The pseudo-intellectuals are at it again. In this case, two geniuses smarter than you or I claim that the reason ISIS was created and began beheading innocent people is because that darned drought just made them so cranky.
You see, pseudo-intellectuals are in a perpetual conundrum. They want to be taken seriously and they want they’re opinions heard. However, they’re also afraid of cold hard truths. At that point, they need to deny reality and create a new one where the bogeyman is something that can’t fight back – like climate. When people who don’t deny reality tell them they’re full of crap… voila!
The pseudo-intellectuals have the targets of their derision – people with common sense. Unfortunately, they just make the fight all that much more difficult because they make such effective useful idiots:
Charles Strozier, Professor of History and the founding Director of the John Jay College Center on Terrorism and Kelly Berkell, research assistant at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, wrote a blog piece in the Huffington Post called “ How Climate Change Helped ISIS,” where they argue that a four-year drought in Syria, from 2006 through 2010, “devastated the livelihoods of 800,000 farmers and herders; and knocked two to three million people into extreme poverty.”
“As the Obama administration undertakes a highly public, multilateral campaign to degrade and destroy the militant jihadists known as ISIS, ISIL and the Islamic State,” the two write, “many in the West remain unaware that climate played a significant role in the rise of Syria’s extremists.”
“Many became climate refugees,” Strozier and Berkell write.
The pair offer a call to action for Americans to consider the link between melting glaciers and a stronger Taliban.
“If more Americans knew how glacial melt contributes to catastrophic weather in Afghanistan—potentially strengthening the Taliban and imperiling Afghan girls who want to attend school—would we drive more hybrids and use millions fewer plastic bags? How would elections and legislation be influenced?” they write.
Of course, all of this tripe short-circuits the Arab Spring. Wasn’t that supposed to be brought about by the right kind of climate? The climate for freedom and change? In fact, contrary to what we common sense folk knew, it was many of the same pseudo-intellectuals that told us the Arab Spring was a great thing. We were right again but that doesn’t make pseudo-intellectuals humble; it makes them even angrier.
How dare we be right!
Uh, for the record, we’re not “unaware” that jihadists murder because of global warming; we’re just aware that pseudo-intellectuals shouldn’t be listened to when they tell us jihadists do.
h/t WZ