November 9, 2007 (LPAC)--The vice president of Russia's National Geocryological Foundation, Sergei Golubchikov, criticized the politicians who "win Nobel prizes" with their "impassioned calls to fight global warming and shift national economies to sustainable development" in a commentary published on Novosti Nov. 8. Golubchikov, is an environmental expert, warning against "panic" about climate change, and raised Vernadsky's concept of the "noosphere" in considering environmental issues.

"Anxiety over climate change is carried too far, to my mind", he said, "Humanity is focusing environmental efforts on the bogeyman of global warming. Why not shift the emphasis to protecting the oxygen-producing environment?" Greater concentrations of CO2 would actually be positive, he wrote, helping plant life to flourish, while the real problems are serious polluters like sulfur dioxide and other toxic substances, which are polluting vital regions of the earth.

"Nothing deserves closer attention from scientists and political leaders than the ocean, the Arctic and Siberia," Golubchikov wrote. "Politicians and experts win Nobel prizes with impassioned calls to fight global warming and shift national economies to sustainable development. To be honest, promises of a radiant noospheric future sound baffling to me, for there are no objective criteria to the noosphere [the third stage of planetary development after the geosphere and the biosphere]. It cannot be measured, weighed or otherwise evaluated, and there is no way to establish its borders in time and space. But please don't think I shrug off the doctrine of the noosphere. On the contrary, I have the utmost respect for it, just as for those who stood at its cradle-- brilliant Russian scientists Vladimir Vernadsky and Nikita Moiseyev."