{"id":180323,"date":"2017-05-23T22:19:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T03:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/23\/we-are-fed-6\/"},"modified":"2017-05-23T22:19:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T03:19:00","slug":"we-are-fed-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/23\/we-are-fed-6\/","title":{"rendered":"We are F%$#ed"},"content":{"rendered":"
Up in the arctic, there is a vault holding the seeds of thousands of species of crops.<\/div>\n

Its purpose is to protect the biodiversity of agriculture in an increasingly commercial and monoculture system.<\/p>\n

An unexpected thaw in permafrost just flooded portions of the complex<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world\u2019s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity\u2019s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault<\/a>, 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cfailsafe<\/a>\u201d protection against \u201cthe challenge of natural or man-made disasters\u201d. <\/p>\n

But soaring temperatures in the Arctic<\/a> at the end of the world\u2019s hottest ever recorded year<\/a> led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. \u201cIt was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that,\u201d said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 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,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

But the breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes. \u201cIt was supposed to [operate] without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day,\u201d Aschim said. \u201cWe must see what we can do to minimise all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Arctic and especially Svalbard warms up faster than the rest of the world. The climate is changing dramatically and we are all amazed at how quickly it is going,\u201d Isaksen told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet<\/a>. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anthropogenic climate change is real, and we are only beginning to see the consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up in the arctic, there is a vault holding the seeds of thousands of species of crops. Its purpose is to protect the biodiversity of agriculture in an increasingly commercial and monoculture system. An unexpected thaw in permafrost just flooded portions of the complex: It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[525,483,530],"class_list":["post-180323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-anthropogenic-climate-change","tag-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}