Posted on 06/29/2014 2:54:18 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent.
A punishing drought hit most of Syria and northern Iraq during what’s normally the wettest time of the year. In the mountains of eastern Turkey, which form the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, snow and rain were less than half of normal. The region has seen one of the worst droughts in decades.
Drought is becoming a fixture in the parched landscape, due to a drying trend of the Mediterranean and Middle East region fueled by global warming. The last major drought in this region (2006-2010) finished only a few years ago. When taken in combination with other complex drivers, increasing temperatures and drying of agricultural land is widely seen as assisting in the destabilization of Syria under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Before civil war broke out there, farmers abandoned their desiccated fields and flooded the cities with protests. A series of U.N. reports released earlier this year found that global warming is already destabilizing nation states around the world, and Syria has been no exception.
With the ongoing crisis in Iraq seemingly devolving by the day, it’s not a stretch to think something similar could already be underway just next door.
Could there be a connection between climate change and the emerging conflict in Iraq?
The short answer is a qualified yes, according to Frank Femia of the Center for Climate and Security, a Washington-based policy institute advised by senior retired military and national security leaders. He explained in a phone interview:...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Is drought destabilizing Kansas? Worse drougt in 50 years -http://www.crh.noaa.gov/eax/?n=drought
Notice how the AGW nuts always talk about droughts, but leave out the abnormal rains that occur elsewhere. Seems England has had heavy rains and flooding in recent years...
Nothing happening other than normal, cyclical REAL climate changes around the world.
From article - “The government of Iraq has named 2014 as a national Year of Environment in an attempt to prioritize the rehabilitation of the country’s degraded lands after years of conflict.”
Someone didn’t send ISIS that memo
Yeah, it's the conflict...that's the ticket. Those people are just flat out dirty as hell. They don't use trash cans, they just toss their crap into the streets. A large number of residential streets in Baghdad (and Mosul and about every other town/city in that country I was in) has open sewage running through the streets, sometimes collecting into large pools where the roads have crumbled away due to poor construction/maintenance.
But I'm sure their environment sucks due to "conflict."
Pretty much says it all on how teachers teach.
Hum. Didn’t Turkey just shut off the water flowing into Iraq? I’m sure their view is that water not used in Turkey is simply wasted. But I’m sure that adds to the aridness more than global warming.
(I was about to make a comment about the Colorado and Mexico. But then I found this. When I was there late in 2009 there was no water at the outflow in Mexico.)
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