Is Russia global warming denialist?

KomissarBojanchev wrote:Preventing global warming is in Russia's interest since with it we will see the Leningrad be flooded and the Caspian dry out, not to mention increased chances of hurricanes on the Pacific coast.

russia can reroute northern rivers pechora into volga and caspian to maintain its levels.

GarryB wrote:

water expands when it is heated... if the sea gets too warm a lot of the life in the sea will die and much of siberia could become flooded... it could become a large inland sea...



progress in robots and remotely operated vehicles could do the same...

Actually , what you arguing about?

The global warming is a jackpot for russia, without the slightest doubt.
if the arctic ocean flood szberia then there will be a lot of new shipping line, on a liveable area, more rain during the ezar, more grain and forest, higher temperature, s better weather and so on.


Practicaly all population center is out from the flood ,except st pteresburg, but it is waz better than in the US or China.

And the robot remark is imply nonsens. Sorry, but it is.

Im not sure how accurate the picture is but its scary to know how a large portion of Russia will be flooded in the event of a sea level rise., but a good question is., is climate change (along with sea level rise) even real?? Isn't whats happening in the past years just a normal fluctuations in the Earth's climate?

kvs wrote:Garry is making a very important point about costs.   The sinking of St. Petersburg in the next century with 2 meters or more of
sea level rise is not going to be a small cost to counteract.   Yeah, they can build flood gates.  But that is a major infrastructure project.
Also, you can't build them to the current Dutch and British standards since those constructions were based on the wrong estimates.
Building a structure that can stave off 2 m of sea level rise (including the storm surge which can bring this to over 4 m) has not
been done before.

The structure already exists and is quite impressive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam
Perhaps what would be needed in worst case scenario of sea level rise is to expand it (make it taller).

Project Canada wrote:but a good question is., is climate change (along with sea level rise) even real?? Isn't whats happening in the past years just a normal fluctuations in the Earth's climate?

That is a good question. I hardly know about this subject, but what I've found is that there is hardly agreement on this issue. Only the big media hammers out this issue as a truth that can't be put into question, mostly for political reasons.

Project Canada wrote:



Im not sure how accurate the picture is but its scary to know how a large portion of Russia will be flooded in the event of a sea level rise., but a good question is., is climate change (along with sea level rise) even real?? Isn't whats happening in the past years just a normal fluctuations in the Earth's climate?

How can it be normal when humans are pumping 30 billion tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere. Volcanoes emit a tiny fraction of this amount
(average of around 600 million tons per year) and since we have not had any increase in volcanic activity over the last few million years, and longer,
any CO2 they spew is in long term equilibrium. So the increase in CO2 from 280 ppmv before the industrial revolution to 405 ppmv today is due to humans.

CO2 and H2O are the greenhouse "tag team". H2O is a vapour and not a dry gas so it is easily removed from the atmosphere by condensation.
CO2 is a dry gas and a strong IR absorber that even with "only" 300-400 ppmv concentrations has a large impact on the radiative transfer budget
of the atmosphere. Thanks to CO2, H2O can reside in the atmosphere. If all the CO2 was removed, water would condense and freeze on the surface
and the oceans would freeze as well. Earth would become an ice Hell. Removing CO2 would drop the global mean temperature by 18 degrees Celsius
which would put the global mean temperature well below 0 C and the freezing point of water.

CH4 (methane) is another potent IR absorbing gas but its concentrations are under 2 ppmv so it does not dominate the system. But we have vast amounts
of organic carbon stored in the cryosphere (permafrost, clathrates) that is being released as both CH4 and CO2 as the atmosphere and the oceans warm.
This natural pool of carbon is being released unnaturally by humans which will help to screw over humans royally.

It is unfortunate that climate science has been smeared by corporate funded shills the whoring MSM which trots out "skeptics" as if they were experts
and not cranks. So in the minds of the masses climate science is some super uncertain thing and everything is about variability. In the dynamical
system consisting of the oceans and the atmosphere, variability is not a process. Variability is not some arbitrarily changing system characteristic.
There is the chaos associated with nonlinear equations of motion (the Navier-Stokes equations). Then there is variability associated with energy storage
in the system depending on cloud albedo and chemical composition. People think climate science is weather forecasting. It is nothing of the sort. Climate
science is about the energy balance of the ocean-atmosphere system. The variability is constrained by the energy of the system and it is clear that it
sits in a local minimum thanks to the strong balance between input of energy from the Sun and loss of the energy to space (via surface and cloud scattering
of incoming sunlight and via IR emission and convective heat pumping to thinner layers of the atmosphere). Cloud albedo is basically white noise and
over the observational record has not demonstrated any trend; there is no valve controlling the energy input just to save our sorry polluting asses. But
surface albedo associated with ice and snow can exhibit long term trends (e.g. during the glaciation cycles) that exert an enormous impact on the thermal
energy in the system.

I could go on for pages. But it is too tedious. People really need to do research on this subject. It is not some casual political concept they
should pick up from their favourite pundit or party hack.

Svyatoslavich wrote:

kvs wrote:Garry is making a very important point about costs.   The sinking of St. Petersburg in the next century with 2 meters or more of
sea level rise is not going to be a small cost to counteract.   Yeah, they can build flood gates.  But that is a major infrastructure project.
Also, you can't build them to the current Dutch and British standards since those constructions were based on the wrong estimates.
Building a structure that can stave off 2 m of sea level rise (including the storm surge which can bring this to over 4 m) has not
been done before.

The structure already exists and is quite impressive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam
Perhaps what would be needed in worst case scenario of sea level rise is to expand it (make it taller).

The land around the Gulf Finland is not 8 meters above the water line in a lot of places. With systematic sea level rise
this structure will be defeated by flooding of the land and percolation of water under ground. Hydrology is important too.

Anyway. It cost money to build this structure. So global warming is not going to be a zero cost experience.

Project Canada wrote:



Im not sure how accurate the picture is but its scary to know how a large portion of Russia will be flooded in the event of a sea level rise., but a good question is., is climate change (along with sea level rise) even real?? Isn't whats happening in the past years just a normal fluctuations in the Earth's climate?

This scenario won't happen! For this scenario the entire ice would have to melt and flow into the oceans. In terms of 100 years we speak about 2 meters maximum! And never forget, we are normally on the edge to a new ice age!!! World climate depends more on the distance earth - sun and the intensity of the sun, than of concentration of CO2. The albedo is another important factor, bright surface will reflect more solar radiation.

Problem is we simply don't know what will happen with world climate. Maybe if the world is heating too fast up, then methane clathrate in ocean and methane in Siberia will be set free, this can be very very bad.

In the map they are a few mistakes! Caspian Sea is not connected with the great oceans. The Mediterranean Sea is shrinking, because the exchange with oceans is around Gibraltar a narrow seaweed, so the level in the Mediterranean Sea will not be so high (evaporation of water), than elsewhere.

GarryB wrote:

Actually , what you arguing about?

Arguing?

What I am saying is that adapting the Russian economy to a new climate... even a more mild one will cost money and effect a lot of industries in a negative way.

It is not going to be a jackpot for anyone.

The land area of Europe and Asia where Russia is situated means extremes of temperature... both hot and cold... that is just weather.

In comparison New Zealand is surrounded by water which moderates the temperature range we experience so it does not get really hot or really cold.

For Russia it is surrounded by land which heats up more and cools down more than water does so its weather will always be extreme.

And the robot remark is imply nonsens. Sorry, but it is.

There are plenty of extreme places in Russia where normal work is not practical... whether it is too cold or too radioactive or whatever.

Their newest armour has options for remote or telecontrol. That sort of equipment will only become more common in other areas... Large greenhouses with robotic farming systems are an examples of an application of such technologies.

So, Russia has very minor population in low elevation areas, and that is mainly in St. Petersburg.

Say , if the Arctic ocean flood a lot of uninhabited area then the average temperature of that area will increase, it will be more habitable, and it become possible to use ships for transportation.


Actually, with even the Armageddon scenario with the melting of Antarctic and Greenland Russia will have more habitable area than now, and more and better shipborne transportation than now.


Robots: I feels like a ship designer who has to explain why a container ship can't fly : ).

GarryB wrote:

Robots: I feels like a ship designer who has to explain why a container ship can't fly : ).

Open your eyes.

In the 1980s when Chernobyl exploded the Soviets had very little in the way of robotic equipment and ended up having to send men and women into the area to contain the situation.

Today the Russian military has its primary armoured vehicles all capable of robotic operation, and is introducing unmanned air, land and sea vehicles.

For decades the Soviets had robots for space as satellites and to visit other planets.

Now they have them everywhere... from industry to their military forces and in civilian use... their use will only expand.

BTW flying cargo ship:

A cargo ship called Progress... irony?

And how you can prove based on the above evidence that the outside works, like foundation building, house repair, post erection , road building , welding and so on can be done by robots?

I haven'_t seen a robot that was stable enough to work without human supervision for long period of time. Say for one week, doing something that required to manipulate its environment.

GarryB wrote:

The technology does not require independent robots capable of autonomous operation... just using telecontrol is enough... a surgeon in Moscow performing an operation on a patient in the middle of Siberia is just one example.

Putting in posts... building roads, welding robots... they already exist and are in operation...

In every activity the ultimate question is the required man-hours to do a given job.


Say, you have a road laying team team, having the same efficiency.

How much road can be done with it in California, USA , or in Krestovaya, Russia?

Main differences: in california you have the right weather in 90% of the time to make roads.
In Krestovaya maybe 30%.

Means if you run a fully automated, very expensive road laying robot that looks like a Hindu goddess with hundreds of fanuc arms then it takes say ten years to pay itself in california, and thirty in syberia.

means that in russia it is simply doesn't worth the money to think about it, simply due to the weather.

Of course you can try to compensate the weather with increased complexity, but that increase the cost, and won't change the equitation.


Only way is to be smarter/more efficient in syberia, and run everything with less people, and with better organisation.


But , of curse if the weather warming up then the efficiency will automagically increase over there : )

GarryB wrote:
You are looking at it the wrong way around... the robot system that works without people means assuming your guesses are right with the 90% and 30% the virtue of a robot system is that it can work in all weathers and all conditions so it changes the 30% in siberia to 90+ percent meaning it greatly improves road building efficiency in Siberia and is much more valuable.

The same could be said for a fire fighting robot that can be dropped into the middle of a burning forest to fight the fire by cutting down burning trees and making fire breaks and spraying fire retardant... it can work where no human could work 24/7 with no risk to life.

Only way is to be smarter/more efficient in syberia, and run everything with less people, and with better organisation.

Or to use machines that can operate in extreme environments and extreme conditions... much like the comparison between a navy and an army. A soldier on their own can cover ground reasonably efficiently using just their feet and hands... in fact some terrain is more easily covered on foot. In the water however most humans are useless on their own... a victim to local currents and vulnerable to the cold. In the navy you need subs or small boats or helos for movement. You need more automation.

From economical standpoint that you saying doesn't make sense.

Making something that can give the same performance /capacity in syberia takes way more money (resources) than in a warm country.
Now you have the choices: using same equipment , but with lower utilisation, or way more expensive one with higher utilisation.

But this is the main point: the increase in the length of the summer will decrease the cost of the road laying example.

Say you have 100 days instead of 90 available for outside work in each year, with high interest rate it can means the return period will be smaller by 1.5-2 years, instead of 9 say 7-7.5.


Quite dramatic change, could means the marginal required improvement in many area.

It is ironic how Russia is a fobbed off as a fossil fuel crack pusher when it is basically the only country on the planet seriously
working on and deploying a viable alternative to fossil fuels.    While the west pretends boutique solar and wind alternatives
will be the solution, in reality they are a net CO2 source thanks to the manufacturing required to make the equipment
and remain a marginal "solution" as demonstrated by Germany which is burning coal even though it spent billions of euros
subsidizing solar and wind.    Solar and wind alternatives are failing to bootstrap as real alternatives.   They exist as
subsidy created sideshows.  

Russia's fast neutron breeder reactor program will tap into the Uranium 238 (not 235) pool which is the biggest source of energy
available outside of the diffuse solar and wind.    Uranium 238 totally overshadows coal energy reserves.   And coal overshadows
both oil and gas.   Out of all of them only Uranium 238 is not associated with CO2 emissions.

The common ploy of the "clean" alternatives boosters is to claim that all the concrete in nuclear power plants is associated
with lots of CO2 emissions.   That is BS because nuclear power plants (new generation) are designed to operate for 60 years.
During that period the initial CO2 emissions associated with construction become irrelevant.   Solar panels and wind mills also
involve CO2 emissions during construction-deployment.   But they last nowhere near 60 years.    Most of the solar panels
you can buy as a consumer don't even last the minimum 25 years required to pay off their construction.   Assuming that
commercial grade panels run for over 25 years, they still are a resource sink except for a few years of operation.   No wonder
that "clean" alternatives remain boutique sideshows.     Wind mills have better economics but they have a lifespan between
20 and 25 years.   So the claim that nuclear power is CO2 dirty is a pure lie.    The "clean" alternatives are CO2 dirty since
their equipment does not last in most cases past 25 years.  

Also, windmills emit infrasound and kill birds.   Infrasound is a negative health stress.   And all the phobia of nuclear is boneheaded.
Even if nuclear power somehow leaks isotopes into the environment (that does not happen from nuclear power plants which
have no local contamination), this radiation is a blip on the background and humans and other animals have genetics that can
deal with it.   But all the industrial chemical contamination which is now rather substantial in the environment is contributing
to the cancer pandemic (old age does not explain it since the longevity has not increased that much in the developed world
and is actually falling in places like the USA).   Various chemicals emitted by industry (e.g. solvents used in production lines)
result in a chain of oxidation reactions that generate not merely simpler products but more complex variants that can have
higher toxicity than the original chemical.

1) Nuclear wast is a total canard especially when dealing with fast neutron reactors which use fuel reprocessing
as their operation cycle. What is called nuclear waste from the bulk of existing reactors is fuel for BN-800 type
reactors. Russia's fuel reprocessing technology and capacity is top of the world. The USA simply does not have
this capacity since Carter banned it for some retarded reason. The waste from fast neutron reactors is of the
much shorter lived variety that goes away after 300 years. So the problem of trying to bury it for thousands of
years and hope it does not leak is a non issue.

2) Solar panels are a species of toxic waste since they involve more than just SiO2 and use toxic metals to achieve
their functionality. It is energetically expensive to reprocess solar panels to extract these low commercially low
concentrations. But that is another source of anthropogenic toxins in the environment.

3) Failing windmills that catch fire spread all sorts of toxins as well. This is not a joke. The number of windmills
required to make them a serious electricity source is tens of times higher than what we have today. So even a
small failure rate will be a source of carcinogens into the environment.

There is no free lunch with alternatives.

4) Alternatives cannot provide a base load electricity supply. For that you need nuclear if you are not going to burn
CH4, oil or coal. Using alternatives to drive the production of fuels like H2 is endlessly yapped about but not being
done. Pushing something into the future is one way to make sure it never happens. When the fossil fuel energy
crisis hits us and it will, there will be no money to start developing expensive infrastructure. Also, H2 is the worst
type of fuel you can have since it leaks through metal (not cracks or joints) and makes it brittle. What is needed
is NH3 with fuel cell combustion which guarantees N2 production through tuned chemistry. Burning NH3 blindly will
produce NOx which is a greenhouse gas and produces O3 another greenhouse gas in the troposphere.

5) Russia is building up solar and wind alternatives and not just nuclear. But the faith in alternatives is not based
on science. It is magical thinking. If we want to live on wind and solar, then we need to downsize the global economy and
population.

LMFS wrote:I generally agree that today's economies cannot transition completely to renewable energies and that in general that transition is not cheap, at least in the short to medium term, but I think it would be better for all of us if we put to rest some horror stories about them, which are as false as the ones told about nuclear energy. Distributed generation or renewable sourced energy works, can be improved through storage and can be controlled by automation and price signalling. It will not eliminate the need for other supporting sources but the technical reality is that a vast amount of residential / urban consumption can be generated locally already today. Return on energy and recycling of solar modules is a long clarified issue, anyone can check this on the internet. As to the relevance of renewable energies in the generation mix, of course seasonality is a big issue. They say wind is the best storage of solar energy but that of course forces to increase a lot the peak generation installed and makes the cost of generated energy higher. In sunny / tropical countries that is not the case, heating is not an issue but rather cooling and there the generation and consumption profiles match almost perfectly, with the intervention of a small storage sized to compensate the daily delay in generation vs consumption it would mean a huge relief to transport and distribution networks and cover significant amounts of the demand. This is relevant for so many developing countries that can use it to grow their economies and living conditions with very low ecological impact. As to whether things are or will be done so perfectly in real world or not, we all know profit rules and determines how policies and markets evolve.

Either the storage exists or it doesn't.   Right now it does not.  So chemical storage in the form of H2, NH3 or something else is what we
have available.   But none of these alternatives are being used in this mode.   They are all being used as boutique supplements to the
base load power generated by natural gas, coal and to some extent nuclear.    

There is a lot of plausibility type talk associated with renewables that is pie in the sky.   Germany tried to bootstrap alternatives through
subsidies but all the 50% per year growth touted as the coming of a new age evapourated as soon as the subsidies stopped.   Wanting
for alternatives to be viable is not going to make them viable.   While hot air about them is being generated, CO2 emissions by humans
are accelerating are above 30 billion tons per year.    By contrast volcanoes emit 600 million tons per year on average since they are sporadic.  
A single nuclear power plant can achieve more than the combined alternative sideshow in the vast majority of countries.    I know, you
will point to Denmark and to a lesser extent Spain.   But they import their base load electricity and export their variable wind and solar
electricity onto the EU grid.   If they were cut off from their imports (net imports are not relevant) they would be in a never ending crisis.  
And the fact that alternatives produce the equivalent of 64% of Denmark's electricity is misleading and trivial since it is a very small country.  
Scaling for Sweden and Germany is not working out.  

So where is the alternative derived base load power?  It does not exist.