"Russian Media Take Climate Cue From Skeptical Putin"

"MOSCOW -- 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."

Andrey Kuzmin reports for Reuters October 29, 2015.