Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 11 – Global warming
is leading to the erosion of shorelines in the Russian north by as much as four
meters a year and to approximately one accident there every three days
involving power stations, roads, gas and oil pipelines, and other
infrastructure, according to analysts at the emergency services ministry.
The ministry’s All-Russian Center
for Monitoring and Predicting Extraordinary Events says these developments are
especially worrisome because of the importance of the Northern Sea Route to
Moscow’s plans and because of the presence of atomic power stations and the
basing of nuclear-powered ice breakers (ria.ru/science/20180311/1516099271.html).
Other facilities
in the North that may become the source of technogenic accidents include “chemically
dangerous and explosive objects and important elements of communications,” all
of which are worrisome. But some things, the center says, are absolutely
predictable like the erosion of the coastline.
Among the areas most profoundly
affected, the center continues, are Chukotka, the Kolyma and Indigirka river
estuaries, most of the Western Siberian lowland, the shoreline of the Kars Sea,
Novaya Zemlya, and also the areas in the north of European Russia where the
permafrost is melting especially quickly.
Because these are major oil and gas
producing regions and the site of numerous military facilities, the center
says, the Russian authorities are concerned that last year alone “more than 100”
events occurred in which roads, housing, pipelines or other facilities were
harmed. Unless preventing measures are taken, such events will affect Russia’s
economy and national security.
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