Take A Video Tour Of The Doomsday Seed Vault In The Arctic Circle

The seed cache is meant to survive every kind of apocalypse.

Co:exist
ADELE PETERS 06.08.16 11:26 AM

Buried 500 feet inside a mountain north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an attempt to save copies of every seed used to grow food in the world. In theory, it should last 1,000 years, safe from climate change, nuclear war, or an asteroid.

A recent video takes viewers on a tour, showing how the vault tunnels into the mountain and where the seeds—now numbering more than 860,000, from all around the world—are being stored until they're needed.






Because the vault is inside permafrost, the seeds will stay cold even if the power fails. The vault is also high enough on the mountain that even if all the ice in the world melted, the building would stay above sea level. Because it's so remote—the farthest north that it's possible to fly on a scheduled flight—the location also helps protect it from human destruction.

In a post-apocalyptic world, the seeds could be used to rebuild agriculture. But the vault is meant to be useful even without a global disaster. In 2015, Syrian researchers made the first withdrawal, pulling out backup seeds they had originally deposited from a local seed bank that had to be abandoned because of war. Now, those seeds will be used to continue research about which crops can best survive drought as the climate changes.

When it's full, the vault will hold as many as 4.5 million varieties of crops, and 2.5 billion seeds.

Gateway to the Underworld’ in Siberia is a warning to our warming planet

Such slumps have been ‘increasing in extent and intensity’ in the frozen north, scientists say
Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent

Independent
Friday 3 June 2016

The Batagaika crater in Siberia is widening by up to 20m a year and is a sign of the rate at which the world is warming


It is known as “the Gateway to the Underworld” by local people who fear to go near the massive crater that suddenly appeared in the frozen heart of Siberia.

And they are right to be afraid.

For as the permafrost melts, the world’s biggest “megaslump” is expanding rapidly. Already about a kilometre long and 90m deep, it is widening by up to 20m a year, making walking near its precipitous edges a dangerous pursuit.

But Batagaika crater, which first appeared about 25 years ago, is also a sign of the rate at which the world is warming – smaller ones have been appearing increasingly across the northern hemisphere.

The melting of the permafrost represents one of humanity’s greatest fears for it contains vast amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide.

If it were all to melt – a process that would start on an epic scale after about four degrees of warming – it would likely tip the planet into an extreme scenario the full horror of which is hard to describe.

Professor Julian Murton, a geologist at the University of Sussex, has just returned from a trip to the crater to study its cliffs, which provide a new source of geological information that potentially dates back some 200,000 years.

This includes the last time that the Earth was warmer than it is now, when hippopotamuses and elephants wandered around the future Trafalgar Square. 

The crater, 1km long and 90m deep, has appeared in the past 30 years (Julian Murton)

Professor Murton said: “In some sense, Batagaika does provide a view to what has happened in the past and what is likely to happen in the future.

“As the climate warms – I think there’s no shadow of a doubt it will warm – we will get increasing thaw of the permafrost and increasingly development of these ‘thermokarst’ features. There will be more slumps and more gullying, more erosion of the land surface.

“I think there’s growing evidence over the last few decades that thermokarst activity in the northern hemisphere has been increasing in extent and intensity.”

However, it will be sometime before Siberia begins to melt dramatically. It can still experience temperatures as low as minus -68C.

The Batagaika crater is thought to have begun after local people cut down some trees in the 1980s or early 1990s.

“Once you disturb the vegetation or soil above permafrost that can often set in train events that lead to the melting of ice within the permafrost,” he said.

“Cutting down of vegetation … removes some of the insulation that keeps the ground cool and that allows the summer heat to penetrate deeper into the ground.”

While the cliff edges are treacherous, the bottom of the crater is also something of a horror show.

Professor Murton compared it to the Badlands of the south-west US, full of ravines and gullies.

The remains of animals such as mammoths, musk ox and horses and ancient tree stumps can also be seen.

However, Professor Murton confirmed he had not found any sign of a mysterious tunnel leading to an underworld, physical or spiritual.

“At the bottom of the slump is rock … I haven’t seen any gateway to hell,” he said.

And while the permafrost can contain large amounts of methane, Professor Murton said there was “probably not a lot” in this particular area.

“You need waterlogged conditions for generating methane. It is pretty wet in the bottom of the slump, so it’s possible there’s some methane coming out of there,” he said.

But the crater, he said, was dangerous to people in the area simply “because this thing is growing remarkably quickly”.

“If you’ve got roads or paths nearby, they could easily get consumed as this thing grows … so it poses a hazard to the locals,” he said.

“There’s a lot of underground ice, ice wedges that are 20 to 30 metres high. Once this starts thawing there will be rapid change.”

The Origin Of Geological Terms: Geology

Forbes

MAY 18, 2016
David Bressan ,


I deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earth

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

“…make them like me adorers of the good science of rock-breaking.” - Charles R. Darwin in a letter dated to 1838 to his friend and mentor Charles Lyell

Specimen of geologist in his natural environment

Curiously enough the, first time the word “geology” was used in the modern sense was in the last will of Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605).

It was in the 17th century that commoners and noblemen alike began collecting natural objects in their cabinets and private museums. The displayed natural oddities and specimens were mostly acquired by chance from lucky discoverers. It was only later that naturalists started to go in the field, even if such an activity was considered more a necessity to gather more specimens than a means to explore the natural world.

In the 18th century, Swiss professor of philosophy Horace-Bénédict de Saussure was one of the first to propose that “savants” should not only collect specimens, but also take observations and exact measurements in the field. (“Savants” was a general term then applied to well educated people interested in philosophy, art and medicine, and sometimes the earth sciences. People interested and dedicated to the slowly emerging fields of “natural history” and “natural philosophy” were more specifically referred as “naturalists” and “natural philosophers.”)


Natural philosophy was interested in all observable phenomena in nature, from the physiological reaction of the body on the summit of Mount Blanc (climbed by de Saussure in 1787) to the rocks composing the mountain. Natural philosophy itself later became divided in three sub-disciplines: zoology (collection of animals), botany (collection of plants) and mineralogy (collection of minerals and rocks). Still all of these disciplines focused more on collecting and simply describing specimens and naturalists were happy doing so.

However miners were more interested how minerals and rocks are distributed in the landscape, if there were certain natural rules much money could be made by following the most rich veins.

In Germany, leading in mining technologies at the time, so the science called “geognosie” (translated maybe in “knowledge about the earth”) evolved from geography. Mapping the distribution of rocks on a map, geognosts tried to project the rock formations also into depth. This science was referred also as “mineralogical geography” or “géographie souterraine”, may the Italian name “anatomia della terra” – anatomy of earth – best describe what it was about.

Geognosie was however more a practical discipline, less interested in formulating theories. You may say geognosie could describe of which rocks a mountain is made of, but it couldn´t explain how a mountain formed.

In 1778, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon stressed in his “Nature’s Epochs” the need to create a geotheory to understand the evolution and structure of earth.

In that same year, the term geology was introduced (hesitantly) in the literature by Swiss naturalist Jean-Andre de Luc in his opus “Letters on Mountains.”


I mean here by cosmology only the knowledge of the earth, and not that of the universe. In this sense, “geology” would have been the correct word, but I dare not adopt it, because it is not in common use.

Despite de Luc’s concerns, geology became synonymous with the proposed theory of earth, a part of cosmology dedicated to the description and explanation of earth and its relationship with animals, plants and humans.

In now addressing my brother -geologists – and under this term I would comprehend all who take an interest in the progress of a science whose problems are inseparably interwoven with the whole study of nature – I have been influenced by the conviction that it is good for us, as workers in the same field, occasionally to pause and question ourselves as to the ultimate bearing of our investigations.
- David Page (1863): “The Philosophy of Geology”

The word geology itself has much older roots, however. In his testament written in 1603, the Italian Renaissance naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi introduced the term “giologia” to refer to the study of “fossilia” – the unearthed things.

Aldrovandi had tried his whole life to classify nature, and to separate specimens of rocks and fossils from similar looking animals and plants. The science “giologia,” so Aldrovandi’s hope, would study the origin of rocks, minerals, petrified organisms (Aldrovandi recognized some fossils as once living things) and the layers of earth.

Two hundred years later, the name geology would become largely known to the public by the work of many professional rockhounds, like Sir Charles Lyell and, like Charles Darwin. Those rockhounds in turn hoped that many people would follow its call and become geologists (like me).

Interested in reading more? Try:

RUDWICK, M.J.S (2005): Bursting the limits of time – The reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London: 708

Canada defines its new role in the world

Richard Gwyn

Toronto Star

May 24, 2016


We’re an exceptionally successful nation, but only a medium-size one, our capacity to take on international roles is limited


Canada's Foreign Minister Stephane Dion shakes hands with Myanmar's Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi before their meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Naypyitaw in April. "Dion has already coined a name for Canadian foreign policy, namely that it will be based on 'responsible conviction,' a term that seems to mean we’ll listen to other countries rather than tell them what to do," writes Richard Gwyn. (REUTERS)


Can Canada make an impact upon the world? Or, even if done well, would a sustained attempt to achieve this kind of stature leave us looking foolish?

That such an effort will be made by this government was signaled by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at last December’s climate change conference in Paris. There, Trudeau declared that Canada would exercise, “a new leadership role” internationally.

This work has now begun. Beyond argument, it is extensive and it is determined.

The minister of international development, Marie-Claude Bibeau, has just announced a major study of Canada’s badly lagging program of aid to poor countries.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has announced he will complete his project by the end of this year. He’s described his goal as to put together, “a perfect mix of personnel, training and equipment.”


The minister of international trade, Chrystia Freeland, is doing the same for her responsibilities for negotiating trade pacts.

Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion is the furthest ahead. He’s already coined a name for Canadian foreign policy, namely that it will be based on “responsible conviction,” a term that seems to mean we’ll listen to other countries rather than tell them what to do.

The scale of these studies is unprecedented, and the goodwill that motivates them is genuine. Already, invitations are coming our way. This month Dion took part in the meeting in Vienna of a 24-member group, headed by the U.S. and Russia, that is trying to negotiate a ceasefire in Syria.

These qualities, though, are where the difficulties begin. We’re indeed an exceptionally successful nation. But we are only a medium-size nation.

In several respects, our capacity to take on international roles is decidedly limited. Our military capacity is well-below our national size, indeed it’s one of the smallest proportionately of all the member-states of NATO.

We’re as mingy about foreign aid. The target of the United Nations is that well-off countries should spend 0.7 per cent of their national output on aid. While Britain is at that mark, Canada’s equivalent is a mere 0.28 per cent.

This is to say that we often talk better than we actually do. The most vivid example is Canada’s recent sale of armoured cars to Saudi Arabia where some are certain to be used against that country’s own people. (Earlier, that fear had prompted Sweden to cancel a military sale to the same customer.)

Sometimes, luck makes us look better than we really are. Our taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees with another 10,000 due to join them was a major accomplishment, most especially so in comparison to the bungling of most of the European states. We enjoyed, though, one asset that made it much easier for us to cope with the intake of newcomers. It’s called the Atlantic Ocean.

The attempt to do what we can to make the world a better place, of some bits and pieces of it at least, is well worth undertaking. Dion caught the character of the challenge by his comment, “This is not a choice. It’s a duty”.

Actually, it’s not so much either a choice or duty; rather, it is us.


Richard Gwyn’s column appears every other Tuesday. gwynr@sympatico.ca