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Climate change offers chance of major economic boost in Arctic for Russia, says Putin

By 0 and 0 and 0
31 March 2017

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'Global warming will continue anyway and anyhow'. Picture: Kremlin

The combination of technological advance and climate change will see a major economic boost to Russia from the Arctic in the years ahead, said Vladimir Putin. 

He spoke on the opportunities of the Northern Sea Route and energy developments after a visit to an ice cave in the remote polar outpost of Alexandra Land, only some 900 kilometres from the North Pole. 

'Today we took the first tanker in the newly constructed port of Sabetta,' he said at an Arctic development forum in Arkangelsk. 'An absolutely new port, built from scratch in the Arctic zone, in an open field, as they say. Until recently, it would have been difficult to do this with such quality. 

'The ship that came to this port today is modern technology, it breaks the ice, itself, like an icebreaker, goes through two metre thick. This is about new technologies.

Arctic talk

Vladimir Putin, along with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson took part in the talk about Arctic development. Picture: Kremlin

'The second essential factor that supports our optimism is climate change... The number of days of navigation along the Northern Sea Route has increased dramatically in recent times. This suggests that transport opportunities are improving.'  

On his trip to the Franz Josef Land archipelago - when he was accompanied by premier Dmitry Medvedev and Defence Minister Sergei Shoygu -  he was told by scientists that 'they observe the constant melting of snow, glaciers'. Rather than wringing hands, this gives opportunities, he said. 

'This suggests that with climate change, come more favourable conditions for the use of this region for economic purposes. If these trends develop this way, then look what happens. Today, we ship on the Northern Sea Route 1.4 million tons, by 2035 it will already be 30 million tons. Here's the growth.

Yamal LNG


Yamal LNG


Yamal LNG

Yamal-LNG plant begins to work at the end of this year. Pictures: Novatek

'When implementing one of our major projects - Yamal-LNG project, and this is another confirmation that such programs can be implemented in these latitudes, an absolutely unique new plant is built, construction is already finished. 

'Previously, it would have been hard to imagine such a thing, but it begins to work at the end of this year, it is almost a fact, and will produce 16.5 million tons of liquefied natural gas. 

'And the volume of traffic will increase at once four times over the Northern Sea Route. And in both directions can work, from Europe to Asia and backwards.' Putin said: 'All this shows that our plans to develop this region of the globe, they are quite viable.'

He made clear that while Russia supported international efforts to control manmade pollution, global warming 'will continue anyway and anyhow'.

Franz Josef Land


Putin, Medvedev, Shoigu


Putin in cave

On his trip to the Franz Josef Land archipelago - when he was accompanied by premier Dmitry Medvedev and Defence Minister Sergei Shoygu -  he was told by scientists that 'they observe the constant melting of snow, glaciers'. Pictures: Kremlin

The said evidence from Franz Josef Land was that warming probably started back in the 1930s and at that time we did not have much manmade effect, but the global warming started nevertheless. 

'It is not about preventing of global warming' - which is 'impossible'. 'It is probably related to some global cycles or some greater outer space cycles. It is about how to adjust to this. We need more research on that, and people and local communities to get adjusted, to get accustomed.'

Putin said that on his Arctic trip 'we looked at the ice at a glacier, which took hundreds, or thousands or millions of years to shape. And one of the layers, believe me, was clearly marked with carbon, thousand year ago, where there were no plants.  

 Christophe de Margery


 Christophe de Margery

'The ship that came to this port today is modern technology, it breaks the ice, itself, like an icebreaker, goes through two metre thick.' Pictures: Dmitry Lobusov

'Please be aware that several eruptions of Etna volcano would be greater then all the manmade impact on the environment. So we need to study these things.'

Within Russia's development of the Arctic 'the key thing is to maintain and preserve the bio diversity and protect the natural environment - as well as the interests of indigenous people of the north. We should not only extract mineral resources but also protect nature. 

'I also mentioned the project of ours that we will be implementing with seven countries, it is Yamal LNG. All the technologies that we have attend allow us to have zero emissions, zero litter. It's all recycled and eliminated in nature friendly and safe manner. So if we adopt such technologies we do not run any risk.'

With Putin at the Arctic Forum were Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson.

Comments (7)

"Volcanic emissions are a small but important part of the global carbon cycle.Published reviews of the scientific literature by Mörner and Etiope (2002) and Kerrick (2001) report a range of emission of 65 to 319 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes." (https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm).



Pres Putin esenstal need speak with more scientists than those he speak now.

Simon P. Lura, Kyiv, Ukraine
05/09/2017 10:56
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It'll never happen. During an interview just last week Peter Wadhams cited preliminary results from shakhova and simeletov on the ESAS from their 2016 survey at 8 times previous measurements is (2013).
That's a doubling time of 1 year. It's gone exponential.
Cameron Forge, Melbourne, Australia
09/06/2017 06:54
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My apologies, I did not put my name on my comment. I quoted both articles and added the joint comment.
Pamela Tetarenko, League City, USA
02/04/2017 22:05
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Within Russia's development of the Arctic 'the key thing is to maintain and preserve the bio diversity and protect the natural environment - as well as the interests of indigenous people of the north. We should not only extract mineral resources but also protect nature. ' (Vladimir Putin).

Nature is a lot more powerful and smarter than everything that humanity came up with so far.' (Kirill Chistyakov, Polar Pollution Blight article).

I agree with both comments and since both articles are related, I just wanted to offer a joint comment here. If we could all please stand together for clean air, water, and healthy, sustainable, accessible food, we will protect nature as well as our human future. If we don't, nature will decide our human fate.....an example already happening being the impact of the overuse of antibiotics.
,
02/04/2017 20:48
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Eva, grapes were never grown in Greenland. Type "grapes greenland" into Google and read the results. And Greenland was named by Erik the Red to try and encourage people to move there, not because of its colour. The ice sheet of Greenland is over 400,000 years old.

If you look at the planet's history from at least one thousand years ago (as the first comment suggested) you get a temperature map like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
Petr, Tiksi
02/04/2017 01:42
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As said in the first comment, this will happen time and again, in therms of thousands of years.
Of course, nobody can remember these changes by heart, by himself. So naturally it threatens us to see what's going on right now. But take a look over history-books - once the Sahara was green all over and then again in the Alps palm trees and other plants of similar climates were growing, as well as grapes on the isle of Greenland look at the name!), not so long ago.
Sometimes it develops very slowly, almost not to notice the change, next time the climate nearly collapses almost overnight, caused by a furious volcano eruption. It's clear enough that human activities add some speed to the changes, but we are not the only ones to blame, not the only reason for it.
Eva Schulz, Wenns Austria
01/04/2017 11:59
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To understand climate change one must look the planet's history from at least one thosand years back. Certainly it didn't began in the last century (nevertheless it accelerated to disastreful rates). Look at the track of global deforestation the humans caused and you get a clearer picture. Remember the forest that existed across Europe, for example. Even here in Mexico my ancestors decimated the forests in the now Mexico's city valley long before the arrival of the spaniards, and they lacked iron tools.
Climate change started local, with the human factor a chief driver, everywhere.
Andres Suarez, Cancun, Mexico
01/04/2017 10:34
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