# Was climate change a factor in the Syrian Civil War and the rise of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 24, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091 "2015-07-24T19:27:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/1 "2015-07-24T19:27:19Z")
Democratic presidential contender Martin O’Malley [said so this week](http://www.mediaite.com/tv/martin-omalley-isis-exists-because-of-climate-change/), and [this article](http://www.thenation.com/article/did-isil-arise-partly-because-of-climate-change/) argues he was right: > [@](#): > > Professor Hannu Juusola of Helsinki has shown in a scholarly article that in the northeast of the country—the seat of power of ISIL in Syria—between 2006 and 2010, 70 percent of farmers’ livestock died because of severe drought. Wheat production declined 18 percent in a single year, and 3 million people in the northeast were already food insecure five years ago. Syria’s underground water aquifers are few and becoming depleted or polluted. Syria is part of a vast Middle Eastern arid zone and has, of course, been subject to cyclical drought throughout history. But drought is exacerbated by higher temperatures, and we know that the world is about a degree Fahrenheit warmer now than in 1850 because since then we’ve been spewing billions of tons of powerful greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere every year. Hence, this drought is worse than previous ones. (Other scientists have confirmed Juusola’s findings.) > > All this would not matter as much if Syria was a largely urban society, but 45 percent of its residents before the turmoil that began in 2011—some 9 million people—were rural. Largely urban societies such the United Arab Emirates (a wealthy oil state that has desalinization plants for making potable water from sea water) are not as badly affected by severe drought, since most residents just need drinking water. But 90 percent of Syrian water is used for irrigation, and a shortfall is a social disaster. It is probably also the case that as it came under pressure to join the march to neoliberalism in the 1990s and after, the Syrian regime privatized many economic activities, and its officials may have been more interested in lining their pockets than in using state resources to address the water crisis. > > As O’Malley correctly observed, failed farmers lacking water abandon their farms and go to the city in search of day labor as construction workers. Central Sunni cities such as Hama and Homs were circled by shanty towns thrown up by these economic refugees from the countryside, and those shanty towns were a major site of social protest in 2011. Likewise, some initial protests in the southern city of Deraa in 2011 were demonstrations by farmers and food distributors over the lack of water in the countryside. When the Syrian army shot down the protesters, they picked up weapons and gradually became radicalized in their fight against a secular, socialist, and Shiite-dominated Syrian state. For ideological clarity, it was advantageous for the new rebels to be everything the state was not, i.e. hard-line Salafi Sunni fundamentalists. Hence the appeal of ISIL, and of the Al Qaeda–linked Jabhat al-Nusra. The turn to ISIL was not inevitable, and there were other possible responses to the drought (the Kurds of the northeast, who also experienced water shortages, have increasingly broken with the regime but are instead attracted by a kind of feminist, post-Marxist, anarchistic, socialism). But that it exacerbated social tensions between the regime and rural Sunni Arab populations of the heartland and the arid east seems uncontroversial. If so – what does this portend for the future? Many other parts of the world, Muslim and non-Muslim, are bound to be affected by climate change – will it lead to social dislocation, social disruption and perhaps civil wars? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/2 "2015-07-24T20:59:36Z")
Other studies did also point at Global Warming a factor making droughts worse, and then it is not hard to conclude “that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict”. [http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241) > [@](#): > > There is evidence that 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. Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, 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. We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict. At least the Pentagon is showing more sense than our Republican politicians. > **[Pentagon: global warming will change how US military trains and goes to war](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/13/pentagon-global-warming-will-change-how-us-military-trains-and-goes-to-war)** > > Climate change to become immediate factor for all strategic, operational and planning decisions > [@](#): > > “There is a lot you can do to mitigate risk and lower the cost of risks if you acknowledge the risk exists,” the officials said. > [@](#): > > “A changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions,” Hagel wrote in his introduction to a Pentagon report out today. “We are considering the impacts of climate change in our war games and defence planning scenarios.” > > The Pentagon’s strategic planners have for years viewed climate change as a “threat multiplier”– worsening old conflicts and potentially provoking new clashes over migration and shortages of food and water in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and opening up new military challenges in a melting Arctic. > > But with Monday’s report, climate change moved from potential threat to an immediate factor in a wide range of operational and budgeting decisions. > > “It makes it a reality that climate change indeed is a risk today, and we need to plan, programme and budget for it now and into the future,” said Sherri Goodman, chief executive of the military advisory board, a group of former generals and other high-ranking officers that studies US national security. > > The report – unveiled at a meeting of more than 30 defence ministers from the Americas and Europe – also signalled US intention to take a lead role at international climate negotiations in Lima in December. > [@](#): > > The Pentagon was first instructed by Congress in 2007 to incorporate climate change into its long-term security planning. > > But Republicans in Congress have gone on to block the military from preparing for a warmer future, cutting funds for intelligence gathering or testing low-carbon jet fuels. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/3 "2015-07-24T21:51:34Z")
You do not need to connect this to the larger idea of the climate change. It is very clear that the population increase in the Middle East with the land degradation from the over-stressed soils and the over intensive usage with too little support and the over extraction of the water from the aquifers is driving great social stress. This obviously has an impact on the society, on the stresses. and for economies where there is too little of the growth that helps employment away from the agricultural tied production, it is leading to great stresses. We can see this in the Yemen, and it is this analysis that makes more logic than the insertion into a sunni - shia divide which has not been the yemanite logic and mistakes the very different shia branch of the yemen for the Iranian tradition. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/4 "2015-07-24T21:57:25Z")
I would need more than \<10 years of data to accept that this drought is both greater in extent and duration than previous droughts, and that climate change is largely responsible if that is the case. Though this may well be a muted cause of regional strife, ISIL was not formed by carbon dioxide, but rather the dangerous combination of religious extremism and barbarism. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/5 "2015-07-24T22:22:31Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > I would need more than \<10 years of data to accept that this drought is both greater in extent and duration than previous droughts, and that climate change is largely responsible if that is the case. Again, it is not that specific droughts can be blamed directly to global warming, what it is known is that as the earth warms, the probability for droughts to come increases, and even if global warming is not a direct cause of the one in Syria there is plenty of evidence to point out that the increase of temperature does make droughts worse when they come. One can look at what took place in California. [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/07/3370481/california-drought/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/07/3370481/california-drought/) > [@](#): > > Climatologist Who Predicted California Drought 10 Years Ago Says It May Soon Be ‘Even More Dire’ > > Climate change can worsen drought in multiple ways. Climate scientists and political scientists often confuse the public and the media by focusing on the narrow question, “Did climate change cause the drought” — that is, did it reduce precipitation? > > In general, most climate scientists say that is the wrong question — severe drought is much more than just a reduction in precipitation. After a political scientist unjustifiably labeled his mainstream views “zombie science,” the President’s Science Advisor, Dr. John P. Holdren, explained in an extended debunking how climate change worsens Western droughts even if it doesn’t reduce precipitation (see here and below). > > First, though, as I’ve reported, scientists a decade ago not only predicted the loss of Arctic ice would dry out California, they also precisely predicted the specific, unprecedented change in the jet stream that has in fact caused the unprecedented nature of the California drought. Study co-author, Prof. Lisa Sloan, told me last week that, “I think the actual situation in the next few decades could be even more dire that our study suggested.” > > Back in 2004, Sloan, professor of Earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz, and her graduate student Jacob Sewall published, “Disappearing Arctic sea ice reduces available water in the American west” (subs. req’d). They used powerful computers “to simulate the effects of reduced Arctic sea ice,” and “their most striking finding was a significant reduction in rain and snowfall in the American West.” > [@Stringbean](#): > > Though this may well be a muted cause of regional strife, ISIL was not formed by carbon dioxide, but rather the dangerous combination of religious extremism and barbarism. And again, we are talking about one factor here, ISIL are still troglodytes. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/6 "2015-07-25T07:53:04Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Though this may well be a muted cause of regional strife, ISIL was not formed by carbon dioxide, but rather the dangerous combination of religious extremism and barbarism. it is note a muted cause, it is a key cause of the strife. social economic stress creates the conditions. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/7 "2015-07-25T14:23:55Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Again, it is not that specific droughts can be blamed directly to global warming, what it is known is that as the earth warms, the probability for droughts to come increases, and even if global warming is not a direct cause of the one in Syria there is plenty of evidence to point out that the increase of temperature does make droughts worse when they come. > > One can look at what took place in California. There’s no oil production in Northeast Syria, the conflict starts with rich Arabs vs. poor Arabs. Now we stress the issues with lower food production due to the drought, and poor Arabs get even angrier … I wish it was as simple as that. Droughts have occurred throughout all of human history, and these droughts have caused many many wars. Global warming has also occurred throughout human history, and indeed it looks like droughts have been slowly getting worse in that time. This is normal, natural and completely expected as long as concentrations of CO[sub]2[/sub] stay below 250 ppmv. Indeed there’s nothing in the science that says this drought couldn’t take place at 250 ppmv. However, as **GIGO** says, there’s is an increase in the _probablity_ of these droughts worsening with our current 400 ppmv. Droughts are bad, very bad … and right now we’re increasing the chances to get a catastrophic drought. On the other hand, maybe this drought never happens at 250 ppmv … but that doesn’t change ISIS’ murderous ways. I think global warming is a contributing factor to the conflict as the OP states, but one among many. This conflict happens whether man-kind’s CO[sub]2[/sub] or not. > [@](#): > > First, though, as I’ve reported, scientists a decade ago not only predicted the loss of Arctic ice would dry out California, they also precisely predicted the specific, **unprecedented** change in the jet stream that has in fact caused the **unprecedented** nature of the California drought. Emphasis mine I’ve lived in the West almost my whole long life, and there’s been nothing unusual in the jet stream these past five years here. Indeed, this flow pattern is common and completely expected during the summer months. It doesn’t rain in California this time of year very much. This pattern will set up in winter as well, but only briefly. What causes the drought is when this pattern persists during winter, very much exactly like things were in 1976-78. I recently drove through a section of California that has been hit particularly hard by this drought, and it’s bad, really bad. The scars on the landscape are obvious and abundant. Now I haven’t been in that part of California since, yup, 1978. So here’s why I think the nature of this drought is unprecedented: In 1978 all these lands were open grasslands, as far as the eye could see (which actually isn’t very far). That’s the difference, so much more acreage is under intense cultivation today compared to 50 years ago. California had been using every drop of available water to irrigate their crops during the wet years, now that things dried up, crops died. They forgot to study their own history. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/8 "2015-07-25T15:23:32Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Emphasis mine > > I’ve lived in the West almost my whole long life, and there’s been nothing unusual in the jet stream these past five years here. Indeed, this flow pattern is common and completely expected during the summer months. It may be overstated by the article, but it is not correct to claim that there has been nothing unusual with the Jet stream, Jennifer Frances (That has worked with Judah Cohen) explains in this short video that the warming of the earth is causing ice loss that in turn has reduced the speed of the stream by 10% since the 90’s. A weaker westerly flow causes then the stream to meander more and get stuck over a location longer than before. Shorter video: Longer explanation of the big changes that are happening with the stream: As for ignoring history, even before this issue pinged my radar it was clear that the south west was not being responsible with the water. On that we agree. ---
**Author:** ![Baffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@Baffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baffle)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/9 "2015-07-25T15:53:51Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > I would need more than \<10 years of data to accept that this drought is both greater in extent and duration than previous droughts, and that climate change is largely responsible if that is the case. > > Though this may well be a muted cause of regional strife, ISIL was not formed by carbon dioxide, but rather the dangerous combination of religious extremism and barbarism. You’re right. They’re not people – they’re barbarians. Real people don’t get desperate and frightened when their crops fail and their only means of survival disappears. It’s only social defects that turn to crime when they have no other way to survive. People – all people – will look for any way to escape from desperation. These people are often poorly-equipped with critical thinking skills and fall prey to persuasive pedagogues who provide simplistic, un-nuanced answers. Tell me again how they’re different from us. So far, our pedagogues have served to maintain the established order. Do not think this means we are immune to change. What do you think’s going to happen here when the status quo fails enough of us? ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/10 "2015-07-26T00:22:45Z")
> [@Baffle](#): > > You’re right. They’re not people – they’re barbarians. Real people don’t get desperate and frightened when their crops fail and their only means of survival disappears. It’s only social defects that turn to crime when they have no other way to survive. Keeping women as sex slaves does not help you survive. Murdering children for having hobbies other than your fucking cult does not help you survive. Destroying statues that offend your sensibilities does not help you survive. ISIL are not victims. They do not seek to create a violently bigoted, expansionist empire because of climate change, they seek it because they are assholes. ---
**Author:** ![Baffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@Baffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baffle)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/11 "2015-07-26T00:35:17Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Keeping women as sex slaves does not help you survive. Murdering children for having hobbies other than your fucking cult does not help you survive. Destroying statues that offend your sensibilities does not help you survive. > > ISIL are not victims. They do not seek to create a violently bigoted, expansionist empire because of climate change, they seek it because they are assholes. “Americans are not victims. They do not launch indiscriminate bombing campaigns against us because they are misled by war profiteers and corrupt politicians. They destroy our houses and kill our families because they are assholes.” - ISIL’s next recruit. Look, the point is, whether or not some group is objectively evil is meaningless. Hitler was objectively evil, but he never would have got into power if Germany’s unemployment rate was less than 30%. When ignorant people get desperate, they can do terrible things. I don’t know what to do about ISIL. I do know we seem to keep finding, like clockwork, new super-evils to destroy. And I know that desperate youth will join dangerous political movements when they have nothing left to lose. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/12 "2015-07-26T15:05:01Z")
> [@Baffle](#): > > “Americans are not victims. They do not launch indiscriminate bombing campaigns against us because they are misled by war profiteers and corrupt politicians. They destroy our houses and kill our families because they are assholes.” - ISIL’s next recruit. Yes, they can say the same things we do. Big deal. Do you believe **Grumman’s** statement has equal validity to your hypothetical next ISIL recruit’s? Personally, I think **Grumman** to be accurate while your hypothetical ISIL recruit is from Turkey, or Chechnya, or Libya if a foreign fighter and I am pretty sure we haven’t bombed any of those people. The vast majority of ISIL’s recruits are Syrian or Iraqi though. How desperate are they that their military objectives require slavery, ethnic cleansing, suicide bombings, beheadings, and destruction of history? It seems like the extra features of ISIL’s war of desperation might be due to the fact they’re assholes. You don’t see the PYG doing the same thing in Syria do you? These people have simply adopted a hideous ideology, it doesn’t matter how they got there, and we’re just left with the option of bombing the shit out of them because we already know how letting violent, expansionist assholes have their way turns out. > [@Baffle](#): > > Look, the point is, whether or not some group is objectively evil is meaningless. Hitler was objectively evil, but he never would have got into power if Germany’s unemployment rate was less than 30%. When ignorant people get desperate, they can do terrible things. How would Hitler’s ideology have gained a foothold if the people he led did not already hold similar beliefs? ISIL is attractive to the Muslim assholes of the world. These are not desperate people being pushed to incomprehensible levels of violence. > [@Baffle](#): > > I don’t know what to do about ISIL. Really? They know what to do about you. The government of Turkey was trying to avoid the question of ISIL. See what it got them? To ruin the ending: They just started bombing them in Syria on Friday. > [@Baffle](#): > > I do know we seem to keep finding, like clockwork, new super-evils to destroy. And I know that desperate youth will join dangerous political movements when they have nothing left to lose. They are not desperate. They just want to carve out a little empire for themselves on the backs of the people that live there. We aren’t the only ones “finding” new evils either. Just ask every government on the planet Earth about ISIL’s evil. Unfortunately for people that cannot handle a war lasting more than 1 or 2 years, we are going to be fighting Muslim terrorists for a long time to come. Get used to it. To address the point of this thread, although I believe climate change may be exaggerating regional weather patterns, most of the reason why we see ISIL is due to weak and corrupt governments (including the unaddressed corruption that has to be the explanation for our invasion of Iraq), readily available small arms, and violent ideologies in the hands of barbarians. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/13 "2015-07-26T15:11:59Z")
> [@Baffle](#): > > You’re right. They’re not people – they’re barbarians. Real people don’t get desperate and frightened when their crops fail and their only means of survival disappears. It’s only social defects that turn to crime when they have no other way to survive. > > People – all people – will look for any way to escape from desperation. These people are often poorly-equipped with critical thinking skills and fall prey to persuasive pedagogues who provide simplistic, un-nuanced answers. Your post is simplistic and unnuanced. Your little “It’s the only way to survive” rationalization for the slaughter and enslavement of thousands doesn’t explain why there are thousands of foreign fighters in Syria, who come from places where the crops are just fine. How quickly people forget that ISIL is a former branch of al Qaeda, a group that formed _decades before_ this drought. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/14 "2015-07-26T15:47:40Z")
> [@Baffle](#): > > You’re right. They’re not people – they’re barbarians. Real people don’t get desperate and frightened when their crops fail and their only means of survival disappears. It’s only social defects that turn to crime when they have no other way to survive. > > People – all people – will look for any way to escape from desperation. These people are often poorly-equipped with critical thinking skills and fall prey to persuasive pedagogues who provide simplistic, un-nuanced answers. Tell me again how they’re different from us. > > So far, our pedagogues have served to maintain the established order. Do not think this means we are immune to change. What do you think’s going to happen here when the status quo fails enough of us? What an odd tirade after what was meant to be a rather middling response to the OP. Barbarians are people…who do barbaric things like decapitate innocent villagers, burn people alive on camera, and stick heads on pikes. It isn’t the comfort of condescension to simply state that the members of ISIL are glad and willing to do barbaric, inhumane things in the name of their Islamist ideology. That’s the truth. For what it’s worth, I think ISIL only exists because of the senseless, fraudulent invasion of Iraq. I don’t want us using unmanned, cold-steeled drones to bomb people and inevitably kill innocent civilian bystanders. But in the grand calculation, doing what we have to do in order to stop the ISIL death cult from spreading is worth the cost. There is a middle ground between high-minded pacifism and mass invasion. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/15 "2015-07-27T13:34:56Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Though this may well be a muted cause of regional strife, ISIL was not formed by carbon dioxide, but rather the dangerous combination of religious extremism and barbarism. :dubious: “Combination”? So far as that goes, wouldn’t religious extremism be enough all by itself? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/16 "2015-07-27T13:39:30Z")
> [@Baffle](#): > > These people are often poorly-equipped with critical thinking skills and fall prey to persuasive pedagogues . . . I think you mean “demagogues.” Teachers are pedagogues. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/17 "2015-07-27T13:42:41Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > They are not desperate. They just want to carve out a little empire for themselves on the backs of the people that live there. We aren’t the only ones “finding” new evils either. Just ask every government on the planet Earth about ISIL’s evil. > > Unfortunately for people that cannot handle a war lasting more than 1 or 2 years, we are going to be fighting Muslim terrorists for a long time to come. Get used to it. From the article linked in the OP: > [@](#): > > O’Malley’s statement provoked howls of outrage on the American right because it challenged two deeply held fantasies. The first is that the earth is not rapidly warming as a result of human burning of coal, gas, and oil. The second is that Muslims are intrinsically given to violent fundamentalism. The scientific evidence for global warming is incontrovertible. As for Muslims, they have adopted all sorts of politics in the modern era. The Uzbeks went Communist for a long time, the vast majority of Tunisians rather like democracy, and the majority of Egyptians have been allergic to religious fundamentalism, while even most religious conservatives in Egypt have rejected violence. The idea, moreover, that heterodox groups such as Lebanese and Israeli Druze, Turkish Alevis, or Syrian Alawites would have any truck with radical Sunnism is laughable. That a violent fringe exists in the Muslim world is undeniable, but it isn’t an essence of Muslims any more than violent separatism, which produces most terrorism in Europe, is intrinsic to Christians. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/18 "2015-07-27T16:51:10Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > From the article linked in the OP: Not sure how the quoted text has anything to do with anything I wrote. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/19 "2015-07-27T16:52:19Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > Not sure how the quoted text has anything to do with anything I wrote. Your post – and several others in this thread so far – appeared to reflect the “Muslims are intrinsically given to violent fundamentalism” meme. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091/20 "2015-07-27T19:38:26Z")
I don’t believe that meme to be present here and it isn’t at all present in my posts. The ideology is composed of an interpretation of Islam that supports barbarism. The people attracted to it are convinced this ideology is correct. Recognizing the beliefs that help support their barbarism is not a display of a meme. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-climate-change-a-factor-in-the-syrian-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-isis-isil-daesh/726091.md?page=2)