> Poor planning and management, wasteful irrigation systems, intensive wheat and cotton farming and a rapidly growing population are straining water resources in Syria in a year which has seen unprecedented internal displacement as a result of drought in eastern and northeastern parts of the country.
> “Population [estimated at 24 million in 2009] growth, urbanization and increased economic activity have contributed to the water crisis, as have climate change and mismanagement of the water sector,” said a local expert, who preferred anonymity.
> Blamed on a combination of climate change, man-made desertification and lack of irrigation, up to 60 percent of Syria's land and 1.3 million people (of a population of 22 million) are affected, according to the UN. Just over 800,000 people have lost their entire livelihood, according to the UN and IFRC.
[...]
> Aid agencies say a sustainable long-term plan for the affected areas is needed. "We need to do studies to identify a disaster risk reduction strategy on how to overcome climate change and have better farming practices," said Awad.
> Most studies currently describe climate change as a “threat multiplier” rather than a direct cause, just one of a host of interconnected factors – like poverty, exclusion of ethnic groups, government mismanagement, political instability and societal breakdown – that drive conflict.
It is incredibly easy to throw in "climate change" at the end of any list of factors to explain this or that event. Indeed, who is ever going to dispute it? Climate change is, by its very nature, everywhere- so everywhere it can be used as an explanation of something.
The links you provide follow this rule, listing many good reasons for the Syrian water scarcity (and not for the Syrian conflict)- such as dramatic population increase (83% increase in 23 years), land and water resources mismanagement, bad economic measures, wasteful agricultural practices- and throwing in climate change in the end, just to be safe.
In general, one could question how much sense does it make to even cite a far and dubious cause like climate change when more obvious causes are perfectly evident. My favourite example was a WHO report which calculated the future global health impact of climate change as an additional 250000 deaths per year. A huge number. And the method to get it was the following: given the current total number of deaths due to diarrohea, malaria and undernutrition (about 7 million deaths yearly- all of which in developing countries, therefore due to poverty and perfectly preventable), multiplying them by 3.5% (the projected impact of climate change on these issues) and voila... an excellent case for spending some 44 trillion dollars to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy. Or not?
You're arguing with people who have a religious view towards climate change. That poster, Smaug123, just came close to justifying the use of nuclear weapons in the other thread to the grandparent comment, don't take them seriously.
You've shown yourself to be insulting. You've shown yourself to argue for a case that the Syrian war is caused by climate change. You read a post where someone took an inflammatory meme out of context, and tries to make sense out of a situation where climate change could lead to nuclear war:
> "Guns don't kill people! People kill people!"
> Having climate change around sure makes it easier for people to work themselves into positions where they have to use the nukes.
And you defended it by insulting my intelligence. I am really not impressed.
I don't think my comment was ignorant at all. It might be that I just have a longer memory than you. In reality the US government gave a guarded but cautious welcome to Bashar Assad when he succeeded his father and carried himself like a reformist for a few years. But when poor harvests - among other factors - led to protests against the Syrian government, said government responded in a very repressive fashion, which in turn stirred up more opposition.
Clearly you think many other factors are more important, but if you think I'm 'dangerously ignorant' for considering food security as a factor then I'm not going to take your input very seriously.
Well, the US government was in excellent terms with Saddam Hussein, when he waged against Iran a war that killed between half a million and a million people.
Then invaded the country and had Saddam captured and killed on a false pretense, causing other 40 thousand deaths and plunging the country into civil war.
In Chile backed the coup of a bloodthirsty dictator that had thousands of opponents killed and tens of thousands tortured.
Is backing right now Saudi Arabia, one of the states with the worst human rights record on Earth, in the military repression of the Houtis rebellion in Yemen.
As for Syria, according to Wikipedia:
"The Assad government opposed the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Bush administration then began to destabilize the regime by increasing sectarian tensions, showcasing and publicising Syrian repression of Kurdish and Sunni groups, and financing political dissidents."
And "the main Syrian opposition body – the Syrian coalition – receives political, logistic and military support from the United States, Britain and France. Some Syrian rebels get training from the CIA at bases in Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Under the aegis of operation Timber Sycamore and other clandestine activities, CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have trained and armed nearly 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year since 2012."
Thus promoting and fuelling a civil war that has costed so far between 300 and 400 thousand deaths.
