Obama to seek climate deal in Moscow

[SpartanDem]

Source: The Guardian

Barack Obama will move to seal a deal with Russia for joint action on climate change during his summit in Moscow next week, the Guardian has learned.


Obama arrives in Moscow on Monday at the start of a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana that will focus heavily on energy and climate change. From Moscow, Obama travels on to Italy for a meeting of the G8 and a gathering of the major polluting countries.


Administration officials are still working out the broad outlines of an agreement that would see the US offer its expertise and technical support to Russian efforts to make its industries more energy efficient. In return Moscow would sign on to international efforts to scale back the emissions that cause global warming at a crucial UN summit in Copenhagen in December.


The overture to Russia — the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after America and China — furthers the strategy adopted by the Obama administration to enter into separate deals for action on climate change with each of the world's biggest polluters.




Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/03/obama...

[Uncle Joe]

1. I wish them the best of luck.

Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, SpartanDem.

[Captain Hilts]

2. The Russians don't give a shit about global warming, for the obvious reason. nt

[Uncle Joe]

3. What is the obvious reason? n/t

[Captain Hilts]

4. They would like the arctic areas rich with minerals to be warmer. They joke about

global warming.

[Uncle Joe]

5. That may be so but I don't believe they will feel like joking anymore, should they or the shallow

artic seas have a massive methane release. I believe should that happen, the results will be globally catastrophic and that includes for the Russians. This article is dated, today scientists are more alarmed than they were in 2005

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

“Global Warming melting Siberian permafrost releasing huge methane amounts”

http://www.alternet.org/environment/25351

<snip>

"According to August 11 articles in the magazine New Scientist and the British newspaper the Guardian, a pair of scientists, one Russian and one British, report that global warming is melting the permafrost in the West Siberian tundra. The news made a little blip in the international media and the blogosphere, and then it disappeared.

Why should anyone care? Because melting of the Siberian permafrost will, over the next few decades, release hundreds of millions of tons of methane from formerly frozen peat bogs into the atmosphere. Methane from those bogs is at least twenty times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide that currently drives global warming. Dumping such a huge quantity of methane on top of already soaring CO2 levels will drive global temperatures to the upper range of increases forecast for the remainder of this century."

<snip>

[Captain Hilts]

6. If they were informed, that would be the case, but they are not. nt

[Uncle Joe]

7. It's inevitable, they will be informed one way or the other, either by the scientists and candid

free speech or by mother nature.

I hope for their sake and ours, it's the former.

[excess_3]

8. only one country is stupid enuf to give money to Russians

Russians will lie and cheat

[TheLastMohican]

9. Unlike the good ol USA

Lying and cheating and taking advantage of people around the world since....forever.