Free Republic

Singer explains Benatar’s antinatalist philosophy, which bases its moral framework by weighing the consequences of existence, in this way: “everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.” Singer then invites readers to engage in a thought experiment: "So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!"

It’s game of clones!The dire wolf — a species that disappeared 13,000 years ago and was made famous by the beloved HBO series “Game of Thrones” — is making a comeback, thanks to the first-ever so-called “de-extinction.” Three dire wolf pups — aptly named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — were successfully born using DNA from ancient dire wolf fossils and genes from their closest living relative, the gray wolf.The extraordinary results were revealed Monday by Colossal Biosciences, the same Texas-based genetic engineering company that created the adorable colossal woolly mouse. “Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a...

The genome was reconstructed by Colossal from ancient DNA found in fossils The fossils date back 11,500 and 72,000 years Colossal Biosciences said: "This moment marks not only a milestone for us as a company but also a leap forward for science, conservation, and humanity. From the beginning, our goal has been clear: To revolutionize history and be the first company to use CRISPR technology successfully in the de-extinction of previously lost species. By achieving this, we continue to push forward our broader mission on—accepting humanity’s duty to restore Earth to a healthier state."

The British State Broadcasting Network (BBC) is now offering its staff counseling to help them cope with Donald Trump’s presidency. According to an email obtained by The Spectator magazine from the corporation’s Pride Board, the BBC outlines its unwavering commitment to the racist DEI ideology and acknowledges that discourse may be causing concern among employees. The email states: “We understand that events and discourse in the U.S. over the last month may be causing concern, particularly for those in the LGBTQ+ community. We are reassured that the BBC’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging remains unwavering. We know the Corporation...

The justice secretary has called for the scrapping of planned changes which would make the background of offenders from minority groups a bigger factor when deciding whether to jail them. Shabana Mahmood called for the Sentencing Council to reverse course, after the Conservatives accused Labour of overseeing "two-tier justice", in which prison sentences are less likely for ethnic or faith minorities. On Wednesday, the council - which is independent but sponsored by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) - published new guidelines for judges aimed at avoiding bias and cutting reoffending. But Mahmood said she would write to its leaders to...

Gavin Newsom & his allies just forced 12 historic family farms & dairies out of Point Reyes National Seashore in California. They claim it’s about saving the environment — but the truth couldn't be more different. Here is the true story — and it's heartbreaking. 2/ For over 100 years, ranchers and dairy farmers have worked the land at Point Reyes. They built Marin’s organic food movement & supplied fresh milk to Californians. Now they’re being forced out — by environmental groups, the federal government, and Newsom’s political allies. ... 3/ When Congress created Point Reyes National Seashore in 1962,...

Divers exploring a southern Florida sinkhole have uncovered clues to what life was like for some of America's first residents.Led by University of Miami professor John Gifford, underwater archaeologists are exploring Little Salt Spring, 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Sarasota.Earlier this year, students working about 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface found the remains of a gourd that probably was used as a canteen by an ancient hunter about 8,000 or 9,000 years ago, according to Gifford.Archaeologists have been recovering primitive relics from the spring since 1977, when divers found the remains of a large, now extinct tortoise...

For the first time in three decades, paleontologists are about to revisit one of North America's most remarkable troves of ancient fossils: The bones of tens of thousands of animals piled at the bottom of a sinkhole-type cave. Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming is 85 feet (25 meters) deep and almost impossible to see until you're standing right next to it. Over tens of thousands of years, many, many animals—including now-extinct mammoths, short-faced bears, American lions and American cheetahs—shared the misfortune of not noticing the 15-foot-wide (4 meters) opening until they were plunging to their deaths. Now, the U.S. Bureau...

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation. About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north. Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built...

A LEADER of climate protesters Extinction Rebellion was last night exposed as a diesel-driving eco­-hypocrite who buys imported food. Gail Bradbrook was shopped by a member of the public who saw her stocking up on Waitrose goods that had travelled thousands of air miles. Gail Bradbrook was exposed as a diesel-driving eco­-hypocrite who buys imported food The hypocrite was spotted by a member of the public who saw her stocking up on Waitrose goods that had travelled thousands of air miles The shopper who spotted her told The Sun: 'She was doing everything Extinction Rebellion tells us not to do'...

Last month, while looking for lilies in a Colombian tributary of the piranha-packed Orinoco River, he jumped from plank to plank in the pitch dark at 4 a.m. to get to a floating pontoon. “It’s not that I am that daring,” said Carlos Magdalena, a research horticulturalist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London. “These situations just arise, and they are not like Superman extreme. Sometimes it’s more Peter Sellers than Indiana Jones.” ..he is also known as “the plant messiah,” as anointed by a Spanish newspaper in 2010, for his work rescuing several plant species from the...

The British Conservative Party is facing an “extinction event” with a comprehensive poll predicting a defeat on the scale of the loss to Tony Blair’s Labour in 1997 on the backs of growing anger over failures to control migration and the rise of the Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK. A YouGov survey of 14,000 people released in The Telegraph newspaper on Sunday found that the Conservatives will win just 169 seats in the House of Commons, a decline of 196 from the last general election in 2019. This would outpace the seismic defeat of the party in 1997 when Sir John...

Eco-zealot group Extinction Rebellion sparked fury after halting Coco Guaff's US Open semifinal win - before tennis fans taunted and jeered as the protestors were hauled out of Arthur Ashe Stadium. Three climate thugs brought Guaff's game vs. Karolina Muchova to a stop for almost an hour as they howled 'End fossil fuels', with one deciding to glue his feet to the concrete in protest. But spectators had the last laugh as the demonstrators - whose group hails from the UK and has repeatedly frustrated events in the name of global warming - were thrown out of the stadium surrounded...

Scientists and tech industry leaders, including high-level executives at Microsoft and Google, issued a new warning Tuesday about the perils that artificial intelligence poses to humankind. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said. Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, were among the hundreds of leading figures who signed the statement, which was posted on the Center for AI Safety’s website. Worries about artificial intelligence systems outsmarting humans and...

A research team of international space scientists, led by Dr. Matthias van Ginneken from the University of Kent's School of Physical Sciences, has found new evidence of a low-altitude meteoritic touchdown event reaching the Antarctic ice sheet 430,000 years ago. Extra-terrestrial particles (condensation spherules) recovered on the summit of Walnumfjellet (WN) within the Sør Rondane Mountains, Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, indicate an unusual touchdown event where a jet of melted and vaporized meteoritic material resulting from the atmospheric entry of an asteroid at least 100 m in size reached the surface at high velocity. This type of explosion caused...

New re­search sug­gests wooly mam­moths, the gi­gantic cousins of mod­ern ele­phants, al­so died out as a re­sult of cli­mate change fol­low­ing a cos­mic im­pact—and that blast may have shocked hu­man popula­t­ions as well. Ei­ther a com­et scrap­ing the at­mos­phere or a me­te­or­ite slam­ming in­to the Earth caused glob­al-scale com­bus­tion, scorch­ing the air, melt­ing bed­rock and al­tered the course of Earth’s his­to­ry, ac­cord­ing to re­searcher Ken­neth Tanker­s­ley of the Uni­vers­ity of Cin­cin­nati. Tanker­s­ley said while the cos­mic strike had an im­me­di­ate and deadly ef­fect, the long-term side ef­fects were far more dev­as­tat­ing – si­m­i­lar to Kra­ka­to­a’s af­termath but many times worse...

Boffins have discovered that "lethally hot" ocean temperatures kept the Earth devoid of life for millions of years after the mass extinction that occurred 250 million years ago. The global wipeout that ended the Permian era, before dinosaurs, wiped out nearly all of the world's species. Mass extinctions like these in Earth's history are usually followed by a "dead zone", a period of tens of thousands of years before new species crop up. But the early Triassic dead zone lasted millions of years, not thousands. Boffins now reckon that the extra-long five million year dead zone was caused by screaming...

Diamonds and precious metals found in the eastern United States might have rained down during the last Ice Age after a comet shattered over Canada and set North America ablaze, all leading to a mass die-off of animals and humans. New chemical analyses of diamond, gold and silver found in Ohio and Indiana reveal the minerals were transported there from Canada several thousand years ago. The question is, how?

Explosions In Space May Have Initiated Ancient Extinction On Earth Scientists at NASA and the University of Kansas say that a mass extinction on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago could have been triggered by a star explosion called a gamma-ray burst. The scientists do not have direct evidence that such a burst activated the ancient extinction. The strength of their work is their atmospheric modeling -- essentially a "what if" scenario. The scientists calculated that gamma-ray radiation from a relatively nearby star explosion, hitting the Earth for only ten seconds, could deplete up to half of the atmosphere's...

Some 252 million years ago, Earth almost died. In the oceans, 96 percent of all species became extinct. It’s harder to determine how many terrestrial species vanished, but the loss was comparable. This mass extinction, at the end of the Permian Period, was the worst in the planet’s history, and it happened over a few thousand years at most — the blink of a geological eye. On Thursday, a team of scientists offered a detailed accounting of how marine life was wiped out during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. Global warming robbed the oceans of oxygen, they say, putting many species...