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Bill gates doomsday vault11/22/2023 ![]() There were other speakers who were more optimistic this could unlock cures for cancer, for example. ![]() Elon Musk, the controversial CEO of Tesla and X - formerly known as Twitter - warned of, quote, "civilizational risk" or threats to humanity, while others in the room talked about protecting workers or vulnerable groups. GRISALES: Well, this is an urgent moment for AI because there's still so many unknowns here. KELLY: So it's unusual to see a group of CEOs all coming together like this, all in Washington on Capitol Hill. Hey there.ĬLAUDIA GRISALES, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise. NPR's congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales is here to tell us about what happened today. So the meeting is part of a bigger focus in the U.S. One would not expect a seed bank, even in Syria, to be a target, but unfortunately there is a recent precedent: Seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan were destroyed or severely damaged over the course of the wars there.” While facilities such as the Arctic Vault mostly go unnoticed, they continue to secure the very seeds of human survival.CHUCK SCHUMER: This was an amazing and historic experience where we learned so much, where we began our quest to deal with this so important looming issue, AI. The war in Syria caused another seed bank, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), to move its headquarters from Aleppo to Beirut, with ICARDA requesting 116,000 samples from the Svalbard Vault to restore its damaged collection.Īccording to Cory Fowler, the founder of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, “The fact that this shipment is coming up right now in some ways points to the utility and value of the seed vault. ![]() While doomsday is not here just yet, the first ever withdrawal from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was made in September 2015 due to the ongoing conflict in Syria. While the Norwegian government are responsible for the upkeep of the structure, financial support has been made available from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other important donors.Īccording to Ross Andersen at The Atlantic, the global seed bank system is designed to "collect and store hundreds of thousands of seed varieties, encompassing nearly every plant ever cultivated by humans, going back to the dawn of agriculture." The facility has been designed for the future and can store more than three times its current capacity at 4.5 million seeds, giving it the ability to conserve all important grains and most major food crops for hundreds or even thousands of years. The vault itself is climate controlled and closely regulated, with seed samples sent to Svalbard in large boxes and scanned with X-rays to make sure they contain nothing but seeds. ![]() The Arctic Vault is permanently buried in permafrost, meaning it could stay frozen for at least 200 years even if the facility lost power. In an amazing act of global cooperation, seeds continue to arrive from across the world, including the insulated state of North Korea. The Svalbard Vault is the centre of an entire global system of seek banks, all of which are designed to serve as essential food security measures in the case of unthinkable environmental collapse. Millions of seeds are preserved in the vault, which houses more than 860,000 crop varieties from across the world. Operated by The Crop Trust, this facility has been in operation since early 2008. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located in the northernmost place in the world that still has scheduled flights.
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