'Was the Syrian civil war partly caused by climate change? Prince Charles, for one, seems to think so. “There is very good evidence indeed that one of the major reasons for this horror in Syria was a drought that lasted for about five or six years,” he told Sky News, adding that climate change is having a “huge impact” on conflict and terrorism.

The Prince is not alone on this one: he joins a chorus of voices making similar claims. In the US President Obama, Al Gore, and the democratic presidential hopefuls Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have all talked of a link between climate change and the Syria conflict, Sanders going so far as to argue that climate change is “directly related to the growth of terrorism”.

In the UK, the Syria connection has been drawn in government-commissioned reports and by leading NGOs, as well as by activists and commentators ranging from Charlotte Church to George Monbiot.

Having spent some time analysing the evidence, we believe there is good reason to doubt the veracity of these claims. First, most of the public and policy discourse on the conflict implications of climate change is driven by politics, not science.'

'This time round, there at least appears to be some scientific support for the climate-conflict thesis: a study by Earth scientists at Columbia University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found: “Climate change is implicated in the current Syrian conflict”. The problem is, this study is deeply flawed.

First, the study is not even about Syria specifically, nor about the links between Syria’s drought and civil war. Rather, its key finding is that there was a multiyear drought during the late 2000s across the “fertile crescent”, a region defined by the authors as stretching from southern Russia to Saudi Arabia. Through statistical modelling, it is then claimed that this drought was made two to three times more likely by human-caused climate change. On to this analysis the authors simply bolt a few dubious, secondary assertions about the links between drought and conflict in Syria. Crucial among these is that prewar drought in Syria led to the displacement of as many as 1.5 million people to the country’s cities. But this figure – widely reproduced in media reports – is almost certainly wrong: the sole source for it is a single short news report, and it is completely out of line with Syrian government, UN and other estimates, most of which suggested numbers in the region of 250,000.'
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/29/climate-change-syria-civil-...

When even the Guardian won't buy his crap, why do others?

..but let's all vote for copper internet anyway

Chimp_Logic wrote on Dec 1^st, 2015 at 12:10am:

Yes! Just ask any young lib voter too scared to look a baby boomer or ever a gen x/aka enabler  in the eye!