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The Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault
Anonymous Cow writes "A giant refrigerated genetic bank built into the island of Svalbard has been brought online. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is designed to house up to 4.5 million seeds in the case of a catostrophic event. The bank is funded by the Norwegian government, Monsanto Corporation, and the Gates, Rockefeller, and Syngenta Foundations. The Global Crop Diversity Trust has completed construction of the doomsday vault and is getting the facility ready to preserve the genetic heritage of the world's agriculture for future generations. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault's relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring human activity. Spitsbergen was considered ideal due to its lack of tectonic activity and its permafrost, which will aid preservation. Locally mined coal will provide power for refrigeration units which will further cool the seeds to the internationally recommended standard 20 to 30 C."
... in charge of saving our agricultural bacon? The same people who tried to bring agricultural holocaust to the developing world with their you-can't-save-our-seeds-for-next-year's-crop shenanigans?
Hopefully their influence will be counterbalanced by some of the less evil groups participating in the project.
awwww.....too late. Anyone have a kleenex ?
To the internationally...?
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Will Monsanto's attorneys survive the apocalypse to collect license fees for the patented GM technology in the seeds?
They say the mind is the first thing to
Heated maybe?
Monsanto is helping fund it?? Aren't they the ones making the terminator gene?
Coal to refrigerate seeds against a catastrophic worlwide ecological disaster in part caused by a large amount of coal?
:P
makes sense...
That article seems a little over the edge. He calls molecular biology a pseudo-science, dismisses the nobel peace prize, and claims the the green revolution was an under-handed plot by the US to turn foreign workers into a cheap labor pool. It's full of insinuations and hints towards a sinister secret agenda. I didn't bother to read the whole thing, as the craziness level was far beyond acceptable thresholds.
The summary has been partially copied from the linked Wikipedia article, but it cuts off unexpectedly. The summary ends with "cool the seeds to the internationally." Which makes no sense. The full version from the Wikipedia article is "cool the seeds to the internationally-recommended standard 20 to 30 C."
Good idea but who is going to be around to plant them?
What if the doomsday involved global warming, permafrost perma-gone?
You may ponder your silly question while my tribe clubs you to death and steals your fuel (and your women).
The linked article in the summary looks like a lot of FUD to me. Read at your own risk.
From the article:
The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick.My question is, if there is a doomsday event, how do we get in?
I recall reading about a vault made in the 50's that was recently opened, and stored inside was some vintage car that had turned into a rust bucket due to the moisture which somehow got into the vault... now maybe technology of today is a little better for sealing things off but how long can you really keep a seed safe from the damage that the mere passing of time can cause unless you put it in cryo stasis with a power source that will last a very long time?
They hope to have a couple packets of seeds of at least 100,000 plant species. It's supposed to survive most anything, being underground and out of the way. The place is fully automated with live video feeds being able to be viewed off-site. This thing is quite literally a refrigerated gigantic robotic filing cabinet with heavy-duty security!
"Don't worry, don't you remember that slashdot article about that vault?"
"What vault?"
"The doomsday seed vault! It'll save us all, we'll have plenty to eat as soon as we can get some crops planted."
"That's great! Where is it?"
"The Arctic circle."
"What?"
"Well, they needed to keep the seeds cold so they'd stay viable."
"How in the fuck are we going to get to the north pole?"
"Um, oh yeah. Peopleburgers it is then."
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
All that needs to happen is for localized catastrophes to happen just to some of the mentioned "sponsors" of this project. After they and evil entities like them are gone the world will be just fine.
You've seen this I hope?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Svalbard is not exactly the choicest site in the world for something as important as a doomsday seed vault. The island is run by Panserbjørnen and witches!
and i hope they keep Monsanto's genetically modified seed and intellectual property separate from natural seeds, thats all we need in the future is for Monsanto having a monopoly on global food crops...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
So what happens when all the people who are supposed to be mining the coal die? No one thought, "hey maybe this thing should run on solar power"?
Kharma is like a boomerang. Mine is broken.
...all we need in the future is for Monsanto having a monopoly on global food crops... 1. Acquire patent for nature;2. Usher in the apocalypse;
3. Rebuild the world under license
4. Name it Monsanto-World (TM)
5. Bwa-hah-hah-hah-hah !!
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
OK say its doomsday or "really really crappy but not enough to be dooms" day.
Who gets access? Only Monsanto, Microsoft and friends?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/09/2214233
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Microsoft is in charge of security. Anyone will be able to get in if they want to.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
How about a vault for the people? What is the point of a bunch of seeds when everyone is dead?
What is wrong with the seed bank at Kew Gardens near London? I believe that it is the biggest in the world. Oh that's right, it not controlled by Americans so it doesn't rate.
Butthead: Hey, Beavis. Uhhh, let's go donate some of our, uhhhh, seed.
Beavis: Yeah, yeah! SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!!!!!!!
Butthead: Dude, they want us to spank our snow monkeys! Heh, heh.
I can't remember anyone asking *me* to donate. WTF?
Like I'm not important or something?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
While I do not debate the merit of this project, I am unsure of its "ability to help us recover from disaster". What I mean is that, sure we can propagate seeds, but assembling them into whole functioning ecosystems that are the same as (or even resemble) is beyond our knowledge. I can't see this changing anytime soon either. Additionally, how are we going to restore the soil microbes and fungi?
Actually, if we cut them a little slack for a munged link, and for misspelling 'rabid', the article is basically correct. Sanger was a follower of Robert Malthus, who is best known for prophecying overpopulation doom. What he is less known for is his proposed solution to the alleged problem. He suggested that the 'inferior races' be prevented from expanding. Only wholesome, Anglo-Saxon christians would reproduce.
I saw this on T.V. like 3 days ago. Modern Marvels "Cold Tech" or something to that effect. Good to see the internet is now getting it's news information from a show which obviously takes at least a week to produce. Old News.
Can the pollen from the terminator plants infect humans and make them sterile? That wouldn't be too good.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Isn't that where the Soviets detonated the 50 MT nuke?
There's a lot of difference between -20 to -30 (TFA) and 20 to 30 (summary).
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Are you so stupid that you can't even read Wikipedia?
Let's dump a backup of all Slashdot stories and all seasons of Stargate SG-1 in there too. You know, just in case.
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"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
I've followed this development of the doomsday vault for awhile, but had no idea of the behind the scenes interest and the possible "not so good" ramifications of it all. This information puts it into a completely new light. Wheels within maximum profits (or worse) enigmas and agendas here.
Yes, the new drought-resistant, high-yield strains are wonderful things that allow the starving masses to feed 'themselfs'. But by throwing in a genetic time bomb and neutering the crops, Monsanto is in effect resting on its laurels and obviating the need for further innovation.
Maybe for now, but patents expire. Someone's going to make a small bundle by making terminator-free varieties once the patents on them expire. Of course, by then, we'll have an entire generation of farmers used to paying the piper for their seeds, and I'm sure that Monsanto will have something new to offer by the end of 20 years.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just think how pissed you'd be if a bunch of velociraptors popped out of some jurassic "doomsday" vault next week and started chomping down on your homo sapiens brethren?
Think about the long term. Modern Humans have been around for as few as 6000 years according to some folks, as long as a few hundred thousand years, maybe a bit more, according to more rational minds.
The same rational minds that put the age of the universe several orders of magnitude greater.
One way or the other, what's the difference?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Seeing as it's such valuable content wouldn't that call for a redundant system near the south pole. If you get too paranoid there's always the moon and Mars.
!sig
I see many many flaws with this.
First off, Svalbard? How in the hell would anyone, if anyone exists, post-epoch get to such a remote place?
Second, coal-powered? I mean, sure the Soviets mined it there for years and the Norwegians still do. But if we are at a point to use the doomsday seed thing, the Norwegians would have been long extinct along with the rest of the world. No coal, no perfectly conditioned environment for keeping dormant seeds.
I've read some people offer the suggestion of solar power. That's nice and all. Except there is the nuclear winter doomsday hypothesis. So that might be out of the question.
Nuclear power would require too much maintenance to power the refrigerators. And with no people left, totally out of the question.
Geothermal would probably be the most reliable source of power for the facility. But that brings me to my next point...
If there are going to be a doomsday apocalypse, why even bother with seeding the planet?
The game.
There are seed stores all over the world, some refrigerated, some not. Most governments do it to prevent the genetic variability of our world's crops from dropping to zero, as well as restoring our crops if there does happen to be a disease outbreak that targets specific species of plants, especially those which are so genetically similar.
So much of the world's cereal crops are dangerously similar, due to the fact that everyone wants GMOs (genetically modified organisms) that are disease resistant, insecticide resistant, drought resistant, or infused with certain genes to deter insects. The downfall to that is the fact that you get practically no variation to select for survivability to future diseases, weeds, and insects, or to withstand pandemics or epidemics of disease.
Last I heard, Mexico banned the use of GMOs for corn farmers so that the huge staple of their diet would be reliable in the future, however since corn is an airborne pollinator some crops had been germinated from US GMO corn crops and were burned. They are pretty strict on that, and I'm just hoping a blight doesn't destroy our corn and soybean crops, the two least genetically variable crops that we grow here.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
IMO the most likely scenario where the seed bank would be needed is when the human race eventually tries to restart agriculture after the start of the next ice age. Yet when that happens, it's very likely that this island could be under a mile-thick ice sheet. That doesn't seem like the best location.
I Was A Botanist That Dealt With Seeds.
In fact a good chunk of my graduate studies dealt with seeds. I can hand you a set Mustard seeds. Each year I add one from the year before recursively - so you plant one this year, two the next (years one and two collection), three after that (years one, two and three collection), then four, etc, etc etc. So that at the end you have ten seeds from the original plant ten years ago, all the way to that same plant's seed this year.
Over time you will see the germination for that particular Mustard's offspring drop to zero. Maybe not in ten years - it is dependent on the plant, but it will happen. Then. Then some lady in Iowa is going to be digging through her great grandmothers root cellar and blow the roof off of the life of a seed. A tomato from colonial times, a spinach that looks like a bush. A corn that is a weed not a crop, a mustard her great-grandma grew.
Truth is we have wery little idea how to keep seeds. Everyone would like to believe that even if we (almost) kill our own species that our current plants will survive is smoking a biiiiig pipe. You may say sure - but if we bank a million seeds - post collapse people get to grow our best efforts. Except they don't. Because they are locked up where no one can find them, in areas that if they get exposed to the elements of the area or radiation or climate, rain, soil, that most of them will die. And if they can survive, why would you look there - you would look in the tropics, where things really grow. This whole thing is predicated on the belief that the people that survive will gather the seeds and become AG gods.
Truth is, if they are Modern Man (shortly after the Fall) They will have access to plants. If you expect MoleMen to come up and start an ag culture based on this storage, well, SciFi is your God.
This might be great for Botany (and it is)
But Noah's Ark it isn't
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
species become extinct by the second, they're looking forward to capitalizing on this.
Yes, exactly my question when I read it. How are they going to refresh the seeds? I've read about various heritage seed farms, and keeping old varieties alive is a bunch of work. As you say, they need to be planted while they are still vital so that you get a reasonable germination rate. The Norskies don't seem to be addressing that. I don't buy that the freezing methodology is a complete solution to that. The other thing is keeping varieties pure. Let's say you have 7 varieties of carrots. You can't plant them anywhere near to each other in he same year, or they cross pollinate and their goes your pure strain. So the problem has multiple constraints.
Wait, this place is only about 1100 km from the North Pole, and they have to run refrigeration to get the temps down to 25 degrees Celsius? Man, that global warming is brutal!
I assume you meant to say 20 to 30 K, no?
The terminator genetics does not stop modified genetics from spreading into the wild. Viruses can enter the plants, multiply, and take little snips of stuff here and there when they spread. And the terminator genes are not perfect. A one in a billion failure across trillions of seeds is a lot of spreading.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Well, considering that the summary says they need to keep the seds at "20 to 30 C." - that's actually rather on the warm side (68F to 86F).
The linked article states:
"In the 1990's the UN's World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.
Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told. "
A quick search on google for "Comite Pro Vida de Mexico" brings up a JSTOR abstract: Damage to Immunisation Programmes from Misinformation on Contraceptive Vaccines.
Whoops, wouldn't want think about immunizing against neonatal tetanus in developing countries. Seems like this author wants to assume there's a sinister plot to take over the world population. Where's James Bond when you need him?
Its surprising that there aren't MORE of these, one central source of anything is a bad thing as we already know. This I think would be important enough to have more than a few of them around the world. Heck I am sure North America could use quite a few of them... Alaska & the Yukon anyone?
Narrator: In A.D. 2101, war was beginning. Svalbard : What happen ? Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb. Operator: We get signal. Svalbard : What! Operator: Main screen turn on. Svalbard : It's you!! CATS: How are you gentlemen!! CATS: All your semen are belong to us. CATS: You are on the way to destruction. Svalbard : What you say!! CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time. CATS: Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Svalbard !! *
Svalbard : Take off every 'SEMEN'!!
Svalbard : You know what you doing.
Svalbard : Move 'SEMEN'.
Svalbard : For great justice.
If they don't press it after, say, 1,000 years, the vault goes into "reseed" mode.
And totally fuck up whatever plant life is around 1000 years from now. If there are no humans, what the hell do you need to go throwing noxious weeds like strawberries around, choking out one thousand years of evolution and bringing disease from our time in the form of mold spores to things that have had a thousand years to forget everything they knew about THAT particular strain.
If there are humans around, they can intelligently manage the revival of whatever species might exist. If not, they it makes a nice collection for an alien botanist who happens to land here. Just going into reseed mode without thought is like use sending up the contents of my vacuum bag with the next Mars mission and dumping it all over the ground there.
And before you dream about something that wakes up in 1000 years and starts throwing packets "all over the globe", you should really read The Clock of the Long Now and reconsider what you are saying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Make yourself at home, eat a seed while waiting ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Fuck me. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
Building a vault isn't rocket science.
Those Okies were idiots.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
it would be rather ironic if they discovered a gigantic underground vault full of Jurassic plants left by the dinosaurs for future civilizations in the event of a large extinction event.
If they are participating to such a thing ... they KNOW something really bad is going to happen because of their genetically modified seeds and their are preparing for colossal future profits.
and i thought this was about something that could CAUSE doomsday. man.
Do you have a female mellon with big mellons?
Who's going to be the first vault dweller?
I dunno, but every time i ear something about Monsanto company, it reminds me of Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil, i wonder why?
Monsanto is involved with this, so after the apocalypse, Indian peasant farmers will still be taking it in the shorts from big corporations.
they overstocked on G.E.C.K-s and waterchips.
oh and Ron Perlman soundclips : "War. War never changes"
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The seed vault is not primarily about preserving species of wheat or whatever it is people have been imagining on /. - it is about saving as many as possible of all the wild plant species we are busy driving to extinction through logging, global warming, mindless, industrial agriculture etc. It is part of a multi layered strategy: preserve habitats, preserve growing specimens in botanical gardens, preserve seeds in seed banks.
A pessimistic, but very realistic view indicates that we will have killed off most rainforests etc within this century; that leaves botanical gardens and the seed banks. When the botanical gardens aren't viable any more, perhaps we have one more chance in the seed banks. If we save enough seeds, perhaps we can re-establish viable ecologies where they have been lost, or in new, better suited places, since the climate changes are likely to change some habitats too much.
What people should realize is that this is not about safeguarding against starvation - it's for after, when a large part of the world's population has died. It is also worth thinking about that this project isn't a panicky rush to build a shelter a-la the cold-war nuclear bunkers. This has been contemplated and implemented by level-headed scientists.
Oh, Monsanto Corp., defilers of all natural plant growth, playing a key part in this? That should play out nicely...
Or is it decidedly creepy when the richest people in the world prepare for "The End"...
Deleted
Of course we should all give up this evil science stuff and run back into the forests were everything is happy and kind and nurturing as soon as possible. But until that time, first world farmers are going to have to front up and pay for seeds if they want the highest yields and the west will remain the bread basket of the world until the mass die off before the happy people can return to the forests.
I'll leave it in a cup by their door.
Can I bum a sig?
That article is a paranoid conspiracy theory. It contains little fact and is chalk full of FUD, bizarre ideas and many alleged links to Nazi and Third Reich Eugenics scientists. Apparently those forces have much to do with Bill Gates and others funding this bank [rolls eyes]. Why was this article even posted on /.? Let me post an exerpt:
That stuff about Sanger may actually be true, but still, conspiracy theories are often arrived at by taking true facts, twisting them and putting them together in ways that should never happen. This article is supposed to be informing us about the seed vault, not spinning up bizarre stories the relate the Svalbard seed bank to Rockefeller, the Nazis, etc. Why did the admins post this drivel?
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
I'm all for awareness of global threats and so on, but this article is a paranoid rant, as far as I can see, without merit and pointless to read. The author merely seems to be promoting his own agenda and book.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
Ladies and Gentlemen:
You have no idea...too late. There are MULTIPLE contamination (both accidental and intentional) problems already. We are rapidly moving to biological armageddon, for a number of reasons. But heck, don't take my word for it. Google for GMO seed contamination. I hope that you will be appropriately outraged and shocked by what you discover and hammer your politicians ASAP.
Here's a couple examples:
http://www.biotech-info.net/control_issues.html
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/2006/05/hawaiian-papaya-gmo-contaminated-by.html
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/est/99/dec/dec-news6.html
Et cetera, et cetera, unfortunately...
So anyone else (including you) is free to create their own vault, with more traditional seed varieties, which would more than likely also suffice for post-Armageddon or other scenarios. Surely you can't argue that we'd be better off post-Armageddon if Monsanto didn't create a vault AT ALL (unless it's Monsanto's plan to engineer an Armageddon with societal structure that leaves them with power afterwards). The way I see it, generally speaking the more such vaults we have the better - it doesn't take anything away from the world for anybody to create a vault, it only 'gives'.
Shit that company is genetically engineering it's seeds and pushing them all over the world, they have test on rats proving they affect the human genome, that's what you get when mixing animal genes with vegetables.
And we would want to be saved by them? Geez i'd rather eat dirt unless someone from monsanto stepped on it and genetically modified it.
There are a lot of crops that got so much mutated and modified for the thousands years since we invented agriculture (by plain old "selection method", you needn't wait for the 20/21th century's biotechnology to create mutants).
:
You end up with plants growing in field that have no close relatives in the nature, at least not close enough to cross-polinate wild species. And those plant, because they mostly got selected for their culinary uses, evolved to the point they are almost completly dependant on humans for their reproduction (that's "intelligent" design for you...)
The risks of turning the tropical forest into the next "World War Z" because of GM crops is low.
Similarly the risk for health of the GM crops can also be kept low : the newer gene that you install inside your GM crop don't need to be taken from some obscure bacteria that only leave several km under the see level near source of thermal or chemical energy, or some highly toxic tropical snail. You can also produce useful GM by transferring genes from other plants. If both plants are known to be non-toxic to humans, chance are high that your newly created product will be non-toxic too.
In short, GM aren't necessarily dangerous, specially shown in the light of the grotesque mutation that modern crops are compared to their ancestror. We can produce GMs that introduce far less novelty than what thousands years of agriculture have already managed to modify.
WHAT IS REALLY PROBLEMATIC is these terminator genes.
They are fundamentally over-throwing the economic model that has prevailed for the last *couple of thousands* years.
For all that time, peasants used *to own their fields* (yeah, maybe not the serfs working the land directly, but land lords) and thus they owned and were free to manage whatever grew on it. Choose to plant next year whatever you have seeds for (and choose wisely - "crop rotation" ain't just a funny word).
With terminator-genes GM crops, the peasants are now at the mercy of the GM producing company. They must, sheepishly, re-pay each year for a new batch of seeds. Vendor Lock-in is assured by combining these genes and the stupid "bio-patents", thus eliminating any possibility of freedom for the peasants.
In a way, Monsanto is becoming the new Microsoft of agriculture, terminator gene playing the role of the technology that will put an end at the "homebrew computre era"-like freedom of choice that the agriculture had enjoyed until now.
The parallels with DRM and TCPM are even more troubling because the terminators are pushed also as a security measure and in fact serve better as lock-in tools too.
Now add to that that the few amount of GM crops available will further encourage monoculture and render world production even more vulnerable to newer bugs (for which there aren't specific trans-genes in the crops yet). The parallels with Microsoft are realy troubling.
The only risk of cross pollination is with neighbours fields. Monsanto is encouraging keeping a given distance, but a lot of agro-specialist are complaining that those buffer distance are too short and cross pollination may occur.
This will
- pose problem to the consumers freedom of choice. Even if he picks up a GM-free product in the shop, the product may still have plant expressing GM-genes they got from the neighbourhood.
- because those terminator gene only work one generation down (kill the offsprings of the GM crops) they could kill next year's crop that was obtained from cross-pollinated GM-contamined seeds. Thus damaging the yield of fields in the neighbourhood of GM crops. (This could even bring bad unfair publicity to unaware peasant because their crop will be performing worse than the GM of the neighbour, thus encouraging switching to GM) The best part ? If a peasant realises and complains about the contamination, *he* wi
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1000 years is a pittance when it comes to evolutionary genetic modification. Plant life 1000 years from now will be extremely similar to plant life now (excluding GM modifications and anthropogenic breeding). And any disease resistance would still be coded into the DNA of the surviving plants.
"Locally mined coal will provide power for refrigeration units..."
Thereby hastening global warming, our eventual doom and therefore the need for the seed banks.
Next up, news of Western plans to hand over nuclear tech for 'safe keeping' to stable, responsible, friendly regimes such as Pakistan, India, North Korea, China and Libya...oh wait.
OK, hasn't anyone seen zetgeist the movie? Does it not seem a bit strange that the guy who wants globalization and is willing to go to great and evil lengths to get it now wants to lock away seeds in case of "something bad"? I think the problem is not that this is being done, it is actually a really good idea, the problem is who is doing it! David Rokerfeller to me alone is bad news. I dont like it one bit.
What happens to the plants once all of the pollenators are gone? Also, a lot of seeds require special conditions to be viable (i.e. passing through the digestive track of animals).
This was the sort of scenario my few surviving G.I. Joe figures would always end up in-- the world had been blown to hell, and Snake Eyes and the Crimson Guard were left fighting it out to see which one of them would get to live the rest of their lives in the insanely well-stocked Antarctic base/my bedroom floor... Ah, good times.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Just junk food for thought...
http://www.growseed.org/potato-breeding.html
Quote:
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
You misspelled "youse"...
Actually I misspelled us:
going into reseed mode without thought is like us sending up the contents of my vacuum bag
But "youse" is way funnier, I'll take that thanks!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1000 years is a pittance when it comes to evolutionary genetic modification. Plant life 1000 years from now will be extremely similar to plant life now (excluding GM modifications and anthropogenic breeding). And any disease resistance would still be coded into the DNA of the surviving plants.
And we should believe any of your cowardly text why?
Seems like you underestimate the changes that can take place in even 1000 years. Non-native species have totally changed vegetation in areas in far less a time (your reseeding is gauranteed to not distribute non-native plants to a region how again?), to pretend like you know what will be what botanically in 1000 years, possibly after a large scale nuclear war with associated mutations, is purest comedy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Looks like they need a version control system, Subversion anyone?
Maybe they'll also store a Windows Vista computer in the vault as an ominous warning for future generations.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529 Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called Terminator or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits suicide after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total. Such control and power over the food chain has never before in the history of mankind existed. While I don't agree with "Control by private seed companies is total. " - patenting and releasing GMO seeds for plants that intentionally die seems deeply wrong on many levels.
A lot of people don't seem to grasp that evolution is simply a tautology--"Whatever survives, survives." There's no such thing as "fucking things up" or "cheating" or what have you. This is especially true on a evolutionary time scale so ridiculously small as 1000 years. Who the hell are you to say that a mere 1000-year-old ecosystem (which really doesn't hasn't had much of a chance at all to even remotely stabilize) has a better right to exist than the ecosystem that preceded it?
In terms of helpfulness to the human race, I'm pretty sure that the species diversity caused by a re-planting would almost assuredly far outweigh any negatives (*especially* if only food-bearing plants were auto-released.) In terms of protecting the poor, struggling, 1000-year-young, artificially-created (assuming nuclear holocaust) ecosystem--who the fuck cares?
Preserving the seeds at 20-30 degrees C seems a little bit hot to me are you not sure its -20 to -30 degrees C?
I've been storing my seeds for many years now in my wife; it's good to see that at 20 - 30c there's a warmer place to take it as well....
So I guess what they expect isn't another Cracatowa but maybe Yellowstone blowing up along with say a meteor the size if Rhode Island. I guess if crap like this happens it won't matter much for centuries where the seeds are none of us will be around to replant anything.
Paul E. Bahre