Killing fires in Russia that spark hopes for “cooling”

Russia doesn’t like to be criticized lately. Putin’s firm state policy, first as President, then as a Prime Minister, reborn the proud sentiments of a strong state. So much so, that Russia’s current President Medvedev has been consistently declaring that global warming is a Western plot aimed at stopping the rapid industrial development of Russia. Just a year ago Medvedev called the global warming debates a tricky campaign of some commercial structures to promote their own business projects.

And not only Medvedev had such a stand. Another state leader, who denies the effects of climate change and says it is a false myth and business trick, is Czech President Vaclav Klaus. The list may be continued.

It’s an exact example of vanity damaging one’s capacity of rational thinking.

Even without any scientific reports, one needs no additional proof to notice that something really nasty is happening.

Antarctic ice caps are shrinking. Glaciers are melting. Siberian “permafrost” is melting and exudes toxic gases in enormous quantities, which deepens the greenhouse effects even more. Some ski resorts on both sides of the Atlantic are closing down, because they are not having snow anymore, and so on. Just watch the news, and it will be hard not to observe the devastation to the biosphere caused by climate change.

Weather memories from childhood summer vacations do not have any similarities with current summers. When I was a kid, the normal summers had +25+27 degrees C here in the heart of Eastern Europe. When temperatures raised to +30 and above it was something extraordinary and happened extremely rare for a short time. Now +30 can start from May and hold till September and it is still OK, because +35+38 has also become an often phenomena.

The climate has become more extreme: the winters may be harsher, which gave more reasons to global warming non-believers, but at the same time summer temperatures have risen, and the in-between seasons like spring and autumn shrunk. Some regions of the world have forgotten mild summers: it’s either drought or floods. The latest weather phenomena, turned catastrophes, in Europe, Asia, Russia, South America are the best proof for the above.

The current unprecedented heat wave that hit Russia has beaten all records and resulted in dozens of deaths, entire villages and a Russian navy military base destroyed by fires, huge losses in agriculture. Moscow is for weeks covered by toxic fumes, suffocating its inhabitants. Death rates in the affected regions have doubled compared to times of normality, morgues are said to be full and not able to meet the dreadful “demands”. Some experts say that like during Chernobyl times, the real information about number of deaths and damages caused by the disaster are suppressed by authorities, which are not able to stop the spread of the fire. Many foreign firefighter experts and special machinery are coming into Russia.

The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has sent world stock prices for wheat into turmoil, having declared that Russia will ban wheat exports till the end of the year, due to heavy losses of grain crops. Add to this crops losses in other wheat producing countries, and the damages caused by climate perturbations are becoming even more quantifiable.

Now the Russian President Medvedev declared something completely different to what he was stating a year ago: “We are in the middle of an unprecedented heat wave…We have never had such record high temperatures before. At times I have the impression that I’m somewhere in Italy or in Egypt, but certainly not in Moscow…Frankly, what is going on with the world’s climate at the moment should incite us all (I mean world leaders and heads of public organizations) to make a more strenuous effort to fight global climate change.

We will have to take this factor into account in our preparations for the Olympics and other international competitions. I think that we will have to make adjustments for the climate factor, and spend extra money, and this concerns the Winter Olympics too. Very soon in fact I will be meeting right there [in Sochi], as it happens, with the heads of our sports federations representing winter sports. We will need to take what is happening to nature into account.”

Let’s hope Medvedev has not said it only as a nice political slogan. This catastrophe so much hit the Russian vanity and proudness, that if no serious measures are undertaken as a consequence and it repeats itself again (usually such weather conditions tend to happen 2-3 years in a row, especially given the current stage of the Sun’s hyperactivity), then the great Russia may really turn into Egypt.

While some state leaders are seeing another conspiracy behind Mother Nature reaction to careless overexploitation of the Earth resources and habitat, the European Union and other rational states are farsightedly promoting climate preservation policies and technologies. Because the truth is simple:

- Better do something for combatting global warming and preservation of the habitat, rather than be complacent and do nothing! Isn’t that obvious? I guess if no measures had been undertaken until now, the situation would have been even worse by now.

- Combatting global warming is not impeding national growth. It’s a challenge in itself, and as any new challenge, it implies the necessity to develop new technologies and new professions, opens new horizons for employment. (Unless your views onto fighting global warming are limited to seeing it as closing down old factories and coal mines.)

- The current “savings” from doing nothing will actually turn the future costs of the damages caused by global warming into unbearable blow for the global economy and for life on the planet. (For benchmarking: according to latest estimates, the damages in Russia are already at about 15 billion USD! Which may be considered a price for doing nothing before, and for easily brushing off climate change as a conspiracy against Russia.)

- Ultimately, it’s about Life. No current outdated industry, no current saved buck, no fortune is worth anything if there is no guaranteed future for our children.

It is so obvious - so, why do people and state leaders need to be struck by lightning and fires first, in order to cool their heads and notice that there is a devastating storm coming?