can you believe these people?
"There are various things going on, but you're talking about 1.5 million people migrating from the rural north to the cities," said climate scientist Richard Seager at Columbia, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It was a contributing factor to the social unravelling that occurred that eventually led to the civil war."
The study's authors do not claim climate change caused Syria's civil war. It's not that simple. Lead author Colin Kelley at the University of California said there are numerous factors involved, including the oppressive Assad regime, an influx of more than 1 million refugees from Iraq, the tumult of the Arab Spring, as well as the drought. Kelley and Seager said they couldn't say which factors were the most important.
But, Seager said, this is the "single clearest case" ever presented by scientists of climate change playing a part in conflict because "you can really draw a blow-by-blow account with the numbers."
"There are various things going on, but you're talking about 1.5 million people migrating from the rural north to the cities," said climate scientist Richard Seager at Columbia, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It was a contributing factor to the social unravelling that occurred that eventually led to the civil war."
The study's authors do not claim climate change caused Syria's civil war. It's not that simple. Lead author Colin Kelley at the University of California said there are numerous factors involved, including the oppressive Assad regime, an influx of more than 1 million refugees from Iraq, the tumult of the Arab Spring, as well as the drought. Kelley and Seager said they couldn't say which factors were the most important.
But, Seager said, this is the "single clearest case" ever presented by scientists of climate change playing a part in conflict because "you can really draw a blow-by-blow account with the numbers."
