By Andrey Kuzmin
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Wildfires
crackled across Siberia this summer, turning skies ochre and sending up
enough smoke from burning pines to blot out satellite views of the
400-mile-long Lake Baikal.
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.
While Western media have examined the role of rising
temperatures and drought in this year’s record wildfires in North
America, Russian media continue to pay little attention to an issue that
animates so much of the world.
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Source: Euronews
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