Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t DailyCaller – an article by Joe Romm on Think Progress (formerly Climate Progress) claims global warming triggered the “political tipping point” which led to Brexit and the rise of Trump.
Recent events, especially Trumpism and Brexit, are omens of the disunity we face. Trump’s campaign is driven by racist statements and wildly impractical plans to wall off the country literally and figuratively from various ethnic and religious groups.
The Syrian migrant crisis “had an outsized impact on the Brexit,” as NBC News political director Chuck Todd said Friday. You can see that in the pro-Brexit poster from the U.K. Independence Party (above) — which became a major advertising campaign of the referendum — featuring thousands of male refugees streaming from Croatia into Slovenia last October.
It bears repeating that a major 2015 study confirmed: “Human-caused climate change was a major trigger of Syria’s brutal civil war.” This study found that global warming made Syria’s 2006 to 2010 drought two to three times more likely. “While we’re not saying the drought caused the war,” the lead author explained. “We are saying that it certainly contributed to other factors — agricultural collapse and mass migration among them — that caused the uprising.”
And that mass migration ultimately fueled the mass refugee crisis of the last two years, a crisis the world has utterly failed to figure out how to handle.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/27/3792313/brexit-trump-climate-inaction/
There are a few problems with this narrative.
For starters, the evidence that the Syrian Civil War has anything to do with climate is tenuous at best. Even the über green Guardian has criticised attempts to link the Syrian Civil War to Climate.
The refugee “crisis” is an almost entirely engineered problem. The countries which have the worst “refugee” problems are countries whose leaders deliberately laid out the welcome mat. In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel virtually guaranteed undocumented immigrants who made it to Europe would receive residency. In America, President Obama granted mass amnesty to undocumented immigrants, encouraging unprecedented numbers of poor people to entrust their families to international criminals.
Contrast those disruptive refugee experiences to Australia, which broke the credibility of people smugglers by turning back the boats, and successfully slowed the flow of mostly economic undocumented migrants to a trickle.
The world is a complex place. Trying to explain the decline of liberal politics, in terms of how much CO2 is in the air, is simply nuts.
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This is a lie. The poster referred to appeared on June 13th, ten days before the vote. The campaigning groups were established last October, although it could be argued that campaigning in earnest didn’t begin until April. Immigration of all sorts was an issue long before the appearance of this poster. The only effect of the poster was to rile the Left, who didn’t like it.
A confederacy of dunces.
How can anyone would take anything that Joe “Permanent Drought” Romm says seriously? I guess there may be a couple possible reasons. Total ignorance? Mental incapacitation or disease? Brain tumor?
But to be sure though Romm has now changed his prediction of permanent drought in the SW US to “by 2050”, if there is a significant La Nina and Texas goes through a dry period during it as it has in the past, the Romm will be out there saying “I told you so” and the same publications that printed his 2011 claim of a “permanent drought” will no doubt take his ravings seriously and print them again. It’s as if they can’t read weather records.
Oh yeah! Well I was sitting under my patio furniture umbrella and the suddenly the shade moved and exposed my feet to sunlight! My feet got warmer too! How do you explain that😎
There is an elephant in the room.
Before the protests and breakdown of society into civil war, Syria was experiencing a very serious problem.
Yes, there was unemployment and high food prices – and consequent unrest.
But why? This article from 2010 offers a very possible explanation:
“Syria now has a population of 20 million people, with a growth rate that remains one of the world’s highest at about 2.4 percent…according to the Syrian Commission for Family Affairs.
“We have a population problem, no question,” said Nabil Sukkar, a Syrian economist formerly with the World Bank. “Unless we cope with it, it could be a burden on our development.”
Well, it certainly did turn out to be a burden to their development. And now a burden to everyone elses.
And in the last few weeks, President Erdogan of Turkey explained to his people:
“I will say it clearly… We need to increase the number of our descendants. People talk about birth control, about family planning. No Muslim family can understand and accept that!”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-population-idUSTRE6522FS20100603
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/30/family-planning-not-for-muslims-says-turkeys-president-erdogan/
This is getting to be like a ‘who’s on first?’ routine.
“How can anyone would take anything that Joe “Permanent Drought” Romm says seriously?”
Here’s your answer:
http://oi65.tinypic.com/35mi1ip.jpg
I worked with Joe for one summer in Dr. John King’s lab at MIT. He was a bit of a laughing stock back then. I guess things haven’t changed.
The social justice-inspired humanitarian disaster (e.g. “Arab Spring”), and its segue into anti-native (e.g. refugee crises, mass immigration) actions, was a first-order cause of catastrophic anthropogenic government waning. However, the “green” industry correlations, and other economic misalignments, are known forcings. The EU was just the first victim of progressive anti-native/pro-immigrant, pro-choice policies and CAGW.
More anthropomorphic ranting from Joe Romm. What an insipid, banal, predictable reactionary twit he is.
But wait according to the EU and Obama and other self-anointed enlightened ones, doesn’t that make Australia racist, xenophobic and just as bad if not worse than the Nazis? I am just saying that is exactly what they are saying.
If someone were to try to convince me it is xenophobic to lock my doors, I would be inclined to suspect they are a criminal.
JohnKnight — A simple and direct answer to the left-wing smear campaign. — Eugene WR Gallun
LOL. Yes wars never occurred in the Middle East prior to the internal combustion engine and electricity. And as Romm implies the war would not have been as brutal if not for climate change. There must be of course major studies that prove that not only was the weather milder but the wars were milder as well before dreaded modern civilization took hold.
Oh for the good old days of friendly non-climate-change wars with pleasant weather.
Come off it. how many people learned enough of the background of the Koran at school to know that many of the rules were to mitigate the damage done by constant warring factions in the region. The three wives rule was because of the shortage of males after so many were killed in the factional wars.
Think about it if there were roughly equal numbers of males and females as would be normal without war killing off large numbers, the three wives rule would certainly have guaranteed civil unrest and tribal warfare anyway to kill off the males from two other tribes.
But , but……. PIK, Potsdam, ultra-alarmistas/warmistas say there is a mini ice age coming
http://notrickszone.com/2016/06/29/u-turn-scientists-at-pik-potsdam-institute-now-warn-of-a-mini-ice-age/#sthash.xe608fSF.dpbs
AGW caused Brexit? We certainly hope so! It was surely a significant factor.
Isis removing heads had nothing to do with?
The author is right on the facts but wrong on the explanation. Global climate propaganda has created bureaucracies against which people revolt. Brexit was indeed partially fueled by all of the stupid efforts on the part of the EU to fight this imaginary dragon. Similarly, Trump’s popularity is due in part to populist revolt against this same phenomenon here in the US.
So, yes, both Trump and Brexit ARE caused in part by global climate change.
I love how Romm attempts to belittle Trump by lumping all he states into either “racism” or “building a wall”, and call it “Trumpism”. How about calling Romm’s ideas “Rommism”?
It seems to me that when the idea of Global Warming first appeared we took the time to carefully inspect the ideas. It was only when they one by one proved wrong that we began to bristle, and then it was because the Alarmists increasingly refused to debate.
Calling another an “ism” and going la-la-la with your fingers in your ears is not mature behavior, Mr. Romm.
If I was Joe Romm trying to hinder Trump’s chances, I would absolutely start shutting up about trying to link the result of the popular vote in the UK referendum to US politics.
“Project Fear” by the media has so far only worked to Trump’s advantage in the US, and has just suffered an Achilles-tendon rupture in the UK. I hate to have to do his job for him, but Joe Romm just shows no aptitude for learning.
Romm: “Trump’s campaign is driven by racist statements …” This is a standard of progressive lying cant.
Expect increasingly frenzied progressivist accusations and lies as the campaign proceeds. Also expect the MSM to play them up for all they’re worth.
Such is the vile quality of politics and journalism these days.
Utopia never arrives. The future is created one gritty day at a time. Gritty day after gritty day, endlessly. Sweat of the brow creates the future. Nothing else.
Eugene WR Gallun
In a sense they are right that global warming caused Brexit. It was actions like the Global warming taxation imposed by unelected Brussels officials and the subsequent belief that having got away with this they could do anything they wanted regardless of the will of all the member nation’s population the caused Brexit and has triggered more to start thinking the unthinkable of opposing a Merkel controlled Brussels.
More tinfoil for Joe. Left/right, left/right – the never ending march to the Madness of Crowds?
In a way it did. The constant hypocrisy of the Left, the constant demand that people live in poverty to save the planet (except those who made the rules—they can live in luxury), the distaste for all of humanity, seeing people as parasites all contributed to people being fed-up with the arrogance and hatred espoused by those who are supposed to be governing “for the people”. Any actual changes in climate had nothing to do with this, of course, but the entire global warming community is very helpful in pushing the populist campaigns along. People are tired of being doormats for the rich and privilege who exempt themselves from all consequences of regulations and laws.