn, we're entering Jurassic Park territory here.

How long until dinosaurs are resurrected from the dead?



Did anyone ask these poor beasts if they WANTED to be brought back from extinction?

[mriddick]

I don't get the connection to global warming, 30 years ago in Russia they found freshly unfrozen mammoths and this was talked about then.

[El Laton Caliente]

Since the Russians, scientific community and all, have rejected the unsupported hypothosis of "global warming", that part of the reporting is incorrect. I'm not worried about a new herd of woolie elephants.

T. Rex would be a little different... but we are looking at a million year older DNA and the likelyhood of finding viable samples are almost non-existant.

[LAGC]

Since the Russians, scientific community and all, have rejected the unsupported hypothosis of "global warming", that part of the reporting is incorrect.

That's funny, cause the only reason they found the viable DNA sample was because all the snow melted and uncovered many new specimens. I can understand wanting to deny man plays a role in global warming, but to deny it's really happening (regardless of cause) is just plain ignorant. Overwhelming scientific consensus is not on your side.

T. Rex would be a little different... but we are looking at a million year older DNA and the likelyhood of finding viable samples are almost non-existant.

Good point. WIRED Magazine just a couple months ago ran an article talking about injecting dinosaur DNA into chicken embryos. Some of the ancient ancestors of birds, I believe it was. But the possibility of any of the huge monsters coming back to life, they concluded, was pretty unlikely.

[mriddick]

Since the Russians, scientific community and all, have rejected the unsupported hypothosis of "global warming", that part of the reporting is incorrect.

Rejected man made global warming isn't it? There is still a very good possibility we are in global warming, it's just can't be attributed to man VS the natural cycle of things.

[El Laton Caliente]

Yes, it is AGW they rejected.

The last email dump is much worse for the warmers than the original one. It proves they were faking data, only allowing "peer reviews" by each other and conspiring to discredit any opposing views and keep them from getting published.

The planets warm and cool; that isn't even in question. BUT, CO2 is almost not a factor in the heating and cooling and man made CO2 is only a tiny fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Any hypothesis that pushes CO2 as a warming factor ignores or negates water vapor as a factor and it is 96% of the greenhouse effect. The latest tortured metal gymnastic is that water vapor would not be a factor if the tiny amount of man made CO2 didn't heat the water. This ignored the fact that the sun directly applies heat to the oceans, just a minor oversight...

[5.56NATO]

From what I've read the Japanese are getting close to begin cloning mastodons,splicing their dna with standard packyderms untill they get a full mastodon.

[gpwasr10]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111204a2.html

Damn, we're entering Jurassic Park territory here.

How long until dinosaurs are resurrected from the dead?



Did anyone ask these poor beasts if they WANTED to be brought back from extinction?

There is no dino DNA, fossilization replaces biological matter with minerals making it impossible.

A cloned mammoth would be AMAZING, I wonder if we could bring back some other more recently extinct species?

[El Laton Caliente]

There is no dino DNA, fossilization replaces biological matter with minerals making it impossible.

A cloned mammoth would be AMAZING, I wonder if we could bring back some other more recently extinct species?

I don't think the saber toothed kitty would be a good choice. One of it's favorite foods was those cave dwelling apes...

[Dreamseller]

Bottom line: If mammoths were found when the glaciers receded, then the glaciers weren't always there in the first place. My question is where would we be in this discussion if Al Gore hadn't invented the internet? That I just don't know.
And yes, I would eat a mammoth ribeye!

[Dr. Gonzo GED]

[slamfire51]

That's funny, cause the only reason they found the viable DNA sample was because all the snow melted and uncovered many new specimens. I can understand wanting to deny man plays a role in global warming, but to deny it's really happening (regardless of cause) is just plain ignorant. Overwhelming scientific consensus is not on your side.



Good point. WIRED Magazine just a couple months ago ran an article talking about injecting dinosaur DNA into chicken embryos. Some of the ancient ancestors of birds, I believe it was. But the possibility of any of the huge monsters coming back to life, they concluded, was pretty unlikely.

I'm thinking you and Gore are butt/bed buddies or maybe you're one of his 'mouth pieces'.
You seem to buy into anything that the left throws out there. Oh yeah, you are a lefty.......I forgot.

All this warming crap is just that. Mother nature will do as she likes, and there's nothing we can do about it.

This being an election year, I see you're posting more than usual. Nothing wrong with that. Glad you are. Try to hang around AFTER the election this time.

[Krupski]

That's funny, cause the only reason they found the viable DNA sample was because all the snow melted and uncovered many new specimens. I can understand wanting to deny man plays a role in global warming, but to deny it's really happening (regardless of cause) is just plain ignorant. Overwhelming scientific consensus is not on your side.

I seriously doubt that anyone rejects the fact that global temperatures are slowly rising... what (anyone with a brain) rejects is the idea that MAN'S ACTIVITIES are the cause of the warming trend.

Earth is just on a slow, natural upswing in solar energy output. Earth has been warmer and cooler than it is today. And the up/down temperature swings will continue long after mankind has wiped himself off the face of the planet.

[Partisan1983]

I don't think the saber toothed kitty would be a good choice. One of it's favorite foods was those cave dwelling apes...

I think they would be great.....ecspecially along the Mexico border

[alismith]

Damn, we're entering Jurassic Park territory here.

How long until dinosaurs are resurrected from the dead?

Not very likely, actually. On a Nova program, entitled, "The Real Jurassic Park," they discussed this very idea. Almost all the dino DNA is long gone, having been turned to rock by the fossilization process. When Jack Horner's team uncovered the T-rex, named Sue, they did find a very small amount of non-fossilized tissue, in her thigh bone, However, even that was almost totally useless. To show the difference between useable DNA and what they found in Sue, a lab tech held up a test tube containing good DNA and another of Sue's. The good DNA had a yellowish color and Sue's had an almost black color. According to her, Sue's DNA was unuseable and not enough protein could be retrieved to make a decent molecule, even substituting modern bird DNA to fill in all the blanks. According to the program, it will be almost totally impossible to "make" a dinosaur from any protein that might be found. The youngest DNA possible from any dinosaur is 65,000,000 years old. Once you go back even thousands of years, the DNA has already deteriorated to a state that is hard to use.

Jurassic Park, in all likelihood, is going to stay science fiction, even though it would be great if it were possible. I wouldn't mind seeing real, living dinosaurs.

[LAGC]

Bottom line: If mammoths were found when the glaciers receded, then the glaciers weren't always there in the first place.

Yeah, the only problem is, the glaciers are receding a lot faster this time around than during any prior global warming period in the past, according to ice-core records. The only difference this time around is that WE are here, with all our industries polluting the atmosphere...

[JTHunter]

Bottom line: If mammoths were found when the glaciers receded, then the glaciers weren't always there in the first place. My question is where would we be in this discussion if Al Gore hadn't invented the internet? That I just don't know.

From what I remember of my geology classes in college, in the last 100,000-125,000 years, there have been 4 periods where ice sheets advanced over most of the U.S. In between, there were periods of warmth last about 10,000-15,000 years before the ice sheets returned.

The last set of ice sheets receded between 10-12,000 years ago and we are in the latest "inter-glacial period". Nobody knew back then what triggered the return or the retreat of the ice sheets and they still aren't certain.

How many of you have seen that Dennis Quade movie, "The Day After Tomorrow"?
In that movie, they showed a possible reason but it probably would take a few years at the very least for that to happen, not hours. There is an ocean current that is part of the Gulf Stream called the "thermo-haline current". When the Gulf Stream reaches the North Atlantic, it cools causing the salty water to get denser and sink to the ocean floor. That cold, heavy water then flows back towards the equator where it warms and rises and becomes the Gulf Stream again.
The problem is that all the fresh meltwater coming out of the Arctic, esp. between Nova Scotia and Greenland COULD interfere with the Gulf Stream and the warmth it brings to the North Atlantic, cutting off that flow. Without that heat, central Europe (Denmark, Germany, etc.) would be as cold as Siberia. With that additional snowfall, more sunlight would be reflected back to space, causing the northern latitudes to get colder and the snow to pile up without melting. Depending on how long that continues, that might start another "ice age".

[1 Patriot-of-many]

Yeah, the only problem is, the glaciers are receding a lot faster this time around than during any prior global warming period in the past, according to ice-core records. The only difference this time around is that WE are here, with all our industries polluting the atmosphere...

Hogwash. In the 70's these same" scientists" and I use that term loosely since they've been documented falsifying and creating data numerous times were predicting ice age and global calamity such as food shortages cause it would be to cold to grow crops.
There was no spike in the temps until they started deleting the cold climate sensors and placing warm climate sensors next to air conditioning units and on blacktop areas. Even then they still had to fudge data and make scary graphs which have no relation to reality. How exactly do you lefty believe anything, if we can tax and control nutbags explain how the last ice age ended? Cavemen with SUV's and factories? Dino farts?

http://neoconexpress.blogspot.com/20...iceage-in.html
The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."


http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3213/D...Ice-Age-Claims

A Small Sampling of 1970's Reports Warning of Global Cooling:

National Academy of Sciences Issued Report Warning of Coming Ice Age in 1975

Excerpt: “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.” - Newsweek - April 28, 1975 “The Cooling World”

NASA warned of human caused coming 'ice age' in 1971 – Washington Times – September 19, 2007

Excerpt: “The world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts,” read a July 9, 1971 Washington Post article. NASA scientist S.I. Rasool, a colleague of James Hansen, made the predictions. The 1971 article continues: "In the next 50 years" — or by 2021 — fossil-fuel dust injected by man into the atmosphere "could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees," resulting in a buildup of "new glaciers that could eventually cover huge areas." If sustained over "several years, five to 10," or so Mr. Rasool estimated, "such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

New York Times: Obama's global warming promoting science czar Holdren 'warned of a coming ice age' in 1971 – September 29, 2009 – By John Tierney – Excerpt: In the 1971 essay, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age. They certainly weren't the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can't think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. (See also: Obama Science 'Czar' John Holdren's 1971 warning: A 'New Ice Age' likely – September 23, 2009)

1977 book “The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age" - CIA Feared Global Cooling - Excerpt: In the early 1970s, top CIA thinkers concluded that changing weather was “perhaps the greatest single challenge that America will face in coming years”. As a result they ordered several studies of the world's climate, the likely changes to come and their probably effect on America and the rest of the world. The studies conclude that the world is entering a difficult period during which major climate change (further cooling) is likely to occur. That is the consensus of the Central intelligence Agency, which highlights the fact that we are overdue for a new ice age. Many climatologists believe that since the 1960s, the world has been slipping towards a new ice age. ....the evidence suggests that change will be a return to a climate that was dominant from the seventeenth century to about 1850. Soviet weatherman Mikhail Budyko believes that 1 2.8F drop in the average global temperature would start glaciers on the march. If the temperature should fall by another 0.7F, it could usher in a ninety-thousand year tyranny if ice and snow.

1975 Newsweek: "The Cooling World," Newsweek. April 28, 1975 By Peter Gwynne

Excerpt: The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. [...] The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.” [...] Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve.

Professor Stephen Schneider converted from warning of a coming ice age in the 1970s to promoting of man-made global warming fears today. In the 1970s Professor Stephen Schneider was one of the leading voices warning the Earth was going to experience a catastrophic man made ice-age. However he is now a member of the UN IPCC and is a leading advocate warning that the Earth is facing catastrophic global warming. In 1971, Schneider co-authored a paper warning of a man-made “ice age.” See: Rasool S., & Schneider S."Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141 – Excerpt: 'The rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” Schneider was still promoting the coming “ice age” in 1978. (See: Unearthed 1970's video: Global warming activist Stephen Schneider caught on 1978 TV show 'In Search Of...The Coming Ice Age' – September 20, 2009) By the 1980's, Schneider reversed himself and began touting man-made global warming. See: "The rate of [global warming] change is so fast that I don't hesitate to call it potentially catastrophic for ecosystems,” Schneider said on UK TV in 1990.

1975 New York Times: "Climate Changes Called Ominous,", June 19, 1975 - Harold M. Schmeck, - p. 31. Excerpt: “The most drastic potential change considered in the new report is an abrupt end to the present interglacial period of relative warmth that governed the planet's climate for the past 10,000 years. [...] The report also noted that periods of benign climate comparable to the present are unusual and have existed for about 8 percent of the last 700,000 years.”

1974 New York Times: "Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output,", August 8, 1974 – Harold M. Schmeck - p. 35. Excerpt: A recent meeting of climate experts in Bonn, West Germany, produced the unanimous conclusion that the change in global weather patterns pose a severe threat to agriculture that could lead to major crop failures and mass starvation. [...] The drop [in global temps] since the 1940s has only been half a degree, but some scientists believe this is enough to trigger changes that could have important effects on the world's weather and agriculture.

1975 New York Times: "Scientists Ask Why World Climate is Changing, Major Cooling May Be Ahead", May 21, 1975 – By Walter Sullivan - Excerpt: Sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable. Hints that is may already begun are evident. The drop in mean temperatures since 1950 in the Northern Hemisphere has been sufficient, for example, to shorten Britain's growing season for crops by two weeks.

1974 Time Magazine: "Another Ice Age," June 24, 1974 - Excerpt: However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. [...] Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth. [...] Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

Newsweek admitted it erred in reporting on predictions of a coming ice age in the 1970's – October 24, 2006 - Excerpt: It took 31 years, but Newsweek magazine admitted it was incorrect about climate change. In a nearly 1,000-word correction, Senior Editor Jerry Adler finally agreed that a 1975 piece on global cooling “was so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future.” Even then, Adler wasn't quite willing to blame Newsweek for the incredible failure. “In fact, the story wasn't 'wrong' in the journalistic sense of 'inaccurate,'” he claimed. “Some scientists indeed thought the Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymen – even one as sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimov – saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production,” Adler added. However, the story admitted both Time magazine and Newsweek were wrong on the subject – Newsweek as recently as 1992.

Climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels, a prominent critic of the man-made global warming fears today, recalls how pervasive the coming ice age scare was when he was in graduate school. "When I was going to graduate school, it was gospel that the Ice Age was about to start. I had trouble warming up to that one too. This (greenhouse) is not the first climate apocalypse, but it's certainly the loudest,” Michaels said.

1970: First Earth Day Promoted Ice Age Fears – Excerpt: At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1970, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

1976 Book: "The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun" By Lowell Ponte - Excerpt: "This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000."

Earth Day 1970: Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling: "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."

Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, who was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970's ( See Time Magazine's 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek's 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) converted into a leading global warming skeptic before his death in 2008. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it's absurd. Of course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” he added. (LINK)

Fire and Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide weather we face an ice age or warming,” Business and Media Institute, By R. Warren Anderson, Dan Gainor, Dan (2006) - Excerpt: The media have warned about impending climate doom four different times in the last 100 years. Only they can't decide if mankind will die from warming or cooling.

1978: “Trends and Variations of Mean Temperature in the Lower Troposphere,” AMS Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 106, No. 3 (March), pp. 413-416. - Harley, W. S.

1971: "The Effect of Atmospheric Aerosols on Climate with Special Reference to Temperature near the Earth's Surface." J. Applied Meteorology 10: 703-14. - Mitchell, J. Murray, Jr.

Mitchell, J. Murray, Jr. (1975). "A Reassessment of Atmospheric Pollution as a Cause of Long-Term Changes of Global Temperature." In Global Effects of Environmental Pollution, edited by S. Fred Singer. Dordrecht: Reidel.


These are the guys who can't predict the weather a week in advance and somehow with the proof they're fudging data and making up all kinds of theories as fact, we're supposed to believe them? I don't suppose you've heard about the hurricane specialists who recently admitted their "science" of predicting hurricanes for the last 25 years has been completely useless, have you?