First Politifact and now Factcheck.org goes after Bernie Sanders on climate change and terrorism

[Cali_Democrat]

First it was Politifact:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251818481

Now Factcheck.org smacks down Bernie:

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Fact check: Bernie Sanders on climate link to terrorism
Robert Farley, FactCheck.org 5:15 p.m. EST November 17, 2015


Sen. Bernie Sanders went too far with his debate claim that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” One study concluded that man-made climate change likely worsened a drought in Syria and contributed to instability there. But the report stops short of drawing a direct causal link between climate change and the Syrian civil war, let alone between climate change and terrorism.

As the study’s lead author told us via email, the research “doesn’t deal with terrorism.”

<...>

But there is a complex web of causal factors behind the Syrian conflict and the Islamic State terrorism that has emerged from it. A study concluded that global warming “increased the probability” of a severe drought, a drought which contributed to displacement and mass migration, which contributed to instability, which may have contributed to violent conflict. But increasing the probability of a possible factor in a conflict isn’t the same as being a “directly related” cause for terrorism. The evidence so far does not support Sanders’ claim.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/11/17/fact-check-bernie-sanders-climate-link-terrorism/75950720/

[Kalidurga]

1. What a relief

The people at the Pentagon can relax now that climate change is not a threat multiplier.

[litlbilly]

8. I guess that 4 year droubt in Syria had nothing to do with the civil war. Cali, you sure convinced

me. Yeah, not a chance. Just keep trying

[Bluenorthwest]

2. And yet President Obama has long said such a link exists. Guess he's getting smacked down too?

Instability brought on by climate change, Obama said, is what creates an environment for terrorism.
"They don’t have a lot of margin for error, and that has national security implications. When people are hungry, when people are displaced, when there are a lot of young people, particularly young men, who are drifting without prospects for the future, the fertility of the soil for terrorism ends up being significant," Obama said, "and it can have an impact on us."

He also said that climate change can lead to wars by fostering conflict over resources.

"Entire countries can be finding themselves unable to feed themselves, and the potential incidence of conflict that arises out of that — that gets your attention," Obama said. "It’s not just the actual disasters that might arise, it is the accumulating stresses that are placed on a lot of different countries and the possibility of war, conflict, refugees, displacement that arise from a changing climate.”


Thread about it.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251819421


You fail to recognize our own Party's policies when Bernie speaks them.

[Cali_Democrat]

3. The problem is Bernie said there's a direct link

That's why the fact checkers are going after The Bern.

[PatrickforO]

5. In this case the 'fact checkers' are full of crap.

In the end, terrorism is about the have-nots and the haves. Period. Climate change is causing an increasing number of people to not have enough. People who don't have enough turn to violence to get what they need.

Consider the Somalis. They were peaceful farmers and fishers until big trawlers from Russia and Japan fished out their waters and drought dried up the crops. Then the problem was compounded by European corporations dumping toxic waste off their coast because it is cheaper to do that than dispose of it regularly.

Warlords rose up and the starving people followed them. They became pirates. The 'civilized' world considers this to be very bad, but it is the economic policies of the 'civilized' world that create people who commit acts of terror.

Climate change is going to create massive instability and yes, acts of terror, as it advances. Our military is certainly looking at it that way - here are several links suggesting a causal relationship between climate change and terror:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/11/14/does-our-military-know-something-we-dont-about-global-warming/ (interestingly, the Military Advisory Board study cited in this article has been removed...money must have changed hands somewhere)

http://www.newsweek.com/pentagon-report-us-military-considers-climate-change-immediate-threat-could-277155

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/73339/20150731/pentagon-report-concludes-that-climate-change-is-a-us-military-problem.htm

[Bluenorthwest]

6. But Obama also said this, he described that direct link rather completely as he is prone to do

but he does in fact say hungry displaced people become producers of terrorism. To make some display over the word choice is a misuse of both men and the English language. Bernie and Barack are making the same damn point.

This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder. He and the President agree and you can't admit that. I keep seeing anti Bernie posters drag in regular old Democratic ideas and legislation, tie them to Bernie and condemn them. The cannabis reform bill he introduced was introduced in the House months ago by a Third Way member, but DU's anti Bernie folks called it radical grandstanding. What anti Bernie people called his 'flat tax to fund the revolution' was actually Senator Gillibrand's Family Leave Act.
Makes me wonder what it is they are so twisted up about.

[Cali_Democrat]

7. Obama never said climate change is directly related to the growth in terrorism.

There's the rub.

It's a pretty big distinction between the two. That's why the fact checkers went after Bernie, but not Obama.

[litlbilly]

9. No he doesnt, just look at his posts. Cali is a Bernie basher plain and simple

[Ron Green]

4. There certainly IS a direct link between the economic forces that are causing climate change

and the economic forces that create terrorist activities.

As far as the causal relationship with Syrian rural-to-urban movement, that sounds reasonable as well.

[SunSeeker]

10. Bernie did not do the environmental movement any favors with the loopy line.

His statement plays into the right wing climate denier's stereotype of "loopy lefties making shit up about climate change." Bernie sounded unhinged when he said climate change causes terrorism. Yes, sure in the long run the sea level rise and droughts it causes will lead to migration, starvation and massive unrest, but saying climate change caused ISIS is over the top. Most Dems know it was George Bush's disastrous foreign involvements that created Al Qaida in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS. Climate change is awful enough. It does not need embellishment. It only makes us lose credibility on this important subject.

[neverforget]

11. Really? I mean, fucking really????????????

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1

The devastating civil war that began in Syria in March 2011 is the result of complex interrelated factors. The focus of the conflict is regime change, but the triggers include a broad set of religious and sociopolitical factors, the erosion of the economic health of the country, a wave of political reform sweeping over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Levant region, and challenges associated with climate variability and change and the availability and use of freshwater. As described here, water and climatic conditions have played a direct role in the deterioration of Syria’s economic conditions. There is a long history of conflicts over water in these regions because of the natural water scarcity, the early development of irrigated agriculture, and complex religious and ethnic diversity. In recent years, there has been an increase in incidences of water-related violence around the world at the subnational level attributable to the role that water plays in development disputes and economic activities. Because conflicts are rarely, if ever, attributable to single causes, conflict analysis and concomitant efforts at reducing the risks of conflict must consider a multitude of complex relationships and contributing factors. This paper assesses the complicated connections between water and conflict in Syria, looks more broadly at future climate-related risks for water systems, and offers some water management strategies for reducing those risks.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241.abstract

Before the Syrian uprising that began in 2011, the greater Fertile Crescent experienced the most severe drought in the instrumental record. For Syria, a country marked by poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies, the drought had a catalytic effect, contributing to political unrest. We show that the recent decrease in Syrian precipitation is a combination of natural variability and a long-term drying trend, and the unusual severity of the observed drought is here shown to be highly unlikely without this trend. Precipitation changes in Syria are linked to rising mean sea-level pressure in the Eastern Mediterranean, which also shows a long-term trend. There has been also a long-term warming trend in the Eastern Mediterranean, adding to the drawdown of soil moisture. No natural cause is apparent for these trends, whereas the observed drying and warming are consistent with model studies of the response to increases in greenhouse gases. Furthermore, model studies show an increasingly drier and hotter future mean climate for the Eastern Mediterranean. Analyses of observations and model simulations indicate that a drought of the severity and duration of the recent Syrian drought, which is implicated in the current conflict, has become more than twice as likely as a consequence of human interference in the climate system.

http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/612710

WASHINGTON, July 29, 2015 — Global climate change will aggravate problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries, according to a report the Defense Department sent to Congress yesterday.

The Senate Appropriations Committee requested the report in conjunction with the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2015, asking that the undersecretary of defense for policy provide a report that identifies the most serious and likely climate-related security risks for each combatant command and the ways those commands integrate risk mitigation into their planning processes.

Fragile States Vulnerable to Disruption

The report finds that climate change is a security risk, Pentagon officials said, because it degrades living conditions, human security and the ability of governments to meet the basic needs of their populations. Communities and states that already are fragile and have limited resources are significantly more vulnerable to disruption and far less likely to respond effectively and be resilient to new challenges, they added.

“The Department of Defense's primary responsibility is to protect national security interests around the world,” officials said in a news release announcing the report’s submission. “This involves considering all aspects of the global security environment and planning appropriately for potential contingencies and the possibility of unexpected developments both in the near and the longer terms.

“It is in this context,” they continued, “that the department must consider the effects of climate change -- such as sea level rise, shifting climate zones and more frequent and intense severe weather events -- and how these effects could impact national security.”

I am so fucking sick of people saying anything in defense of their candidate......Bernie is correct. Climate change is exacerbating an already bad problem by forcing people, in this case an extreme drought in Syria, off of their land into the cities with no prospect of jobs. People with no hope are much easier to manipulate with propaganda (ISIS) to blame their problems on others when a part of the problem is too much carbon in the atmosphere altering the climate. Stupid fucking science always getting in the way of politics.

[Fearless]

12. How about sniper fire... what do they say?

[AgingAmerican]

13. The Syrian war was kicked off by a drought

The drought was caused by climate change. From this you can extrapolate that climate change was the direct cause of that conflict, which along with the power vacuum in Iraq, led to the rise of ISIS. Thus ISIS was indirectly caused by climate change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html?_r=0