#Russia has Called B.S. on #GlobalWarming, and has in Fact Been Doing it for Well over a Decade

Jim Stone

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes global warming is a "fraud" - a plot to keep Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.

Putin believes "there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia," Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and Putin critic, told The New York Times.

"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.

"We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited," Illarionov 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."

Read more here