Wednesday, 17 March 2010 10:18
According to experts at the PEW Environment Group, the world may lose trillions of dollars by the middle of the century due to speedy melting of ice in the Arctic. The Polar ice cap is disappearing so fast that it may melt completely in the near future, say American experts. This will lead to large-scale calamities and will cause huge damage to the economy.
Is it worth believing in these predications? Global warming has been worrying scientists in recent years; however, scientists are divided over how climate change will affect the economy.
About 300 research projects have been carried out in the past decade and over one third of them insist that global warming will have a favorable impact on the global economy.
But most scientists disagree. Melting ice in the Arctic is not a fantasy concocted by scientists, says Vladimir Grachev, a member of the UNESCO commission on ecological issues. "The melting of ice in the Arctic and Russia's continental north as a whole causes huge damage to both the environment and the economy."
Grachev explains. "The damage is caused by the retreat of permafrost, the destruction of facilities on this territory, the thinning of the ice layer and the change in conditions for the existence of fauna and flora, especially polar bears."
According to Grachev, it's impossible to stop global warming, but people can reduce its negative impact on climate change. If Russian companies fail to invest money in solving the issue now, it will be too late to improve the situation.
"There is a need to take into account the fact that the Yamal Peninsula might go under water due to global warming when exploring new gas fields there," Grachev predicts. "This is a serious problem, which has to be attended to without delay."
Critics of the global warming theory insist that the increase in temperature and the processes linked to this – especially the melting of ice – are caused by unintentional fluctuations. The planet has experienced such situations at least twice in the past ten thousand years.
But the question of what affect climate change will have on the economy remains, while many predict there will be benefits to Russian and Canadian economies. With ice melting, mineral deposits in the far north will be more accessible for processing – and the economy could reap benefits not only from new oil and gas fields but also in other industries, as the shipping routes on an ice-free Arctic sea open up.