Two million square miles of permafrost—an area two-thirds the size of the United States has now thawed since the beginning of the 20th century. And all that thawing permafrost is costing the Russian oil and gas industry billions of dollars to repair damaged pipelines and infrastructure as global warming changes the face of western Siberia.
The energy program head of Greenpeace in Russia, Vladimir Chuprov, after interviewing experts at Gazprom, concluded, “For Russia, the biggest threat of the permafrost melt is to oil and gas company infrastructure.” (from Carbon-Based)
Thawing permafrost presents even more of a threat: it could release frozen methane deposits and causing runaway global warming, mass-extinctions, and huge amounts of economic damage to global infrastructure and economic well being. In addition to Gazprom’s, that is.
Over the last fifty years, the “active layer” of permafrost in Siberia that normally melts and freezes annually is increasing and is now up to a 10 inch thick layer of unstable melting and freezing slush in Western Siberia. The permanently frozen ground or permafrost underneath is getting correspondingly smaller and smaller.
Building pipelines across permafrost is difficult. Oil in pipelines has to be kept above 140° Fahrenheit to flow easily, and drilling deep wells for oil and gas in itself can thaw permafrost.
Politically, the “resource curse” of oil wealth has always seemed to contain the seeds of its own downfall. Oil wealth seems to result in destabilizing inequalities and anti-democratic politics in regions that host the seeming miracle of oil from Nigeria and Somalia to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Russia’s sudden oil wealth has further corrupted politics in a region with no real history of democracy.
But, as it turns out, Russia’s recent oil wealth may not be sustainable: climate change appears poised to curb Russia’s nouveau riche swagger. Repairs to infrastructure caused by thawed permafrost now costs Gazprom 1.9 billion dollars a year. Each year Western Siberia warms, that figure is only going to go up.
Image: Beautiful Life
PDF 
About Susan Kraemer
What you say? Climate change is caused by man?
So, when temperatures in the medieval era were higher than they are today, who was to blame?
Oh and in the 70′s all the media was predicting Global Cooling.
Go figure.
What you say? Climate change is caused by man?
So, when temperatures in the medieval era were higher than they are today, who was to blame?
Oh and in the 70′s all the media was predicting Global Cooling.
Go figure.
The biggest threat to Russia’s oil wealth is probably a technology you’ve never heard of before, and is too-good-to-be-believed. Mark my words: it will replace every other form of energy production!
This independently verified clean energy technology produces electricity at the astonishingly low cost of 1 cent per kilowatt hour. As reported by both CNN and the New York Times:
Check out above link to a 2 minute youtube video of a CNN report. What are the odds that the independent testimony below is fraudulent (not bloody likely unless you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist)? Here is a silver bullet technology: clean cheap and abundant energy.
In a joint statement, Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Amos Mugweru, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Peter Jansson P.E., Associate Professor of Engineering said, “In independent tests conducted over the past three months involving 10 solid fuels made by us from commercially-available chemicals, our team of engineering and chemistry professors, staff, and students at Rowan University has independently and consistently generated energy in excesses ranging from 1.2 times to 6.5 times the maximum theoretical heat available through known chemical reactions.”
Also, check out this article: http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2008/10/21/21venturebeat-blacklight-power-bolsters-its-impossible-cla-99377.html
Brad Arnold
St Louis Park, MN, USA
dobermanmacleod@gmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod
The biggest threat to Russia’s oil wealth is probably a technology you’ve never heard of before, and is too-good-to-be-believed. Mark my words: it will replace every other form of energy production!
This independently verified clean energy technology produces electricity at the astonishingly low cost of 1 cent per kilowatt hour. As reported by both CNN and the New York Times:
Check out above link to a 2 minute youtube video of a CNN report. What are the odds that the independent testimony below is fraudulent (not bloody likely unless you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist)? Here is a silver bullet technology: clean cheap and abundant energy.
In a joint statement, Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Amos Mugweru, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Peter Jansson P.E., Associate Professor of Engineering said, “In independent tests conducted over the past three months involving 10 solid fuels made by us from commercially-available chemicals, our team of engineering and chemistry professors, staff, and students at Rowan University has independently and consistently generated energy in excesses ranging from 1.2 times to 6.5 times the maximum theoretical heat available through known chemical reactions.”
Also, check out this article: http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2008/10/21/21venturebeat-blacklight-power-bolsters-its-impossible-cla-99377.html
Brad Arnold
St Louis Park, MN, USA
dobermanmacleod@gmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod
And yet the Russians are eager for the coming of a global warming that will open up huge areas of the Siberian Arctic for oil and gas exploration which are currently closed due to extreme freezing and icing conditions.
Cold is by far the worse of the two evils, in terms of Russian energy production.
The arctic has been thawed much more extremely than any reasonable predictions for the next century, without the slightest trace of “runaway” warming.
Read the CRU emails and commented files. You may learn something in your dotage.
And yet the Russians are eager for the coming of a global warming that will open up huge areas of the Siberian Arctic for oil and gas exploration which are currently closed due to extreme freezing and icing conditions.
Cold is by far the worse of the two evils, in terms of Russian energy production.
The arctic has been thawed much more extremely than any reasonable predictions for the next century, without the slightest trace of “runaway” warming.
Read the CRU emails and commented files. You may learn something in your dotage.
@Susie; the hacked emails don’t show anything that changes the science: they were hacked by the delayer industry that has hounded climate scientists for years.
The data on climate has been collated for decades from thousands of scientists worldwide like our NOAA
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
and NASA
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Mann just posted all the raw data here
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
@Susie; the hacked emails don’t show anything that changes the science: they were hacked by the delayer industry that has hounded climate scientists for years.
The data on climate has been collated for decades from thousands of scientists worldwide like our NOAA
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
and NASA
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Mann just posted all the raw data here
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/