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”.Redefining forever: turns out to be only 9 years.
And there wasn't even a disaster, just one unusually hot season, in the end of 2016, when temperatures were over 7C above normal. Is it scientifically sound to refer to the temperatures in one season as caused by global warming? And speaking of what's scientific, they obviously were conning us with claims about the impregnability of the Global Seed Vault.
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87 comments:
I had to laugh at this. Mankind is soooo smart. We design a seed vault for the ultimate protection of a future food source, only to be torpedoed by mankind .... er .... humankind (lost my head there).
You know who thought this up, designed it, oversaw the construction, and yakked about it's brilliance endlessly?
Scientists.
"Scientists."
The 97%, not the 3%.
The first picture shows it fairly close to the ocean. Wouldn't it be more temperature-stable/weathersafe farther inland? Was convenience of access more important than the affects of weather when they chose the location?
"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." Like a glacier? Really?
2008 was a year of implementing poorly thought-out decisions.
I don't get it. The trillions of seeds that are everywhere are all going to be destroyed, but some looney scientist is going to be around long enough to plant them and wait for the harvest to feed all of the people who somehow survived whatever killed the seeds?
Scientifically sound? Maybe not, but it is politically correct to blame climate change for every weather anomaly.
'“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."
You gotta love it. They did not plan for the disaster they have been predicting.
Should this subvert our trust in the judgment of scientists but not in their judgment about global warming?
Is it scientifically sound to refer to the temperatures in one season as caused by global warming?
Not really. Global warming simply means the odds of such a thing happening are increasing. Which was known when they build the vault. So a little bit overselling was going on.
SeedSavers in Decorah is a great day trip from Madison. They curate a seed collection there too, having garnered many varieties.
Is it proper to attribute one warm year to global warming? Well, I'm not an alarmist, but I recall reading that most of the warming is predicted to occur near the poles, during winter, at night. I believe global warming so far, for the last hundred years or so, is around one degree Fahrenheit plus or minus (which is over half of the total warming expected to be caused by a doubling of CO2 over pre-industrial levels, btw, because the relationship between CO2 and warming is logarithmic, not linear, let alone exponential, which means there is a law of diminishing returns that applies). So I would say yes, one unusually hot year might possibly be partly due to global warming.
Onan, phone your office.
MadisonMan; ++
And speaking of what's scientific, they obviously were conning us with claims about the impregnability of the Global Seed Vault.
Exactly, Ann. Science is always 'settled' until it becomes unsettled by reality.
Turns out the Svalbard seed vault is probably fine
http://www.popsci.com/seed-vault-flooding
Global warming sent my precious seed gushing into the entrance tunnel.
+
A guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender if he wants to hear a Norwegian joke.
The bartender pointed to a large man at the end of the bar and said, "He's Norwegian", then the bartender pointed to a burly cop near the door and repeated, "and he's Norwegian."
The bartender said "Now think about whether you want to tell that joke, because I'm Norwegian, too."
The customer replied, "I guess I won't tell that joke after all because I don't want to explain it three times."
Apparently, it wasn't designed to protect the seeds from any global disaster.
Indeed, not even the global disaster that has been widely, overwhelmingly discussed for the last twenty years causing no end of regulations about mitigating global climate change.
But the seed bank itself was not designed to survive global warming, the warming that was driving the polar bears away?
Either this was designed to fail, to be some kind of global wake-up call when it did, or they are making an excuse for shockingly bad construction.
"Is it scientifically sound to refer to the temperatures in one season as caused by global warming?" Since, in this field, science now stands for whatever serves the prog agenda of the moment: yes.
"And speaking of what's scientific, they obviously were conning us with claims about the impregnability of the Global Seed Vault." It's almost as if they didn't really think Global Warming, aka Climate Change, wasn't going to be that big a deal.
Or it was a half-assed, feel-good, make-work, bureaucratic scam. Always a possibility.
Eric Hennen said...
Turns out the Svalbard seed vault is probably fine
http://www.popsci.com/seed-vault-flooding
The Guardian article was fake news about climate change. That's shocking.
“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.”
It is always a lot of work trying to figure out at least a bit more of the story when journalists attribute bad things to climate change. In this case: the storage for seeds was built deliberately to allow for some water to come into the larger area (not where the seeds are) every year: some permafrost will thaw in summer, water will come in, it will re-freeze, etc. The cycles of nature. Not only is it the case that no seeds were harmed in this particular warm year, but it would take some fantastic, inconceivable amount of flooding to actually hurt the seeds. And, as our host points out, one year, in one location, does not make a long-term global trend. Is there anything about this story that isn't bullshit? Somehow just saying "precious rare seeds in danger" gets boomer hearts racing, so they will recite the Al Gore mantra.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/20/dont-panic-humanitys-doomsday-seed-vault-is-probably-still-safe/
“In my experience, there’s been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year,” Cary Fowler, an American agriculturist who helped create the seed vault, told the magazine. Though he was not at the vault to observe the incident, he noted that “flooding” was probably not the most accurate word to describe what happened.
“The tunnel was never meant to be watertight at the front, because we didn’t think we would need that,” Fowler told Popular Science. “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.”
This science-fiction story has been written too many times. They even made a crappy movie about it last year.
And speaking of what's scientific, they obviously were conning us with claims about the impregnability of the Global Seed Vault.
Based on the article, it seems likely that a plastic mayonnaise jar tethered to a lead weight would have survived the warming event. Obviously the vault was designed by academic scientists and not by engineers.
Did the people who paid for this fail-safe engineering project now get their money back? Same question for the billions in global warming money.
So let me understand.
They tunnel into a hill, and into permafrost.
One Summer, it rains, and there is runoff.
The permafrost has not melted and the vault stayed at -18.
the water that ran in, froze.
where is the disaster, other than the architect should have considered better entrance drainage?
"Did the people who paid for this fail-safe engineering project now get their money back? Same question for the billions in global warming money."
Nah, they need to start over (IOW, send more money).
WTF??? It's right next to the ocean!!! Don't they know the sea level's rising? 200 feet, if I recall the Teachings of Al correctly.
There is no such thing as global warming.
I don't see how a site that far north can be proof against "any" natural disaster. A new Ice Age that brought a mile-thick glacier to Chicago (as the last one did) would surely put a pretty thick layer of ice on top of Svalbard, too, which already has glaciers. Are survivors in the newly-chilly tropics just supposed to wait for the Ice Age to end before they can get to the seeds they need?
One scary thing about past climate change (younger dryas etc) is that it happened abruptly.
In other words the designers of this system couldn't do as good s job as the engineers and installers do on the meat lockers at your local Jewel and Kroger?
But then they don't have to be good at real things; they work for NGO, or Envio organizations, they are inherently good, honest, efficient by definition, and they get to write the definitions..
Doesn't a seed vault violate the whole foundational premise of the AGW movement, i.e., that man should not interfere in the natural order? If nature decrees (even in response to some man-caused disruption of the atmosphere) that plant species must die, wouldn't preserving them artificially be a further contamination of the biosphere? It makes me wonder if the whole AGW scare isn't just laying the predicate for direct human management of the earth's weather.
"
One scary thing about past climate change (younger dryas etc) is that it happened abruptly."
Yes, both ways. Cooling can be fast, also. Watching the Maunder Minimum situation.
Cary Fowler said let all the ice melt and let there be the huge-est tsunami and the seed vault is still fifty feet or more above that. Science, science.
There’s only one problem — the vault floods almost every year.
Ann, please tag this thread as #fakenews.
Maybe the Global Seed Vault guys can ask Superman if they can sublease part of his Fortress of Solitude.....
"SeedSavers in Decorah is a great day trip from Madison. They curate a seed collection there too, having garnered many varieties."
Thanks for demonstrating the the justifiable use of "garner."
It was Goldstein. Again. This afternoon's Two Minute Hate will be extended to 5 minutes. And to memorialize the brave workers lost in Goldstein's cowardly attack, chocolate rations will be increased to 8 gramms from 12.
fake news
Pretty much everything in the news has to be read as if you were perusing back issues of Pravda. I suppose journalists have always been propagandists, but they used to be more skillful at it.
But mostly it was the Russians, mostly.
WaPo has an unnamed source who saw the whole thing.
"Then there’s another barrier [the ice] for entry into the seed vault,” Fowler says. In other words, any water that floods into the tunnel has to make it 100 meters downhill,..."
And everybody knows how hard that is...
See Inga, you are so ignorant that you don't even know what Goldstein believes. You just swallow whatever MiniTru shoves in your mouth.
Goldstein believes the planet is warming.
Goldstein believes humans have contributed to that warming.
Goldstein just disagrees over how significant that contribution is.
To simplify for your libtard brain:
Your theory says that according to your computer models, if CO2 output remains constant, global temps will increase 3.0 years in 10 years.
So we wait 10 years and find that global temps only increased 1.2 degrees.
What went wrong, Inga?
Spoiler: your computer models are shit
Typo autocorrect, should read "increase 3.0 degrees in 10 years"
Apocalypse shelter destroyed by 7 degree spike in temperature.
I keep hearing the Hound in my head: "Greatest fucking swordsman who ever lived killed by Merron fucking Trant? Ha! Greatest fucking swordsman who ever lived didn't have a sword? HaHaha "
Sorry to put a damper on all the wild gravedancing here, but this post is just way too incoherent to evade criticism of the cynicism. What's the point, exactly? That a temperature swing as wild as 7 degrees C and flooding of the permafrost-embedded vault means AGW has been disproven? That it is wrong to collect a genographic record of these varieties or that any concern prompted to doing so by AGW is somehow wrong?
Here's a few lists and memorials to all the spaceflight-attempted fatalities before and after NASA successfully landed a man on the moon and returned him to the earth. There was the horrifying early tragedy of Apollo 1. Remember Apollo 13, too? Sometimes troubleshooting in real-time saves things. But with attitudes like yours, you'd have been saying things like, "What bad science! Why go to the moon anyway? And can we even be sure that space actually exists?" Just an absolutely disgraceful attitude. These feats are trials, tests, and not unlike wars, are often fraught with failed early attempts to learn from so as to improve down the road. But what would a bunch of apologists for a quintuply-bankrupted real estate marketing agent who lies about his net worth and claims to be a business success know about learning from mistakes?
It's great that people who hate science or resent not knowing how it works are so cynical, but they don't seem to appreciate that their own cynicism can be attacked with the precise skepticism that they want to believe that they're all about. Your attitudes are not the attitudes of a great people or of a great nation, but those of a nation of people too arrogant to learn from mistakes, too ignorant to care to understand them, and too cowardly to question the received unwisdom that trained you to be that way. As long as people like you remain in charge, America will continue to decline.
What? You have poor reading comprehension. Where do you get that this fake news about a seed vault failing somehow disproves global warming theory?
The science on the design was settled however. 90% of scientists thought it would be fine, even though none of their testing or models could predict it.
Completed in 2008?
So I guess scientists aren't great at predicting the effects of climate change.
And drop the "science haters" crap. It only spotlights you as a shill not to be taken seriously.
Talk about the Scientific Method instead. For example, if observable temperature data does not match computer model predictions, would you go back and adjust the data or the computer models?
I would think storage underground in a desert environment, out of the way of any extant or future floodplain would be the ideal siting for such a vault.
"Doesn't a seed vault violate the whole foundational premise of the AGW movement, i.e., that man should not interfere in the natural order?" Doesn't a human use of seeds violate the whole foundational premise? For that matter, doesn't the very existence of humanity violate the foundational premise?
"I would think storage underground in a desert environment, out of the way of any extant or future floodplain would be the ideal siting for such a vault." I hear Yucca Mountain is available.
"The trillions of seeds that are everywhere are all going to be destroyed, but some looney scientist is going to be around long enough to plant them and wait for the harvest to feed all of the people who somehow survived whatever killed the seeds?"
-- They read it in a dystopian novel, so it must be true.
" I hear Yucca Mountain is available."
Not anymore!
A good backup plan requires that there be at least two copies at geographically disparate locations. Perhaps the Saudis can be persuaded to build a big refrigerated seed vault somewhere on the Arabian peninsula. Then anyone who needs a particular seed would make a pilgrimage there.
Talk about the Scientific Method instead.
Talk about? How about you do something about. Publish your own research. Do an experiment. What is this, a tea party? I'm not talking about something to a proven science hater who has an agenda and is too ignorant and proud to take a fucking fact into consideration. I don't discuss Shakespeare with parrots, either.
For example, if observable temperature data does not match computer model predictions, would you go back and adjust the data or the computer models?
What does this have to do with fuck-all? It's the denialists who keep changing the reality. Watch Ted Cruz expose his embarrassing inability to understand that actual observations are more accurate than satellite-based observations. But he's a sleazy trial lawyer - who even other senators don't like and find to be more full of shit than most - so he's used to thinking that he can get away with manipulating facts. And you followers just fall right into the footsteps of frauds like him.
I would think storage underground in a desert environment, out of the way of any extant or future floodplain would be the ideal siting for such a vault.
Of course you would - because you know less about biology (and even biochemistry!) than a diatom knows about differential equations. Ever heard of something called DNA? Hello? Is it more stable in extreme heat or extreme cold?
These compounds are your friends. You can't live without them. Learn about them. Learn about something called denaturation. You might even find their structures interesting. They're more interesting and complex than inorganic compounds. I don't get you, it's like you have a preferred affinity for materials that typically disrupt life if anything than those that life is actually based in. You are the strangest chemist I've ever met.
How ironic. You slander me as an ignorant science hater and liken me to a holocaust denier, but you don't even know why my questions are relevant to AGW theory. Thanks for the entertainment.
Do you even know what the Scientific Method is?
And BTW, for the climatically un-inclined, a desert environment is just dry anyway - and can therefore equally be in an extremely cold environment as an extremely hot environment. But it's hard to avoid floodplains when those conspiring to end the conditions of the agricultural revolution are determined to melt away as much of the natural environment globally as they can.
Fen, you're not worth talking to. You don't know how to take anything seriously. I've learned to spot people addicted to the agenda they were sold a mile away and, new policy: I don't talk to them. If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. If you want to promote something that Brietbart News or FOX told you was a scientific finding, go get your PhD. There are ways to take yourself more seriously than anyone else ever will. And I didn't call you (let alone "liken you") to a holocaust denier; but I don't deny that your proud emotional attachment to the same way of understanding the world as they prefer is a huge problem for the world.
People learn about the scientific method before college. I'm glad you seem to have gotten at least that far, but not about the fact that you remain stuck in it.
Like Hillary Clinton's loss, this fiasco can be attributed either to routine human incompetence and hubris, or vast, powerful, unnatural forces.
It was a simple question, no need to destroy your credibility by going off on a Two Minute Hate over Ted Cruz. I'll pitch it again, slower this time:
If your theory predicts x, but the resulting data comes back as y, do you change x and run your test again? Or do you change y to match x and call your experiment as success?
This is so amusing. You puff up as some super smart chap, but when presented with a simple question about the Scientific Method you retreat behind a paragraph of ad hom.
It has to be parody, yes? You are trolling us, portraying the typical arrogantly ignorant AGW alarmist, right? Well done!
Unbelievable! After a number of commenters have proven, beyond refutation, this is fake news, there are still any number of idiots posting as if it was true! Althouse should update her post.
We know it's fake, we're just having fun with it. It's amusing on so many levels. An article intended to promote global warming hype inadvertently makes the "experts" look incompetent.
And for those of you at home keeping score - this is the same journalistic "professionalism" behind all your Trump-Russia stories.
After a number of commenters have proven, beyond refutation, this is fake news, there are still any number of idiots posting as if it was true!
Who reads other commenters?
The last quote in the article says the vault is supposed to last for eternity. What hubris! "Let us build a tower that reaches to the heavens..."
You puff up as some super smart chap, but when presented with a simple question about the Scientific Method you retreat behind a paragraph of ad hom.
I wasn't aware that the "(S)scientific (M)method" (capitalized, of course) was a matter under debate or dispute or in question.
If you have questions about how the "S"cientific "M"ethod works, or anything else about it, I suggest you submit your questions and challenges in writing to:
Ms. Local Elementary School Teacher
XYXY Fenstreet Boulevard
Fen City, Fen State, Zip Code
USA
Although, both educators and scientists are not much fans of Trumpists like you, let alone your scientific research-budget and education budget slashing Leader, Donny Tinyhands. So that might be a similarly uphill climb for you, as well.
But I do love this demand that it's other people's job to educate you. Especially when you act like such an incorrigible twat.
Trumpists like destruction for its own sake: Socially, politically, scientifically. They're not worth engaging. Let them get their destruction love off their chest and leave them alone. It's like coming upon someone having a seizure on the sidewalk. Call for professional help and then keep your distance, lest their uncontrollably flailing limbs and chattering teeth damage you.
They can't help it. And we can't help them.
...no need to destroy your credibility by going off on a Two Minute Hate over Ted Cruz.
Declaring love for the ignorant asshole Ted Cruz is now how one demonstrates their credibility?
Pretty hilarious. Yep, you're beyond hope.
Ted's a great scientist and science educator. That's what he got paid in the courtroom to do.
Still dodging a simple question about the Scientific Method. Still wasting paragraphs on ad hom to avoid answsring.
That's 3 strikes now, so it's fair to assume you don't know what the Scientific Method is and can't explain it. You Re a poser, a fraud. Just another ignorant climate cultizt.
EVERYONE else here knows the answer - when observable temperature data doesn't match up with what your computer models predicted, you go back and rework the computer models.
You can't admit such a thing becUse your religion is based on the sanctity of those computer models. That's not science.
"declaring your love for Ted Cruz is how one demonstrates crexibility"
No. Pretending to be an objective scientist while salting your points with cheap shots at politicians you hate is what destroys your credibility.
Demonstrating poor reading comprehension and failing at basic logic in just 3 posts doesn't help either.
Still dodging a simple question about the Scientific Method.
Oh, I know. I'm just so afraid of you and your almighty question, whatever it has to do with anything.
You really showed me. Send all the kids back to school. Fen's pretended ignorance of the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and climate is somehow my fault and my problem. Not.
So how's your computer model for the relationship between climate and atmosphere on celestial bodies like Mercury, the moon and asteroids holding up? I heard that's a really strong competing model. Really giving AGW a run for its money. The whole thing might have to be thrown out any day now.
No. Pretending to be an objective scientist while salting your points with cheap shots at politicians you hate is what destroys your credibility.
Like you, I don't do scientific research on geophysics.
Unlike you, I don't sign up for the patently stupid and obviously wrong Exxon Mobil-Republican agenda of pretending that atmosphere and climate have no relationship.
And I reserve the right to take cheap shots at talking points as cheap as yours. If you want a more valuable point, make a more valuable contribution. And no one's shots are as cheap as Ted Cruz's, ("Lyin' Ted", remember that?) A government legislature who's as destructive as they come. An unscrupulous courtroom liar/lawyer who only does whatever he can get away with for his career. So when his ass was handed to him by an admiral whom CRUZ tried to destroy, with bullshit cheap shots about data from satellites that's infinitely less precise than ground measurements, then I think that's fun to point out. How unpracticed and sloppy and ideological he is - and you swallow it up. And he didn't even have the integrity (of course) to admit error. He just backed out of it and aggressively changed the subject as quickly as he can.
He knows he was lying. He's "lyin' Ted," after all.
But you lie to yourself. And just follow blokes him like a slave.
Yep, there's no shot too cheap for someone as slimy as Ted.
See? You're just a bag full of hot air. And too stupid to realize this game is over. I outed you as just another partisan climate cultist, arrogant in your ignorance, and you played right into it. Not very smart, not even good with the ad
So now I'm bored. Game over and, as Althouse has taught us - no point in attacking downward now that you've been exposed for what you really are.
Goodbye.
Considering the most the article is rubbish, is anyone taking their reported "7 degree spike" at face value?
Oh no! I'm so "exposed"! A "game" is over. Meanwhile, Feninine Fen, the Fembot from hell inhales all the hot air that comes out of Lyin' Ted Cruz's butthole. Talk about a partisan cultist, (and AGW is not partisan, it's science, you rotted out dildo), he can't even stand the thought of the same politician douchebag that his leader Trump beat being called out! Oh no! Now we must bend over backward not only for feninine fenbot, but for the corrupt politicians that tell him what to think.
Again, how's the climate holding up on the moon and Mercury? Dumbass can't even figure out a basic fact! Hahaha. But now his feelings are hurt. He didn't get his answer. I guess this is just one more item on the list of things his education missed that stays unchecked.
What Eric Hennen said:
http://www.popsci.com/seed-vault-flooding
What I say:
If you see something is caused by global warming it is always best to check for real facts, not pseudo science and hyperbole.
"The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters."
So it was made to protect the seeds from climate change, but climate change is damaging it?
Not impressed.
Peer review is not the ultimate quality control for science. Engineering is.
People read other people's comments?
"People read other people's comments?"
Well, not yours.
I suppose people are going to make this about global warming, but the possibility of that was well-known in 2008.... and from the more pessimistic forecat6st, what happened in teh last year or so was being forecast for another decade or 2 out--hardly "forever."
This is really about incompetence.
David said...
“It was not in our plans to think ... "said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault."
Parody Award Committee accepts Norway's entry.
...said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government,
Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman ROTFL.
Apparently missed important design parameters.
"...pretending that atmosphere and climate have no relationship. "
LOL.
Nice diversion. BS,of course.
Many of the early AGW models had a uniform atmosphere, several did not account for clouds. All utilized an unproven tipping point to account for warming beyond what CO2 would produce. All were gospel until they got too far wrong. Then, as noted, past temperature points were "fixed"and always in the same direction. Or the models were changed, often without notice.... and there we are.
No, it's not the "deniers" - although to be honest most of those so labeled are actually skeptics about the degree to which CO2 contributes to warming - that pretended that atmosphere and climate have no relationship.
"where is the disaster, other than the architect should have considered better entrance drainage?"
You assert that admitting one made a stupid (and probably costly) mistake is less than a disaster?
You (and those who reviewed your work) said it would last for millenia yet here it's been breached after only eight years, and that's not a disaster?
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