User:Aqaraza/Library of Life

The Library of Life

The Library of Life is a practical project proposal as well as a thought experiment, originally set forth by author Gregory Benford as a refereed scientific paper in 1992. In response to accelerating loss of biodiversity worldwide, it proposes a “broad program of freezing species in threatened ecospheres”, in situ, which “could preserve biodiversity for eventual use by future generations.”

This paper, originally published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was expanded in Benford's 1999 nonfiction work Deep Time, which explored the methods human use to communicate across the ages. In this version, Benford notes that "...this was and is a radical idea: to convey a new kind of message, intensely information-dense, a signal of desperation. The target lies at least a century away, perhaps much longer: nothing less than a future generation that needs the information lost in our coming dieback of many species, and can harvest our salvaged samples with technology we cannot foresee."

In the original paper as well as the chapter devoted to the Library of Life, Benford recommends random sampling whenever possible, rather than taking the time that may be needed to perform full taxonomy and classification studies on biological samples of endangered flora and fauna. “Our situation,” Benford writes, “resembles a browser in the ancient library at Alexandria who suddenly notes that the trove he had begun inspecting has caught fire. Already a wing has burned, and the mobs outside seem certain to block any fire-fighting crews. What to do? There is no time to patrol the aisles, discerningly plucking forth a treatise of Aristotle or deciding whether to leave behind Alexander the Great's laundry list. Instead, a better strategy is to run through the remaining library, tossing texts into a basket at random, sampling each section to give broad coverage. Perhaps it would be wise to take smaller texts, in order to carry more, and then flee into an unknown future.”

A variety of methods of excavating and gathering in situ samples of biomass are explored, from earth moving machines to local teams of manual laborers for more finely-tuned samples.

Criticism

The original article discusses several of its critical responses, as encountered during peer review. (p.11100-11101).

Preservation of Habitat May Compete Politically with a Sampling and Freezing Program

One argument against such an effort is that resources and energy put towards such a preservation project might distract or detract from more progressive efforts at habitat preservation. Benford's response is that "we would all prefer a world that preserves everything. But the emotional appeal of preservation should not be used to disguise the simple fact that we are losing the battle or to argue against a prudent suspension strategy." (Article Abstract, p.11100).

Sampling and Freezing Have Little Aesthetic Appeal

A second argument against the proposal is that its efforts will not excite the public through its appealing results, thus casting conservation efforts in a negative light and failing to generate needed proactive conservation efforts. One aspect of this argument is answered in the criticism below. However, Benford concedes this point to a degree, noting that "freezing species does not offer the immediate benefits that preservation yields. ... More concretely, this proposal will not hasten benefits from new foods, medicines, or industrial goods. It will not alter the essential services an ecosphere provides to maintenance of the biosphere. We should make very clear that this task is explicitly designed to benefit humanity as a whole, once this age of rampant species extinction is over."

To Undertake Salvaging Operations Weakens Arguments for Biodiversity Preservation

Another criticism anticipated in the original article is that an in situ mass sampling, freezing, and preservation effort of this sort would forestall more earnest preservation efforts. In Deep Time, Benford excerpts a personal letter from Carl Sagan expressing this concern, as well as his admission that the effort may demonstrate its own urgency more effectively than more traditional efforts have.

My main concern is that people will conclude that scientists have given up on preserving living biodiversity, or that future species extinctions are not so worrisome because we can always reconstitute the species and genera that we render extinct. But I agree that these potential obstacles can be circumvented: by stressing that only a fraction of the disappearing species would be 'saved' this way and that the very fact that such steps are being taken is an indication of how serious the problem is.

In the original proposal, Benford concludes, along these lines, that "If the Topeka Zoo budget is cut, the city does not transfer funds to Zaire to save gorillas. Indeed, one can make the opposite argument -- that the spectacle of the scientific community starting a sampling program will powerfully illuminate the calamity we face, alerting the world and stimulating other actions."

The chapter in Deep Time ends with a discussion of the possibilities that, "...if scientific progress has followed the paths that many envision today, [future generations] will have the means to perform seeming miracles. They will have developed ethical and social mechanisms we cannot guess, but we can prepare now the broad outlines of a recovery strategy, simply by banking biological information." He encourages widespread debate, and concludes that "these are the crucial years for us to act, as the Library of Life burns furiously around us, throughout the world."

See also

• Archive
• Biodiversity
• Biophilia hypothesis
• Cryogenics
• Deep time
• Extinction
• Genomics
• Library
• Thought experiment
• Time capsule

External links

• The Library of Life - Original article as published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science U S A. v.89 (22); Nov 15, 1992 (PMC50491)