Guest post: Snow is AWOL

Aug 5th, 2022 | By Ophelia Benson
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Never going back.

The situation is much the same in south-eastern Norway. For the first time ever this year the trusted spring flood due to snowmelt in the second half of May has been completely absent due to record-low levels of snow in the mountains. Combine that with the driest summer on record, and it’s becoming a major challenge for hydropower companies such as the one I’m working in to keep our power plants running. To the end consumers this has the effect of driving the already economy-breaking energy prices even further up. Factor in the European over-reliance on Russian gas that is no longer available, and we’re facing the real prospect of rationing this upcoming winter.

Many have suggested that Putin is now counting on the crisis to turn Europeans against their own governments and make them elect pro-Russian rightwing populists who will ease the sanctions against Russia and withdraw their support for Ukraine. He is obviously also counting on the Republicans to regain control over the U.S. Senate, in which case his old friend and ally Donald Trump (or someone equally bad) may very well be “legally” declared winner of the next presidential election, even if he doesn’t win the election – not even on a technicality as in 2016.

It’s like everything about this problem is self-reinforcing. Not only does the initial increase in global temperatures trigger positive feedback loops that lead to further increases in global temperatures (the greenhouse effect being amplified due to more water vapor in the atmosphere, less sunlight reflected back into space due to less snow and ice etc.), and not only does the problem significantly impair the best available alternatives to fossil fuel, such as hydropower, but the misery and suffering caused by the problem make it – if at all possible – even less politically feasible to do anything about it.

Oh well… The rest of the universe should be fine…

One Response to “Guest post: Snow is AWOL”

#1
Papito
August 5, 2022 at 6:03 am

Russia is one of the only countries in the world which actually benefits from a warming climate. Their grain belt is moving north and getting wider.

Russia is often seen as a country that produces little that the world wants except energy commodities. The oil export dependence looks like a major time bomb under the country’s future, given the current focus in the West and in China on reducing the use of hydrocarbon fuels. By an ironic quirk, however, Russia appears to be benefiting from the climate change its energy resources are helping to fuel: Its prospects as the world’s biggest wheat exporter and a grain superpower are bright, not least because of the rise in global temperatures.

https://russialist.org/russia-is-an-emerging-superpower-in-global-food-supply-climate-change-is-working-against-other-regions-but-in-favor-of-the-eurasian-grain-belt/

A great transformation is underway in the eastern half of Russia. For centuries the vast majority of the land has been impossible to farm; only the southernmost stretches along the Chinese and Mongolian borders, including around Dimitrovo, have been temperate enough to offer workable soil. But as the climate has begun to warm, the land — and the prospect for cultivating it — has begun to improve. Twenty years ago, Dima says, the spring thaw came in May, but now the ground is bare by April; rainstorms now come stronger and wetter. Across Eastern Russia, wild forests, swamps and grasslands are slowly being transformed into orderly grids of soybeans, corn and wheat. It’s a process that is likely to accelerate: Russia hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climate-migration-crisis.html

Of course Russia would like Western governments to do nothing about climate change. As the American West dries up and catches on fire, corn harvests in Vladivostok double.