House Republicans are seeking to cut funds from the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) budgets that are directed at researching the national security implications of climate change.
In a sweeping budget proposal rolled out on Tuesday, which presents the yin to the Obama administration’s yang when it comes to spending priorities, lawmakers identified national security-related climate change research as a key area to eliminate “wasteful” spending.
“The Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, two of the most important agencies in our national security apparatus, currently spend part of their budget studying climate change,” a House Budget Committee document states.
For years, including under the George W. Bush administration, the Defense Department and intelligence community have assessed the potential for climate change to act as a threat multiplier, particularly in areas that have preexisting sources of tension.
The Republican proposal, put forward by Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia, comes soon after a study found that global warming likely amplified a drought in Syria that preceded the devastating civil war in that country. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that climate change was likely one of the many factors that contributed to the deadly conflict, which has displaced millions and killed at least 200,000.
When violence erupted in Syria during the Arab Spring in 2011, the country had been mired in a three-year drought—its worst in recorded history. Government agricultural policies had led to an overreliance on rain, so desperate farmers had to turn to well water—and they ended up sucking most of the country’s groundwater reserves dry. What happened next upended the country. “A lot of these farmers picked up their families, abandoned their villages, and went en masse to urban areas,” says Colin Kelley, a climate scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of a new paper on the conflict. Add 1.5 million refugees fleeing the US-led invasion of Iraq, and the population of Syrian cities grew by 50 percent between 2002 and 2010. The influx led to illegal settlements, rampant unemployment, and inequality. But the government hardly did anything in response (corruption didn’t help, nor did the fact that the hardest-hit areas were populated by Kurdish minorities, who have long been discriminated against and ignored). Soon, frustrations boiled over.
The drought didn’t cause the violence—it just made Syria susceptible. But what’s more important here is that the drought, Kelley found, was severe likely because of human-caused global warming. It’s behind the drop in precipitation researchers have seen since 1930, the beginning of the data record. The researchers compared two climate models of the region: one that included the warming effects of greenhouse gases and one that didn’t. They found that in the model with global warming, severe, multiyear droughts like the one that preceded the Syrian uprising were two to three times more common than in the other model. A statistical analysis of the data also showed that the long-term trends of rising temperatures and drier climate make droughts more likely and severe. While it’s impossible to link global warming to this particular drought, climate change makes such droughts much more probable. “Climate change isn’t causing it by itself,” Kelley says. “But if you combine it with all the preexisting factors, it can multiply that threat.”
Researchers have linked abrupt changes in climate to the rise and fall of civilizations from the Roman Empire to the Khmer Empire that built Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In modern times, droughts or hotter temperatures have contributed to Hindu-Muslim riots in India, civil wars in Africa, and even violence and crime in the US. But the new study stands out, because it’s proof that the cause has a non-natural component. “This is a serious piece of work,” says Andrew Solow, a statistician at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “It’s certainly plausible that the drought increases the chance of civil conflict—you’re putting stress on a society and it’s plausible that that tends to lead to violence.” But, he cautions against making a direct connection between drought and war. Other geopolitical factors probably play a bigger role in causing conflict.
Nice, tweet scheduled on this.
So, House Republicans, how is your groundwater holding up in California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas? How is Lake Mead doing these days.
I suppose when this happens:
those futures in prisons (sorry concentration camps) will bloom but nothing else will. But then the staff are going to be short of water particularly as much of it has been used or spoiled for fracking.
‘Mad Max’ will be seen as a holiday vacation by comparison to what is coming down the road if these House Republicans are allowed to continue ruling the hen-house.
Didn’t Jared Diamond (Collapse) indicate that one of the problems that caused the Viking settlers to lose Greenland was reliance on the words of false prophets, the priests. These House Republicans are just as transfixed by false profits.
It’s too bad Crichton passed away. He needs to write an Andromeda Strain sequel about the virus that is attacking the brains of Republican politicians and lowering their IQ’s to that of a “developmentally challenged” chipmunk. (For those who are not PC, the operable word from the past is “retarded”).
Lord love a duck, but things are getting crazier in this country.
Strewth, that’s a good ol’ expression, rescued from the grave, although I have noted you use it previously.
S’funny you mention Crichton and ‘The Andromeda Strain’ (Jurassic Park was a strain on credulity let alone State of Fear) as these have cropped up in ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public’ by Steven Drucker which I have just started reading, having put aside Dana Nuccitelli’s ‘Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics’.
Both well worth a look, Nuccitelli’s I wasn’t sure would have anything new for me but it does, especially an overview of that 97% Consenus study methodology. If you like a laugh go have a look at THE one star review and follow up comments for Nuccitelli’s book at Amazon.com.
Lord love a duck, but things are getting crazier in this country.
Strewth, that’s a good ol’ expression, rescued from the grave, although I have noted you use it previously.
Yes, it’s old and not often seen, but I like the way it rolls off the tongue and the image of dumb ducks waddling around that it conjures up. I picked it up in some course way back when, and it stuck with me.
Actually, I think it goes back to the middle to late 1800’s in England and began as “Lord love a Duke”. I think it was some sort of a political statement that was popular among union types, and was NOT meant as a compliment to the “Dukes” and the upper classes but more as “Can you believe these people”?
🙂