Will woolly mammoths save humanity from itself?

[Techno-Druid]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/27/1...thetic-biology

The Trump administration is known for its anti-science stances, except maybe when it comes to resurrecting the woolly mammoth. Newly appointed White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci is apparently a fan of Woolly, a new book about the quest to use genetic engineering to bring back the extinct animal, and has promised to “do what he can to bring up” the book with the president.

That's according to author Ben Mezrich, who's been DMing with Scaramucci on Twitter. Mezrich hopes his book can help bridge the gap between scientists and politicians. “There’s this fear and dislike of scientists, and I think that has to change,” he says. “So I think this is one way of getting people to be more interested and optimistic.” (Scaramucci is a fan of Mezrich's previous books, which include The Accidental Billionaires, the book the Social Network movie was based on.)

Woolly is written like a novel, with a few chapters taking place in the future and past. The opening, for example, takes place from the perspective of a calf — the last of the woolly mammoths. This is typical of Mezrich’s style, which often includes composite characters. Previous books, such as his 2002 book Bringing Down the House, have been accused of practically being fictional, while Accidental Billionaires was called “nonfictionish.”

The book follows the life of George Church, the Harvard University geneticist who leads the effort to bring back extinct species by extracting mammoth DNA and combining it with the DNA of an Asian elephant. We learn about an important childhood trip Church took to the 1964 World’s Fair and how the famous academic almost flunked out of a graduate program because he didn’t do the coursework, even though he published important papers.

That’s the crazy part of this story. The reason to make woolly mammoths is not just to make an amusement park full of them. They can actually do good. Permafrost is a giant ticking time bomb. The permafrost carries a lot of carbon dioxide [which contributes to global warming]. It’s slowly thawing and releasing it, and when it does release all the carbon dioxide, it’s going to be game over.

So these Russian scientists, the Zimovs, roped up a huge section of the permafrost starting in the ‘80s and are repopulating it with these large animals: reindeer, horses, bison. They’ve been able to lower the temperature of the permafrost by as much as 15 degrees [Fahrenheit] by reintroducing large herbivores. The mammoth project is all about this. If we can introduce a mammoth herd to the tundra, we can maybe save the environment for another 100 years, because they’ll help put into place these very natural processes to keep the environment colder.

This is a topic I've been extremely interested in for years, the possibility that bringing back the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem could help in the battle against Anthropogenic climate change really shows how interconnected species are with not just their ecosystems, but with the entire world.

[Heladys]

Can I get a wooly mammoth jacket? That'd be cool.

[Venziir]

Make mammoths great again, it'll be great. Yuuuuuuge mammoths all over. America has, the best, mammoths.

[Techno-Druid]

Can I get a wooly mammoth jacket? That'd be cool.

I guess you could shave off parts of its fur, but I doubt you would be able to get anything else out of it for at least a few centuries

[Noomz]

That lowering of the perma-frost temperature sounds like bullshit to me.

Also I guess the woolly mammoth died out for a reason and it wasn't only just because they were hunted.

Yeah it does, I'd want to read more about that connection.

And what reason is that...?

[Aeula]

Great! I know this nice little Chinese man who thinks mammoth tusk powder can cure cancer...

[Doctor Amadeus]

People need to kind of get over the Jurassic Park fetish...

Which will probably never happen so I guess this will do and is fine, how long will this toy last before we get bored or break it.

[Techno-Druid]

Yeah it does, I'd want to read more about that connection.

And what reason is that...?

The vegetation in the park started to change. In the areas where the horses grazed, the soil has been compacted[27] and mosses, weeds and willow shrub were replaced by grasses.[3][6][25][35] Flat grassland is now the dominating landscape inside the park.[34] The permafrost was also influenced by the grazers. When air temperature sank to –40 °C (–40 °F) in winter, the temperature of the ground was found to be only –5 °C (+23 °F) under an intact cover of snow, but –30 °C (–22 °F) where the animals had trampled down the snow. The grazers thus help keep permafrost intact, thereby lessening the amount of methane released by the tundra.[6][13]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park

[Noomz]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park

That is quite interesting!