CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RISE OF ISIS

Fact-checking the link between climate change and ISIS

Linda Qiu, September 23, 2015 (PolitiFact via Tampa Bay Times)

“…[Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley was derided when he suggested] that climate change contributed to the rise of ISIS…[We rate his claim Mostly True]…A spokesperson for the O’Malley campaign…[said] his source was a March 2015 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, which was well received in its field, does not mention ISIS at all, but…found evidence that climate change led to an extreme drought in Syria’s breadbasket between 2006 to 2009. Food prices skyrocketed, nutrition-related diseases became widespread, and 1.5 million internal refugees abandoned their farms and flooded into Syrian cities already crowded with 1.5 million Iraqi refugees displaced by the Iraq war…This influx of people exacerbated existing problems like unemployment, corruption and brewing discontent with the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which failed to respond to the situation…In 2011, the unrest reached boiling point and erupted into the Syrian uprising…[According to a study co-author, it is] reasonable to say the next fallen domino is the rise of ISIS…” click here for more

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