Members of the United States Senate have seized on climate change as a political football and consequently are stalemating legitimate efforts to enact greenhouse gas emissions and other general pollution control legislation. They were able to gather this faux support by decrying errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued prior to and discussed during the Copenhagen Climate Conference.
Recently, in response to political meddling the Union of Concerned Scientists along with eight Nobel Prize winners, 2000 prominent scientists, 32 National academy of Science members, three medal of science recipients and 11 MacArthur Genius Award Winners have signed a letter to the US Senate calling for immediate measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The letter specifically asks for legislation committing the US to reduce emissions to 80% of the year 2000 level. The letter was written as a response to political factions using slight misstatements on the part of the scientific community to attempt to discredit the last ten years of accumulated climate change fact. The scientific community has rallied to join hands in a definitive chorus so as to make known their complete belief that global warming is occurring as we speak and that the ability of nature to balance industrial interference diminishes in direct proportion to that growth. The concern of science is not whether or not we can reverse the damage incurred to our environment. It now accepted as a give that we cannot. The point put forth by the scientific community is that we must attempt to at least limit our environmental losses.

The timing of the Union of Concerned Scientists letter to the US senate could not have been better. A Gallup poll released today reports that almost half of all Americans believe that the problems related to global warming have been greatly exaggerated. Furthermore 46% of those polled believe that the scientific community is divided on whether climate change as a result of global warming is a real environmental threat. This is why the letter from the combined voices of the world’s leading scientists is of so much importance. The last two years have seen a marked reversal in the belief of Americans that global warming is a world environmental threat. This change in beliefs is primarily due to skillful manipulation of the media by powerful lobbying groups. These groups work for non-compliant industry with a vested financial interest in continuing to stomp over the earth with carbon footprints.

During the Eisenhower era 1950s baby boomers who were then still babies watched their parents dig holes in their backyards, pour concrete foundations and build solid concrete walls for what were to be fallout shelters. These sturdy cubicles would allow us to hide away from the effects of a nuclear holocaust. Never was it mentioned that in the event of a true nuclear war the remaining earth would be so radioactive that leaving one’s shelter would not be possible for 100 years and it was just as likely that anyone within the thirty mile radius of a blast zone would likely be turned to dust. Yet the parents built the shelters because Ike said it was a good idea.
We all had a great laugh ten years later when those shelters were converted into garden sheds and wine cellars.

Around 2000 years ago most of the knowledge the world had acquired was secreted away in Egypt. The location was Alexandria an ancient city named after Alexander the great. The Library was said to contain 500,000 pieces of literature and cultural revelation. The general belief is held that Julius Caesar accidentally burnt the great library while burning his own ships in the harbor. Although others including Theophilus and Moslem conquerors are blamed for the next 6oo years of history.
In any event the burning of the world’s knowledge set civilization back around 1400 years until the renaissance began.

So what do fallout shelters and the greatest storehouse of knowledge in earth’s history have in common?

Hidden away in Norway, in what is one of the most remote locations on the earth is a kind of fallout shelter and library. Known as the doomsday vault there resides a global seedbank created so that in the event of a nuclear or equally potent environmental disaster, we, or what remained of us could replant the earth. This 21st century ark for plants is dug into the side of a frozen mountain near the village of Longyearbyen, on Svalbard an island halfway between Norway and the North Pole. This location is remote as any place on Earth. This is a good thing too as over 500,000 species of plant life seeds are stored there.
Seedbanks in Iraq and the Philippines have recently been destroyed. The remoteness of this the largest seedbank on earth will likely keep it safe. Add to this the true but comical fact that the main inhabitants of the area are Polar Bears who frown upon visitation.
It does seem ironic that our ludicrous efforts at self preservation from radioactivity and our lesson sorely learned from the loss of Alexandria’s knowledge have resulted in our stashing away what could be, in the event of irreversible damage to the Earth, the most valuable substance in our world… seeds.