Norway to Build Doomsday Seed Bank 273
Kagu writes "According to the BBC, Norway is planning to build a Seed Bank in the Artic Permafrost to protect all known variations of seeds in case of worldwide disaster." From the article: "Mr Hawtin said there were currently about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but a large number of these were located in countries that were either politically unstable or that faced threats from the natural environment."
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Short Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyways, the world is dying because the resources were squandered by humans. As a last resort, we package our genetic material into the nose cone of a rocket and fire it blindly into space (colder than the artic tundra).
Would it be such a bad idea to launch seeds into outer space to orbit the world just in case? I mean, they have to be worth something to us, right?
From the article:I hope there's a foot of lead included in that shielding somewhere. To me that would seem the most vital shielding they could provide.
Re:Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Short Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_device [wikipedia.org]
[Obligatory Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb quote]
Mmmm, global warming & permafrost (Score:3, Interesting)
A much more interesting article... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's really more about preserving genetic diversity rather than being a hedge against world-wide disaster.
Another idea for preserving life on Earth . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
In this boldly optimistic manifesto, Savage proclaims a master plan for the human race: to spread life throughout the galaxy. To many, space exploration seems irrelevant to Earth's real problems; but humanity may in fact have no other way to secure its long-term survival. To remain confined to Earth, Savage claims, is to court extinction, possibly within a few decades. Savage (an engineer who has established the Millennial Foundation to promote space exploration) outlines his program for transferring a significant portion of humanity off-planet. The crucial first step is to colonize the ocean surface with floating cities, quadrupling the living space available to the growing population of Earth. This allows us to reverse the degradation of the environment by shifting to the thermal energy of the deep ocean as our primary power source. At the same time, spirulina algae (already on sale in health food stores) becomes a major new food crop. The hardware for these oceanic colonies is already within practical reach: Savage provides a detailed inventory of how his floating cities would work and support themselves, with copious citations of the scientific literature. Once this move is well underway, it frees up energy and resources for the next steps. Improved space vehicles make possible orbiting space colonies, then settlements on the moon. A larger step is terraforming Mars--creating an atmosphere and a water supply for our lifeless neighbor to form a human habitat. On an even longer time scale, the race can expand into the rest of the solar system: asteroids and the moons of other planets. Ultimately, artificial habitats may completely surround the sun. With the resources of an entire solar system at our command, according to Savage, humanity can at last send out emissaries to other stars. The stuff of science fiction? Of course--but rigorously built from existing science, carefully documented, and convincingly argued. Highly recommended.
Better to store the information virtually, maybe? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's for this reason that the actual viability of the seeds isn't maybe that much of an issue. So long as the DNA remains intact and can be sequenced, it will be useful.
Although...I wonder if they might not be better off spending the money on sequencing the genomes now. That data can then be stored in many different places, and probably far more compactly and easily than the seeds. Furthermore, I think the mol bio field generally agrees that in the not too distant future it should be relatively straightforward to understand gene function from sequence, and that means only the sequence is really needed anyway. We won't need the actual DNA itself, because we can always reconstruct it, or the part of it we need.
Basically I'm saying maybe preserve all these plant species virtually, in cyberspace, instead of actually, in the frozen tundra. Cheaper. As well as more cyberpunk.
Norway has political stake to develop Spitsbergen (Score:5, Interesting)
Svalbard, of which Spitsbergen is an island, is a complicated case politically -- sort of like the Antarctic where signatories to the treaty of Svalbard can have a research or economic presence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard [wikipedia.org].
Norway's sovereignty is not in question, but it is under constraint. The Russians mine coal there (among other things). Norway has huge oil reserves in the North Sea and wants to move drilling into the Arctic ocean. The Norwegians have a strong interest in developing Svalbard and have a heavy presence in Longyearbyen. There is a developed tourist trade for people like me and my crazy wife who rode snowmobiles six hours to Berentsberg (The Russian Settlement) in a whiteout last Easter. But how many idiots like us can they count on?
Now, put in this context, the seed project makes a lot more sense. It is a good thing to do, of course, but at root there is the matter of "presence" not to mention all that oil and gas up there. And let's not forget those pesky Russians who also have interests.
Re:politically unstable? (Score:3, Interesting)
All Norway has is lutefisk, which would probably tend to repel invaders.
That, and some oil. But, of course, nobody has ever invaded anybody over something as trivial as oil.
Re:politically unstable? (Score:2, Interesting)
Your taxes help support the CGIAR and the sustain the gene banks of the world's most important food crops to the tune of $500m a year. It would be a shame if the billions invested were to be lost. About half of the world's population eats rice; 2 in 3 in Asia get most of their calories from rice. Half of the rice grown today was bred using materials from the rice gene bank of the International Rice Research Institute. If the gene bank of a major food crop was lost the loss to humanity would be incalculable, and the potential future consequences could include widespread famine, political unrest, large scale human migration and environmental destruction. For an insight into the economic importance of the CGIAR see the article on wheat in the recent issue of the Economist (Story of Man on the cover, or click here http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm? story_id=5323362&no_na_tran=1/ [economist.com]). Norman Borlaug, featured in that article, works at the CGIAR's wheat and maize institute, still, in his 90s.
As a recent profile of Gurdev Khush, a rice scientist, put it: his name may not have passed your lips but his work certainly has.
The CGIAR doesn't have any gene banks for oak trees, though it does have two forestry institutes. Oak is a temperate climate tree found in Northern latitudes not known for political instability. The future of the world's climate, the security of its food supply, biodiversity and any prospects of world peace are largely in the hands of the world's poor living in developing countries. People who don't have enough to eat today don't worry about tomorrow. Lucky for us all the Norwegians are enlightened people. Likewise other supporters of Global Crop Diversity Trust.
Two minutes here is all you'll need to understand why it matters http://www.croptrust.org/items/homepage.php/ [croptrust.org].