GLOBAL WARMING OR WARNING
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
GLOBAL warming is regarded as the greatest problem besetting mankind at the present time. Scientific investigations have revealed that the earth’s life support system dependent upon the balance of nature is fast falling apart. It is greatly feared that soon a time will come when nothing will be left on earth to ensure the survival of life.
To mitigate the horrors of this forecast period, many strategies are being planned in advance. Since it is feared that—as a result of climatic change—all food crops may be wiped off the face of the earth, one of the strategies has been to build a vault for the safe storage of the different varieties of seeds in Norway. It will then be possible to cultivate crops at a later stage to fulfil the world’s food requirements.
The Global Seed Vault was established in 2008. On its inauguration, important international personalities were present, including the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Baroso, as well as Wangari Matai, the Nobel Prize winning environmentalist, besides others. The event was widely reported with one report titled: ‘Doomsday Vault Comes to Life’.
That is to say that the vault is a safe storage ready for doomsday. The report also tells us that out of fear of general crop devastation, the global seed vault has been built on a mountain on the island of Svalbard in Norway, 1000 km from the North Pole. Three spacious cold chambers—provide storage for some seven hundred and fifty thousand samples of seeds from all over the world. A Global Crop Diversity Trust has been formed to oversee this venture. One media report calls this storage facility, ‘’a Noah’s Ark of food in the event of a global catastrophe, an Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’ filled with samples of vital seeds.”
It would be more appropriate to compare the food storage vault built in Norway atop a mountain not with Noah’s Ark but with the fate of Noah’s son Kan’an.
The Quran states that in the last days of Noah’s life, when the floods came Kan’an, the rebellious son of Noah, said:
'I will betake myself for refuge to a mountain that shall protect me from the water.' Noah replied to his son that the flood was a divine matter—'the flood waters are sent by God'—and no mountain could protect him from this.
(THE QURAN, 11:43)
People make full use of divine blessings, but they fail to acknowledge the Giver of these blessings.
Events showed that what the Prophet Noah had said about the flood was true, and no one was saved from this flood except for the Prophet and his small group of companions. The same is true of the flood of Doomsday, from which no mountain top or Foodgrain Vault will be saved. The oncoming flood is going to alter the face of the world completely. After the onset of this flood no one will find any refuge.
In ancient times, human beings inhabited only the Mesopotamian region, situated between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. When perversion set in amongst these people, God sent them His messenger, Noah, to whom He granted a very long life.
He had a very long struggle trying to communicate God’s message to his people. But with the exception of a few, the majority did not accept his message or mend their ways. Finally, the Prophet Noah gave them the last warning and told them that if they did not reform themselves, they would be destroyed by a flood. But they ignored his warning. Finally the great Flood came and drowned them all.
The present age has been one of an explosion of divine blessings. But the abundance of these blessings has only increased people’s arrogance. People have made full use of these blessings, but they have become distanced to a very great extent from the Giver of these blessings. Perversion in the name of freedom has become the general culture of the present times.
Just as the Prophet Noah had given a prior warning of the ancient flood, now also modern science is giving a prior warning of the imminent flood of the present era. For the past several years, scientists from all over the world have been giving us the news that as a result of global warming, huge reservoirs of ice are continuously melting. The glaciers and the ice of the North and South Poles are fast melting resulting in a rise in global sea levels.
It is ‘Global Warming’ which is causing all this climatic change. Scientists have also predicted that, very soon, all the ice will melt, resulting in a severe flood, which will be of a far greater magnitude than Noah’s Flood. This flood will engulf the earth and the entire population of the world will be destroyed.
The Prophet made it clear that human beings had not been settled on earth for all eternity; that a time would come when the present inhabited world would come to an end and be replaced by another world. Here good will be rewarded and evil will be punished.
In the 7th century, the Prophet of Islam said that the distance between him and Doomsday was only that between his two fingers (Sahih al Bukhari, Kitab ar Riqaq).
The phenomenon of global warming shows that this distance has now been covered and that the climatic change, as the scientists have predicted, has now reached the point of being irreversible.
What was to happen has already happened. The final day has come very close. Now the time has ultimately come when man has to change himself: he has to abandon the way of disobedience to God and opt for the path of obedience to Him. Nature is silently calling upon man to mend his ways before he finds that he has no further opportunity to do so.
