Norway building 'doomsday vault' to protect seeds

Farid

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http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/19/arctic.seedvault.ap/
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- It sounds like something from a science fiction film -- a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah's Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe.

But Norway's ambitious project is on its way to becoming reality. Construction began Monday on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to house as many as 3 million of the world's crop seeds.

Prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland were to attend the cornerstone ceremony on Monday morning near the town of Longyearbyen in Norway's remote Svalbard Islands, roughly 620 miles from the North Pole.

Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen has called the vault a "Noah's Ark on Svalbard."

Its purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.
Kiler, S.Hawkin and now the Norwegian, it's now fact: run to the hill folks, run for your lives!
 
I'd say it's a good move. Even though doomsday scenarios are extremely unlikely, I think (a large asteroid impact is, but the likelihood of large-scale nuclear war in the next few decades cannot be measured with any accuracy), this is a case where the potential downsides are far too disastrous to not consider taking some small preparations.
 
Well... They've got to waste their money on something. 4.7 million people and more than $250 billion in surplus cash lying around (around 2.5 times current annual public spending/GNB).
 
Chalnoth said:
this is a case where the potential downsides are far too disastrous to not consider taking some small preparations.
If an asteroid falls on our heads and causing mass extinction, I think we got A LOT more to worry about than a bunch of crop seeds possibly dying out. Think no rainforests anymore for example; hundreds of thousands of highly interconnected species that as an aggregate have a great impact on the planet's climate - should we actually survive the event to begin with.

No, the biggest threat for these species isn't asteroids or nuclear war, it's the global capitalist food industry and its quest for ever greater profits that rationalizes away and squeezes out traditional crops in favor for specifically bred strains.
 
Which reminds me of an unexceptionally vivid dream I had last night (I don't remember the last time I had a dream after which when I woke up I wasn't sure if it was dream or real).

I had a dream where rocks the size of a mans head started falling from the sky, first just one, then two... three, after which I thought "this can't be good" and put on my woolly cap to protect my head. The rocks hit the ground with a heavy thud right beside me as I looked for cover.
Then I saw a huge tree that grew upside down with the base somewhere up in the clouds and branches descending down to the ground. The tree had people sitting on the branches I think.
Then I woke up.

I think it was an omen that the sky is falling soon....
 
Guden Oden said:
No, the biggest threat for these species isn't asteroids or nuclear war, it's the global capitalist food industry and its quest for ever greater profits that rationalizes away and squeezes out traditional crops in favor for specifically bred strains.

So you're saying it's a good move by Norway then ...:LOL:
 
If it's on a secluded Artic island in the middle of nowhere, who the hell is going to know where it is or even get to the place in a post-Doomsday event world?
 
Neeyik said:
If it's on a secluded Artic island in the middle of nowhere, who the hell is going to know where it is or even get to the place in a post-Doomsday event world?

They'll search the Beyond 3D forums to find out its location, of course. :rolleyes:

;)
 
Hanners said:
They'll search the Beyond 3D forums to find out its location, of course. :rolleyes:

;)
Ah, I see. Well that's encouraging - it's good to see that the Internet will still be running, even though the rest of the world is totally buggered. :cool:
 
Neeyik said:
Ah, I see. Well that's encouraging - it's good to see that the Internet will still be running, even though the rest of the world is totally buggered. :cool:

I guess we could smuggle a few servers into that vault. Maybe masked as mamooth tree seeds or so ;)
 
Isn't that why the US military invented the interwebnet, so that when it all goes horribly wrong, you can still download porn?
 
Guden Oden said:
No, the biggest threat for these species isn't asteroids or nuclear war, it's the global capitalist food industry and its quest for ever greater profits that rationalizes away and squeezes out traditional crops in favor for specifically bred strains.

Uh huh. And which of the seeds that are being stored haven't been specifically bred strains Guden? You forget to add the scare words "Frankenfood GM strains". "Traditional crops" means what? Most current food crops are bred, baked with microwaves, grafted, burned with chemicals and radiation to produce mutations, cross-bred out the wazoo. All for "profit" too, as farmers seeked to breed better performing crops and crops with unique tastes and aspects.


Personally, I think the biggest threat to the future is luddites who consistently oppose scientific progress with knee jerk anti-capitalist sentiment.
 
I'd say the effort to preserve the seeds is an important one. You never know which species may save us someday. For example, no one cared about the wild rice. However, it turned out that wild rice is very resistant to a certain rice disease. If everyone were planting the same kind of rice (it already happens in some countries), such disease may be devastating.
 
rabidrabbit said:
Which reminds me of an unexceptionally vivid dream I had last night (I don't remember the last time I had a dream after which when I woke up I wasn't sure if it was dream or real).

I had a dream where rocks the size of a mans head started falling from the sky, first just one, then two... three, after which I thought "this can't be good" and put on my woolly cap to protect my head. The rocks hit the ground with a heavy thud right beside me as I looked for cover.
Then I saw a huge tree that grew upside down with the base somewhere up in the clouds and branches descending down to the ground. The tree had people sitting on the branches I think.
Then I woke up.

I think it was an omen that the sky is falling soon....

Either that or you seriously need to lay off the acid. ;)
 
DemoCoder said:
Uh huh. And which of the seeds that are being stored haven't been specifically bred strains Guden? You forget to add the scare words "Frankenfood GM strains". "Traditional crops" means what? Most current food crops are bred, baked with microwaves, grafted, burned with chemicals and radiation to produce mutations, cross-bred out the wazoo. All for "profit" too, as farmers seeked to breed better performing crops and crops with unique tastes and aspects.


Personally, I think the biggest threat to the future is luddites who consistently oppose scientific progress with knee jerk anti-capitalist sentiment.

Ah, so true.
The luddites act like things like selective breeding/crossbreeding don't result in "specially bred" crops. Yeah, like the yeild of non-GM wheat isn't hundreds of times what it was 500 years ago. Oh wait, it is! Must mean "Traditional crops" are teh evil also. I guess the logical luddite conclusion is "starve to death".
All GM does is further that idea - and gives us a way to do it faster and better.
 
The threat is from strangefungi and diseases that can and do wipe out crops around the world. Kenya lost 66% of its wheat crop recently through a newly discovered fungi and old seeds may be resistant to a pandemic.

Not only Norway has seed banks, apparently Iraq had a seed bank but it was lost during the recent conflict(s) because of looting/robbing/bombing (delete as applicable).
 
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