About Pulling Out Of Syria

[I'm thinking out loud here, trying to bring disparate thoughts together.  Bear with me.]

It's not at all clear to me the costs and benefits of the US having troops in Syria.  I think finding ways to pull out of places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ending support of the Saudi war in Yemen are important goals.

Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of congress from California, in this Washington Post piece,  supports President Trump's instinct to pull out of Syria, though he argues we need to do it in a way better coordinated with our allies, and in a way that uses leverage over Turkey's Erdogan that keeps him from massacring Kurds in the area.

He also mentions,

"We have spent more money in Afghanistan than we did in the Marshall Plan and continue to spend more than $40 billion each year."

The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe rebuild after the destruction of WW II.  It help lift their economy so Western Europe could help us defend against the Soviet Union as the Cold War ramped up and so they could buy American products, which helped repay what we spent.

Imagine $40 billion a year.  What could the US have spent that money on?  Helping with education and economic development in Central America so that the people there could make a living and build safe lives, so they wouldn't feel the need to flee over the US border.

Think of the US veterans who wouldn't be suffering from PTSD and other serious ailments, not to mention missing body parts.  War is only good for people who make money selling guns, planes, tanks, technology, and all the support items needed for soldiers to live and fight and die.

Think about all the fossil fuel that would not have been used. And how global warming would have been a little bit slower.   The Union of Concerned Scientists write:

"The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg."

According to Wired, $40 billion a year is only 2/3 of what's needed to rebuild our infrastructure.

" $1 trillion sounds great, but it ain't enough, not if the country wants to keeping fixing roads ten years down the line. According a US Department of Transportation report, just maintaining current highways and bridges through 2030 will cost a cool $65.3 billion—per year. That’s being conservative."

You get the point.  If the Soviet Union, which borders Afghanistan could take control, how can the US do it from half-way around the world away?

Unfortunately, few people, and I know this includes many members of congress, don't have a comprehensive understanding of the factors involved in wars like the ones we're involved in.  We originally went to Afghanistan to punish those who killed 2,955 people on 9/11, 2605 of whom were American citizens.

Brown University's Cost of War study offers this summary of what we've unleashed* in return:

SUMMARY

• Over 480,000 have died due to direct war violence, and several times as many indirectly

• Over 244,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting

• 21 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons

• The US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $5.9 trillion dollars

• The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 76 countries

• The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad

READ ALL FINDINGS

*I say 'unleashed' because the US forces didn't kill all these civilians, but the wars we've engaged in have.

Saddam Hussein was a ruthless leader.  Getting actual figures of the number of people his regime killed - civilians and and conscripted soldiers - is not easy.  As I look, numbers range in the hundreds of thousands - at least 300,000 and probably significantly more than that.  Some sources:

• State Department Summary
• The Scotsman
• Wikipedia

Surely, there are people alive who wouldn't be if we hadn't invaded Iraq.  But there are also people who are dead, who wouldn't be if we hadn't invaded Iraq.

I'd note this Brookings Institute (a liberal leaning think tank) prediction from 2002 about the costs of getting into a war with Iraq which I found while getting data for this post:

An invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein would likely cost the United States about $50 billion, though it could plausibly range from $25 billion to $75 billion or so, with likely annual U.S. costs of maintaining order in Iraq ranging from $5 billion to $20 billion for a number of years thereafter. The latter costs of winning the peace, and associated wear and tear on American military personnel, may actually turn out to be a greater concern than the one-time cost of winning the war.

If only it had been so 'cheap.'

My point is, again, that the number of people who actually have looked closely at all the costs and benefits - economic, human, political, opportunity costs - is relatively few.  I'm not in that group.

It's clear to me though, that the money spent "fighting terrorism" could have been better spent creating opportunities for human beings - education, health care, economic development.  These kinds of initiatives would have created positive changes in people's lives and put the United States and the world in a much better place than it is now.

It's time people went back and read some of the old stories we were supposed to learn simple truths from.  For instance the story of B'rer Rabbit and the Tar Baby might be an apt story for the United States' war on terrorism.





I'd note that many such old stories are seen today as sexist or racist.  I suspected people hadfound reason to question the Uncle Remus stories.  So  I checked and they have.  But it's hard not to be racist if you grow up in the United States even today.  Joel Chandler Harris was born just before the Civil War in the South, so surely he had lots of racist tendencies.  But all that considering, it seems he was pretty progressive for his times, and the Uncle Remus stories seem to be a tribute to an old black slave Harris looked up to.  See this Pittsburgh Gazette article on Harris' life.

In The Unbelievably Racist World of Classic Children's Lit,   Malcolm Jones writes:

"The case of Joel Chandler Harris is particularly relevant in this regard. A lifelong southerner and an Atlanta newspaper editor (and incidentally a friend of Twain’s), Harris was probably as enlightened as a white person could be in his time and place. If you read his Uncle Remus stories, you’ll see that to Harris, Uncle Remus was a hero. He’s certainly the smartest and kindest person, black or white, in the narrative that frames the folk tales collected by the author from former slaves.
More important, had Harris not collected those folktales, we almost surely would have missed much of a vast trove of oral storytelling (“our most precious piece of stolen goods,” Twain called them—so that’s what we were getting away with!), because before Harris, no one else had the sense to realize how wonderful those stories were, much less that they should be recorded for posterity. Whatever sins he may have been guilty of, Harris knew at least that much. James Weldon Johnson called the 185 stories published by Harris 'the greatest body of folklore America has produced.'”  

He's not as kind to Disney's Song of the South, from which this clip was taken.

None of this changes my belief that the sooner we get Trump out of the presidency the better for the world and the United States.  And the Republicans who have had control of both houses of Congress since Trump became president, share the blame, because they haven't done their job as a check on the criminal* who is in the White House.

*I think that anyone who looks at the Trump organization and Trump objectively has to acknowledge that he has abused our laws repeatedly.

The White Helmets Takes You On A Short Trip To Syria

Netflix is showing The White Helmets, a short documentary about a group that rescues people immediately after bombings.  It takes you into Allepo and into a training program in Turkey.  It gives you a close up look inside Syria.

When I googled the movie to find out more, I did find an interview with a Dr. Tim Anderson of the University of Sydney who claims the White Helmets is a terrorist group and the movie is total propaganda.  I also found this article which argues that Anderson is merely parroting the Asad and Russian line.   There is also an article in the Australian which looks at Anderson's past.

Judge for yourself.  I still recommend the movie if you have Netflix.  Oh, yeah, they're showing it because it won the Academy Award for best short documentary.  It's very well made.

Does US Pay Too Much For NATO And Other Issues Raised By Commenter

A commenter figuratively rolled his eyes about something  I said in post last week about Trump taking orders from Putin.  In a responding comment I pointed out that I’d qualified that statement and challenged him to be more specific about his problems with the post.

He responded with a series of issues that I couldn’t factually respond to off the top of my head.  I realized that I had an opinion on them, but that I hadn’t done any homework on them.

Normally, responses to comments should stay in the comment section.  But I spent some time looking things up (and was also diverted by gramping  duties), time passed, and I decided my response warranted its own post where more people would see it.

But I want to thank Oliver for coming back with his list.  As Justice Ginsburg said about Justice Scalia, his challenges make me better.  I'm assuming that Oliver’s questions are serious, and not just trolling to distract me from other things.  I assume  that Trump supporters could be thinking the same things.  (I didn't say 'other Trump supporters'  because I don't know if Oliver supports Trump or not.)  As I looked up the questions about NATO funding, I did find that his points mirrored Trump talking points (and in the case of NATO Bernie Sanders talking points) and there were complexities that weren't reflected that seem to make his concerns less clear if not moot.

So here's what he wrote the second time:

"Further Putin’s agenda? Let’s see, the former president sat by while the Russians allegedly hacked the election. Sat by while he gobbled up Crimea and the Ukraine. Yes, I know we did some sanctions and expelled some low level diplomats, or as it’s really know as doing nothing meaningful. Putin’s bombing campaign accomplished in a couple months what the Obama administration was unable to do in a year in Syria.
As for Trump, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for NATO members to pay their fair share, only five of the twenty eight members are paying the 2%. Even Obama ask them to up their contribution. The United States contributes between one-fifth and one-quarter of NATO’s budget. In FY2010 that contribution totaled $711.8 million. We all know what NATO did about Russian aggression over the past several years, nothing. So what is NATO for again?
I don’t think the man who says torture is ok as sick as that is has any intentions of weakening the U.S. intelligence agencies. We sell Taiwan 1.2 billion dollars in military equipment and that’s fine, Trump calls them on the phone and you have outrage from China!!! Tough.
Oliver"

I'm not going to respond to everything - that would be like a week's worth of posts.  I did most of my searching on the NATO points.  Here's what I found mainly at the Washington Post, Politifact, and the Congressional Research Service:   (feel free to offer other serious analyses)

NATO -   Basically they all say it’s more complicated than those numbers say:
1.  There are different NATO budgets.  One is related to NATO non-military costs and each member pays according to a formula based on its GDP.  In that area, countries are paying pretty much according to the formula.

2.  The Congressional Research Service says the US gets plenty of benefits from NATO

“DOD has noted that the United States has benefitted from NATO infrastructure support for several military operations, including the 1986 air strike on Libya, Desert Storm, Provide Comfort, Deny Flight, peacekeeping activities in the Balkans, as well as military operations in Afghanistan and training in Iraq. Finally, the Pentagon notes that U.S. companies have been successful in bidding on NSIP [NATO Security Investment Program] contracts.”

3.  When it comes to military contribution, the calculations include the total military expenditures for each country.  Most of the NATO countries only have troops related to Europe and NATO.  The calculation for the US includes all military spending world wide.  It’s true that some of those forces can be brought in, if needed, to deploy in Europe.  But it’s also true that the US troops in Europe are not solely to support NATO.  They can if needed, but they also support US military missions in other places - like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc.  So the calculations of those expenses, which make the US contribution look huge (less than your $700 million figure, but more than you 20% figure), are misleading because those expenses are for much, much more than defense of NATO.

Oliver, I realize this doesn't end the debate or change your opinion on NATO, but it does put the ball back on your side of the court on this one.

I don't have time to do the same tracking down of facts - and even if I did, there would still be disputes - but let me respond briefly to your comment about Syria:

"Putin’s bombing campaign accomplished in a couple months what the Obama administration was unable to do in a year in Syria."

Syria is a thorny problem.  I suspect that Obama had some options in the beginning that might have made a difference.  What would have happened if he had tried to take out Asad right away?   If he succeeded or failed, there would have been a lot of blowback.   History may or may not be able to sort that out.  There were lots of things to consider, including civilian lives and the already overextended US military that had soldiers overseas in their 3rd, 4th, and 5th rotations.  And there was an overstretched VA that would have to serve even more veterans.    And we don’t know what all has happened there behind the scenes.

I would argue that supporting the existing regime (as Putin is doing) is far easier than trying to figure out which of the rebel organizations should be supported.  Asad had a long-standing, well trained and organized army.  Supporting Asad meant Russia would get what it wanted from Syria if Asad prevailed.  The rebel outcomes were far less certain.    Russia also had no qualms about killing civilians.  Putin has no humanitarian interests in Syria (or anywhere else as far as I can tell), so was free to support the strongest party, despite its terrible record including atrocities in the prisons as this Amnesty International report describes.

I don't know Trump's intentions.  The idea that Putin has leverage over Trump is not nearly as far-fetched as Trump's long standing campaign about Obama being a Kenyan, which so many Trump supporters had no problem embracing.  There's far more circumstantial evidence that Trump's financially entangled with Russian interests and his serious of Russian friendly moves raises serious questions, even among congressional Republicans.  Seeing Obama's birth certificate, as Trump demanded for years, was far less consequential than seeing Trump's tax returns.  Yet Trump refuses to make them public, something all the recent presidential candidates have done.  And which would likely confirm his financial links to Russia one way or the other.  (And possibly open up new questions.)

So there are a few possibilities that Trump is weakening the US security agencies:

• He is being pressured by Putin.
• He is hurting US Security unintentionally - His lashing out at anyone who criticizes him leads him to attack the CIA and others and take actions that hurt them - as in replacing the chair of the Joint Chief of Staff and the head of national intelligence with Stephen Bannon on the National Security Council - which is being reported now, that he didn't realize he was doing when he signed the order.  

Oliver, I do appreciate your making me sharpen my facts.  I think we should be talking respectfully about the issues that some would rather have divide the nation for their own interests.  Your serious comments also help me understand how intelligent folks could see Trump as a reasonable option.  I do get the opposition to Clinton, but not when Trump is the alternative.  Now, if you still want to address the other issues - the Russian hacking and the Ukraine - I'll let you spell out your facts that demonstrate Obama could have done something different that would have worked.  

Perhaps the best thing that could come out of this is a shake-up of both parties, more serious talk across party lines,  and improvements in how we elect presidents.  But I think the issue goes beyond the parties to the corporations that have inordinate influence over congress and the presidency.

How To Talk To Your Cat About Gun Safety And Other Books At Elliott Bay Book Company

There was a book I couldn't get in LA, San Francisco, or Anchorage.  But Elliott Bay Book Company said they had a copy when I called.  It's a surprise for a relative, so nothing here yet.  

But here are some other books I saw on the shelves.  Remember books?  

HOW TO TALK TO YOUR CAT ABOUT GUN SAFETY -  Zachary Auburn

From the Preface:

"My fellow purrtiots,
You hold in your hands the only book in print today with the courage to tell it like it is.  To stand up to the idolaters, the liberals, the international bankers, and the secret kings of Europe who want to destroy America and replace it with their one-world government.  To bring about our downfall, these villains have targeted what is surely our greatest national resource:  our cats.  They know that no other cats in the world are as cute as ours.  American cats have the softest bellies, the fluffiest tails, and the loudest purrs.  We are the greatest country in the history of the world, and we have the cats to match.  Our enemies know they have no chance of defeating us while we stand tall with our cats by our sides, and so for years these scoundrels have worked in the shadows, trying to weaken us and our cats.  Stripping from ur cats their Second Amendment right to bear arms!  Undermining the faith of our kittens by teaching them the lie of evolution!  Addicting out feline friends to the scourge of catnip!  The cats of America are under siege . . ."

BLANKETS,  Craig Thomson

From DrawnandQuarterly:

"This groundbreaking graphic novel, winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, is an eloquent portrait of adolescent yearning; first love (and first heartache); faith in crisis; and the process of moving beyond all of that. Beautifully rendered in pen and ink, Thompson has created a love story that lasts."

RAD WOMEN WORLDWIDE  - Kate Schatz

From Advocate:

Rad Women Worldwide tells fresh, engaging, and inspiring tales of perseverance and radical success by pairing well researched and riveting biographies with powerful and expressive cut-paper portraits. Covering the time from 430 B.C.E. to 2016, spanning 31 countries around the world, the book features an array of diverse figures, including Hatshepsut (the great female king who ruled Egypt peacefully for two decades), Malala Yousafzi (the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize), Poly Styrene (legendary teenage punk and lead singer of X-Ray Spex), and Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft (polar explorers and the first women to cross Antarctica). This progressive and visually arresting book is a compelling addition to works on women’s history. 

WE CAME TO AMERICA - Faith Ginggold

From Kirkus:

"Known for her trademark folkloric spreads, Caldecott Honoree Ringgold showcases the arrival of people immigrating to America. By way of luscious colors and powerful illustrations, readers embark upon a journey toward togetherness, though it’s not without its hardships: “Some of us were already here / Before the others came,” reads an image with Native Americans clad in ornate jewelry and patterned robes. The following spread continues, “And some of us were brought in chains, / Losing our freedom and our names.” Depicted on juxtaposing pages are three bound, enslaved Africans and an African family unchained, free. The naïve-style acrylic paintings feature bold colors and ethnic diversity—Jewish families, Europeans, Asian, and South Asian groups all come to their new home. Muslims and Latinos clearly recognizable as such are absent, and Ringgold’s decision to portray smiling, chained slaves is sure to raise questions (indeed, all figures throughout display small smiles). Despite these stumbling blocks, the book’s primary, communal message, affirmed in its oft-repeated refrain, is a welcome one: “We came to America, / Every color, race, and religion, / From every country in the world.” Preceding the story, Ringgold dedicates the book 'to all the children who come to America….May we welcome them….'”

THE BATTLE FOR HOME - Marwa Al-Sabouoni


From The Guardian.

". . . With so much of the country destroyed, what will the future look like? People close their eyes, and they wonder: is it even possible to imagine such a thing?
Marwa al-Sabouni believes it is – and her eyes are wide open. A 34-year-old architect and mother of two, Sabouni was born and grew up in Homs, scene of some of the most vicious fighting. Unlike many, however, she did not leave Syria – or even Homs itself – during the war. The practice she and her husband still (in theory) run together on the old town’s main square was shut up almost immediately: this part of the city quickly became a no-go area. But her home nearby somehow survived intact, and her family safe inside it.
“I’m lucky,” she says. “I didn’t have to leave my home. We were stuck there, as if we were in prison; we didn’t see the moon for two years. But apart from broken windows there was no other damage.” She laughs, relishing my astonishment at this (we’re talking on Skype, which feels so strange, the cars in her street honking normality – or a version of it – with their horns). . . "

ATLAS OBSCURA: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders - Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton

This book is divided by continents and then countries.  I randomly opened to a page to a 'hidden wonder' I'd actually been to.  On India's northwest border with Pakistan, outside Amritsar, there's a bizarre, but uplifting ceremony held each sundown when the flag is powered at the border called the
Wagah border ceremony.  A couple pages later was another choice Indian attraction we had visited - Jantar Mantar, an observatory built in 1728, in Jaipur.  The Alaska entries are less compelling.  The Eklutha cemetery and the Adak National Forest sign are definitely unique, but not quite of the same magnitude as those Indian entries.






NEIN - Eric Jarosinski

From Publishers Weekly:

". . . Nein is not no. Nein is not yes. Nein is nein," he explains. The slim manifesto is divided into digestible, tweet-length aphorisms (each on its own page) with a hashtag for a title. "#TechRevolution/ Turn on./ Log in./ Unsubscribe./ Log out." Jarosinski also includes a hilarious glossary of Nein-ish words and phrases. Performance art, for instance, is defined as "six doppelgangers in search of a selfie." Technology particularly draws his ire. He calls Instagram a "marketplace in which pictures of your cat are exchanged for a thousand unspoken words of derision." There are gems on nearly every page. The book might seem tongue-in-cheek, but Jarosinski's cynical aphorisms about philosophy, art, language, and literature hold plenty of truth. . . "

The Story Of Mankind: History Of The Middle East In 300 Words

click to enlarge the images

"The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and conquest. . .

"In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had entered Mesopotamia.  They were soon afterwards overpowered by the Akkadians . . . A thousand years later, the Akkadians were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another Semite desert tribe whose great

Damascus, the capital of modern Syria, is in the middle

King Hammurabi built himself a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state the best administered empire of the ancient world.  Next the Hittites whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, overran the Fertile Valley and destroyed what they could not carry away.  They in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert god, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians and made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most important capital of that day.  Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their kings, encouraged the study of science and our modern knowledge of astronomy and mathematics is all based on certain first principles which were discovered by the Chaldeans.  In the year 538 B.C. a crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans.  Two hundred years later, they in turn were overthown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province.  Next came the Romans and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second centre of the world's civilization, became a vast wilderness where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory." (pp. 84-87)

This is from Henrik Van Loon's The Story of Mankind, the first book to win the Newbery Prize for outstanding contribution to children's literature in 1922.  It has over 500 pages and as you can tell, it's a little dated and Eurocentric.  The first index reference to China, for example, isn't until World War II. 

This is a book I got as a kid.  I don't remember how much of it I actually finished.  But with my son here looking through the closets and garage for stuff he's left behind, this book showed up. 

What strikes me is the much larger context it gives the events in the Middle East today.

Like, "In the fortieth century before our era."  Forty centuries.  That's 4,000 years.  Add two thousand years since the birth of Christ and we're talking about 6000 years.  Since the so called 'first Iraq war' in 1991, the US has been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan about 23 years out of that 6000.

Despite those who believe in American exceptionalism,  we're still a relatively young nation, and throughout history there have been many powerful nations that have ruled large portions of the world, and then have faded into obscurity.  I thought I'd put up these maps to remind folks of the geography - I have a modern map with the countries that border Syria here - and also to remind us that the limits of our knowledge plus our biases cause us to believe our version of Truth which inevitably will change as time goes on.  That's not a bad thing.  In fact it's inevitable.  But we're wiser and probably more effective human beings if we remember that and leave a keyhole of doubt in all our certainties. 


The Story of Mankind, it seems, was made into a terrible film in 1957 - the last film to have three Marx Brothers.  You can learn more about the film (and see a couple of clips) here.

Conservative Intellectual Yoga

Rooster Pose image from Martin Brading

It seems to me that some conservatives seem to be incredibly adept at intellectual yoga, in which they can twist their logic and the facts into very bizarre ways in order to support their  logically contradictory positions.



Point 1:  Hobby Lobby objects to paying for health insurance for employees that includes contraceptive coverage for women, saying the business owner's religious beliefs should trump a woman's right to non-discrimination, privacy.  Basically, they are saying they should not have to pay for a woman's contraception through their health care.  What about paying for treatment of STD's resulting from an employee's adultery?  Will women have to research company owners' religious beliefs before applying for a job to be sure the health care will cover her reproductive health needs?
And what about the company money paid to an employee that the employee uses to buy reproductive health care?  That's the company's money used for the same thing, just not through insurance.  Will companies be allowed to not hire women if they use contraceptives or might possibly have an abortion in the future and would spend part of the salary to pay for it?

Point 2:  The Georgia legislature passed a law that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons into bars and churches.   In this case, it seems that the rights of owners and churches who are pacifists for religious reasons would be superseded by gun owners' rights to bear arms.

So the same people (business owners and churches) whose rights are asserted in point one are ignored in point two for the higher right of bear tools designed to kill other human beings.  

Original yoga image from CNTV

It seems they are getting closer and closer to merging their heads and their nether parts.

A Mother Jones report shows how truly twisted things get:

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

And under the 'be careful what you wish for' category,  Mike Papantonio raises the question of whether the giving the religious belief of the owner import here would threaten the legal separation of the owner from the corporation opening owners to lawsuits for misdeeds of the corporation. 

At the heart of this, what you have is, you have Hobby Lobby saying, “We’re a corporation but we’re a devout Christian corporation. … If you follow that rationale, the separateness that usually distinguishes the owner of the corporation from the corporation [itself] is then destroyed. …

[Note:  I modified both images in Photoshop.  I also used Google's search by image to try to get to the original source of the photos.]

The Role of Climate Change In The Syrian Revolution

[The Syria connection is toward the end.  But I urge you to read my synopsis of the talk because Paul Beckwith really helped me better understand  the dynamics of how the warming works and how it causes massive flooding in some places and droughts in other places. And that background helps add credibility to his comments on Syria]

At today's Citizens Climate Lobby meeting, the national speaker we heard via phone, was University of Ottawa climatologist Paul Beckwith who spoke about how the melting in the Arctic affects the rest of the planet.  [You can hear the whole talk here - it begins a few minutes into the meeting.]   The gist was:

The temperature difference between the poles and the equator results in global wind patterns that greatly affect weather. 

Hot air rises, creating a low pressure area.   The temperature difference creates a pressure difference between the poles and the equator and that pressure difference causes air to move from high pressure areas to low pressure areas near the surface of the earth. 

Because the earth is rotating, the air doesn't move in a straight line. Curves to the right in the northern hemisphere and the opposite in the southern hemisphere.  This curvature to the right generates the jet streams, which are high altitude winds which circle the earth - sort of a boundary between the upper and lower atmospheres - so these winds typically move from west to east and there will be some waviness, but what is happening now. 

Warming Faster at the Poles Lowering Temperature Differences World Wide
With the elevated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere there is more absorption of the heat that is leaving the earth so it's trapping that heat and causing an overall warming.  In the Arctic the white of the sea ice and snow on land reflect the heat.  But as the ice and snow melt, the poles absorbs more heat causing the Arctic to warm.  North of 66˚ the rate of warming is 2-3X the rest of the planet.  As you move north, the increase is magnified more - 4, 5, even 6 times.

Because the Arctic system is warming faster than the rest of the planet, it's lowering that temperature difference.  So there is less of a pressure difference and less need for the air to move northward.  This slows down the jet streams. 

As they slow down the land ocean temperature difference increases and the jet streams get much wavier as they slow down and they tend to get locked into position relative to where the oceans and continents are.

Important because jet streams guide weather and storms.  And because overall temperatures are warmer, there's more evaporation from the oceans and more water vapor in the atmosphere. 

More Moisture and More Energy and Slower Air Movement = Bigger Storms Here and Drought There
For every degree Celsius increase in temperature there's 7% more water in the atmosphere.  It rises, cools, condenses, and forms clouds.  When it forms clouds, it releases energy.  So more water vapor and more energy in the atmosphere means more intense storms.  And the storms are moving slower, so if you have a massive storm system carrying  huge amounts of water, it's not moving as quickly as it used to move.  That's why certain areas get massive torrential downpours.  In Canada this summer this led to flooding in Banff and Calgary - a $3 billion event -  and a month later the same thing happened in Toronto.   They had 3 inches in an hour, 5 inches in an evening.  Those cities don't have infrastructure that can handle that.  Manila recently had 2 feet in a day or two.  While they are used to monsoons, normally it would be 1 foot in a week or two.

At the same time, these storm systems depositing large amounts of water on specific regions means that water is not traveling to other regions where it used to go.  They are getting less than normal rainfall because storms are sticking and not traveling as far and as fast.

The Syria Connection

Then he added the kicker.   In answering a question about how to respond to those who claim climate change is natural, he talked about how the strange weather patterns today are far more frequent and intense than in the past. 

He was talking about how these climate changes are causing social disruptions.  And he used Syria as an example.  What hasn't been mentioned much is that Syria's been having a five year drought that has devastated farming.  He said that of 8 million farmers, 3 million fell into poverty.  A large number of these farmers moved to the cities and were unemployed.  While he didn't claim this was the cause of Syrians joining the Arab spring, it certainly may well have been the tipping point. 

Since I had missed this point about Syria, I looked it up.  Here are things others are saying about this.  I've just taken a bit.  You can see much more at each link.



 From The Bulletin (Aug 2012):

"Among the many historical, political, and economic factors contributing to the Syrian uprising, one has been devastating to Syria, yet remains largely unnoticed by the outside world. That factor is the complex and subtle, yet powerful role that climate change has played in affecting the stability and longevity of the state.  .   .

From 1900 until 2005, there were six droughts of significance in Syria; the average monthly level of winter precipitation during these dry periods was approximately one-third of normal. All but one of these droughts lasted only one season; the exception lasted two. Farming communities were thus able to withstand dry periods by falling back on government subsidies and secondary water resources. This most recent, the seventh drought, however, lasted from 2006 to 2010, an astounding four seasons -- a true anomaly in the past century. Furthermore, the average level of precipitation in these four years was the lowest of any drought-ridden period in the last century. .  .

It is estimated that the Syrian drought has displaced more than 1.5 million people; entire families of agricultural workers and small-scale farmers moved from the country's breadbasket region in the northeast to urban peripheries of the south. The drought tipped the scale of an unbalanced agricultural system that was already feeling the weight of policy mismanagement and unsustainable environmental practices. Further, lack of contingency planning contributed to the inability of the system to cope with the aftermath of the drought. Decades of poorly planned agricultural policies now haunt Syria's al-Assad regime."

From The Climate Desk  (March 2013):

"In Syria, prior to the unrest that eventually exploded into revolution and armed conflict, Syria had experienced an unprecedented drought, lasting about five years. In 2011, NOAA produced a report showing that the Mediterranean littoral and the Middle East had significant drought conditions that were directly related to climate change. And then we found some reporting that had been done over the course of the drought which were showing that in Syria the drought, connected with natural resource mismanagement by the Assad regime, had led to a mass exodus, rural-to-urban migration, as farmers lost their livelihood. The UN estimated that about 800,000 people in Syria during the course of the drought had their livelihoods entirely destroyed. In the run-up to the unrest in Syria, a lot of international security analysts, even on the eve of the exploding unrest, had determined that Syria was generally a stable country, and that it was immune to social unrest and immune to the Arab Spring. It was clear that there were some stresses underneath the surface, and those migrations that we’re talking about, internal migrations, also put pressure on urban areas that were already economically stressed, and that was added on top of refugees that had been coming in from Iraq since the US invasion.

The Atlantic (Sept. 2013):

 Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011.  Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well.  But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it.

Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011.  Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well.  But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it.

The domestic Syrian refugees immediately found that they had to compete not only with one another for scarce food, water and jobs, but also with the already existing foreign refugee population.  Syria already was a refuge for quarter of a million Palestinians and about a hundred thousand people who had fled the war and occupation of Iraq.  Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers.  And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.   .    .

What Countries Border Syria?

Syria's been in the headlines about two years now, but where is it?  How many of you have pulled out a map and studied this country so that when they say Allepo, you know where it is?  If you've already done this, then hit next blog.  If not, I'm here to remedy that deficit, to help you do what you know you should have done already.

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Cyprus	B
Turkey
Israel
Lebanon
Egypt
Jordan
Iraq
Syria
Saudi Arabia

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You know if I just gave you a map with the country names, you wouldn't look at it.  But if you take a screen shot from the first cut here line to the next, print it out, and then fill out the table, you'll get this forever.  Below is another map with the names.

From Blog28

And so you can follow the news about what's happening inside Syria, here's a political map with the names of main cities.

This political map comes from a site called World Shia Forum, which has an array of maps showing religious, ethnic, linguistic, population and other characteristics.  The writer of this post proposes dividing up the country on ethnic lines. 


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