Plus by the time we need to open the vault, the surrounding land will likely be arable.
Published by Kyso Kisaen February 9th, 2007 in Brilliant Ideas, EnvironmentWhen the planet melts and/or we otherwise manage to destroy ourselves, do not dispair. Instead, look to the future-look the Arctic.
The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.
The vault aims to safeguard the world’s agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.
It’s like Noah’s ark, but with plants instead of animals and it is very specifically designed to not float.
The Norwiegians are paying for it, so if I were you I’d stay on their good side. And if I may say, flatteringly but not obnoxiously so, they’ve really done a bang up job of planning against every horrible thing we could possibly do to shoot ourselves in the face agriculturally:
“We looked very far into the future. We looked at radiation levels inside the mountain, and we looked at the area’s geological structure,” he told BBC News.
“We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was above the resulting water level.”
By building the vault deep inside the mountain, the surrounding permafrost would continue to provide natural refrigeration if the mechanical system failed, explained Dr Fowler.
I’m just glad a government is actually taking the future into consideration.