Climate science has been stymied as Russia continues its war in Ukraine. The stalled work threatens to leave the West without a clear picture of how fast the Earth is heating up.

  • humblebun@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    with Western-imposed sanctions and other restrictions, interrupting work on a host of projects

    Which sanctions? Communication wasn’t and will not be banned. Russian authors are still published and welcomed at various conferences.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOPM
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      2 months ago
      • Western nations aren’t funding people to work in Russia.
      • Russia requires people who live there and accept funding from overseas to register as foreign agents
      • humblebun@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Western nations aren’t funding people to work in Russia.

        They are. VoA and Red Cross do function there. Alongside with a thousand of commercial organizations like Manpower and Unilever

        Russia requires people who live there and accept funding from overseas to register as foreign agents

        Yes and no. Currently, the government can pronounce anyone a foreign agent stating that they are under foreign influence. Money is not the source of this status anymore.

        Foreign research initiatives in Russia used to work a little bit different to what you have probably used to. There were, effectively two ways:

        1. Foreign organizations grant Russian scientists money for research, but the money is transferred to the Russian government, and the government gives it to the scientists in a year.

        2. A foreign organization and a Russian both give a grant to a cross-national group. The foreign one transfers money to the foreign part of the group and the Russian one transfers to the Russian.

        Both these ways seem to work right now, so the claim in the article looks suspicious to me.

    • masterofn001
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      2 months ago

      Don’t worry, when the former permafrost becomes bog land the methane sink release will ignite the atmosphere.

      • silence7@slrpnk.netOPM
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        2 months ago

        the former permafrost becomes bog land

        This can happen

        the methane sink release will ignite the atmosphere.

        This is a bunch of words, but not something that we’re actually facing.

        The permafrost wasn’t so much a methane sink, as a place where carbon got stored. When it warms up, the decay process can generate methane, which can then be released. Under some limited conditions, you can actually even burn it when released from natural sources like this, but that’s not usually what happens — it just floats off into the atmosphere.

        The atmosphere as a whole will not ignite.

        • sinkingship@mander.xyz
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          2 months ago

          As far as I understood, it’ll leak into the atmosphere, where it’ll cause 80 or 100 times more warming than CO² for a decade or so, before breaking down into good, old CO², causing further warming for centuries / millennia.

          Not sure, but I think I’ve also read that in the process of breaking down into CO², the ozone layer gets damaged.