Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
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Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#2>When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.
Guess it wasn't all that fail safe after all
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#3"Fortunately, the meltwater did not reach the vault itself, the ice has been hacked out, and the precious seeds remain safe for now at the required storage temperature of -18C."
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#4Antarctica then?
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#5>"It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel."
This story makes the design/management of that place look really bad. In 2007 the IPCC was predicting a 0.4 C average temperature rise by 2020 and about 1.0 C by 2040[1], etc. This isn't too far off from what happened[2], so this makes it look like they did not plan ahead at all.
[1] http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm... (Figure SPM.5)
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#6>"It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel." This story makes the design/managemen…
Time for a backup vault on the other side of the arctic in Ellesmere Island. This time maybe they can tunnel an upward slope into a stable mountain so no moisture will be able to flow in, and moisture originating inside should (in theory) flow out.
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#7>"It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel." This story makes the design/managemen…
That and saving the seeds of flowering plants without preserving eggs of pollinating insects isn't very useful.
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#8>"It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel." This story makes the design/managemen…
That and saving the seeds of flowering plants without preserving eggs of pollinating insects isn't very useful.
It isn't so bad. Pollinating hundreds or thousands of flowers by hand in an hour is imaginable.
Better to have friendly insects do it, but if you want the fruits, having humans step in is viable (it is or at least has been done for apples in China).
There's also a lot of plants that self or wind pollinate (most grains).
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#9"It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that,”
Sorry, but isn't that the entire point of a "doomsday vault". To protect from doomsday events, like extreme climate change?
Re: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
#10>"It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel." This story makes the design/managemen…
Wait, I thought it was still 2017. 2020 already happened?