An English professor claims that in the coming years millions of people will lose their lives due to floods and a heat wave. Regardless, the European Space Agency's chief scientist calls for a DNA library on the moon in case of a catastrophe on Earth
16.9.2004
Makhtesh: a classic place for a library.
Professor Mike Pilling from the University of Exeter, England, who studied the heat wave that hit Europe last year and killed thousands of people, claims that in the future millions may lose their lives due to floods and heat waves, which will result from extreme climate change. "We will experience a significant increase in extreme weather changes," he stated at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Pilling added that air pollution is like an epidemic that has spread all over the planet, and of course it has hit industrialized places harder. "The main issue is climate change, we must control it. The problem is not only factories, airplanes, power plants and car exhausts, but also burning forests and oil.
Although industrialized countries have signed a treaty to reduce the use of greenhouse gases, but Peeling says that for example Britain and London in particular, with the inevitable combination of people and traffic, will not necessarily breathe cleaner air and live healthier lives. "People will continue to live in polluted places that will harm their health, and that governments must fight all the causes of pollution at once, and not just one cause every time. "We must look for the technologies that will allow us to fight air pollution, but also to change our ways of life", he concluded.
With or without connection to these things, the chief scientist of the European Space Agency, Dr. Bernard Poing, called for a kind of Noah's ark to be set up on the moon, in case the Earth is destroyed by a giant asteroid or a nuclear holocaust. In an interview with the BBC, Poing said that the "box" should contain the DNA of every creature living on Earth, and it would be a sort of giant DNA library.
"Samples of the Earth's biosphere, including human samples, should be stored on the Moon, should a catastrophe occur on Earth. This way it will be possible to reproduce certain forms of life in future constellations". To realize Poing's vision, you need a lot of cash and schedule clearance, and everything that is required of such a grandiose production, but due to his role, his words will not fall on deaf ears.
