Political effects of the Russian drought?

[BrainGlutton]

This year’s drought in Russia has ruined crops in 27% of its planting area. We can debate whether that has anything to do with anthropogenic climate change, but we can be sure a lot of Russians will think so. Will this produce any political ramifications? Pressure on the government to take a hard line on carbon emissions, etc.?

[GIGObuster]

My impression so far from the science blogs, science reporters and forums, is that the current disasters are natural..

Unfortunately many deniers ignore what NASA, GISS and others point at the end of their reports: anthropogenic climate change is making these natural incidents worse than they should be.

NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like

When it Rains it Pours

Harvey Taylor sends along a link to an article entitled “Magnitude of Pakistan Floods is Unprecedented”. If we consider the Russia and Pakistan catastrophes as part of the same event, we have easily thirty million people directly affected and loss of life in the tens of thousands.

We also have more ammunition for claiming a very high weirdness index for the event.

Two especially interesting quotes:

We had an extraordinary event in northern Pakistan, where ten times the normal annual rainfall for one of those areas fell in four days. This is unprecedented. And, of course, you see the similar sorts of things happening in Africa, in Asia, in Central America. The farmers no longer know when to plant, because the rains don’t come at the time they used to come. All these are the kind of effects of climate change that we’ve feared and are beginning to come to pass, I’m afraid. - John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

Just to give you a sense of how bad the rain was that caused this flooding initially, on the 28th of July, there was 318 millimeters of rain just on one day. To put that into context, the record, all-time record, for rain in Peshawar, which is where this number is from, for one month, the month of July, was 217 millimeters. So it rained more in one day than it had ever rained in an entire month for the monsoon season. The floods that have ensued—and there’s been two waves of these floods now—there’s no government in the world that could have prepared for this or that could have responded to this in the way that we would have liked it to. - Mosharraf Zaidi columnist for The News of Pakistan and Al-Shorouk of Egypt

Rolling a thirteen

Australian Prof. Steven Sherwood of UNSW says the same sort of thing I have been trying to say very nicely in a statement recently quoted on Dot Earth:

The “loading the dice” analogy is becoming popular but it misses something very important: climate change also allows unprecedented (in human history) things to happen. It is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13. What happens then? Since we have never had to cope with 13’s, this could prove far worse than simply loading the dice toward more 11’s and 12’s. I’m not sure whether or not what is happening in Russia or Pakistan is a “13″ yet, but 13’s will eventually arrive (and so will 14’s, if carbon emissions continue to rise).

I think we have just rolled our first thirteen. I don’t know how to prove it. (update - or maybe our second, if you count Australia last year)

I can define a fourteen easily. We will have rolled a fourteen when there is no controversy at all about whether the given event was in the range of unforced natural variability.

My attempt to raise this issue at Kloor’s went like this:

As the climate, i.e., the distribution of weather events, changes rapidly, the space occupied by the tails of the distribution sweep out territory that were not meaningfully in the distribution before.

So we will occasionally see things we could not have seen before, and some of them may be things we have not imagined before. We will see not only known but previously unlikely conditions (e.g. extreme heat), but also previously unsuspected vulnerabilities (smoke).

One very important warning that can not be ignored:

This events are happening when the sun is still at a low activity level and there is a La nina going on. Once nature forcings go up, the unnatural ones will still be here and in a few years we will roll more thirteens.

[Rune]

Putin is always good for a cite: Those afraid of global warming haven’t experienced a winter in Siberia.

Overall global warming is probably going to be a net positive for Russia. At least that’s what the Russians I know are telling me. As for the current crisis. Russia has stopped export of corn. Prices are going up, which is good for Danish farmers. Not so good for nations dependent on foreign import to satisfy their basic needs. And Denmark and Sweden too have had a very bad harvest, and I hear Canada too. Some nations are going to go to bed hungry. But in any case, no nation should have more mouths to feed than can be done so by its own production.

[GIGObuster]

@Rune

Overall global warming is probably going to be a net positive for Russia. At least that’s what the Russians I know are telling me. As for the current crisis. Russia has stopped export of corn.

Maybe you meant wheat? In any case the possibility of crisis like this one has been pointed before as an important reason why global warming is not really a net positive.

[Sam_Stone]

What effect will the drought have on the politics of Russia?

I’m thinking we’re about to see photos of a shirtless Vlad Putin peeing on a crop from a helicopter.

[GIGObuster]

@Sam_Stone

What effect will the drought have on the politics of Russia?

I’m thinking we’re about to see photos of a shirtless Vlad Putin peeing on a crop from a helicopter.

Well, that was the cavalier attitude there until recently.

Russia cannot afford climate inaction

Russia cannot afford climate inaction

…

Indeed, until recently its leaders seemed to believe climate change would be beneficial. Warmer weather would open up the Arctic’s mineral wealth, create new shipping routes along its northern coasts, and extend agriculture into infertile areas. At a conference in 2003, Vladimir Putin, then president, even said global warming would merely mean that “we Russians will spend less on fur coats”.

This summer’s disasters – in which the country lost some 25 per cent of its grain production – should have brought home the naivete of this view. No one can say with certainty that the fires were influenced by climate change. Yet they are the sort of disasters that lie ahead if warming is not held in check.

Yes, changing such industries is expensive. But where there are significant costs Russia should seek help, both from other nations and international organisations. The emissions permits Russia already holds as a result of signing up to Kyoto could be put to good use, to fund more environmentally responsible policies. This would build on moves in July, when – finally starting to make use of its carbon credits – the government endorsed 15 clean energy projects.

The rest of the world has a further strong interest in helping Russia: limiting the damage likely to result from the effects of global warming upon Russia’s frozen peat bogs. As they melt, these huge sinks of carbon will release vast amounts of methane into the air – and methane is a greenhouse gas many times more potent than CO2. Serious outside investment could come Russia’s way to help develop ways of limiting this process, especially if Russia itself began to sound more receptive to outside help.

Can a country that has found it difficult to break from its reliance on oil and gas revenues, and to modernise other industrial sectors, feasibly make this kind of transition? It will be testing, to say the least. The sense of emergency may soon fade when the temperatures drop. Support from other countries will be essential. Yet it remains in Russia’s strategic interests to take climate change seriously. If its leaders can take this on board and communicate it to the public, the sense of fatalism in the face of disaster, coupled to bureaucratic stasis and corruption, that so often inhibit innovation in the country can be challenged. If not, Russia’s plans to modernise its economy will be undermined before they have begun.

[BrainGlutton]

@Rune

But in any case, no nation should have more mouths to feed than can be done so by its own production.

Agricultural autarky? A counsel of perfection. Japan has not completely fed itself by Home Islands produce since before the war – anxiety over that situation was one reason Japan why went to war, to acquire agrarian colonies to feed its population. Now Japan still does not feed itself, but its people eat much better that they did then – they’ve even grown taller, since the war – because they produce high-value manufactures, export them at a profit, and spent part of the profits on importing food.

[foolsguinea]

Since Japan is one of the major drivers of the global fishing trade, which is facing an extinction event of its own making, I’m not sure that’s a shining example of success.

[Meurglys]

@GIGObuster

@Rune

Russia has stopped export of corn.

Maybe you meant wheat?

Using the first definition, their corn is wheat! Just as in North America your corn is maize…

[villa]

@Rune

But in any case, no nation should have more mouths to feed than can be done so by its own production.

Do you have any kind of justification for this foolish idea? Why just food? Should any country have more bodies than it can keep warm and transport by its own energy production? Any more minds than it can connect to the internet by its own computer chip manufacture? Any more assholes than it can keep wiped by its own toilet paper production?