Excerpt:
In 2003, Putin amazed scientists when he speculated that a global warming by “two or three degrees” could be a good thing for Russia as its people would no longer need fur coats.
A press conference hosted by the RIA Novosti state news agency ahead of Cancun provided some indication of official attitudes. Called “Climate Change: myth or reality?” it gave a platform to a leading climate sceptic academic.
“Climate is a concept that has existed as long as the Earth exists… several hundred million years ago the temperature was 10-13 degrees higher than now,” said Yury Israel, director of the Institute of Global Climate and Environment at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“What is happening now is not some kind of unusual special case,” he said, adding that life flourished on Earth at the time of dinosaurs.
Full story here
h/t to WUWT reader Jorge Kafkazar
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It’s going to take more than two or three degrees to get rid of the need for fur coats in Russia.
Molodtsi.
From an earlier WUWT comment by oakwood who read a comment by Trofim on the Guardian’s website regarding historical Russian temps:
1298: There was a wholesale death of animals. In the same year there was a drought, and the woods and peat bogs burnt.
1364: Halfway through summer there was a complete smoke haze, the heat was dreadful, the forests, bogs and earth were burning, rivers dried up. The same thing happened the following year . . .
1431: following a blotting out of the sky, and pillars of fire, there was a drought – “the earth and the bogs smouldered, there was no clear sky for 6 weeks, nobody saw the sun, fishes, animals and birds died of the smoke.
1735: Empress Anna wrote to General Ushakov: “Andrei Ivanovich, here in St Petersburg it is so smoky that one cannot open the windows, and all because, just like last year, the forests are burning. We are surprised that no-one has thought about how to stem the fires, which are burning for the second year in a row”.
1831: Summer was unbearably hot, and as a consequence of numerous fires in the forests, there was a constant haze of smoke in the air, through which the sun appeared a red hot ball; the smell of burning was so strong, that it was difficult to breathe.
The years of 1839-1841 were known as the “hungry years”. In the spring of 1840, the spring sowings of corn disappeared in many places. From midway through April until the end of August not a drop of rain fell. From the beginning of summer the fields were covered with a dirty grey film of dust. All the plants wilted, dying from the heat and lack of water. It was extraordinarily hot and close, even though the sun, being covered in haze, shone very weakly through the haze of smoke. Here and there in various regions of Russia the forests and peat bogs were burning (the firest had begun already in 1839). there was a reddish haze, partially covering the sun, and there were dark, menacing clouds on the horizon. There was a choking stench of smoke which penetrated everywhere, even into houses where the windows remained closed.
1868: the weather was murderous. It rained once during the summer. There was a drought. The sun, like a red hot cinder, glowed through the clouds of smoke from the peat bogs. Near Peterhoff the forests and peat workings burnt, and troops dug trenches and flooded the subterranean fire. It was 40 centigrade in the open, and 28 in the shade.
1868: a prolonged drought in the northern regions was accompanied by devastating fires in various regions. Apart from the cities and villages affected by this catastrophe, the forests, peat workings and dried-up marshes were burning. In St Petersburg region smoke filled the city and its outlying districts for several weeks.
1875: While in western europe there is continual rain and they complain about the cold summer, here in Russia there is a terrible drought. In southern Russia all the cereal and fruit crops have died, and around St Petersburg the forest fires are such that in the city itself, especially in the evening, there is a thick haze of smoke and a smell of burning. Yesterday, the burning woods and peat bogs threatened the ammunitiion stores of the artillery range and even Okhtensk gunpowder factory.
1885: (in a letter from Peter Tchaikovsky, composer): I’m writing to you at three oclock in the afternoon in such darkness, you would think it was nine oclock at night. For several days, the horizon has been enveloped in a smoke haze, arising, they say, from fires in the forest and peat bogs. Visibility is diminishing by the day, and I’m starting to fear that we might even die of suffocation.
1917 (diary of Aleksandr Blok, poet): There is a smell of burning, as it seems, all around the city peat bogs, undergrowth and trees are burning. And no-one can extinguish it. That will be done only by rain and the winter. Yellowish-brown clouds of smoke envelope the villages, wide swaithes of undergrowth are burning, and God sends no rain, and what wheat there is in the fields is burning.
Well, Russia doesn’t need to embrace alarmism, it already has a totalitarian system; certain factions in the West seem desperate to catch up and see AGW alarmism as an ideal vehicle for achieving similar totalitarian results.
“Well, Russia doesn’t need to embrace alarmism, it already has a totalitarian system”
-It also doesn’t need anything to stand between the oligarchs and their oil.
If there is a country that knows what cold is it’s Russia. I think that’s why they are good
Spacers….
scott ramsdell says: (November 27, 2010 at 7:50 pm) From an earlier WUWT comment by oakwood…
Well worth repeating, Scott. Thanks.
scott ramsdell says: Wrote
November 27, 2010 at 7:50 pm
(Russian fire history lesson) Thanks.
It seems to me, with modern man’s fire fighting capabilities, have we not altered the earth’s climate by extinguishing fires in the modern age? It would be nice to see a good scientific study on this issue.
I still don’t understand why the “harryreadme.txt” file is being ignored.
That document shows total corrupted data was used for history.
Climategate emails say original data was deleted.
Am I wrong?
If CO2 increase follows higher temps by 800 years or so…
could our current increased CO2 be caused by the MWP?
Russians have far too many “real world” problems than worrying bout a little warming. If anything, most Russians would prefer a little warming.
Russia steadfastly denied that Y2K was going to be an issue. I heard a Russian computer scientist interviewed on the radio back then who said that Y2K was a crisis manufactured by American computer consultants to create windfall profits. Then they immediately interviewed an American computer expert who said nudge, nudge, wink, wink, “We all know what those Russians are like- not very sophisticated, etc.” Y2K turned out to be a big scam where the public were bilked out of billions and in countries like Russia, where the did virtually nothing, nothing happened. The swine flu H1N1 “pandemic” last year was another scam where the public were separated from billions of dollars and in countries like Poland, where they did nothing, nothing happened. The subprime mortgage scam, of course separated the public from trillions of dollars. I long for the old days when entrepreneurs gathered together a band of bullies, smashed people on the head, took their crops and then declared themselves rulers forever. At least working people back then didn’t have to put up with the constant fear mongering that we live with. Anyway, if the Russian politicians still say no to AGW, I say maybe its because they are still bashing their citizenry over head to separate them from their earnings. When they learn the modern techniques of profiteering, look for them to embrace AGW, H1N1 and the heartbreak of psoriasis.
“Despite hellish summer, Russia says “nyet” to AGW”
Despite two ice-laden winters U.S., government officials say “yes” to AGW. What happened to the “weather is not climate” argument of the AGW crowd where Russia is concerned? If its hotter than average, it’s AGW. If it’s colder than average, it’s “manmade climate disruption”.
Someone should explain to U.S. officials that “average” is a derivation of a series of numbers that seldom, in and of themselves, hit “average”.
Mike Restin says: (November 27, 2010 at 9:37 pm) I still don’t understand why the “harryreadme.txt” file is being ignored.
I don’t either, Mike.
Check “Is it in their Nature to lie?” — The Devil’s Knife agrees with us wholeheartedly.
We had also the hottest summer in record in Finland. However, the previous record was from 1914… when the wind blows persistently from the southeast in July, Finland will enjoy record warmth, global warming or not.
http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/weather/climate_4.html#4
Horror summer? At last a little bit warm. Something that the rest of world enjoys every year.
Global warming is not harmful. Sahara is getting greener. Russia and Greenland are areas where humans do not live because it is no cold.
Russians has the right to be selfish like Americans. They have oil and natural gas. There is no reason to abandon these.
The Russians have a long history of warming dreamings. In the 1950s they had this massive engineering project on the table which was to ‘reverse’ the north flowing rivers. This was primarily for irrigation purposes, but the depriving of the arctic ocean of fresh water might make it ice-free. And and ice-free arctic would have significant climate feedback and allow farming much further north. Anyway, with the 40s and 50s warming, there had already been talk among scientists that the Arctic might soon be ice free regardless – and that this was climatic-wise a fairly normal condition…and unquestionably most favourable.
Then in 1956 these Yanks (Ewing and Donn) came up with the idea that an ice-free arctic was what actually triggered Ice Ages. Their theory was pretty far fetched but it was resillient in the political climite of the West – and it made the Ruskies’ scheme look pretty stupid. The Ice Age story was picked up and spun out in the USA press and Ice Age scare continued to ebb and flowed through the late 50s to the 1970s.
Western scientists opposed the Russian scheme and it became a bit of a cold war thing, but the up side of this interest was that Western scientists started to show an interest in Russian research. At the height of the cold war, from the late 1960s, Russian science was translated and published, including a secular global temperature graphs which were the authority in the USA until 1981 the new standard was born of James Hansen’s pen.
Moscow forecast for Mon 29th Max -11 C. The average maximum for December is -3.5 C. The outlook is for it to get even colder over the next few days.
http://worldweather.wmo.int/107/c00206.htm
Well it may have been warm in Russia last summer, but here in the UK we have had the coldest November temperatures since records began.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11855579
Mike Restin says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:37 pm
I still don’t understand why the “harryreadme.txt” file is being ignored.
Totally agree… it was the killer blow for me…
So I guess it must have been translated into Russian and Chinese…
Roger Carr says:
November 27, 2010 at 10:16 pm
The Devil’s Knife agrees with us wholeheartedly.
Thank you the link… wonderful article… and their use of the Anglo-Saxon word beginning with F expresses my outrage… especially as that is what the AGWers are trying to do to everyone else.
Jarmo says:
November 27, 2010 at 10:36 pm
We had also the hottest summer in record in Finland. However, the previous record was from 1914… when the wind blows persistently from the southeast in July, Finland will enjoy record warmth, global warming or not.
Helsinki-Vantaa forecast for Mon 29th Max -16 C. The average maximum for December is -0.8 C. The outlook is for it to get even colder over the next few days.
http://worldweather.wmo.int/061/c00168.htm
Reality check: summer temperatures in Central Russia grid
http://i56.tinypic.com/2w4zg44.jpg
July was really warmest evah, but June/August were not warmer than in the past. Overall trend: zero.
Reason: atmospheric blocking
Connection with CO2: none.
It looks like the iron curtain alive and well, and acting like a firewall-protecting Russia from the avalanche of socially-engineered pseudo-science, MSM propaganda and political PR bombarding the West. It seems that in Russia, we can at least hear from scientists and journalists that haven’t been bought and paid for, and are therefore impartial. (Imagine the ‘settled science’ furore that would have come from the USA, had they have experienced similar conditions.)
I say keep up the info from Russia, they seem to be a beacon of sanity.
The Russians have just emerged from 80 years of a stupid debilitating dogma called communism, based on the rantings of Marx, Lenin, Stalin etc.
Not surprisingly, they don’t want another 80 years of another stupid debilitating dogma called AGW, based on the rantings of Mann, Jones, Briffa etc.
Michael says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:17 pm
It seems to me, with modern man’s fire fighting capabilities, have we not altered the earth’s climate by extinguishing fires in the modern age? It would be nice to see a good scientific study on this issue.
That is a fantastic observation! I’ve often said that the apparent rise around 1970 in global temperature just happens to coincide with the advent of clean air acts around the world, but it never occurred to me that we may actually be using fossil-fuel powered fire engines to reduce atmospheric pollution levels beyond the “natural” level pre-fire-engine technology fire-planes, etc.
Fortunately, nature being nature, you can reduce the number of fires for a while, but sooner or later the critical level of burnable brushwood makes it virtually impossible to contain any fire and eventually the whole backlog of burnable material goes up in one go – evening out the score!