A Very Interesting Comparison

Dmitry Orlov writes: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is. My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the "Collapse Gap" – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War. The subject of economic collapse is generally a sad one. But I am an optimistic, cheerful sort of person, and I believe that, with a bit of preparation, such events can be taken in stride. As you can probably surmise, I am actually rather keen on observing economic collapses. Perhaps when I am really old, all collapses will start looking the same to me, but I am not at that point yet. And this next one certainly has me intrigued. From what I've seen and read, it seems that there is a fair chance that the U.S. economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also would seem that we won't be particularly well-prepared for it. As things stand, the U.S. economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act. And so I am eager to put my observations of the Soviet collapse to good use. I anticipate that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt. The USA and the USSR were evenly matched in many categories, but let me just mention four. The Soviet manned space program is alive and well under Russian management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships sit in the shop. The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and that is excellent news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a nonexistent one. The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans, with the highest percentage of people in jail ever. The Hated Evil Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans. It's easy now that they don't have anyone to compete against. (12/12/06)

Nuclear War Could Trigger Climate Disaster

BBC Humanity & Environment -- Even a small-scale nuclear war would have far-reaching consequences for the global climate, say scientists. A US team has modelled the effects of a limited conflict in the light of new concerns over weapons proliferation. Its study, reported at an American Geophysical Union meeting, employed the very latest computer simulations. For an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, the modelling suggested there would be millions of deaths, as well as climate cooling and ozone damage. The team said increasing urbanisation and the centralisation of economies in megacities had made modern society more vulnerable to the destabilising effects of war. "We saw what happened on 9/11: 3,000 people died and the world economy staggered," said Professor Richard Turco from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "One can only imagine the implications if Hiroshima-scale detonations occurred in one or more major cities around the world today." It was Professor Turco who first coined the phrase "nuclear winter" back in the 1980s to describe the climate shift that would result from a war using atomic weapons. ... The new simulations, run on a Nasa supercomputer, show that for five million tonnes of black smoke sent skyward, the result would be a global cooling of 1.25C, as the material spread out and blocked light from reaching the ground. A reduction in precipitation levels of 10% and a shortening of growing seasons by up to 30 days was also forecast. The impact on global food supplies would be catastrophic, the group said. The researchers warned that the impoverished conditions would last longer than previous studies had indicated because older climate models did not adequately represent the mechanisms that took material high into the stratosphere. "If you look at the change in solar radiation from, say, the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption (1991), it goes away after about a year, but the black smoke is lofted into the stratosphere and it lasts for a decade," explained Professor Alan Robock from Rutgers. (12/12/06)

Goodbye Arctic Ice

BBC Environment -- The Arctic may be close to a tipping point that sees all-year-round ice disappear very rapidly in the next few decades, US scientists have warned. The latest data presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting suggests the ice is no longer showing a robust recovery from the summer melt. Last month, the sea that was frozen covered an area that was two million sq km less than the historical average. "That's an area the size of Alaska," said leading ice expert Mark Serreze. "We're no longer recovering well in autumn anymore. The ice pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very rapid losses in the near future," the University of Colorado researcher added. The sea ice reached its minimum extent this year on 14 September, making 2006 the fourth lowest on record in 29 years of satellite record-keeping and just shy of the all time minimum of 2005. Dr Serreze's concern was underlined by new computer modelling which concludes that the Arctic may be free of all summer ice by as early as 2040. The new study, by a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that the ice system could be being weakened to such a degree by global warming that it soon accelerates its own decline. "As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice," explained Dr Marika Holland. "This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region." Eventually, she said, the system would be "kicked over the edge", probably not even by a dramatic event but by one year slightly warmer than normal. Very rapid retreat would then follow. (12/12/06)

Indian Summer in Moscow

Reuters AlertNet -- Most people think of Moscow as cloaked in snow from late autumn but this winter daisies are blossoming by the Kremlin and fresh buds are growing on trees in some of the warmest December temperatures on record. On Dec. 7, Moscow basked in plus 7.7 degrees Celsius (45.9 Fahrenheit), beating the previous record of 6.6C set on Dec. 7, 1898, a spokesman for the state weather monitoring unit said on Tuesday. "In the European part of Russia, we can clearly see an anomaly, a big positive anomaly," Mark Naishuller said. "Temperatures are positive even beyond the Arctic Circle." Four days this December were warmer than any of their counterparts in the period since records began in 1879. Instead of trademark snow, green grass adorns some parts of Moscow. Purple violets and yellow coltsfoots -- flowers that usually blossom between spring and autumn -- have been spotted in the capital and the surrounding area, media have reported. Some types of mushrooms have also ignored the calendar month, when the average temperature for Moscow is around minus 4C (minus 25F), and grown afresh on tree trunks. ... "Muscovites are smiling: they don't have to wear hats and the grass is green like in some kind of England," wrote popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, adding Russia could only gain from a warmer global climate. "Siberia in that case will become the world's granary and Russia will be a clear winner." (12/12/06)