Global Warming Helped Cause Syrian Civil War ?

[Airbrush]

I first heard this watching Bill Maher's "Make America Sane Again". So I googled it to find this article from 2015. Does anyone dispute this? If this is true, it is amazing that not more is made of this on cable news.

 

"The bloody conflict in Syria—which enters its fifth year this month [ article dated two years ago 3-2-15]—has killed almost 200,000 people, created 3.2 million refugees, and given rise to the murderous extremist group known as the Islamic State. The roots of the civil war extend deep into Syria’s political and socioeconomic structures. But another cause turns out to be global warming.

 

"When violence erupted in Syria during the Arab Spring in 2011, the country had been mired in a three-year drought—its worst in recorded history. Government agricultural policies had led to an overreliance on rain, so desperate farmers had to turn to well water—and they ended up sucking most of the country’s groundwater reserves dry. What happened next upended the country. “A lot of these farmers picked up their families, abandoned their villages, and went en masse to urban areas,” says Colin Kelley, a climate scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of a new paper on the conflict. Add 1.5 million refugees fleeing the US-led invasion of Iraq, and the population of Syrian cities grew by 50 percent between 2002 and 2010. The influx led to illegal settlements, rampant unemployment, and inequality. But the government hardly did anything in response (corruption didn’t help, nor did the fact that the hardest-hit areas were populated by Kurdish minorities, who have long been discriminated against and ignored). Soon, frustrations boiled over."

 

https://www.wired.com/2015/03/global-warming-helped-cause-syrian-war/

Edited April 27, 2017 by Airbrush

[Ken Fabian]

There was a PBS documentary that included the assertion that the conflict in Syria - and others - have been exacerbated by climate change consequences, ie record drought conditions. It featured former US Chiefs of Staff and other military figures. The idea that it will be a threat multiplier has been around a while within Intelligence circles.

 

http://pbsinternational.org/programs/the-age-of-consequences/

[Ten oz]

If this is true, it is amazing that not more is made of this on cable news.

Cable news is ratings driven. Trump's tweets get better ratings than civil war in Syria. People have grown accustomed to short black and white headlines. Anything that requires lengthy reading, has nuanced pros and cons, or difficult solutions gets ignored by most people. That is just the reality of it. If Syria got ratings CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, and etc would report on it around the clock.

[EdEarl]

Unfortunately, this aspect of global warming is good business for arms dealers, and some of the proceeds, probably, go for climate change denial to improve business.

Edited May 1, 2017 by EdEarl