DailyDirt: Playing With Technological Fire...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Mar 29th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Sometimes people really leap before looking -- and that can be especially dangerous when it comes to technologies that we don't fully understand. Not too long ago, we created rivers so polluted that they'd actually catch on fire. We seem to be tuning in to the environmental repercussions of the chemical industry, but we might be making analogous mistakes when it comes to nuclear or biological technologies. Too much, too soon -- and we'll be cleaning up the aftermath for generations (if it can be cleaned up). Here are some quick links to some potentially concerning activities.

Pumping water into the ground in order to extract more natural gas may be causing some man-made earthquakes in Arkansas. A seismologist says that an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.5 is extremely unlikely, but also states that the fault system in the area is largely unmapped. [url]
Wired interviews Jack Horner on his experiments towards hatching dinosaur-like creatures from chickens. Since Horner is working on a really tight budget, he's not actually creating any fancy DNA hybrids -- just knocking out genes until he finds (he hopes) a set of genes that resembles a pre-historic, dinosaur-looking chicken-lizard. [url]
Here's an interesting TED talk that questions the wisdom of bioengineering animals. GATTACA, FTW. [url]
To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: bioengineering, chickens, dinosaurs, earthquake

11 Comments

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Andy Roon (profile), 29 Mar 2011 @ 5:56pm

I refer you to this: http://reason.com/archives/1999/04/01/precautionary-tale

Remember, anything can be proven dangerous, nothing can be proven 100% safe. Without forward thinking, there will be no progress.
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- Michael Ho (profile), 29 Mar 2011 @ 8:06pm
  
  Re:
  The Precautionary Principle takes things to a risk-averse extreme... there's always a balance to be found, but getting that balance right can be tricky.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 29 Mar 2011 @ 10:17pm

Re Playing With FIre...
Prometheus, who gave humans fire and paid dearly for it, was the Greek god of foresight.

The was also a Greek of hindsight, called Epimetheus.

I think his eyesight was pretty good.
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- d_mat (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 3:50am
  
  Re: Re Playing With FIre...
  Yep, and although we keep experiencing that difference from our own actions over and over, we don't seem to be learning from it. We still want to move as fast as possible in every direction, without the proper amount of time to make sure we can deal with the consequences. Be it selling weapons, using pesticides, or building nuclear plants. I'm not against technology, I just think we should be a hell of a lot more careful about what we do with it.
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abc gum, 30 Mar 2011 @ 4:59am

Fracking is not a very good idea. In several instances it is highly likely to have caused local drinking water to contain flammable compounds. There are many videos of people setting fire to water exiting their faucet.
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- Pixelation, 30 Mar 2011 @ 5:08am
  
  Re:
  Yes, it's a bad idea.
  
  Welcome to lobbying.
  
  http://www.polluterwatch.com/blog/big-oil-front-group-poured-millions-lobby-against-fracking-reg ulation
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  - Chris Rhodes (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 8:42am
    
    Re: Re:
    Eh, I'm not willing to say it's always a bad idea. Natural gas is a pretty important source of energy. Sure, we could reduce the amount we burn and use coal instead, but is that really better, in the end?
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    - abc gum, 30 Mar 2011 @ 8:43pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      It's possible to extract natural gas without fracking - no?
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Pixelation, 30 Mar 2011 @ 5:03am

I, for one, welcome our new dinosaur-looking chicken-lizard overlords.
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d_mat (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 9:11am

Options?
I really don't think the conversation has to be on natural gas versus coal. If you look at where the technology is today, despite the lack of big investment in the 20th century, I think we have a lot of other options. I am not going to list them here, you can find them anywhere; but for those who say those technologies are not enough and that we need other sources, just look at the case of Germany, where all of a sudden it is no problem to take 5 nuclear power plants off the grid after 2 years of politicians and "experts" insisting it would be impossible. And East Germany now has a problem of too much power flowing into the grid due to wind turbines.

But this topic is a nice contrast to the article. We need to be careful and bring change gradually, but this is an area where we need to speed up a bit, because the rash decisions in energy policy of 20th century are really hurting us now.
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Bob Webster (profile), 31 Mar 2011 @ 8:33am

Naturally burning creeks
"Not too long ago, we created rivers so polluted that they'd actually catch on fire." Not too long ago, creeks in some oil-rich areas of the U.S. could be set on fire because of naturally oozing oil -- pollution not required.
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