What Climate Change will Bring to Us?

In 2014 and 2015, the all-Russia public organization “Social Ecological Union” (RSEU) has carried out surveys in Russian regions on the results of implementation of the RF Climate Doctrine. Letters with requests for providing information had been sent to all regions of Russia.

The different scales of regional climate change in temperate latitudes of the Asia-Pacific region marked change in climatic conditions at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in half a century time scales of 50-60 years, as well as inter-annual and multi-year fluctuations that depend on the phase of half a century of hesitation and under certain conditions can lead to an increase in the frequency of extreme climatic events.

Strategies of response action to climate change on different levels (federal, regional and municipal) will allow us to lower the risk of damage from negative effects of climate change. This is the conclusion made by the authors of the recently published Second Assessment Report on climate change and its effects on the territory of Russian Federation, by RosHydromet. Environmental NGOs make it clear that adaptation and mitigation measures must become an inevitable part of Russia’s national and regional policies.

On June 6, public consultations with the world’s citizens took place all over the world. They were focused on the topic of climate and energy and were part of the global World Wide Views on Climate and Energy, that unfolded in the run-up to the next round of UN climate talks in Paris later this year.

According to the scientists at the World Resource Institute (WRI), the number of the people on the planet that are affected by floods every year is going to increase threefold in the coming fifteen years. Environmental NGOs say that the leaders of the international community must focus on the mitigation of climate change effects and the adaptation to natural disasters.

Many people think of global warming as a positive process that is going to reduce the amount of snowfall, the number of snowstorms and the overall occurrence of extreme cold. MIT scientists debunk this myth and say that most regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including Russia, will be hit by heavier snowfall and extreme cold as the result of climate change.

To summarize the outcomes of 2014, the Climate Secretariat presents a top-5 of the year’s most important climate-related discoveries. Not all of them are actual scientific discoveries, strictly speaking. Rather, they are both the realizations that humanity has matured enough to come to, and naked facts - that present a serious dilemma for both Russia and the rest of the world.

Three quarters of Russians believe climate change is a threat to human existence, and one third is absolutely sure of this, according to results of a public opinion poll by the Global Challenges Foundation in Stockholm. Representatives of non-governmental environmental organizations believe that the climate change comes out of the sphere of scientific discussion and becomes a pressing issue for residents of Russia.

Russia has stated that the goal of keeping global warming within 2 degrees in the new climate agreement shall not be a limiting factor. Representatives of environmental organizations believe that the agreement, which must be adopted in 2015, shall fix considerable and ambitious economic mechanisms to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The third part of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that it is possible to avoid the catastrophic climate change consequences, but only if the immediate and long-term reduction of carbon pollution will be started by every country.