A little warming might be a good thing -- lots of tundra in Siberia and Fuel oil is expensive. From The Moscow Times:
For Russia, Global Warming Benefits 'Outweigh' Negatives
Global warming in the next 40 years will allow Russian authorities to save on central heating, increase agricultural production and extend sea navigation in the north, a leading Russian climatologist told a Russian-German conference Wednesday.
But authorities will have to fork out money to reconstruct several big Siberian and Far Eastern cities to prevent them from collapsing as a result of a warmer climate, Vladimir Klimenko, head of Laboratory of Global Power Engineering Problems at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute told the conference co-organized by Alexander von Humbolt Foundation.
However, "the reduction of heating alone outweighs all the negative results [of the global warming] by many times," Klimenko said. If the money saved through reducing heating "is spent sensibly, then something can be achieved," he said.
Klimenko based his English-language report on the findings of his laboratory.
Climate was discussed elsewhere Tuesday. The World Meteorological Organization said during the annual UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, that scorching heat waves that killed thousands of people in Europe in 2003 and that choked Russia earlier this year were set to appear like an average summer in the future as the Earth continued to warm.
The last 'graph regarding the World Meteorological Organization is just pure political rent-seeking. This organization makes its money issuing doom and gloom predictions and offering ways out. For a fee. Al Gore was quoted once about a 30' rise in the level of the Ocean but he bought a waterfront condo in San Francisco. I like the Russian perspective -- practical and not hyperbolic. Major hat tip to The Blogmocracy for the link.
