Bishop Hill More Syria shamefulness
Sep 7, 2015 Climate: Surface Climate: WG2 ;)
The ambulance chasers are still, rather disreputably, hovering around the fringes of the migrant crisis. Today I came across a cartoon that again seeks to link the 2007 Syrian drought to climate change. Entitled Syria's Climate Conflict, it opens with the 2007 drought and then moves on to the displacement of people thereafter, before moving on to the uprising itself, describing its beginnings in the southern city of Daraa and the spread to Damascus before asking whether maybe climate change had something to do with it. A scientivist type is on hand to insinuate that it did.
If you take a look at the cartoon though, you will notice something odd: there is not even a vague insinuation that the climate in Syria has changed. There has been a drought of course, but Syria is nothing if not a country prone to drought. So where is the climate change? It is so transparently an attempt to use a weather event to advance a climate argument that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the authors are not just playing fast and loose with the facts.
This impression is hardly weakened by a look at this paper, which finds almost no changes in Syrian rainfall since 1950 (or since 1900).
;)
There's something else though. Take a look at these graphs of vegetation health in Syria from a UN document (source).
;)
You can see the 2007/8 drought in the bottom left, and you can see it dragging on into the following winter season as well. But 2009/10, the year before the uprising began, was much better. Most noticeably, Daraa, the cradle of the uprising, right at the southern tip of the country, had just had a "very good" winter. Surely it's a bit surprising that a climate-related uprising should begin somewhere that had just experienced the most benign weather for years?
Reader Comments (82)
Owen Morgan, what did I write suggesting I was defending Islam?
Your quoted texts do not elaborate, but justify further religious hatred.
You fully accept that the Crusaders were a bunch of jolly nice chaps. I do not.
Just because someone claims to be a devout Christian, and regular churchgoer, gives me no more reason to trust them, than a similar Muslim.
My instinct at the moment is not to trust anything coming out of Syria, particularly the words of the BBC. But I am not going to condemn the majority, based on the words and actions of a minority. Apart from the wealthy arab states. For some reason, probably discrimination, nobody bothers to flee there, which goes against traditional Moslem standards of hospitality and charity.
You are correct to point out discrepancies, between religious texts, and interpretation . It would be great if Christianity could achieve some consistency between Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Methodist, Mormon, Quaker, etc, etc, and then expect all the Jewish and Moslem faiths to do the same.
The Ten Commandments should have been so simple to follow. Then we would all know who to throw the first stone at.
Facts! I don't need no stinking facts to get in the way of a good story!
Where are the investigative reporters of yesteryear?
They would have had an absolute field-day with climate "change" and the gravy train/vested interests running on it.
gc +1
I find it surprising that people who have had a good glimpse of the lengths govs, MSM, and the establishment, push a certain global agenda re AGW; they're fully aware of the lies they tell, the propagandistic methodology, the labarinthine collusion; yet they take in all this guff on muslims and Sirya as unquestionable fact.
Just ponder who benefits from ethnic cleansing in the ME?
It wasn't long ago parliment refused to allow an invasion of Syria because Assad is a bad man, then all of a sudden we supposidly have ISIS pop up from nowhere controlling half the ME, complete with black clad marching squads in Nike trainers and crew cuts. Now we should invade Syria to stop them? I thought Assad was the enemy? LOL
BBC lies, except when it's about isis? Is that cherry picking a source, or cognative dissonence?
Frosty, what is going on in Syria is ghastly. The UK did not bomb Assad, because people said there would be civilian casualties. So we didn't bomb Assad and there are civilian casualties.
What is certain, is that nobody is fleeing the impact of climate change. The media need a good disaster in the run up to Paris. The Hockey Team have obliged, and printed a series of disastrous scientific papers, all properly peer reviewed in the best tradition of climate science, since the dawn of the Hockey Stick.
That's the whole point isn't it GC, absolutely no one is fleeing Syria due to climate change!
Mailman
Sure it's climate change. Suddenly the climate is full of neck-slashing swords, and indiscriminate bullets, not to mention rapists. And they were worried about a little warming.
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I really think Ms. Quinn has scored with BH folk.
This is clearly to my mind an example of when to play the player - and not the ball. The climate of Syria is a matter of record and it's erm.. not like it's homogeneous and a farmer's paradise (as Bish points out)
Ms. Quinn and her illustrator grotesquely swerve around the central issue in the present ME conflicts - Sunni vs. Shia (and the associated political power blocs) and I can't begin to elaborate my contempt for Audrey and Jackie pontificating and misdirecting from their cosy Brooklyn trendy hangouts.
This is the lady who brought you Greening Islam (Green was the prophet's favorite colour and pretty much everything in Paradise to aspire to - is that colour)
I can't bring myself to label Quinn's drivel as analysis but ignoring the history of the area and almost everything else - to present this ghastly contrived garbage says more about Ms. Quinn and her band of acolytes and collaborators than I can do justice to.
What a crock. what a miserable, dishonest, opportunistic and nauseatingly glib bit of dancing on other peoples's misery.
golf Charlie
Perhaps you could explain how and why there were Arab Muslims in the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades?
Was it because (a) they were there peacefully vacationing or (b) they were part of an invading army of fanatics that slaughtered their way out of the Arabian Peninsula and conquered other lands?
Perhaps your history teachers didn't touch on this?
For all those ignorant of The Crusades...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo
Point of fact- the Crusades were a response to Jihadist violence.
The "West", then was being reactive- as it is now to waves of unprovoked Islamist violence.
Frosty
Exactly. Not only are we being confuzzled, that confuzzlemet is turning folks' brains to mush.
Tim Hammond, my history teachers taught me that the Crusaders had to rescue the Holy Land. That was back in the 70's, before I had reached my teens, when every time the word 'Palestinian' was mentioned in the news, it was followed by 'Liberation Organisation' 'Terrorist' and 'Hijack'. I am not sure whether I even remember whether 'Moslem' or 'Islam' were mentioned then, 'PLO' was quite sufficient as a derogatory term.
I have made an effort not to be prejudiced, and accept that not everything I was taught was correct. The attrocities carried out by extremists in the name of any religion appal me, and Islam is no exception.
I am English born and bred, with C of E orientated education. It is frustrating that no one has been able to help the Syrians, unless they can point a finger of blame at global warming etc.The Arab Moslem world should be doing more to help, but are too busy fighting with each other, just like good Christians have been doing, since the time of Mohammed.
"the Crusades were a response to Jihadist violence"
About as far off the mark as Ms. Quinn's drivel.
Morelike Normans + associates leveraging (and wallowing in) religious zealotry for territorial gain (Outremer) while political/military power in the Moslem lands of the eastern Med was fractured by assorted fatal rivalries. Throw in some serious religious hysteria , geo-political power plays and medieval warfare and few emerge from the Crusades business looking virtuous - at all. Game of Thrones is tame by comparison.
Objective histories inform about the area (like this one) - not that Ms Quinn needs them to fabricate toxic tosh like the subject of this BH post.....
tomo 1:44 , not disagreeing with what you say, but during the Medieval Warm Period, the whole area must have become unstable. If warmists want to claim today's problems as being a result of climate change, it is only fair to offer them the opportunity to be consistent with their logic.
tomo FYI The Normans came at the invitation of the Pope whose subject were been attacked and enslaved by the Moslems.
When the Normans were victorous- eg. in Sicily, they decided to run the place for themselves and were remarkably tolerant.
Just to clarify, as a Christian I don't think the Crusades went well.
The Love of God was not well-expressed by massacring Joppa.
Also, I think the Viking hordes did a bad thing by devastating the north of England.
However, no-one expects such ancient history to inspire kamikaze violence against the common folk of Copenhagen.
Indeed, when we did use our Navy against that port, thoughts of the Vikings were remarkably absent.
And I don't believe that ISIS is seeking justice for Joppa.
B&T
I'm well aware of Urban II's recorded motives and his declaration at Clermont. Other popes were let's say quite a mixed bag....
The way that Christians were treated by Muslims doesn't - from this distance - look much different to the ways that Christians actually treated each other and especially folk who still weren't that keen on Christianity.
The Normans were multiplying and new lands and plunder were pretty irresistible to aristocratic progeny unlikely to get the old man's crown as the evidence of their antics over approx two centuries shows.
Other factors like the Venetians, the Pisans and the Genoans are much underplayed - as is the role of the Byzantine empire . Add in overtly pious posturing (some no doubt genuinely felt) and quite modern "PR" on both sides and it's quite a mix.
The old fart wing of the CofE seems to be contemplating a re-run :-)
Tomo,
There were no muslim lands in the middle east until the Arabs invaded from. The Crusades were a response to Christian lands being over run by muslims.
The fact Normans saw an opportunity for personal gain is merely a happy coincidence. That doesn't change the fact though that had Muslims not invaded Christian lands then there would have been no Crusades.
Mailman
Well said, Mailman.
Methinks, tomo is a bit of a revisionist- rather like climate scientists who have whitewashed the MWP.
When the female camels with child are neglected.
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