Evidently my cut and paste didn't work so here's the text.
Josh
*Russian Federation*
*Russia is ambivalent toward climate change and therefore also toward
geoengineering*
*Some Russian elites see benefits to climate change*
- *Arctic oil and gas*
- *Northern Sea Route*
- *Improved agriculture and habitability*
*But others perceive serious costs for Russia*
- *Environmental destruction*
- *Damaged infrastructure*
*A “resource bonanza” mentality has tended to dominate, but the Russian
government has remained conspicuously open to geoengineering, for two
primary reasons*
- *A proud tradition of state-supported science such as the space
program, nuclear technology*
- *Personal connections, in particular between Yuri Izrael and Vladimir
Putin*
- *Izrael is the former vice chair of the IPCC, an influential
science adviser to Putin, and the first scientist to conduct SRM
field tests
*
- *Izrael co-chaired geoengineering panel at the Problems of
Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC-2011) conference officially
sponsored by
the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring*
On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Josh Horton <[email protected]>wrote:
> Bill,
>
> Here are some very high-altitude observations on the Russian POV from a
> poster I presented last year. The takeaway is that there is serious
> tension between Russian interest in geoengineering and the desire to take
> advantage of economic opportunities created by climate change. There is no
> mention of this underlying tension in the Guardian piece.
>
> Josh
>
>
>
> On Thursday, September 19, 2013 3:13:50 PM UTC-4, Bill Stahl wrote:
>>
>> In this context it's interesting to note that 1) a freighter just
>> completed the first Asia-to-Europe trip, and 2) Russia a few days
>> ago announced it is starting the first-ever naval patrols along its arctic
>> coast. It is now a shipping lane for the first time, a development that I
>> assume is profoundly startling to Russians.
>>
>> Can anyone on this list comment on Yuri Izrael and his work? I wonder if
>> he is hoping to re-freeze that new coastal route and nip arctic economic
>> development in the bud. Or on Russian GE research and POV generally?
>>
>> PS: cage-match ETC vs.Putin: bets on who comes out on top?
>>
>> On Thursday, September 19, 2013 12:23:09 PM UTC-6, andrewjlockley wrote:
>>>
>>> Russia urges UN climate report to include geoengineering The Russian
>>> government is asking for 'planet hacking' to be included in the climate
>>> science report, leaked documents show
>>>
>>> Martin Lukacs
>>>
>>> Suzanne Goldenberg
>>>
>>> Adam Vaughan
>>>
>>> Thu 19 September 2013
>>>
>>> Russia is pushing for next week's landmark UN climate science report to
>>> include support for controversial technologies to geoengineer the planet's
>>> climate, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.
>>>
>>> As climate scientists prepare to gather for the Intergovernmental Panel
>>> on Climate Change (IPCC) in Stockholm to present the most authoritative
>>> state of climate science to date, it has emerged the Russian government is
>>> asking for "planet hacking" to be included in the report. The IPCC has not
>>> included geoengineering in its major assessments before.
>>>
>>> The documents seen by the Guardian show Russia is asking for a
>>> conclusion of the report to say that a "possible solution of this [climate
>>> change] problem can be found in using of [sic] geoengineering methods to
>>> stabilise current climate." Russia also highlighted that its scientists are
>>> developing geoengineering technologies.
>>>
>>> Geoengineering aims to cool the Earth by methods including spraying
>>> sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, or fertilising
>>> the oceans with iron to create carbon-capturing algal blooms.
>>>
>>> Such ideas are increasingly being discussed by western scientists and
>>> governments as a plan B for addressing climate change, with the new
>>> astronomer royal, Professor Sir Martin Rees, calling last week for such
>>> methods to buy time to develop sources of clean energy. But the techniques
>>> have been criticised as a way for powerful, industrialised nations to dodge
>>> their commitments to reduce carbon emissions.
>>>
>>> Some modelling has shown geoengineering could be effective at reducing
>>> the Earth's temperature, but manipulation of sensitive planetary systems in
>>> one area of the world could also result in drastic unintended consequences
>>> globally, such as radically disrupted rainfall.
>>>
>>> Responding to efforts to discredit the climate science with a spoiler
>>> campaign in advance of the report, the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra K
>>> Pachauri, said he was confident the high standards of the science in the
>>> report would make the case for climate action. He said: "There will be
>>> enough information provided so that rational people across the globe will
>>> see that action is needed on climate change."
>>>
>>> The Russian scientist Yuri Izrael, who has participated in IPCC
>>> geoengineering expert groups and was an adviser to the former Russian
>>> president Vladimir Putin, conducted an experiment in 2009 that sprayed
>>> particles from a helicopter to assess how much sunlight was blocked by the
>>> aerosol plume. A planned test in Britain that would have used a balloon
>>> attached to a 1km hose to develop equipment for spraying was prevented
>>> after a public outcry.
>>>
>>> Observers have suggested that Russia's admission that it is developing
>>> geoengineering may put it in violation of the UN moratorium on
>>> geoengineering projects established at the Biodiversity Convention in 2010
>>> and should be discussed on an emergency basis when the convention's
>>> scientific subcommittee meets in Montreal in October.
>>>
>>> Civil society organisations have previously raised concerns that expert
>>> groups writing geoengineering sections of the IPCC report were dominated by
>>> US, UK and Canadian geoengineering advocates who have called for public
>>> funding of large-scale experiments or who have taken out commercial patents
>>> on geoenginering technologies. One scientist who served as a group
>>> co-chair, David Keith of Harvard University, runs a private geoengineering
>>> company, has planned tests in New Mexico, and is publicising a new book
>>> called The Case for Climate Engineering.
>>>
>>> Nearly 160 civil society, indigenous and environmental organisations
>>> signed a letter in 2011 urging caution and calling on the IPCC not to
>>> legitimise geoengineering.
>>>
>>> Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America director of the technology watchdog ETC
>>> Group, said: "We have been warning that a few geoengineering advocates have
>>> been trying to hijack the IPCC for their agenda. We are now seeing a
>>> deliberate attempt to exploit the high profile and credibility of this body
>>> in order to create more mainstream support for extreme climate engineering.
>>> The public and policymakers need to be on guard against being steamrollered
>>> into accepting dangerous and immoral interventions with our planet, which
>>> are a false solution to climate change. Geoengineering should be banned by
>>> the UN general assembly."
>>>
>>> Matthew Watson, a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol's Earth
>>> sciences department and one of the team behind the cancelled balloon
>>> project, said: "In general ought the IPCC to be thinking about
>>> geoengineering? Yes. But do I want to see unilateralism or regionalism
>>> affect the debate? Certainly not. The people who don't like geoengineering
>>> will suggest the IPCC is a method for normalising it."
>>>
>>> He added: "The IPCC has to be very careful about how it handles this
>>> [geoengineering] because it is clearly a very significant output that
>>> people are very mindful of."
>>>
>>> While the IPCC is intended to be a scientific advisory panel, government
>>> delegates have been reviewing the summary report and make final decisions
>>> about it in Stockholm at the end of the month.
>>>
>>> Sweden, Norway and Germany expressed more scepticism about
>>> geoengineering and asked that the report underline its potential dangers.
>>>
>>> "The information on geoengineering options is too optimistic as it does
>>> not appropriately reflect the current lack of knowledge or the high risks
>>> associated with such methods," noted the German government.
>>>
>>> Geoengineering is expected to play a much larger role in the next IPCC
>>> reports coming out in 2014. Observers were surprised that it had turned up
>>> in this first major report – meant to assess physical science rather than
>>> mitigation strategies.
>>>
>>> Russia's climate negotiators did not respond to a request for comment.
>>>
>>> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All
>>> rights reserved.
>>>
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