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Arctic Stronghold of World's Seeds Flooded After Permafrost Melts (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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. The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. 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". But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world's hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. "It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault. "A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in," she told the Guardian. 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. But the breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes.
Seems like an event as "natural" as ice melt would have been considered when the vault was located.
Maybe they just failed to account for the fact that they get a heat wave once every now and then. What kind of retard designs a tunnel so that it will get flooded if it rains, especially for a facility that is supposed to last for hundreds or thousands of years?
And so the vault wasn't flooded.
do they have mj seeds there too?
News outlets: global warming causes calamity.
Actual news: Global Seed Vault designed poorly.
1. The melting of permafrost ice caused by global warming. 2. The bad design or placement of The Global Seed vault. 3. The blatantly wrong click-bate title of this article..
While weather and climate are not the same thing, they are inextricably linked. You don't get to cherry pick the definitions to suit your agenda.
The headline is confusing, I can't tell if this was a past event or a future prediction.
How about: "... flooded after permafrost melted",
if more than one melting "...flooded by permafrost melts"
Fyi, the conspiracy newsletter say we are supposed to say fifty year cycle. The past thirty years have nearly all been the hottest on record, so we need to move the goal posts again. Also, get back to blaming China, Africa and the Muslims so we can avoid taking responsibility.
Perhaps its just me but "In case of catastrophe" should include several scenarios that imply putting a big water/air/bomb tight door on the hole going into the ground would be a good idea. Not planning for the effects of global warming that has been happening for years/decades strikes me as bureaucracy at its less than finest. Of course hindsight is always 20/20 but this oops deserves to be heard around the world.
In an attempt to plan for an apocalyptic event, they were were caught off guard by this apocalyptic event?
To be fair, no one was even thinking about global climate change as far back as 2008.
I'm glad to see you agree that it's irresponsible to blame this on global warming. If a cold winter in North America isn't evidence against global warming, surely a very warm winter in the Arctic isn't evidence for global warming. Right? Depending on the phase of the Arctic Oscillation, either the cold air is trapped in the high Arctic inside a strong polar vortex, or the polar vortex is weak and surges south. Sounds like weather to me, not global warming.
- snruter rotsac
permafrost melts
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
New Employee: "Hey, where's the ice maker?"
Current Staff: "The foyer."
Guess they can't plan for human stupidity.
Oh, that's what nuclear weapons are for.
The problem is not a single event but rather the fact that it occurred given the likelihood of such event actually occurring. Or, to put it differently, as long as "unusually warm" means "minus five degrees", it was all fine.
Ezekiel 23:20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
At least that's not threatened by permafrost melt.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Here we have an "ark" carrying items to save the world, a flood, a worldwide disaster scenario, a few crying about the end of the world while the rest party it up...
In a few thousand years this will be part of some religious story at which people of that time will scoff.
It seems permafrost is no longer permanent, even in Svalbard up near the north pole.... 7 degrees celsius above normal.
Wow.
The seed vault was supposedly designed to last 1000 years without human intervention. If you believe in AGW, or even if you don't, it is inevitable that over 1000 years we would see a substantial change in climate. That means the possibility that the Nordic location of the seed vault may be considerably warmer than it currently is.
That is, if you're planning for the vault to last 1000 years without human intervention, then the 7C variation that flooded the entrance to the vault should be considered nearly inevitable during that 1000 year span. Hell, I'd plan for at least a 20C swing; we've seen similar swings in the past few thousand years, and it's not entirely implausible we would see more variation in the future.
Further, if I were the researchers who man the vault, I would make plans to periodically open various seed samples (perhaps by requiring any seed cultivars to be supplied in multiple packets, so one can be occasionally sacrificed for testing). This way you can evaluate if the seeds we are storing are still viable, or if something happened to them which may question the viability of the entire sample--and if that happens, hopefully we'll have time to store a new sample in its stead. (The FAQ suggests this is not happening: "The boxes with seeds will be sealed by the depositors and will not be distributed to or given access to by anyone other than the depositors.")
Remember: if there is an unusually warm few days or weeks, it's because weather and climate are linked.
However, if it is unusually cold (as we saw a few winters ago in the Eastern United States with snow in Atlanta), weather is not climate. (Unless, of course, increased climatic energy is causing larger variations in weather--meaning global warming is making the Earth cold.)
Seems to me that's exactly what is happening.
By making this ridiculous claim, they're hurting the case for the people that believe in AGW. Great trolling.
Surely there's an abandoned working somewhere inside a mountain, well above sea level, that would make a better location for the repository than a tunnel in permafrost.
Yeah, I live in Colorado, we just got a foot of snow Thursday. But remember, the biggest snow storm we've had in mid to late may on record is not climate change, it's weather. But this unusually warm day for the seed vault is climate change, not weather.
I don't know what's sadder, someone who actually accepts money from oil companies to shill against global warming or the useful idiots who do it for free because they think they're smart.
Climate is the average of weather. One cold snap doesn't mean anything more than one hot spell. If the hot spells outnumber the cold spells and record hot events are happening far more often than record cold events the the climate is clearly warming.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
global warming doesn't exist. our gloriously orange president says so!
must be fake news!
Sure.
And if we accept the IPCC's own data on global warming, then we are now experiencing a world that is approximately 1 degree (celsius) warmer than the baseline average.
Which means the other 6 degrees celsius that caused melting at the seed vault was.... what, exactly?
So a vault designed with protecting something through a catastrophe didn't consider the possibly of melt water or lots of rain? Was the director of design Donald Trump?
Except perhaps for the need for refrigeration needs, including equipment that should operate for 1000 years without (or any) maintenance or energy input.
Just looking at the pictures ( https://www.theguardian.com/en... ) of the vault itself its apparent these people have no idea what they are doing:
1. The plastic boxes are not waterproof in the event of a flood the entire supply will be compromised
2. There are no cages in place to keep the plastic containers from falling off the shelves in the event of an earthquake or flood, and compromising their integrity
3. The ground floor is permafrost - not actual concrete or any sort of reinforced material, so any lifeform that is capable of digging can penetrate this 'vault'
...Dry Valleys. That's where it should have been built, if you're serious about 'long term'.
Any "life-form" that decides it wants to dig through a lot of ice.
Before pointing at incompetence it may have been a good idea to consider what the word permafrost means and to lay off on the science fiction. Sure, it happens a lot in movies and novels that some alien thing tunnels through a lot of ice, but outside fiction nothing is munching on frozen mammoths or anything else in the permafrost because it's too damned difficult to get to the things.
Remember, if it's snowing outside, that's not weather, it's climate cooling. But if it's a record breaking 18 continuous months, it's been hotter before, so AGW is false.
Turns out this was mostly over-sensationalizing from a badly translated story:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/...
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
The folks who planned this should be given the Darwin award. May be Nobel too. They are worthy of both.
Tat Tvam Asi
Surely this is evidence that a privately-funded "failsafe" ark that couldn't even last 10 years right here on Earth means the end of your Space Nutter fantasies?
So this appears to the result of climate change, but big oil would like to tell you otherwise through a number of its 'anti-climate change' shell companies. At the same time the government is being asked to reduce regulation, for industries who are not socially responsible. In the case of the US government this is pretty blatant, along with ignoring the commitments it has signed up to.
Can the government be legally held accountable for actually reducing its ability to live up to its environmental obligations and treaties?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
For the longest time earth was flooded with CO2 18 times higher than we have today, and it was colder.
We had 12 times more CO2 in THE FUCKING ICE AGE.
If 12 times more CO2 doesn't melt the ice, your little car engine isn't going to either.
It's fucking common sense, stop spreading the CO2 global warming nonsense already.
I don't know why these global warming idiots just don't do their own research before opening their mouths.
CO2/Temp Graph
There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today.
For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.
The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time
Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
The Global Warming Scam
Now then, looking at Carbon Dioxide, we find that only .117% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is directly attributable to human technology such as automobiles. .117% is a rather small amount. If we were to measure out .117% of a football field, it comes out to 4.212 inches, barely long enough to get off the touchdown line.
CO2 Is Not Causing Global Warming
The Possessive Belief
CO2 (carbon dioxide) is not causing global warming or climate change. I can't say it more boldly, but it doesn't seem to matter; the belief persists that CO2 is the cause and therefore a problem. The belief is enhanced by government policies and plans, which spawn businesses to exploit the opportunities they create. A majority of the mainstream media pushes the belief because of political bias rather than understanding of the science. Evidence continues to show what is wrong with the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but it is complex and so most don't understand. The fact they hold definitive positions without understanding is disturbing. However, ignoring the fact that IPCC predictions are always wrong doesn't require the understanding that the science is completely unacceptable and proof of the political bias.
Contradictory Evidence
Mars sounds like the perfect location for a backup seed vault, colder than Norway, no rain (for the foreseeable future) and when something really bad happens to Earth, the people re-populating Earth can bring the seeds back with them.
The obvious mistake was not sending the seeds off to a planet that is 75-light-years away, where aliens and corporations would squabble over Earth's genetic legacy in the future. Check out "City of Pearl" by Karen Traviss, the first of six volumes in The Wess'har Wars series.
What's sadder is people who blame 'oil companies' like we're permanently living in 1988.
Because they think they're smart.
Fuck you you fucking fuckers at slashdot with these constant bullshit articles.
The headline is BS and the article is BS. And it's not due to global warming. It just fucking melted. It happens.
Is this a site about tech or biased posts that fit the posters narratives?
The left doesn't conflate "weather" with "climate"...
You think oil companies have less impact on politics today than 30 years ago?
Well, you heard it here first, folks...
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.
Global warming is not a global disaster. They designed the vault to protect against any global disaster, it didn't protect against this; therefore this is not a global disaster.
The logic is irrefutable (and looney).
This is an annual occurrence , as explained by one of the creators of the vault:
“Flooding is probably not quite the right word to use in this case,” says Cary Fowler, who helped create the seed vault. “In my experience, there’s been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year.”
Fowler wasn't at the seed vault this year when the flooding (or 'flooding') in question took place, but has extensive knowledge of the project and facilities. He explains that a 100 meter long tunnel leads into the heart of the mountain where the seed vault is stored, running at a slight downward slope. At the base of the slope are two pumping stations to remove any water that might get in. Then there's a slight uphill section before you reach the doors to the vault itself, where the seeds are kept at 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit or -18 Celsius.
“The tunnel was never meant to be water tight at the front, because we didn’t think we would need that,” Fowler says. “What happens is, in the summer the permafrost melts, and some water comes in, and when it comes in, it freezes. It doesn’t typically go very far.”
Even without climate change, it's silly to think there won't be a string of unusually warm years leading to a situation like this.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We need smarter zombies.
http://www.popsci.com/seed-vault-flooding
I'm a bit surprised that they didn't design the facility to be able to automatically and passively deal with flooding. This would make point #1 (flooding) a non-issue.
Unable to account for unexpected issues like water flowing downhill. This is an accurate representation the skill level of these eco-warriors folks. And you wonder why skeptics even exist.
The 1C is the average across the whole globe, but the increase is MUCH higher in the arctic.
put it on another planet, or outer space.
What's sadder is people who blame 'oil companies' like we're permanently living in 1988.
Because they think they're smart.
What, do oil companies no longer profit from selling a product that causes global warming? And thereby have an incentive to continue marketing said product? Do you really think none of the companies behind fracking want to ignore global warming, and spread denial of it?
Still global warming. First: the estimates have gone up lately on how much global warming we are experiencing and second: a lot of that warming is happening locally. And Antarctica is one of the areas most affected (there are other places where the average temperature is colder or not rising, e.g. due to more rainy days).
So it flooded but didn't get flooded. Neat.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Nothing but lies! It can't even survive a little flood water.
"It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault.
Given that climate change has been a thing in the public consciousness for over two decades now, your designer was an idiot.
Are you legitimately too fracking stupid to understand what a global *average* is?
... nature shows you that you missed an important detail.
Fukashima anyone?
As boulet pointed out above, why the heck are the seeds not in airtight containers?!?!
And yet, for some reason beyond comprehension, they feel that a pumping station is a better idea than making the first ten meters of the tunnel slope slightly upwards (when looking in..), and therefore be self draining?
I wonder where they got the pumps with 1000 year service life, along with the never-fail power supply.
Someone dropped the ball here, luckily it would be an easy fix.. Just recut the first ten meters or so of the tunnel to slope correctly (you would gain an odd ceiling profile, but that should not matter).
Of course it will never happen, because then someone would have to admit they made a mistake..
Try again and see what you missed last time. Clue - it's a three letter word that suggest magnitude instead of whether something happens at all or not at all. Maybe consider how deep this vault is and how much permafrost a fox or whatever would have to dig through.
There's a bit of a difference between digging one metre through frozen soil and ten.
Sure. mean(t) = sum(t) / N. (And thank you /. for stripping the sup, sub tags and summation signs.)
What puzzles me is the presumption that an increasing mean implies an increasing range.
For example, if you have a data set ( 1, 3, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2 ) with a mean (average) of 2, and an external force increases the mean (average) by 1, giving us a new set ( 2, 4, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3 ) with a mean (average) of 3--then why the assumption somewhere in the range of data there should be a 9?
In fact, the fact that the mean (average) has incremented by 1, this does not imply that somehow the range (which in the old set was 1 through 3) somehow must then go from -5 through 9.
Yet, that seems to be what you are implying with your comment
See, this is why I really dislike politicized discussions, and inevitably any discussion about global warming becomes politicized: because often most people seem to check their brains at the door.
Frankly I'd be far more worried about global cooling than global warming.
The reason is that the colder the Earth gets, the shorter the growing season gets. The shorter the growing season, the less food we harvest.
And we are literally one harvest away from global starvation.
You don't think all that fresh food on the shelves of the grocery store will last a year, right?
I suspect one reason why the more alarmist activists who are pushing global warming as a political agenda (as opposed to the scientists researching the topic) have stopped using the phrase "greenhouse effect" is because we build greenhouses in order to increase crop yield. And the phrase would seem to imply that by adding CO2 and additional warmth and humidity to the world, we are making the world more favorable to longer growing seasons and larger crop yields.
I can just imagine the thoughts of the workers as they attempted to enter the vault, built deep inside a mountain in the attic circle, chipping away ice inside the seed vault facility removing ice caused by 'global warming'...
Seems to me the issue is not the vault, which was not breached, nor the temperature fluctuations that caused permafrost to 'melt' only to freeze in the vault's ante room, but instead was the pin-headed decision to build the vault facility to NOT be water-tight.
The temperature drop was temporary, since the melted permafrost soon froze again, hence the ice workers had to remove...
Ken
You're quite right, an increasing mean doesn't imply an increasing range. However the measurements and climate models do show an increasing range.
Is there any reason why you'd expect the warming to be distributed evenly?
Nope. A few weeks proves nothing about climate. When the weather changes consistently, and things happen fairly frequently over a period of years that almost never happened before, that's climate.
It almost never rained in winter when I was a kid. Now that I'm older and in the same city, we've had fairly frequent rain in winter for quite a few years now. That's probably climate change, but of course says very little about global warming.
In this case, something happened that had been considered almost completely impossible. One characteristic of climate change is that extreme events move from the nearly impossible to the highly improbable, so one unbelievable event happening does provide evidence.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The title is not accurate when reading the story. Are you that worried that nobody will read your little post? #sad