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Climate skeptic Putin and Russian media
Sounds familiar? Just substitute "Republican Party" and "Fox News" for Putin and Russian media (along with a few place names). .
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/29/us-climatechange-summit-russia-media-idUSKCN0SN1GI20151029#MMd0Kyh5oqJcfyY4.97
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. .To many climate scientists, the worsening fires are a consequence of Siberia getting hotter, the carbon unleashed from its burning forests and tundra only adding to man-made fossil fuel emissions. Siberia's wildfire season has lengthened in recent years and the 2015 blazes were among the biggest yet, caking the lake, the "Pearl of Siberia", in ash and scorching the surrounding permafrost. But the Russian public heard little mention of climate change, because media coverage across state-controlled television stations and print media all but ignored it. On national TV, the villains were locals who routinely but carelessly burn off tall grasses every year, and the sometimes incompetent crews struggling to put the fires out.
. . .
The indifference reflects widespread public doubt that human activities play a significant role in global warming, a tone set by President Vladimir Putin, who has offered only vague and modest pledges of emissions cuts ahead of December's U.N. climate summit in Paris. Russia's official view appears to have changed little since 2003, when Putin told an international climate conference that warmer temperatures would mean Russians "spend less on fur coats" while "agricultural specialists say our grain production will increase, and thank God for that". The president believes that "there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia," says Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and critic of Putin. "That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general."
. . .
"We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited," he said. "It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to 'fight' global warming was rather unfounded." That opinion endures. During a trip to the Arctic in 2010, Putin acknowledged that "the climate is changing", but restated his doubt that human activity was the cause. His trip was to inspect the retreat of the polar ice cap, something that promises to make the Arctic ocean and northern Siberia more accessible to exploration and production of the oil that Russia, the world's leading producer, depends on for export earnings. Marianna Poberezhskaya, author of the academic work "Communicating Climate Change in Russia", characterized media coverage in Russia as "climate silence", broken only by the airing of official doubts about any human impact on global temperatures.
. .
But for all that, there is no sign of public pressure on authorities to do more, let alone of Putin relaxing Russia's hard line ahead of the Paris talks."This subject has failed to become a priority," says Konstantin Simonov, the founder of a non-governmental oil and gas research fund who often appears on Russian media. "Russia's attitude will most likely be something like this: Guys, you put economic pressure on us, introduced sanctions. Do you expect us to be holier than the Pope about the issue you're pushing through and take a load of responsibilities?"
The answer, he says, will be: "No."
. . .
The indifference reflects widespread public doubt that human activities play a significant role in global warming, a tone set by President Vladimir Putin, who has offered only vague and modest pledges of emissions cuts ahead of December's U.N. climate summit in Paris. Russia's official view appears to have changed little since 2003, when Putin told an international climate conference that warmer temperatures would mean Russians "spend less on fur coats" while "agricultural specialists say our grain production will increase, and thank God for that". The president believes that "there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia," says Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and critic of Putin. "That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general."
. . .
"We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited," he said. "It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to 'fight' global warming was rather unfounded." That opinion endures. During a trip to the Arctic in 2010, Putin acknowledged that "the climate is changing", but restated his doubt that human activity was the cause. His trip was to inspect the retreat of the polar ice cap, something that promises to make the Arctic ocean and northern Siberia more accessible to exploration and production of the oil that Russia, the world's leading producer, depends on for export earnings. Marianna Poberezhskaya, author of the academic work "Communicating Climate Change in Russia", characterized media coverage in Russia as "climate silence", broken only by the airing of official doubts about any human impact on global temperatures.
. .
But for all that, there is no sign of public pressure on authorities to do more, let alone of Putin relaxing Russia's hard line ahead of the Paris talks."This subject has failed to become a priority," says Konstantin Simonov, the founder of a non-governmental oil and gas research fund who often appears on Russian media. "Russia's attitude will most likely be something like this: Guys, you put economic pressure on us, introduced sanctions. Do you expect us to be holier than the Pope about the issue you're pushing through and take a load of responsibilities?"
The answer, he says, will be: "No."
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