De-extinction

Bring out yer dead:

In Jurassic Park dinosaurs are resurrected for their entertainment value. The disastrous consequences that follow have cast a shadow over the notion of de-extinction, at least in the popular imagination. But people tend to forget that Jurassic Park was pure fantasy. In reality the only species we can hope to revive now are those that died within the past few tens of thousands of years and left behind remains that harbor intact cells or, at the very least, enough ancient DNA to reconstruct the creature’s genome. Because of the natural rates of decay, we can never hope to retrieve the full genome of Tyrannosaurus rex, which vanished about 65 million years ago. The species theoretically capable of being revived all disappeared while humanity was rapidly climbing toward world domination. And especially in recent years we humans were the ones who wiped them out, by hunting them, destroying their habitats, or spreading diseases. This suggests another reason for bringing them back.

“If we’re talking about species we drove extinct, then I think we have an obligation to try to do this,” says Michael Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales...

NO. Wrong! BAD Scientist! No grant for you!

Mr Archer is a prime example of the fallacy behind "progressive" "thinking": the idea that humanity as a species is the juvenile manifestation of some mischievous god, that we have somehow despoiled nature by our existence, and therefore are obligated to "fix" these imagined problems. This misguided sense of quasi-deific guilt ignores the fact that we are part of nature. The idea that we are somehow accountable for the extinction of species 'A' but not species 'B' is a non sequitur. It's as ridiculous as the notion of holding the dinosaurs accountable for millions of years of "repressing" mammals.

The universe will do as it wills. Whether that is according to design or momentum is irrelevant; it will still happen. We could no more have prevented the extinction of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers than we could extinguish the sun. To try to remedy a problem that exists only within the bounds of existential guilt is just hubris -- of which "progressives" and other reality-detached loons seem to have an inexhaustible quantity.