Prince Charles: Climate Change is to blame for War in Syria

http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-november-14-2015
All quite normal I believe.

Could it possibly be water mismanagement? Turkey has dammed up the rivers, no-one has built reservoirs, water abstraction is rife. What do these have to do with climate change ??

The Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Levant and Middle East have been severely affected by human-caused local climate change through deforestation over the centuries and not from any cause of modern fossil fuel use. Climate-alarmists should acknowledge that deforestation has been and is the greater threat to this planet and its biodiversity rather than focussing on fossil fuel use.
Syria
Syria was at one time an immense granary and largely a wooded area. According to historians, the region situated between the Euphrates and the Orontes was covered by a network of canals which connected the waters of these two rivers. But for a very long period the country was torn by the rivalries between the Sumerians, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Persians from the east, and the Greeks and Romans from the west. It was in Syria that orient and occident met, but met in fight and quarrel; it was the scene of wars in which Ummayads, Abbasids and Crusaders took a hand. The country finally passed under the sway of the Ottoman Empire in 1516, when Sultan Solim put an end to the rule of the Mamluks. The unsettled state had as one result the stripping of the tree cover – the natural protection once provided for the land; it prevented permanent cultivation, encouraged nomadism and drove people to seek refuge in remote mountain forests. Especially under Turkish rule, forests were looked upon as an inexhaustible supply of timber and fuelwood. The greatest damage was inflicted upon them by the construction of the Baghdad and Hedjaz railways, both of which were still operated with wood for fuel during the first world war.
Final touches of forest destruction stemmed from the ravages of the second world war, during which pine forests were mutilated for the tobacco-curing industry and forest fires were set going as a protest against the foreign regime. Thus, until quite recently, the Jebel Balas and Jebel Abdul Aziz were covered with forests whose relics are still to be seen as single pistacias. The terribly eroded region west of the Latakia forest and south of Wadi Qandil is another tragic example of loss of soil fertility in less than two or three decades.
Altogether, as in any other country of the Near East, the destruction of vegetation by man and animal has left its mark everywhere in Syria, from the remains of old Roman wine and olive presses in the Duma steppe to the heavy landslides on the barren hills around Latakia. This deterioration of the physical environment has already led to a marked drop in food production, resulting in even greater demand for forest land and thus establishing a vicious circle from which there seems to be little escape, unless land use is properly planned and good forestry carried out.
(and-)
Conclusion
After all the evidence that has been considered, there is not the slightest doubt that the Near East once had many more forests than it has today. History provides this evidence. In most cases the progressive, and sometimes the complete, destruction of these forests has been the work of man. The often heard argument that .their dwindling has been caused by change of climate has some scientific basis, but at least within recorded history it may be categorically said that this is not so. The progressive destruction of the protective forest cover was done by man to his own impoverishment and has been the main cause of desiccation spreading over the lands of the Near East.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/e3200e/e3200e03.htm