Seed vault at Svalbard threatened by warming Arctic

[Clare]

https://www.theguardian.com/environme...

Permafrost is melting faster than imaginable and rain fell instead of expected snow.

[Robert]

They were hoping the facility would automatically run by itself. Back to the drawing board.

Every structure in the polar regions that uses permafrost as part of the building structure is at risk.

"It is a fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time — and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters. The Seed Vault represents the world’s largest collection of crop diversity." - SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT

https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/sv...

At some point in time, which is getting closer and closer, people are going to have to take their heads out of the sand.

It was hoped that the various diseases that mosquitoes are capable of carrying would fight each other to get the upper hand [human logic], when more than one was in the mosquito. Instead, they seem to co-operate with each, so you can get infected by multiple diseases from one mosquito bite. It's funny how all around us, the smaller life forms are advancing in capabilities, while we are finding ourselves treating ourselves to imaginary benefits or solutions that only the very richest can afford.

[Clare]

Relevant book: Food Chained: How the agri-business oligarchy has monopolized the world food supply and the disastrous results for farmers and consumers

[Clare]

From The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...

"The Cherokee seeds will be only the second deposit from an indigenous community to be stored in the Svalbard vault, following the deposit of 750 South American Andean potato seeds in 2015.

“The Cherokee nation is the only place on the planet where all these crops are grown, and these days tough weather patterns make the situation precarious,” Pat Gwin, the tribe’s senior director of environmental resources, told the Guardian from Oklahoma."

A slightly different version in EcoWatch.
https://www.ecowatch.com/cherokee-nat...

[Robert]

Whole Foods, the grocery company that Amazon bought, has put big labels on the store shelves for every product that indicates if the product is GMO. The labels can not be missed. It is like they picked a font size and pattern that can easily be seen by people who have a lot of difficulty seeing what they are looking at. I will have to check to see what it means when it is not GMO free. One GMO ingredient in the mix, or the lack of data, would go a long way towards explaining why so much is GMO.