Guest essay by E. Calvin Beisner
Did manmade global warming cause the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS?
A new paper, “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” PNAS, March 2, 2015, summarized its findings by saying, “the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers.”
It went on to say, “Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results [emphasis added], strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone.”
It concluded its summary, “human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.”
Not surprisingly, global warming alarmists jumped on the news.
AP’s Seth Borenstein called it “one of the most detailed and strongest connections between violence and human-caused climate change.”
Eric Holthaus, writing in Slate, led his report by saying, “One of the most terrifying implications [of climate change] is the increasingly real threat of wars sparked in part by global warming. New evidence says that Syria may be one of the first such conflicts.”
He cited Retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley, a meteorologist who’s now a professor at Penn State University, as saying, “you can draw a very credible climate connection to this disaster we call ISIS right now.”
But the case isn’t quite so clear. Holthaus also cited Titley as saying that after decades of poor water policy “there was no resilience left in the system” and “It’s not to say you could predict ISIS out of that, but you just set everything up for something really bad to happen.”
A “climate connection” isn’t the same thing as a “manmade global warming connection,” and “climate model results” aren’t exactly convincing support for anything.
Consider first the measures of temperature and rainfall for the region. Are those two factors sufficient to explain the drought—or even much of it? Eyeballing graphs in the PNAS paper suggests not.
In the Fertile Crescent, of which Syria is part, the Palmer Drought Severity Index (which uses a scale from +3 to -3) worsened from about positive 0.2 to about negative 0.8 since 1930. That’s significant but not likely sufficient to explain the severe 2007–2010 drought.
More important, what caused the drought?
The Fertile Crescent experienced about a 7% decline in winter rainfall since 1930, most occurring before 1980, leaving only about 3% during the period of allegedly manmade warming. Not much there to explain.
If you accept the figures from the Climatic Research Unit, home of Climategate, annual surface temperature in the Fertile Crescent rose by about 0.5 C˚ since 1930, again about half before 1980, leaving about 0.25 C˚ since then, but that’s not sufficient to explain the drought.
So, with so little change in precipitation and temperature, why the major increase in drought, and, more important, what caused the conflict over water?
Part of the answer is embedded in Holthaus’s own words: “After decades of poor water policy.” Got that? Poor water policy.
But there’s a second, more important culprit, and neither Holthaus nor Admiral Titley mentions it, though it’s obvious in the bottom portion of Kelley et. al’s graph.
Syria’s population multiplied 11 times since 1930, from about 2 million to about 23 million. At the same time, its industrial and agricultural water use multiplied even more. Eleven times as many people coupled with burgeoning industry and agriculture mean you’re going to use a lot more water—and hence face water shortages, especially with “poor water policy.”
But assume for a moment that higher temperature and lower rainfall, not population growth, actually drove the drought. That doesn’t explain what caused either one, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its 2012 report on extreme weather that it was impossible to demonstrate a connection between global warming, manmade or natural, and increasing frequency or severity of extreme weather events, including droughts.
Even assuming that global warming contributed somewhat to the rise in annual surface temperature and the fall in winter rainfall, that doesn’t mean human activity drove the global warming. The computer models on which the IPCC depends simulate warming from rising atmospheric CO2 at double (and more) the observed rate, and none simulated the complete absence of observed warming over the last 18+ years, so they’re wrong and provide no rational basis for any belief about the magnitude to human contribution to global warming.
At most, human activity has contributed only a fraction of the global warming observed over the last 30, 50, 100, or 150 years, which means it can have contributed only a fraction of the half-degree increase in annual average surface temperature in the Fertile Crescent and only a fraction of the slight decline in rainfall, and hence only a fraction of a fraction of the increased drought and a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the conflict over water.
Rising population coupled with “poor water policy” is a far greater cause of conflict for access to water in Syria.
And as causes of Syria’s civil war, those pale into insignificance compared with religio-political conflicts. Elephant in the living room, anyone?
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
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Roger Andrews debunks the claim:
Below are the rainfall records for six GHCN stations in Syria. They show no sign of any “extreme drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 …. the worst in the country in modern times”. Rainfall over the period was close to normal.
go to this link to see the charts
http://euanmearns.com/blowout-week-62/
Remind me not to select that Rear Admiral to be my PhD Mentor (on Ice cream making.)
If I was going to have a Rear Admiral be my coach, it would have been Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.
G
A few days back WUWT post also debunked the claim.
At that post I pointed to this.
It is a possibility. The “Moche” in now what is the west coast of south America effectively wiped themselves out through war and fighting BECAUSE of drought/famine etc. Climate change (Something not new) a possibility, but certainly was not driven by CO2 emissions. There society fractured and they started fighting and sacrificing people to the “God’s”. Also, apparently, climate change lead to drying of Egypt on the Nile and “Lucy” standing upright!
Same with the Mayans. The decline from the classic period coincided with drought, especially in the south. The more northerly cities were the last to fall. The theory is that the drought caused food supplies to fail, followed by wars, butchery, and the dispersal of the population from the city centers. Happily, there are many Mayans around today. Just visit the Yucatan. Now they’re all Catholics.
See
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya/
Pollen studies in some areas showed zero forest land.
“We modeled the worst and best case scenarios: 100 percent deforestation in the Maya area and no deforestation,” says Sever. “The results were eye opening. Loss of all the trees caused a 3-5 degree rise in temperature and a 20-30 percent decrease in rainfall.”
It looks like the Mays brought on their own disaster.
Well when you cut out people’s hearts, and then chop their heads off to roll down the pyramid steps, along with their torso, for the masses to play games with, then you can run out of people to grow food.
But what is the explanation for the Incas abandoning Mach Pichu ? Is that possibly an el nino or la nina situation, or don’t they last long enough to cause a major upheaval ??
g
I would much more likely link the conflicts in Syria and the rest of the Sandbox to the great “Man-Made Global Warming” fraud by way of the insane diversion of food crops into the production of fuel ethanol as yet another part of the “renewables” crapfest.
The world’s grain markets tend reliably to treat the products of industrial agriculture as fungible. Wheat and rice and barley and rye and corn (“maize” to the Brit-speak types) and suchlike are pretty much equivalent, and you can throw sorghum and soybeans in there, too.
Divert corn by the hundreds of thousands of tons into the fuel ethanol boondoggle, and world prices in the grain markets are – ceteris paribus – gonna go up like a sonofabitch, and the poorest people in the Third World are gonna become hungrier and hungrier by and bye.
Thus the “bread helmet guy” showing up in so very many of the 2011 “Arab Spring” demonstrations.
Well, by deed and action ISIS is the personification of evil, so it makes far more sense to blame the Syrian drought on the Devil, rather than supposed made made global warming in the region, which seems to be negligible.
Anyhow, ISIS is a post drought phenomenon. I suppose it all goes to show alarmists will use anything to try and add flesh to their dodgy ‘science’.
Thank you. I was wondering how long it would take a commenter to see that the timeframes of the war and the drought don’t match. Indeed, the end of drought is the time when social disorder is LEAST likely.
A really sad commenatry on how low the alarmist will stoop to lie.
Yeah instead of pulling out random statistics why not ask the Syrians why they are fighting? I asked this before on that other page but these pseudo-scientists believe it is better to reconstruct the situation with bad graphs and poor understanding to justify request for more grant money.
Reblogged this on Aussiedlerbetreuung und Behinderten – Fragen and commented:
Glück, Auf, meine Heimat!
It is a very long time since The Fertile Crescent was particularly fertile. The name comes from the early civilzations which started in th is area thousands of years ago (Iraq – Syria -Palestine). It has long since lost its lushness.
Wasn’t the garden of eden in Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Don’t see it having anything to do with Syria.
If Mohammad was a peaceful dude with his newly invented religion, you can’t exactly say that the mohammedans who followed his path, were anything of the sort.
Tammerlane after whom the elder of the two Boston Marathon bombers was named (by his delightful mother) seemed to be pretty good at cutting heads off and burning a few people, which has a significant effect on getting passive and unarmed people to say “I believe.”
Has any other major world religious group got a history of using massive and totally vicious blood baths to encourage compliance ??
And please don’t give me some Spanish Inquisition, as an example.
Taking advantage of the ignorance of the masses to assert a controlling influence over them, is one thing, and has led to many religious sects; but giving them an “or else” choice is not mainstream religious persuasion.
In my view; the single greatest scourge to ever inflict the human species is organized religion.
“Rising population coupled with “poor water policy” is a far greater cause of conflict for access to water in Syria.”
Does the Kelley et al say that climate was the only factor? or that it contributed as a factor? They quantitated and gave a probability for their hypothesis, but you say their could be “a far greater cause of conflict” with no measurement.
Weak.
Isn’t ISIS like, a very recent event? Don’t think it’s anything to do with change in climate (/weather), more likely a continuation of the trouble in Middle east that has been going on for decades now. There’s always some war/trouble etc. going on there, and I don’t think that will ever change.
These climate researchers/scientists don’t know nothing. Soon they will probably say something about the Ukraine crisis claiming that it’s somehow linked to climate or something like that.
For over 50 years Syria exported war into it’s neighboring countries. That Vulture has come home to roost.
For over 1000 years Islam has preached war against all others. Now they are fractured into many groups of “others” and are turned against their neighbors. The industrialized west is not the cause of this. Warlords that use Religion as their tool are. pg
As Netanyahu said the other day, ” in this case the enemy of my enemy is my enemy”. This wisdom was not known by those running the US when they celebrated, dare I say supported, the “Arab Spring”.
World Wide Fewer Droughts, Fewer Floods, Fewer Major Storms Explain Why The World Is At Peace!!!! —
says climate scientist.
Silly climate claims refuted by simple facts. But the alarmists will just go on to their next Chicken Little story. How do you parody stuff as crazy as this?
Eugene WR Gallun
Its sad to say but the Western Powers seem to have adopted policies that are directly contrary to their national interests.
The proof is easy to find.
Arming the mujahadeen in Afghanistan led to AL Qaeda , 9/11 and the mess of what Afghanistan is today.
Attacking Saddam in Iraq over non existent weapons of mass destruction led to the barbarism and irrationality of ISIS.
Overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya was another unnecessary mess which backfired spectacularly
The arming of the Syrian opposition which we now know included ISIS is another ongoing mess.
Thousands of pitiful refugees have died trying to escape from Iraq ,Syria and and Libya in sinking boats trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
How western leaders like Cameron, Obama, Hilary Clinton, Blair and Bush sleep at night escapes me!
A new ongoing threat even more significant that the chaos above is the situation in Ukraine .
The violent overthrow of the elected government cheered on by Victoria Nuland has resulted in a civil war in the heart of Europe.
Russia on one side USA and the UK on the other.
Germany and France are not keen to follow the gung ho drift further into what could become a nuclear war.
The connection between the above and Global Warming alarmism escapes me; but perhaps the complete lack of rational forward thinking is there amply displayed in all their policies.
Bryan, the answer is simple, stupid is forever and they seem to rise to the top in a democratic forum. On the other hand, the brutal seem to gain traction in the dictatorial setting. We need those “philospher kings” of which Plato spoke. Apparently they are few and far between.
The responsibilty for the destruction of these nations can be directly laid on the U.S. State Dept and CIA (is there a difference?).
That’s what Obama said.
The sad state of foreign affairs world wide is an unpleasant reminder of the prelude to World War I. None of the “Great Powers” understood where their interlocking alliances could lead. None had any way to short circuit reflexively bad policy, such as declaring war in compliance with a treaty. And above all, none had learned from the American Civil War, arguably the first “industrial” war. None of the supposedly great military or political minds could envision how much technology would contribute to the devastation and brutality of an industrialized world war.
And then the great minds forgot everything and stoked the same fires for a repeat in World War II.
Where is Hari Seldon when we need him.
I was expecting an explanation regarding the elephant. None was forthcoming. Drought is a weather pattern variation. A couple years of drought is a short-term weather pattern variation. A multiyear/decade drought is a long term weather pattern variation. These variations are caused by oceanic/atmospheric semi-permanent teleconnected disruptions. So what flipped/moved/disconnected? What semi-residential atmospheric pressure system changed from one location to another? What warm or cold pool shifted where? What pattern stalled in neutral/nada/nado? This piece needed a meteorologist expert. Why was one not used to write this up? Like, we have several, even an in-house one.
Pamela, More important than the “what” of your questions is the why, for which we see very few provable answers.
Jim G1:
“…More important than the “what” of your questions is the why, for which we see very few provable answers.”
You ask a question that bears more on your comments than on others. Ask yourself, and let us know.
Much is known about the why of weather pattern variations. Combine these patterns with fluid dynamics, self-feeding circular feedbacks, and known teleconnected patterns, and the why begins to surface. As to the ultimate why, spin a gloppy, variously viscous, two layered and sub-layered fluid and gas, peppered with variously shaped boundaries, and impinged upon by varying gravitational forces as things orbit around us and we orbit around the Sun, and you have the ultimate why.
We do a fairly good job of quantifying Pamela’s apt descrition for the very short term weather forcasts, for longer term, be it weather or actual climate, not so much. Even something a simple as seasonal fluctuations we can say little more than that it will generally be colder in winter, but how much, when and where, very little can be very accurately predicted. Too many variables whose complex inter relationships are not well understood in terms of quantification.
Pamela, it’s an idiom.
Isn’t it?…
The warm AMO mode Pamela, and if you look at the precipitation graph above, the drying later in the 1990’s and from 2005/6 correlates with periods of increased negative North Atlantic Oscillation. All the wrong sign to be associated with increased fording of the climate.
I suspect that seasonal rainfall totals would be the highest if the NAO was more positive in winter months, and turning negative in the early spring.
An elephant needs no explanation and sits where it likes.
The gist of the post was that neither weather nor climate explains much about what has happened in Syria. 500% population growth, industrialization, and poor water planning for the whole region is more than adequate explanation.
The USA has a similar problem in California, particularly southern California. Plopping 40 million people(up from ~4 million in 1920) in the midst of a recurrent desert is a recipe for disaster. Half the residents and most of the water planners have been expecting a big drought and water shortages for years. It’s happened before, but now the possibilities of a technical solution are much less tenable, since most of the water is already imported from other states that also need it.
Fortunately Californians are still mostly civilized people.
Another case of you’ll give me how much money to show the conflict is the result of AGW and not the politics of Obama following after the politics of Bush? The art of pulling strings to confuse the public just get worse. Politicians long ago learned to pay attention to who the public trusts and then try and use them for political advantage. Scientists used to be very high in the public’s trust.
Kind of explains California’s drought as well, large population growth and irresponsible water use policies.
Would you care to explain just exactly how California’s population growth and wastage of water has led to the occurrence of a short period of drought.
California historically is a desert, at least south of Monterey; so all that is happening is a return to its normal climate.
Sure. But now 30+ million people live in that desert. Neglect and bad decisions about water use and storage since the 1970s have made a bad situation worse.
[bold was mine] So… nothing definitive then, but the message is out there as if it’s a fact.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Why give this idiocy even a moments life in the conciousness?
“Stoopid is as stoopid does”
Of course CAGW caused good muslims to be upset and give us ISIS.
CAGW and those bad muslims
CAGW those bad muslims and that video
CAGW those bad muslims that video and those cartoons
CAGW those bad muslims that video those cartoons and western music
CAGW those bad muslims that video those cartoons western music and gays
CAGW those bad muslims that video those cartoons western music gays and naked women
They’re very unhappy people.
Maybe it wasn’t so much CAGW
mikerestin
March 8, 2015 at 8:01 am
Of course CAGW caused good muslims to be upset and give us ISIS.
…
…and naked women.”
Um, if CAGW is causing women to be naked, I might become a supporter.
/grin
Homeland Security, state partner on climate change study
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/03/08/homeland-security-state-partner-on-climate-change-study/
For instance, increased temperatures are affecting seasonal energy demands, straining the capacity of electrical transmission lines.
Increased precipitation linked to climate change is creating more surface runoff into lakes and also increases the salinity of coastal aquifers, which supply drinking water.
Transportation infrastructure – especially low-lying roads, marine terminals and rail lines – are being threatened by unexpected storm surges. Much of that infrastructure was built long before planners recognized climate change as an issue.
And higher global temperatures are requiring more cooling of wireless and cell tower equipment.
The project, largely conducted last year with cooperation from a host of state and local agencies, was part of the department’s annual Regional Resiliency Assessment Program, but the first to have a specific focus on climate change…
Last year, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that the Gulf of Maine is warming at a rate faster than 99 percent of the world’s ocean water.
Those rising temperatures, combined with ocean circulation patterns, have caused sea levels to rise in the Northeast at higher rates than other areas. A recent study by the University of Arizona showed that the waters off Portland rose at an unprecedented rate in 2009 and 2010.
Sea level rise contributes to beach erosion and coastal flooding, which in turn leads to deterioration of infrastructure.
…Climate change and its underlying cause are still a polarizing political issue at the national level, but the Department of Homeland Security – acting on an executive order signed in 2013 by President Obama – has shifted focus toward climate change effects…
=================
They are bats shit insane.
The proposed workshop on May 7th will be an excellent opportunity for the AGW crowd to spread madness to the unafflicted. I wish there were an organization that could send skeptics to such meetings, but the local security would probably view this unfavorably. I note that one can comment on the article only by logging in through Facebook.
I didn’t quite catch how that increased precipitation of fresh water leads to increased salinity of “coastal aquifers.”
In the case of the San Francisco Bay area, where we don’t exactly have any coastal aquifers; well besides the Pacific Ocean, we do have increased salinity in the Sacramento / San Joachin / Mokelumne delta system, but that is entirely due to diversion of those river waters to build goof courses in Southern California, and otherwise try to turn those deserts into tropical paradises.
When you artificially lower river flows, then the natural tidal flows in a river delta cause the salinity to migrate upstream. All of SF Bay is just a part of the delta system.
ISIS has affiliates in LIbya, the SInai and the Philippines.
And Boko Haram just pledged allegiance in Nigeria.
That’s a very widespread drought.
Of course it’s due to CAGW. All that heat there is causing the people to become mad…..
Which just happened to coincide with a premature evacuation of Iraq, assassination of the regime in Libya, and expanded wars throughout the Middle East, Africa, And Asia. Presumably all part of the so-called “Arab Spring”.
Isis has a lot more to do with the illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq by the US.
I agree that it was a mistake. Perfect hindsight. But Americans are emotional, and wanted revenge for 9/11. It didn’t matter that Iraq wasn’t the culprit.
The worst aspect was trying to impose democracy on a region without a democratic culture. That only works when you’ve completely beaten the enemy into submission, like Japan after WWII.
Another major blunder was legitimizing the Moslem religion, which is a much stronger force than civil government. If we had any sense, we would push to make Islam an outlaw religion. Or at least, insist that it must have a clear hierarchy. That way we could threaten the boys at the top, and they would keep their troops in line. But now it’s worse than the Wild West. Any old mullah can issue fatwas.
ISIS is a natural outgrowth of Islam. It fills the vacuum created; it has ever been thus, for the past 1400 years. It will never change, unless it is compelled to change. But who is going to do that? We have a President who is arming ISIS. And what happens when one of those evil groups gets its hands on a nuke? Is there any doubt? The only question is: Tel Aviv, or New York?
But that’s all in the past. The chickens are coming home to roost now, and we have to deal with the problems they caused, and which we reacted to.
No it’s not. It’s a direct consequence of our bombing Iraq, and the stupid decisions we made, starting with breaking up their Army on Day One. Not to mention the ancient hatreds we unleashed when we killed Saddam. Those, too, were the result of British, French,and American decisions made after WWI, interfering where were had no right to and doing it in an imperialistic way–wasn’t ESSO once called Imperial Oil?–because we wanted to secure their oil.
Colonel Pat Lang (Ret.) was the director of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), in charge of Special Forces in Vietnam, and the US Military liaison for 10 years in the Middle East. He also taught this history at the US Army War College, IIRC, and is a contributor on Fox News. Here is one of his explanations of what is going on from last June. His comments below the post are useful too. As Lang has said on many occasions, if you don’t understand the history, you arrive at simplistic solutions that make the situation worse. He calls the President’s current advisors the “Children’s Crusade” for their lack of understanding. http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2014/06/httpwwwnytimescomreuters20140613worldmiddleeast13reuters-iraq-security-region-insighthtmlrefworld.html
Colonel Lang on June 12, 2014.
Lang speaks Arabic, and taught it as well at the US Army War College. He also served in Yemen years ago. Again, read his comments.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2014/06/httpenwikipediaorgwikisaber_abdel_aziz_al-douri.html
Oh, that’s really smart. Outlaw the religion of a quarter of the globe’s population. How about understanding what it is, because from your remarks, you have no clue. As Monckton has noted on several occasions, Islamic Science gave us the scientific method.
In fact, Europe would probably still be mired in the Dark Ages if it hadn’t been for Islamic Science that brought culture, science, mathematics, jurisprudence, astronomy, botany, chemistry, engineering, universities, libraries, and architecture to a stupid Europe through the hub of Cordova, Spain. While the kings and queens of Europe were sleeping in single-room barns with their animals and a hole in the roof to let the cooking smoke escape, the Moors had a city of a million people with paved roads and raised sidewalks. Christian monks and Jewish scribes made pilgrimages to Cordova to learn of its secrets and science. That’s how we know about it. That was 900 AD. Where do you think Copernicus got his ideas? While Europeans were struggling with Euclid’s Fourth Principle, Moorish Science was teaching trigonometry. One of their compounds is still protected. It’s a UNESCO site. Look up Al-Hambra (Alhambra). They built that in 884 AD. Our engineers weren’t able to replicate their irrigation feats bringing water down from the Sierra Nevada mountains in Andalucia, irrigating their fields, and supplying the fountains that lined streets and filled private gardens until the 20th C. Even as late as 1400 Ad, one of their universities in Timbuktu had 22,000 students.
As someone I read recently said, “You wouldn’t have an iPod without Islamic Science.”
To polycritic: Could you please point me to an article or talk or interview in which Lord Monckton addresses the wonders of Islamic science?
Actually, I wouldn’t lay the blame for ISIS on killing Saddam.
The real problem was the US putting the Shi’ites into power without ensuring any form of sufficient representation for the formerly Sunni minority rulers.
It is this political divide which coincides with a sectarian divide in Islam which underlies the rise of ISIS.
However, the civil war in Syria has relatively little to do with even the above – the roots of the Syrian Civil War are very clearly marked out in the “liberating” of Libya via Qatari and Saudi money and subsequent shipping of weapons and fighters into Syria to continue to cleansing of Saudi enemies in the Middle East – with US and Turkish complicity all along the way.
Sure.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/07/a-question-for-oreskes-but-what-do-we-mean-by-consensus/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/20/monckton-challenges-the-ipcc-suggests-fraud-and-gets-a-response/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/
As for the “wonders” of Islamic Science, do your own homework. I assume you’re old enough to do that. I’m neither your librarian nor your historian.
Well when George W Bush cut down all of the Cedars of Lebanon, it started an era of drought in the region. After all, if you don’t have any more trees, why would you need precipitation.
Gaia simply moves the water to where she has trees to grow.
Not to mention the 2.5 million Iraqi refugees that streamed into northern and eastern Syria as a result of our illegal bombing of Iraq stressing their resources more.
I’ll cut the politicos a break on Isis in Iraq. After WW-II Europe and the Far East were a mess. The Marshall plan in Europe and MacArthur’s implementation of the Potsdam plans in Japan lead to a pretty complete and civil reconstruction, but it to over 7 years. This would give some indication that civil and political reconstruction is possible after a war. Given the political conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan the politicos should have been prepared to push for 10 years of occupation and reconstruction. Instead they opted for a low budget, short term fiasco.
Does anybody even bother to look at the history of that region? There have been wars in that part of the world even before Abraham walked the earth. Even if you don’t believe in the Bible, you can look at archaeology, provided ISIS hasn’t destroyed it yet, to see about all the wars and conflicts fought in the area. Conflict in this area runs thousands of years deep. And we are supposed to believe that people who have been fighting for thousands of years would be peaceful if not for man-made climate change? Really?
Or that a simple police action that was approved by the UN (somehow became illegal because it was bush after all?) would cause these people to fight one another? They’ve been fighting amongst themselves for centuries they are as barbaric is it comes. People should stop and think that everyone is like them. Mirror fallacies everywhere. People of the time were still frightened by Sadam’s use of Chemical weapons (not nukes). Of course we would invade. People have such short memories. Forgetting that Sadam did launch scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Golf wars. Sadam was unpredictable and that was scary enough.
It is all part of the mantra “Anything bad is as a direct, indirect, result of AGW”. All of course “supported by climate model results”, (since when did a computer model replace reality? When associated with AGW of course!).
I can add one more thing that has been caused by the computer models; high blood pressure (mine). So global warming is responsible for more health issues.