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"The ongoing Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011, has drawn attention from both the scientific community and the media to the question of how climatic co

"The ongoing Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011, has drawn attention from both the scientific community and the media to the question of how climatic conditions can contribute to political unrest and civil war. Recent studies of the Syrian uprising have shown that growing water scarcity and frequent droughts, coupled with poor water management, led to multiyear crop failures, economic deterioration and consequently mass migration of rural families to urban areas (Gleick, 2014; Kelley et al., 2015). Rapid growing population, overcrowding, unemployment and increased inequality put pressure on urban centers and finally contributed to the breakout of political unrest" That's the introduction paragraph. "Blaming the US" for all turmoil in the Middle East is far too simplistic.

iguy 8y ago
I don't doubt that you can find something statistically significant (once you control for everything else) but every time this comes up, the relative sizes of things seem vastly under-emphasized. If 5% less rain does bad things for stability, and what surely matters is food per mouth, then what's 4x the population doing? https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+syria https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+syria
- benj111 8y ago
  If you have 4x the population, you plant 4x the grain. If you have drought, 4x the grain would succumb to drought. You can plant extra grain in anticipation but you need to commit to buying possibly unneeded grain, which pushes up costs, which causes problems for the people you're trying to help.
- gowld 8y ago
  5% rain doesn't mean 5% less crops. It's a nonlinear relationship that could mean 1% less crops or 90% less crops.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Absolutely, and I pulled 5% out of thin air, too. Here's a graph with the famous Arab spring 2011 drought... about 10%, for one year. You can debate how much of that you wish to attribute to what cause. But note that this is also the population growth since 2011 alone. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.PRD.CREL.MT?locations=EG https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.PRD.CREL.MT?location...
CodeMage 8y ago
It's clear from that same introduction paragraph that the focus of the studies is pretty narrow and excludes a whole slew of factors that would normally be considered extremely relevant.
luckylion 8y ago
> That's the introduction paragraph. "Blaming the US" for all turmoil in the Middle East is far too simplistic. Sure, you're right (at least in a general sense; Libya, Iraq are 100% on the US/NATO). But saying climate change plays a significant role in a conflict that has been started by external forces is a joke. We might've seen wars in the middle east without US/NATO starting them, and climate change would probably have played a role in those (as would population size), but we won't, because they did start them. It's a nice meme, though. "It wasn't us by arming, training and directing forces to topple a Regime we didn't like - it was climate change!"

iguy 8y ago

I don't doubt that you can find something statistically significant (once you control for everything else) but every time this comes up, the relative sizes of things seem vastly under-emphasized. If 5% less rain does bad things for stability, and what surely matters is food per mouth, then what's 4x the population doing? https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+syria https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+syria

benj111 8y ago
If you have 4x the population, you plant 4x the grain. If you have drought, 4x the grain would succumb to drought. You can plant extra grain in anticipation but you need to commit to buying possibly unneeded grain, which pushes up costs, which causes problems for the people you're trying to help.
gowld 8y ago
5% rain doesn't mean 5% less crops. It's a nonlinear relationship that could mean 1% less crops or 90% less crops.
- iguy 8y ago
  Absolutely, and I pulled 5% out of thin air, too. Here's a graph with the famous Arab spring 2011 drought... about 10%, for one year. You can debate how much of that you wish to attribute to what cause. But note that this is also the population growth since 2011 alone. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.PRD.CREL.MT?locations=EG https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.PRD.CREL.MT?location...

CodeMage 8y ago

It's clear from that same introduction paragraph that the focus of the studies is pretty narrow and excludes a whole slew of factors that would normally be considered extremely relevant.

luckylion 8y ago

> That's the introduction paragraph. "Blaming the US" for all turmoil in the Middle East is far too simplistic. Sure, you're right (at least in a general sense; Libya, Iraq are 100% on the US/NATO). But saying climate change plays a significant role in a conflict that has been started by external forces is a joke. We might've seen wars in the middle east without US/NATO starting them, and climate change would probably have played a role in those (as would population size), but we won't, because they did start them. It's a nice meme, though. "It wasn't us by arming, training and directing forces to topple a Regime we didn't like - it was climate change!"