Ecosystems are inconveniently complex, and elephants won't make good surrogates.
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Editorial: Mammoth de-extinction is bad conservation
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It's a narrative to get funding. I bet nobody there actually believes most of that long-term pipedream.
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From the article:
I can't help but think about the growing mud canyons in Siberia. The Batagaika Crater, aka, the Gateway to the Underworld, aka, a permafrost megaslump.
This area started in the 60's when the locals decided they wanted to build a road connecting Yakutsk, Siberia with the outer world. They figured they had all the natural materials they needed: rocks, trees, gravel, sand. So they started clearing forests. This allowed the permafrost to be exposed to sunlight for the first time in millenia. The result was a massive crater as the waterlogged soil melted and sinkholes developed. And developed. And kept on sinking. It's about a kilometer long at this point and increasing in size at a rate of about 20m a year. There's no end in sight, as more fresh permafrost is exposed constantly. The carbon held in the frozen earth is pouring into the atmosphere, increasing global warming.
Getting a pack of mammoths to clear the snow and forests will not have a different result.
Of course, I don't really care. I want a mammoth. But if the company behind this is ass-backward about the effects of mammoths on the current ecosystem, I no longer have any faith that they will ever produce one. Alas.
I can't help but think about the growing mud canyons in Siberia. The Batagaika Crater, aka, the Gateway to the Underworld, aka, a permafrost megaslump.
This area started in the 60's when the locals decided they wanted to build a road connecting Yakutsk, Siberia with the outer world. They figured they had all the natural materials they needed: rocks, trees, gravel, sand. So they started clearing forests. This allowed the permafrost to be exposed to sunlight for the first time in millenia. The result was a massive crater as the waterlogged soil melted and sinkholes developed. And developed. And kept on sinking. It's about a kilometer long at this point and increasing in size at a rate of about 20m a year. There's no end in sight, as more fresh permafrost is exposed constantly. The carbon held in the frozen earth is pouring into the atmosphere, increasing global warming.
Getting a pack of mammoths to clear the snow and forests will not have a different result.
Of course, I don't really care. I want a mammoth. But if the company behind this is ass-backward about the effects of mammoths on the current ecosystem, I no longer have any faith that they will ever produce one. Alas.
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Wow, what a genuinely interesting, well-written and well-researched article! I had a conversation with a friend of mine on this topic a week ago and this article gives a lot of background information! Thanks Ars!
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SubWoofer2
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Thank you for this article, Ars. I believe there are three biotech companies in the Mammoth race. As usual when there's a race to be first, ethical questions can get downgraded or ignored.
I believe the project will founder on the rock of cultural instruction.
But before then, fame and fortune for the makers, because, like with woolly mice, "this'll be really cool!"
"Really cool" for the homo sapiens win! It's our species' special thing.
I believe the project will founder on the rock of cultural instruction.
But before then, fame and fortune for the makers, because, like with woolly mice, "this'll be really cool!"
"Really cool" for the homo sapiens win! It's our species' special thing.
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I agree with everything you have said, but would add another concern, which for me may be the most serious concern of all - there is a false and unfounded confidence in many climate circles that miracle technologies will save us, and I think this is an enormous impediment to facing the realities we're up against.
Whether its nanobots remediating ocean plastic, carbon sequestration, miracle fuels, or resurrecting extinct species, the promise of miracle technologies recapitulates and abets the popular fantasy that eventually we'll all live in something like the Federation of Planets, and robots will vaporize all our trash for us.
It's unfortunately clear that the vast majority of people gravely underestimate the severity of the threats that are on the horizon, both in magnitude and likelihood. Keeping the noosphere populated with highly-visible moonshot solutions is destructive for public awareness.
Whether its nanobots remediating ocean plastic, carbon sequestration, miracle fuels, or resurrecting extinct species, the promise of miracle technologies recapitulates and abets the popular fantasy that eventually we'll all live in something like the Federation of Planets, and robots will vaporize all our trash for us.
It's unfortunately clear that the vast majority of people gravely underestimate the severity of the threats that are on the horizon, both in magnitude and likelihood. Keeping the noosphere populated with highly-visible moonshot solutions is destructive for public awareness.
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There may be some true believers working on it; along with some indifferent-but-want-to-work-on-exotic-embryology types; but 'de-extinction' seems like the carbon capture of conservation.
Sexy, high-tech, flashy result if you eventually get one after kicking the can down the road for a while; but the part that really gets people on board is precisely what it does not ask of them.
"How about we preserve the elephants by maybe not cutting down that tasty looking forest for a palm oil plantation?" is conceptually trivial by comparison; but it involves not doing that profitable thing even though you want to; which is totally lame. The idea that we can do whatever and real science by real men in lab coats will be along shortly with a silver bullet, though, that's something to get hyped about.
Sexy, high-tech, flashy result if you eventually get one after kicking the can down the road for a while; but the part that really gets people on board is precisely what it does not ask of them.
"How about we preserve the elephants by maybe not cutting down that tasty looking forest for a palm oil plantation?" is conceptually trivial by comparison; but it involves not doing that profitable thing even though you want to; which is totally lame. The idea that we can do whatever and real science by real men in lab coats will be along shortly with a silver bullet, though, that's something to get hyped about.
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I'm inclined to agree with the editorial, but its questionable logic has stopped me.
- The author starts talking about how the evidence has proven that wolves were not the trophic cascade that we thought they were, and in fact, trophic cascades are unlikely. But this is different for elephants. Yes, other species spread seeds, but elephants are really important for some uncited reason.
- Elephants sometimes hurt, sometimes harm conservation efforts. Ecosystems are full of unpredictable patterns. We don't know what elephants will do. If their research is right, we should use pre-existing herbivores, not elephants, even though elephants are a keystone species.
- We don't treat elephants well in captivity, and having them give birth to genetic experiments that might die is an extra layer of cruelty, when they clearly mourn. Even if they survive, they may lack the cultural skills. This argument is probably the most convincing. However, some of the corollary arguments are very much not, and the links are not great at providing evidence.
- We should care more about animals than conservation of species. Why? For the argument to be convincing, this point must be explicitly mentioned, with at least cursory logic provided. Instead, the author outsources that to an Atlantic article covering the debate over invasive species culls.
- The other relevant link is to a paywalled article summary that says conservationists should care more about animals without giving specific evidence.
- This is spending money that the author would prefer goes directly to elephant conservation. Ok. That's assuming that there is a significant socially beneficial opportunity cost, which I doubt there is, but either way this point is very clearly unproven. What's to say that people investing in this wouldn't invest in efforts to integrate AI into the blockchain to create new synergistic workflows that disrupt old juice delivery paradigms?
- There's a typical irrelevant aside here: 27,000 elephants with 1.4 billion people in India. If the implication is that there's limited habitat, wouldn't the devil's advocate position be that theres a lot more habitat in Siberia?
- A trillion dollars goes to combating climate change, far less goes to conserving elephant habitats. Umm... good? As a human I would prefer that?
- They could be genetically engineering plants that store more carbon. But also, they could be funding the removal of invasive plants that elephants can't eat. So... more unnatural plants, just not where elephants are? Is this ecological nimbyism?
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Agree that there are also sorts of issues (both technical and ethical/moral) about bringing back mammoths. But no one can deny the appeal of fuzzy elephants. The technical issues may be overcome, but not the ethical/moral ones.
Curious what the author thinks about bringing back the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger)
Brian
Curious what the author thinks about bringing back the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger)
Brian
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I still remember well over 25 years ago being told by the instructor in my freshman seminar class that Climate Change wouldn’t be a problem because “Big Corporations will figure out a solution for it”. It is a faith-based delusion and it’s incredibly dangerous, I agree.
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Miracle technologies exist, they just don't seem like miracles anymore. EVs, batteries, heat pumps, solar, wind, electric furnaces for metals. Even two hundred years ago these things would have been alien.
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I'm pretty sure that this type of argument has been used for every instance of purposeful introduction of a species. I mean, cane toads were brought to Australia under the assumption that they would control a different pests. Kudzu was just an ornamental shrub. We really need to think a lot harder about these sorts of thing because when it comes to introducing new species to ecosystems, our track record doesn't even rise to abysmal.
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This is true, but again, we defeated mammoths with literal sticks and stones in the past, so I feel like there's maybe somewhat more reason to actually believe it to be the case. Let people off the hook to hunt invasive mammoths and they'll be extinct within a couple years.
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We have real actually living species dying out but assholes being assholes want to bring back an admittedly cute species. I hate this world we're living in. It's like the asshole Musk who wants to terraform Mars rather than fix the planet which is already almost perfect.
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No kidding, the ivory value alone would do them in.
That said, I still think this is a huge waste of resources just to get a hybrid animal that has never existed before. The article has also highlighted the animal suffering involved, which is both unnecessary and horrific.
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Where I have you seen this? My experience is the polar opposite, that the overwhelming majority of climate researchers believe the only way to solve climate change is through systemic change to all of society and that there are no silver bullets.
That there simultaneously are projects around that tries to combat various specific issues, like plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, does not in any contradict the above. Such initiatives might be necessary anyway even if any or all of those initiatives in them selves won’t stop climate change.
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At least in the case of a hypothetical mammoth introduction in the arctic, their reproduction rates are likely to be low so won’t have an uncontrollable spread in the same way as those species you mention above.
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Slovakia plans to kill hundreds of wild bears (they have a tiny population of around 1000, but will kill 350).....because one person was killed.
https://www.dw.com/en/slovakia-approves-plans-to-kill-hundreds-of-wild-bears/video-72130802
Unfortunately, this is why the megafauna will ultimately lose out. Tourism dollars and real estate scarcity makes nature too valuable to simply be left alone.
https://www.dw.com/en/slovakia-approves-plans-to-kill-hundreds-of-wild-bears/video-72130802
Unfortunately, this is why the megafauna will ultimately lose out. Tourism dollars and real estate scarcity makes nature too valuable to simply be left alone.
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Tasmanian biology operates on the rule of cool (with venomous annex house rules); so thylacines are 100% above board.
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This whole article is "status quo bias: the article."
Apparently according to expert ecologists, we should prevent as many species from going extinct as possible, but once they're extinct, then bringing them back is also bad, because change is almost always worse for the extant climate than the status quo.
Yes, it's true that the "change" part of climate change is what causes so much harm, but in order to fight the harms of climate change, we do need to research how to make some changes of our own, and I do think bringing back extinct species ought to be a tool in our toolbox for that. To do that, we need to learn how to do it, which is what this company is doing.
And as for the whole opportunity cost argument, it's a logical fallacy. If this company is stopped from doing this, it's not like they'll suddenly just donate all their expertise and funding to conservation NGOs because there's no profit in that. If we want those things funded, it will have to come from public funding which means convincing people to vote for that.
The two things are orthogonal and we can do both if we develop sufficient political will. But that's just the thing: the constraint isn't funding or expertise, it's political will. If we had the political will to do both, we absolutely could.
Apparently according to expert ecologists, we should prevent as many species from going extinct as possible, but once they're extinct, then bringing them back is also bad, because change is almost always worse for the extant climate than the status quo.
Yes, it's true that the "change" part of climate change is what causes so much harm, but in order to fight the harms of climate change, we do need to research how to make some changes of our own, and I do think bringing back extinct species ought to be a tool in our toolbox for that. To do that, we need to learn how to do it, which is what this company is doing.
And as for the whole opportunity cost argument, it's a logical fallacy. If this company is stopped from doing this, it's not like they'll suddenly just donate all their expertise and funding to conservation NGOs because there's no profit in that. If we want those things funded, it will have to come from public funding which means convincing people to vote for that.
The two things are orthogonal and we can do both if we develop sufficient political will. But that's just the thing: the constraint isn't funding or expertise, it's political will. If we had the political will to do both, we absolutely could.
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Anton Longshot
Ars Centurion
I'm not sure how I feel about the resurrection of extinct species (may depend on the species) but I definitely know how I feel about Colossal's shtick: it reeks of total bullsh1t. Overwhelmingly so.
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Yeah, I get that. But similar arguments have been made in the past and failed spectacularly. Introduce species A to control species B and once B is gone, A will die out. Until A finds a local source of food and the lack of predators and hunting makes the population of A explode. I guess I really dislike using a bad argument just because we think we can shoot our way out of the problem.
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Man, this....
We aren't going to carbon sequester our way out of this mess. Nor synthetic fuels. Nor direct carbon capture. Especially direct carbon capture. No magic microbe.
We have to actually change the way we do things. We don't have to live in yurts, walk to school uphill both ways or turn off the lights but we do need to make fundamental changes to society.
We're doomed.
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Depending on how it is defined, it’s often not people in climate circles per se making those arguments. I suspect most people who seriously study climate think we need to reduce emissions and that’s the one thing that will work.
The people touting miracle technologies are often people low on the Dunning-Kruger curve (low knowledge, high confidence), or people trying to sell something. I hate to say it, but some scientists from other fields definitely fall into this category, “Hey, I invented this hopelessly impractical widget that sounds really great if you don’t think about it too much.” The media falls for that every time because we have this cultural narrative that innovation and technology will solve every problem.
Creating a gene-edited creature that looks like a woolly mammoth falls in that same category. sounds great on the face of it, but is impractical. E.g., in addition to the authors comments, what they skip in the 10 step plan is how difficult it is to get a creature who doesn’t have unforeseen health problems. With the wooly coats, what about skin problems? Asian elephants have evolved in a specific ecosystem and just giving them one or two genes to grow fur may have unforeseen side effects that impact their health.
I suspect that if the actual goal was to deal with the climate, these funds that these people raised would be better spent retrofitting poor people’s homes to make them more energy efficient. That’s a clearly useful solution with a direct effect on the CO2 levels, since less power would be needed to heat/cool them, and HVAC is the biggest consumer of electricity in the home.
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Uh, they are extinct in large part because the environment changed. Putting some creature that expects a certain environment into a significantly changed one is really a crap shoot. And the house always wins. The idea behind preventing an organism from going extinct is that you need to protect the environment the organism has lived in. Yes, that is explicitly a status quo bias. Because the status quo is what we are best suited for, environmentally speaking. Sure their are groups that are housing nearly extinct animals in hopes of something, but except in a few groups, that something, again, is to get at least part of the environment back to where it was.
Opportunity cost isn't a logical fallacy. TFA isn't suggesting that all of Colossal's money go toward saving Asian elephants, just that if India could perhaps get funding going in that direction, that lots more can usefully be accomplished. I don't think the articles author was specifically making a 1:1 funding switch.
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"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Insert uhs as appropriate heh.
Insert uhs as appropriate heh.
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I think these are circles of people who:
(1) hope to profit from these technological solutions
(2) or profess to care about the climate (or are forced to, due to social or peer or job role pressure) and hope that technological solutions mean that they won’t need to take any personal action or make any lifestyle / workplace changes.
On the last point numerous Ars articles have laid out that the responsibility for making a significant impact on climate change is absolutely the responsibility of corporations both large and small.
What we do at home and and as individuals pales in comparison to the spending power of corporations to create change towards a more eco-friendly way of living. But it has to be imposed at national scale by governments.
Reagan did it, Thatcher did it. If they did it so can we.
(Caveat: obviously not in the US at the moment, but other nations, yes.)
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???
Preventing the extinction of current species is preserving the status quo.
Resurrecting species that went extinct 10,000 years ago, when human population and the climate was different, isn’t preserving the status quo.
==============
Edit: I didn't quite succeed in pointing out the problem with the quote I replied to.
Let's try it again...
There's a bit of sleight-of-hand in the "bringing them back is also bad": it's suggesting doing this for current species is equivalent to doing it for ancient species. And it's suggesting it's "hypocritical" to approve of the first but not the second.
"Bringing back" recently extinct species would basically be "no change" (compared to preventing their extinction in the first place). So, no, no one would say it's "also bad".
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Article reads like sour grapes from a zero-sum fallacy.
Which is a shame, there are some interesting points raised in the article. But placing them within the framework of a conflict that the author is losing engenders zero trust in the author's objectivity or perspectives.
"They're been more successful at raising money, so what they're doing is bad, and they should give their money to me, because I'd spend it better."
Which is a shame, there are some interesting points raised in the article. But placing them within the framework of a conflict that the author is losing engenders zero trust in the author's objectivity or perspectives.
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The key here is to make sure the tech is used responsibly, not to oppose its development wholesale. I agree that unintended consequences are a distinct possibility from just unleashing these new kinds of Mammoths in Siberia. Whether to do that should be studied carefully before doing it.
But the article goes much further than arguing for only that. The article argues we shouldn't even develop this technology in the first place because those resources should be put towards more traditional ecological projects, which is a logical fallacy because it is a false dichotomy and entirely unpersuasive.
Yes, that's the point. Preserving the status quo isn't always the right thing to do to mitigate the harms of climate change. I think sometimes people have too much status quo bias to recognize that change can sometimes be good.
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I think colossal should also focus on mammoths that shed their hair when it gets hot- not a lot of sense in making hairy elephants to deploy in 50 years when the artic temperature are going up 13-15 C. Eventually we’ll just be able to drop Asian elephants off up there.
There are so many issues aside from those raised by the article that make the colossal plan laughable- so what you going o introduce a bunch of clones? The Asian elephant population is already genetically bottlenecked- so they will need to introduce large scale variation in the population - by making mutations and this will have adverse health consequences. The numbers just aren’t big enough to support a population and have that population large enough to have any impact. George certainly knows this - his companies have always been around promising something unachievable to push forward a specific targeted methodology. Here to accelerate multiple mammalian edits and artificial wombs.
Is the true goal of colossal to create the tech to enable a brave new world?
There are so many issues aside from those raised by the article that make the colossal plan laughable- so what you going o introduce a bunch of clones? The Asian elephant population is already genetically bottlenecked- so they will need to introduce large scale variation in the population - by making mutations and this will have adverse health consequences. The numbers just aren’t big enough to support a population and have that population large enough to have any impact. George certainly knows this - his companies have always been around promising something unachievable to push forward a specific targeted methodology. Here to accelerate multiple mammalian edits and artificial wombs.
Is the true goal of colossal to create the tech to enable a brave new world?
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The most realistic thing about Jurassic Park is how they managed to fuck it up despite having so much money. A billionaire "spared no expense" and it looks flashy but is actually incredibly unsafe and could have been made safe if the guy spending money put it in the right place.
Electric fences to hold in massive predators? There's this thing called glass, hello
Ignoring well established safety standards and doing it from scratch yourself, killing people in the process? Hmmm...
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
"Kodos, the humans themselves thought that de-extinction was unethical. Something about gut microbiomes, I forget. Let's let dead apes lie."
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Elephant adjacent Woolly Mammoths are just a terrible species to try this de-extinction thing on. But it's splashy, and that helps spin things up. The first species that they try have to be 'cool', so they've focused on a tough call. Thylacines would be better. Smilodon, maybe? That Ugly Chicken?
Oh well, an unfortunate confluence of Mad Science and Hucksterism.
Oh well, an unfortunate confluence of Mad Science and Hucksterism.
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