Putin's Run

I know the Russians have a reputation for looking at geopolitics like chess and planning many moves ahead, but this is ridiculous (via Newsmax Insider):

Russia's decision to cut the flow of natural gas to Europe could be linked to reports that the planet is entering a new ice age, a leading weather expert says.

AccuWeather's chief hurricane and long-range forecaster Joe Bastardi said on Glenn Beck's radio program, "My theory . . . is that [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin knows what's going to happen, or he believes the same way I do about the overall climate pattern.

"So if you control the pipeline into Europe, you literally can control Europe without firing a shot — if you control the energy."

Russia supplies about one-quarter of the European Union's gas, 80% of it shipped through Ukraine's vast pipeline network. Russia cut off gas supplies to Europe on January 7 just as the continent was gripped by freezing temperatures, possibly instigating a new "Cold" War.

One report published by the Russian news source Pravda Online stated, "Earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science.

"Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, 12,000-year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years."

The report dismisses assertions that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming, noting: "Global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse.

In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperatures to rise; instead the natural cycle increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise."

Bastardi said in an interview with the Business and Media Institute cited by NewsBusters.com, "If you look at those Russian scientists, where a lot of these studies on it getting cold come from . . . what makes you think that Putin doesn't have some knowledge of that?"

Or, rather, what does he know that Al Gore doesn't?  Answer: quite a bit, if he's willing to bet future Russian global domination on it.  And to think that Putin's intended prey - Europe and now Obamerika - are bent upon destroying their own economic vitality in the face of this power play, essentially saving Czar Vlad the trouble of softening them up, by a full-scale face-planting descent into pagan global warming superstition.

By the time Red Barry and friends get finished "saving the planet," we'll have already reverted to hunting & gathering, living in caves, and otherwise embraced the lifestyle of the ape-men in the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyessy long before the ice sheets force it on us (or else).  At that point, whether our ruler is an indigenous communist tyrant or a former KGB hack will almost be irrelevant.

Either way, you can be that THEY will never be left out in the cold.