Russian President Vladimir Putin says that global warming is a “fraud”, and the myth of man-made global warming is being perpetuated by the West in order to prevent Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.
Putin has said that “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia”.
Dailycaller.com reports:
“That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general,” Belkovsky said.
Putin has been casting doubt on man-made global warming since the early 2000s, according to the Times.
In 2003, Putin told an international climate conference warming would allow Russians to “spend less on fur coats,” adding that “agricultural specialists say our grain production will increase, and thank God for that.”
Putin’s comments likely came after his staff “did very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate,” according to Andrey Illarionov, Putin’s former senior economic adviser, who’s now a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.
The New York Times published an article on how the Russian media’s skepticism of global warming is being driven by Putin’s laissez faire attitude on the issue.
The Times bashed the Russian autocrat for offering “only vague and modest pledges of emissions cuts ahead of December’s U.N. climate summit in Paris.”
Related: Global Warming Data FAKED by Government
Here’s a print screen from Reuters.com, just in case their article also gets pulled:
Source & references: Reuters; The New York Times (link now missing); Daily Caller
