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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“Mike Restin says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:48 pm
If CO2 increase follows higher temps by 800 years or so…
could our current increased CO2 be caused by the MWP?”
I know I’ve seen it explained and probably here, but can’t they supposedly account for the age of CO2 by the isotope distribution and doesn”t that prettty much put the increase on us as consumers of “fossil fuels.”
Maybe somebody could point us the right direction.
If the dust bowl of the 1930’s had occurred today just think how wild the warming crowd would be. In the face of such evidence it would probably be criminal to question global warming. Short periods of extreme weather don’t prove anything.
i can guess why they are skeptical. At least after watching this picture over siberia:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/arcisoTTPPWW.gif
Russians are no less liars than Americans. If they are telling the truth in this particular case, it’s only because Putin finds the truth to be more politically convenient (his power depends on oil and gas sales, after all).
Follow the money. Modern scientists say whatever those who pay them want them to say. In the battle of dollars vs. facts dollars always win.
Russians like to repeat what Stalin allegedly once declared:
“Facts are stubborn things. So much worse for the facts, then!”
Alexander, the situation in Russia is very different from what you suppose. Russian scientists can say everything they want, the government just does not pay any attention. Russian bureaucracy would not give a rat ass to what population thinks or says, scientists will get their miserable salaries quite independently of what they do or say. There is no such thing as commonly accepted ideology in Russia, no politcorrectness, no multi-culti, no nothing. Environmentalism does not exist here too. Expert opinion makes no difference to government policy, you can just as well have a lovely discussion with a stone wall.
Sergey,
Having spent the better half of my life in the Soviet Union, I won’t bet a penny on the slightest possibility of a scientist expressing his or her truly independent opinion anywhere in Russia (there may be exceptions to the rule but they are always few and far between).
Russian government may not pay much attention to the scientists these days but scientists themselves are very finely tuned to the preferences of those who can fire or imprison them any time (as they did imprison several scientists already for demonstrating an overly independent behavior).
You state that “there is no such thing as commonly accepted ideology in Russia.”
A dubious statement. In the same sense, there never was a “commonly accepted ideology” in the Soviet Union, either. Nobody among the scientists “accepted” Soviet slogans or propaganda at their face value. But habitual cowardice, corruption, and subservience made scientists say whatever authorities required. These habits did not evaporate, suddenly and miraculously, as soon as the USSR ceased to exist.
The only commonly accepted ideology in Russia always was, and continues to be, the servitude.
Perhaps this is why: “In the Russian capital, Moscow, temperatures dropped to -23.6C, the lowest on record for 1 December since 1931.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11885495