How climate change is helping Al Qaeda

South Park TerroristBy Tristan McConnell and Nick Loomis

NAIROBI, Kenya and GAO, Mali—  The Sahel is an environmentally fragile zone that stretches across Africa just south of the Sahara desert.

To get a better idea of how climate change can worsen conflict there, GlobalPost spoke with three experts on the topic: Drew Sloan of energy efficiency company Opower, Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley and Josh Busby of the University of Texas at Austin.

Their short answer? It’s complicated, but climate change is making things harder for those who live in a politically unstable and economically challenged region.

Read the rest at Global Post.

6 Responses to How climate change is helping Al Qaeda

  1. Neilio December 5, 2013 at 7:19 am #

    Ok, so the climate is changing in sub-Saharan Africa. I don’t see how this can be attributed to human caused warming since there hasn’t been any warming for 17 years. All this is just a money grab.

  2. Rob N. Hood December 12, 2013 at 10:36 am #

    In case you missed Obama’s enthusiastic oil speech, here it is again: “Over the last three years,” boasted Obama in public, “I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some…”

    yes, a money grab indeed

  3. Rob N. Hood December 15, 2013 at 9:44 am #

    “money grab” is the connection to your statement- thought that was pretty clear

    • Neilio December 15, 2013 at 7:45 pm #

      Oh, Ok? Whatever you say.
      I think the poor farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are looking for the richer nations to bail them out of a situation created by their climate changing, by blaming it on AGW. And the people who explore for, extract, transport, refine, and distribute a product that is in high demand are exactly the same? No difference there!

  4. Neilio December 15, 2013 at 9:50 pm #

    http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/tyranny-climate-change
    The current interglacial warm period, the Holocene, started 11,500 years ago. At its start, among the dramatic changes in climate was a notable increase in rainfall, triggered by summer insolation values higher than those of today. This caused what is called the African Humid Period in North Africa—a time when the Sahara was dotted with large and small lakes, savannah grasslands, and in some regions, humid tropical forests and shrubs. The African Humid Period ended abruptly 5000 ybp (years before present) in many locations, such as western North Africa and northern Kenya. In other places, such as the central Sahara and the southern Arabian Peninsula, change occurred more gradually, taking several millennia. Regardless of the pace of change, those areas are tracts of arid desert today, and the animals and humans who had previously thrived in those formerly verdant regions have either moved or had to adapt to much harsher conditions. This is but one example of nature at its most capricious—the tyranny of climate change.

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