Uncontroversial?

It looks like a fifth meme regarding ISIS' violent rampage in the Middle East and Europe (see here for the first four) is being propagated by Barack Obama's supporters on the Left. In an article entitled "Why Climate Change is the Best Hope for Peace," that is so ridiculous (I'll note the reasons why in a moment) that I'll allow two of it's adherents to describe the meme in their own words. This, from Jason Box and Naomi Klein in the left-leaning New Yorker:

The connection between warming temperatures and the cycle of Syrian violence is, by now, uncontroversial. As Secretary of State John Kerry said in Virginia, this month, “It’s not a coincidence that, immediately prior to the civil war in Syria, the country experienced its worst drought on record. As many as 1.5 million people migrated from Syria’s farms to its cities, intensifying the political unrest that was just beginning to roil and boil in the region.”

The authors go on to state that there might be other factors that also contributed to Syrian violence. Ya think?

Like most authors who have turned climate change into a religion, Box and Klein are true believers who connect any weather phenomenon that is negative (e.g., droughts, hurricanes, floods, massive snowfall) with climate change (weather and climate are connected, but very different from one another. They then suggest, without a shred of scientific backing, that the fight against climate change will somehow reduce the occurrence of negative weather phenomenon.

Let's take a detailed look at Box and Klein's paragraph. First, the authors state that the connection between warming temperatures (itself a controversial position), the Syrian drought, violence, and climate change is "uncontroversial." How exactly? There is currently a drought in southern California. Can we assume, therefore, that extreme violence, the use poison gas against of civilian populations, the ascension of an ISIS-like group, and even civil war will break out in CA. Or let's for just a moment go back to the dust bowl of the 1930s .. same questions apply. If you think those comparisons lead to absurd conclusions about the effects of drought, you're right. But they demonstrate the vacuity of the fifth meme espoused by Box and Klein.

In science, there is no need to oversell a valid scientific concept by trying to connect it to other unrelated or weakly related phenomena. The idea sells itself through solid, reproducable, experimental verification and by using accurate data that has not been cherry-picked or modified in any way. Under the Obama administration, there appears to be an attempt to keep the data and the analysis secret.

There is a certain desperation among those on the Left to argue that ISIS and related radical Islamic group are driven not by an evil Islamist ideology but by things the Islamists can't control—poverty, oppression, geography, and now climate change. That in an odd way, these Islamic extremist groups are actually victims. If they are victims of anything, it's an interpretation of the Koran that leads to a malevolent outcome. Climate change has NOTHING to do with it!