Doomsday Vault in the Arctic

Why are those people who live at the north of the world always so ahead of everyone else when it comes to making hard decisions that other western nations simply never want to face....much less make.

My case in point is this little tidbit from Norway:

Aimed at providing mankind with a Noah's Ark of food in the event of a
global catastrophe, an Arctic "doomsday vault" filled with samples of
the world's most important seeds will be inaugurated here Tuesday.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Nobel Peace Prize
winning environmentalist Wangari Matai will be among the personalities
present at the inauguration of the vault, which has been carved into
the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain, just some 1,000 kilometres
(620 miles) from the North Pole.

The only problem I see is the use of the words "carved into the permafrost". There is permafrost all over Siberia that has melted...and smelling terrible...because as it turns out...there is a whole lot of frozen Mammoth poo that's been there frozen and smell-free for tens of thousands of years.

Here's the rest of the story:

The vault, made up of three spacious cold chambers each measuring 27 x
10 metres (89 x 33 feet), create a long trident-shaped tunnel bored
into the sandstone and limestone.

It has the capacity to hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all
known varieties of the planet's main food crops, making it possible to
re-establish plants if they disappear from their natural environment or
are obliterated by major disasters.

"The facility is built to hold twice as many varieties of agricultural
crops as we think exist," explained Cary Fowler, executive director of
the Global Crop Diversity Trust and project mastermind.

"It will not be filled up in my lifetime, nor in my grandchildren's lifetime," he predicted in a phone interview with AFP.

Norway has assumed the six million euro (8.9 million dollar) charge for
building the vault in its Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, where
ironically no crops grow.

Secured behind an airlock door, the three airtight chambers have the
capacity to house duplicates of samples from all the world's more than
1,400 existing seed banks.

Many of the more vulnerable seed banks have begun contributing to the
"doomsday vault" collection, but some of the world's biodiversity has
already disappeared, with gene vaults in both Iraq and Afghanistan
destroyed by war and a seed bank in the Philippines annihilated by a
typhoon.

By the time of the inauguration on Tuesday, the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault should hold some 250,000 samples, which will remain the property
of their countries of origin.

Pakistan and Kenya, both undergoing periods of serious unrest, have
sent seed collections, while samples sent from Colombia have been
closely scrutinised by police to avoid the project becoming a vehicle
for drug trafficking.

"I've been working in this field for 30 years and I thought I knew at least all the crops," Fowler said.

After receiving a list of all the different seeds in the vault,
however, "I must admit there are a number of crops I've never heard of
before," he said.

That's a spectacular amount of diversity for Svalbard, where no trees
can grow due to the permafrost and where the mercury plummets to an
average 14 degrees Celsius below zero (6.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in
winter.

The Norwegian archipelago, which is home to some 2,300 people, was
selected not despite but because of its inhospitable climate, as well
as its remote location far from civil strife.

The seeds of wheat, maize, oats and other crops will be stored at a
constant temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius, and even if the
freezer system fails the permafrost will ensure that temperatures never
rise above 3.5 degrees Celsius below freezing.

"Svalbard really met all the criteria," Fowler said.

Protected by high walls of fortified concrete, an armoured door, a
sensor alarm and the native polar bears that roam the region, the
"doomsday vault" has been built 130 metres (425 feet) above current sea
level -- high enough that it would not flood if the Greenland and
Antarctic ice sheets melt entirely due to global warming.

The concrete cocoon has also been built to withstand nuclear
missile attacks or a plunging plane, something that could come in handy
in light of the 6.4-scale tremor -- the biggest earthquake in Norway's
history -- registered near the archipelago on Thursday.

So not only are their women unbelievable hot...but they are also really concerned about the fate of the planet.

Very cool indeed.