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Craig Venter Tackles Global Warming
Venture$cience writes: "Fresh from his arguably successful sequencing of the human genome with his company Celera Genomics, Craig Venter is now entering the field of global warming. Specifically, he is readying an ocean wide expedition to harvest novel forms of bacteria from the ocean's deep. From these collections he hopes to find bacteria that excel at converting CO2 into proteins, sugars, and methane. The current candidate for an atmospheric "scrubber" is the ancient Archae family of bacteria that is believed to have helped modify the early Earth's original atmosphere. This all brings up another question concerning what cross-contamination protocols should they use? What if they find something down there that should not be brought back up?"
Venter is a egotist to the nth degree, as we saw when he revealed that much of Celera's gene database is comprised of his own genetic code. The news related to the whole Celera enterprise over the last few years is rife with other examples.
Global warming, in my opinion, is not a well understood phenomenon, scientifically. In fact, I'm not convinced that it is even a problem to worry about, but I don't wish to become involved in that debate in this context.
What concerns me is Venter's apparent disregard for scientific procedure, which is often quite rightly conservative. I am afraid that Venter is just the man to unleash a dubious solution to a phantom problem, potentially unbalancing the environment with his CO2-eating bugs much worse than "global warming". Thusfar, Mankind has been shown to be ineffective in reversing the global processes of nature, unless global warming really is such an effect. Attempting to create a form of life with the intent to reverse a reversal of natural processes seems to like playing with fire... or nuclear weapons.
All things in moderation.
Superman notwithstanding, if you bring organisms into an environment utterly unlike what they're designed for they'll die, not develop super powers. It's not like introducing pigs and cats to Hawaii, where they have abundant food and no predators. If some deep-sea methanogen will do well above water, one of the billions that must bubble to the top every day would have already flourished.
You need to be careful anyway so as not to cross-contaminate one sample with another. I wouldn't worry too much beyond that.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What if they find something down there that should not be brought back up?
If they find something that Should Not Be Brought Back Up, why, obviously, most of the expedition will die horrible deaths, one at a time, or in small groups. The organism will terrorize the vessel they're travelling in, which will coincidentally be caught in a storm preventing any contact with the outside world. Rescue will also be impossible.
In the end, it will be up to the suave, dashing Hero and the Eye Candy. In a last, desperate move, they'll manage to barely defeat the organism, saving humanity. And then the storm will clear, and a Coast Guard ship will be on the horizon...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
> Historical science? You weren't there...the scientific method can not be applied, you can not prove something you didn't yourself see
How come I'm not surprised to see effect-of-pollution deniers invoking the same lame arguments that evolution deniers invoke?
There are lots of ways of knowing what the earth was like in both the recent and distant past. The "Were you there?" argument is simply a desperate strategem for people who want to assert their beliefs in the face of the evidence.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade