Australian Billionaire Wants To Build Jurassic Park-Style Resort

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Australian Billionaire Wants To Build Jurassic Park-Style Resort

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 31, 2012 @06:13PM from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

lukehopewell1 writes "Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has already floated a plan to rebuild the Titanic to scale and sail it around the world, but now the mining magnate has found a new use for his money: cloning dinosaurs. Palmer reportedly wants to clone a dinosaur and let it loose in one of his resorts in Queensland, Australia. The billionaire has already been in touch with the scientists who helped clone Dolly the sheep to see what it would take to clone a dinosaur from DNA."

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Awesome! by Elgonn · 2012-07-31 18:14 · Score: 5, Funny

I don't care how stupid, impossible, and just damn right eccentric this sounds.
1. Re:Awesome! by Jane+Q.+Public · 2012-07-31 18:21 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Crichton was trying to make a point with his Jurassic Park novels. It was a cautionary tale about "the law of unintended consequences".
2. Re:Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 18:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Doesn't it come across as "never do anything because there might be unintended consequences", though? I mean, the point of unintended consequences is you can't predict whether anything you do will have bad ones or not.
3. Re:Awesome! by niftydude · 2012-07-31 18:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Don't hold your breath. Clive Palmer has a long history of shooting his mouth off about grandiose schemes, then not following through with any action.
  
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  You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
4. Re:Awesome! by SomePgmr · 2012-07-31 18:43 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I thought the take-away was, "Pay your programmers well, or things will go horribly wrong."
  Also, don't breed that really large, featherless, murderous variety of chess playing velociraptor with opposable digits. They're not worth the aggravation.
5. Re:Awesome! by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-07-31 19:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Crichton was trying to make a point with his Jurassic Park novels. It was a cautionary tale about "the law of unintended consequences".
  And so? Why should we take Jurassic Park, or any work of fiction, as a guide to the way this would work in the real world?
  Cautionary tales of Science Run Amok are at least as old as modern science itself (Frankenstein was published in 1818, arguably about the point where science as we understand it today was emerging from the morass of religious teleology, superstition, and philosophical maundering) and for just as long, they've been held up as examples of why we shouldn't do this or that: "That which we know now is Good and Right and The Way Things Are, but this new knowledge you're seeking is in the realm of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know!" And for the entire time, science has gone ahead anyway, and within a generation or two everyone pretty much agrees that it was a good thing ... just in time to complain about whatever new field of knowledge is opening up and is therefore Scary and Dangerous.
  I'd say spending any amount of money to clone dinosaurs is a bad idea, but that's not because the end result will be people getting eaten by raptors. It's because we don't have any dinosaur DNA* and aren't likely to have enough to get anything like a complete sequence, nor do we have nearly enough basic biological knowledge to create a viable embryo even if we did have the genetic information. Now, speaking as a bioinformaticist, if Clive Palmer wants to devote a portion of his considerable wealth to creating the knowledge that would allow us to clone dinosaurs if we were lucky enough to retrieve some reasonably intact tissue, I'll applaud -- but I hope he's not expecting to have a pet stegosaurus any time in the next few years, or even decades.
  *Not counting bird DNA, which of course is plentiful, but reconstructing the ancestral sequences back to the point necessary to create "dinosaurs" as most people think of them would be just about as huge a challenge as building the whole thing from scratch.
  
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  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
6. Re:Awesome! by Lotana · 2012-07-31 19:11 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I have read several of his books and came to the conclusion that either he is really afraid of all science and technology or just writing his books targeting the audience that are. Every single book came down to: "See? SEE?! This is why you fucking scientists shouldn't do anything remotely exprimental!!!"
7. Re:Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 19:13 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No matter how primitive the technology, it's possible to construct a cautionary tale of how it will fail: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
8. Re:Awesome! by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-07-31 19:16 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I think it's pretty well accepted at this point. Early birds and feathered ground-dwelling dromeosaurs are anatomically almost identical. Obviously there's no way to be sure without DNA, but we're probably about as sure that aves is a subset of dinosauria as we are of anything in paleontology. (IANAP, terms and conditions may apply, see your local paleontologist for details.)
  
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  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
9. Re:Awesome! by silentcoder · 2012-07-31 19:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Not in the least. Read the forewords and author's notes as well and you'll see a very different point of view: science for PROFIT is extremely risky.
  His concern isn't science for the sake of knowledge, but the inherent dangers of doing science for the sake of money. That become science done in secret rather than open, science that cuts corners to save costs, science that is applied for dubious rather than nobel goals.
  He loves genetic engineering and it's possibility to improve lives for example, but as he shows in "Next" - he despises the idea of "gene patents".
  The problem with Jurassic Park wasn't that it was science, but that it was consumerist-driven.
  
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10. Re:Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 19:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Using nothing more than signal chemicals (something like growth hormones) applied at the right spot during the right moment of embryo growth, it's possible to make chickens grow teeth. A different substance applied at the base of the spine during early embryo formation gets you a chicken with a long, dinosaur-like tail. You can do something similar to the wings too, unbending them in a way that makes them more like handclaws.
  This is without any genetic modification at all. The data to revert a chicken to something with dinosaurlike claws, teeth and tail all still exists in the standard modern chicken genome. There's nowhere near enough data preserved in chickens to reverse what evolution has done to them over tens of millions of years, but there is a lot more preserved than you might expect.
  Look up Jack Horner's "chickenosaurus" concept for the details. His book has info on the experimental background to the idea.
11. Re:Awesome! by hvm2hvm · 2012-07-31 20:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  science that is applied for dubious rather than nobel goals
  Yeah, all scientists should have a nobel as a goal, not money
  
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12. Re:Awesome! by aliquis · 2012-07-31 20:31 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  "Pay your programmers well, or things will go horribly wrong."
  No problem. I/we/she/whatever knows UNIX! ;D
13. Re:Awesome! by tehcyder · 2012-07-31 20:32 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It's not the scientists who cause the problem in Jurassic Park, it's the selfish, money-obsessed fat-arsed geek who fucks everything up.
  
  But I can see why most slashdotters would not like this interpretation.
  
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  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
14. Re:Awesome! by DrXym · 2012-07-31 20:56 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Dinosaurs and unicorns simply didn't make it onto the ark. That's all you need to know.
15. Re:Awesome! by silentcoder · 2012-07-31 21:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Nice comeback - though I obviously meant to type "noble".
  That said - most people miss the point of the Nobel prize, I just hope most scientists don't. Alfred Nobel made his money from an invention called dynamite. While it later found use as a weapon of war, that wasn't the purpose of his creation. Dynamite is derived from the Latin for "alive" - and it was created to SAVE rather than TAKE lives. Specifically dynamite was invented for mining purposes - the most common mining explosive prior to that was nitro-glycerine, dynamite is MUCH safer to work with and it saved millions of lives by reducing explosion-accidents in mining.
  Nobel firmly believed that science and knowledge are the greatest tools to advance a peaceful world with happier and longer-living people. His prize was intended to encourage scientists to do just that- produce knowledge for the good of mankind. This is also why the only NON-science prize is the peace prize. There is no Nobel-prize for business or economics (no really there isn't - the so-called Nobel-prize for economics was created much later by a bunch of Swiss bankers and has no affiliation with the fund Nobel left or the committee who awards the prizes from that fund).
  Nobel was a humanitarian. The irony is that the very life-saving invention that convinced him of science's great potential for humanity was also just a few decades later such a major part in racking up the body counts in the world wars. Nobel would not have been pleased...
  
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16. Re:Awesome! by silentcoder · 2012-07-31 21:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not at all. Even if all money is made in a profit-based market - and thus the funding for science comes from there- that doesn't mean that science has to be done with a profit motive.
  Crichton is strongly opposed to privatization of science and believes it must be tax-funded as a public-good without a profit motive, he also strongly opposes laws that allow publicly funded research to be patented.
  Now that tax-money may have been made by profit-seeking companies originally, but the intermediary step prevents THEIR motivations from becoming the motivations of the SCIENTISTS.
  His point is science should be done for knowledge, if somebody can use that knowledge to make a profit that's fine- but that somebody must not be the scientist. I tend to agree.
  If you take that approach, then you can prevent the kind of stupid laws that want to turn universities into more "business-like" entities, if anything they are TOO MUCH like private enterprize already, they OUGHT to operate as a public service. Nobody ever asks if a neighbourhood playground makes MONEY - we just build them because it's better to live in a world with them than a world without them. That is what science should be. A neighbourhood playground.
  
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17. Re:Awesome! by Lotana · 2012-07-31 22:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  it must be tax-funded as a public-good without a profit motive
  His point is science should be done for knowledge, if somebody can use that knowledge to make a profit that's fine- but that somebody must not be the scientist.
  That would be ideal. Unfortunately that only works if people at large are happy to pay taxes to fund the science. In the real world we live in, majority of people bitch and whine about taxes that don't bring them direct, immediate benefits.
  Science investment brings with it incredible returns, but in incomprehensible forms that can only be put into practical inventions many years later. Majority of people would rather have more money in their pocket to spend on whatever they feel like at the moment, rather than being put towards something that they don't understand nor can imagine ever being useful. Another aspect is the anti-intellectual slant that seems to be quite prevalent.
  Thus taxes get cut, government science programs are on the top list to get slashed (Since majority of voters care about them the least and don't employ as many people), so researchers must turn towards profit-looking private investors to survive.
  Idealism just doesn't survive in the real world.
18. Re:Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 22:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  If it's any consolation, velociraptors were not that big and looked rather ridiculous
19. Re:Awesome! by silentcoder · 2012-07-31 22:37 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  >That would be ideal. Unfortunately that only works if people at large are happy to pay taxes to fund the science. In the real world we live in, majority of people bitch and whine about taxes that don't bring them direct, immediate benefits.
  Sad, but true, not an insurmountable problem however. The difference is in education: teach people the value of knowledge, that all scientific research DO bring tangible benefits and that making it publicly available gives you as an individual a greater SHARE of that benefit. For example if all drug-research was done publicly, and made by whoever had a factory, without patents, then medicines would be MUCH, MUCH cheaper for all of us.
  >Science investment brings with it incredible returns, but in incomprehensible forms that can only be put into practical inventions many years later.
  Some generations have figured that out in the past, often the next one undid the progress, but like I said, it can be done.
  >Idealism just doesn't survive in the real world.
  This I radically don't agree with. Idealism is the only thing that changes the real world.
  To quote Richard Stallman: "If I had set out to say 'a mostly free operating system is okay' back when even that seemed impossible to most people, then we would not have had completely free operating systems available today. We have completely free operating systems because we set out to create nothing less than the ideal. Idealism is stating the ideal, and pushing for the ideal, even if you never quite get there, because every step you get closer is an improvement".
  
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20. Re:Awesome! by silentcoder · 2012-07-31 23:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  >- no? So tell me then, what is the motivation if it is not for profit? So how do you measure scientific output, how do you figure what scientific paths to pursue?
  Knowledge, knowledge is the most valuable commodity in the universe, far moreso than profit - especially monetary profit. Besides which - all knowledge ultimately translates into profit anyway - but sometimes that takes centuries.
  That's exactly why profit should NOT be a motivator. Where is the profit in studying planets around stars 20 milion lightyears away ? It will never be profitable -but it could ultimately turn out to the most important thing humans ever did.
  >Do you understand why science developed mostly starting with the industrial revolution, which was the consequence of free market capitalism?
  You've got the cause and effect exactly BACKWARDS. Science can, and does, drive industry - but while industry can drive science it must NEVER be allowed to.
  For-profit science didn't EXIST during the industrial revolution, the idea of academic research being patentable, the idea of a PHD holding patents was unthinkable in those years (as it OUGHT to be today). Scientists produced knowledge, some of that knowledge was used by industrialists to create products, but a lot of it wasn't useful for products.
  In fact the vast majority of non-university scientists in the industrial revolution were priests ! Why ? Because priests had lots of free time, which they devoted to research, and no profit motive to detract from researching what was INTERESTING.
  By your logic one of the greatest scientific discoveries should never have been allowed to happen: Darwin's theory of evolution. Since Darwin was trained in theology and medicine, and never worked as either, and his research was absolutely useless to ANY industries that existed at the time (in fact it would take almost 70 years for the next piece of the puzzle - genetics to be discovered - and another 50 years before industries were able to make use of that combination for anything at all, it's only STARTING now).
  You're another typical "free market uber alles" capitalist who refuses to see even the POTENTIAL value in PUBLIC goods.
  Let me guess, you want eternal copyright too - because knowledge in the public domain has no value according to you.
  What value does Shakespeare have, what profit is there in Snow White - how can there be value in something that belongs to EVERYBODY ?
  Oops... idiot.
  
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21. Re:Awesome! by GameboyRMH · 2012-07-31 23:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Utahraptors, on the other hand...
  
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  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
22. Re:Awesome! by bitt3n · 2012-08-01 00:04 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Crichton was trying to make a point with his Jurassic Park novels. It was a cautionary tale about "the law of unintended consequences".
  and as a result, some dude's building a dinosaur park. I bet Crichton never intended that.
  
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  how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
23. Re:Awesome! by silentcoder · 2012-08-01 00:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  >Value can be measured in the real world, it's not that hard, either people want it and are willing to SPEND on it, and thus you can have profit and you can measure efficiency or people don't want it and then there is NO VALUE except for what is in your head.
  That's an economist's definition of value - it's not an accurate or complete picture. Knowing the movements of the planets is information we cannot use to make a product, we cannot sell it, we cannot make anything out of it, if we ever can it won't be for probably hundreds of years - yet it DOES have value.
  Any and ALL knowledge have value. In fact, the value of it is INFINITE since knowledge cannot be used-up. It's a true post-scarcity supply.
  Economists measure that value as "zero" - but that's because economists are using a too limited view.
  >If you are not seeing this, then all you are talking about is mental masturbation, sure sure, you can have your mental masturbation, you can have your mental orgasm even because you believe that you have some knowledge that wasn't there previously, but if this knowledge never translates into anything that the economy actually is willing to pay for with profits, then its purely irrelevant, it was no more relevant than any other form of entertainment.
  That kind of view is the antithesis of human progress. All knowledge has infinite value just by existing.
  >My argument is that the basic science is done in the private sector as long as there is no government stealing money from the private sector, and it's done as a side effect of people searching for profit.
  If we limit science to that which has the potential for profit (or at least the currently VISIBLE potential for profit) we destroy it, not least because it isn't science AT ALL unless the results are freely available. It's only science WHEN it is public domain, until then - it's not science.
  Fundamental principle of the scientific method is peer-review, public scrutiny and openness - directly contradictory with a profit motive.
  >Before 1913 there were no income taxes, there were no corporate taxes, there were no payroll taxes, there were no capital gains taxes, no taxes on dividends, no taxes on rent, no taxes on PRODUCTIVITY
  Not only an idiot, an idiot who thinks America is the world. Read the bible, the first version of income taxes will be found the very first chapter of Kings I. 4000 years ago the governments charged taxes. Most of the Industrial-age scientific revolution came from Britain, not America and that WAS a welfare state. Most scientists were not employed by industry but by the church or by TAX-FUNDED academia (which Britain had, had for hundreds of years by then). The idea of tax-funded academic research was already WELL ESTABLISHED when it gave us Isaac Newton in the 1600's !
  >But how necessary is it to have government stealing money from the private sector to fund research into such things, what is the efficiency of this model?
  It takes something of fixed/limited value to buy something of infinite value that only gets MORE valuable the bigger the supply becomes and MORE valuable the more people have access to it. It's the greatest deal in the world, the ultimate investment.
  >It is the institutions that are concerned with education that allow the environment to develop that is necessary to do scientific research, including basic sciences.
  Cause and effect reversed - AGAIN. It's institutions that are concerned with research that double as the best training grounds for other researchers. That should be the total extent of university education: training the next generation of scientists. Everybody who does not WANT to be a scientist should NOT get a degree, but go to some or other form of trade school.
  >You are completely wrong, putting the cart ahead of a horse, thinking that the education and science came before the free market capitalist looking for profit.
  The first example of a University was Plato's academy, established in 387BC, it charged no admissi
  
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Interesting...And.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-31 18:20 · Score: 4, Funny

Just for the record, he did actually watch the movie, so he knows how this turns out right?
1. Re:Interesting...And.. by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-07-31 19:08 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Jurassitanic. The touching story of a doomed love between a beautiful woman and a scrappy, determined raptor, set against the background of one of the greatest theme park disasters of all time. It'll be the date movie of the year.
  
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  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Palmer's Jurassic Park plan extinct by rjames13 · 2012-07-31 18:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Colourful mining billionaire Clive Palmer may have a costly penchant for resurrecting remnants of the past, but he has no intentions of extending that to long-extinct reptiles, sources say.
The Sunshine Coast Daily reported on rumours that the mining magnate plans to clone a dinosaur from DNA, so it could roam free through a Jurassic Park-style area at his Coolum golf resort.
It was reported Mr Palmer had been in deep discussion with the people who successfully cloned Dolly the sheep.
But a source close to Mr Palmer rubbished the suggestion today.
"It's absolutely ridiculous," the source said.
However, Mr Palmer is expected to reveal highly-anticipated redevelopment plans for his luxury Coolum resort on Friday.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/palmers-jurassic-park-plan-extinct-20120731-23bvr.html
Re:Did I miss something? by pegasustonans · 2012-07-31 18:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

I thought there were lots of talks about this after the movie came out, and the definite answer was that it was impossible because DNA does not preserve that long, no matter how nicely that mosquito was encapsulated in amber.
True, though nobody ever said it would be impossible if the specimen were encapsulated in ice.
It may be possible if dinosaurs are ever found preserved in ice. Though, I wouldn't hold your breath.
The reason DNA degrades in amber is, among other things, due to background radiation, a factor which is less worrisome when dealing with ice.
The likelihood of finding a dinosaur or specimen with intact dinosaur DNA in ice, however, is ridiculously low. Nevertheless, if I were a billionaire intent on blowing money, I could think of worse ways to spend it than a dinosaur hunting expedition to Antarctica.

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And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Spin doctoring by gargleblast · 2012-07-31 18:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

This is just Clive Palmer's way of deflecting press coverage. Palmer is one of several Australian mining billionaires, and the Treasurer is expected to talk soon about their opposition to mining tax. Clive would rather have http://google.com/search?q=clive+palmer+news link to anything else, e.g. dinosaurs and his new resort.
Jurassic park lesson by rossdee · 2012-07-31 19:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

The lesson I got from Jurassic Park was - Don't clone the meat eaters. Brontosuars and Siplodocis may not be as excitinfg as T-Rex, bit they won't eat you.
Re:Jurassic Park by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-07-31 19:33 · Score: 4, Funny

I thought it ended ok, but IANAL.

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"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wasn't this the plot of a movie? by jamesh · 2012-07-31 20:22 · Score: 4, Funny

I distinctly remember that happening in a movie from my youth. It was even based on a book! As I recall it didn't end well for those involved.
A futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques? I think the movie you're thinking of was "Billy and the Clonasaurus".
'a pernicious myth' by Darth+Snowshoe · 2012-08-01 03:17 · Score: 4, Informative

Space science is another such endeavor. It's been used as rationalization for some of the most ridiculously overpriced infrastructure (the International Space Station) ever built. Even the unmanned space programs have devolved into building new overpriced widgets rather than actual space science.
New Horizons - first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Kepler - (at least) tripled the number of known exoplanets.
Messenger - first artificial satellite of Mercury.
Cassini/Heugens - first spacecraft orbiting Saturn and its moons. Discovered methane lakes on Titan. Discovered cryovolcanoes on Enceladus. First landing on Titan. [...]
Dawn - first close-up images of major asteroids (Ceres, Vesta). First demonstration of ion thrusters in space.
Radiation Belt Storm Probes - understanding the (critical to life on earth) Van Allen radiation belt.
Solar Probe Plus - closest man-made object to the Sun.
[...]
It's a pernicious myth that the unmanned space program is not producing new and significant results. I really don't understand why it keeps recurring on this website, amazingly. Is it a myth born out of abject ignorance? (If so, go RTF NASA websites.) Or is it an article of faith of people of a specific political bent, absolutely unsubstantiated by facts or actual knowledge of space science?