Jan 31 2008
Hiding Seeds From Doomsday
The BBC reported today on a news item that’s both heartening and deeply unsettling at the same time. Scientists at the Svalbard Global Seed Bank have created a special vault deep inside a mountain on Spitzbergen, one of Norway’s four Svalbard Islands to safely house seeds of important crops and plantlife against the possibility of a global catastrophe.
The facility’s location makes it quite safe from most catastrophic events, be they climactic, nuclear or what have you. It also will keep the seeds at a relatively constant 18 degrees Celsius (0 Farhenheit) which will allow them to stay safely stashed for over 1000 years.
The vault is intended to act as insurance so that food production can be restarted anywhere on Earth after a regional or global catastrophe.
Built deep inside a mountain, the structure will eventually house a vast collection of seeds; safeguarding world crops against possible future disasters including nuclear wars and dangerous climate change.
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The collection and maintenance of the seeds is being co-ordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which has responsibility of ensuring the “conservation of crop diversity in perpetuity”.
So, while I think this is very forward thinking and rational, I gotta wonder….cowpeas? What is a cowpea? Is it food? Sounds made up to me, kind of like “dirtweed” or “tater tot”. And what do they know that I don’t? Global warming climate crises aside, are we preparing for the 2012 Mayan apocalypse here? A Jerry Lewis Film Festival? Alien invasion? Will ET even like wheat?
of course you realize this is the precise location that the next asteroid will hit. . . ^_^