But climate exacerbates the problems with resources. Remember that the Syrian civil war started in part due to the drought and lack of food.

There have always been droughts and there will probably always be droughts. Climate changes constantly. If man is having any effect on the climate, then all this does is potentially change some of the winners and the losers.

The Syrian war started when a group of teenagers painted slogans on a school wall. They were arrested and tortured. This prompted a protest, where the government opened fire on the protesters. The only role food has played is that Assad has been accused of keeping it from groups he doesn't like.

Yeah, but largely from the standpoint that you're just flat wrong, similar to how I'd be bothered if you made the wrong play call in a goal line situation (just with higher stakes).

I don't doubt the existence one iota, it's the cruel/sadistic sense of humor I increasingly take issue with.

(ftr, 'cause tone can get lost when typing on the interwebz, not one ounce of hostility was contained in my answer. It was meant as a very neutral, matter of fact reply to a totally legit question)


Not really. You exterminate those who threaten that accumulation of assets as needed & carry on.


Let's NOT say that. There's simply no reason at all to let that occur. See above. And if it does, well, we kinda brought it on ourselves by allowing it to ever get to that point. There's a name for that point of view (not "fatalistic" but there's a word for it) but I'm too braindead to come up with it at the moment just to be honest.

No. Over a million people migrated in the years leading up to the war due to the most severe drought in Syria in modern times. The cities expanded rapidly and Syria wasn't able to handle it. Lack of food due to drought wasn't the only reason, but it played a role.

Droughts happen all over the world, yet the actual events which triggered the Syrian war don't happen all over the world.

Weather patterns change constantly. Even in the 1800s, the whole "Fertile Crescent" didn't even remotely resemble what it was a few thousand years earlier. And that can be said about any place in the world.

Syrian's government deserves considerable criticism for mismanaging the drought and creating a food crisis, but connecting the war and the protests and the continued violence today to the drought is hard to support.

More simply, Assad is an extremist who has no trouble bombing his own civilians. No amount of rain is going to change him. Obama's policy of appeasement certainly hasn't changed him.

I've upset you. Win. Free advice: Have a Snickers.

And yet there's plenty of research that supports the idea.

Ugh...looks like Mongolia is a possible Civil War zone.

Mongolia in for double whammy: drought now, 'dzud' next - Yahoo News


And the United States got lucky last year...avoided the Civil War even though research showed that Arizona suffered a major drought due to Climate Change. But to be fair, we have President Obama, a huge Climate Change supporter....kind of hard to overthrow him when he believes.

http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/2...t-of-southwest

Mongolia is a disaster environmentally - maybe they're a "low emitter" on a global scale, but Ulaanbaatar is one of the most polluted cities in the world and the causes for that are local.

Curbing Air Pollution in Mongolia’s Capital

Of course, climate change has the potential to really exaggerate local problems.

People can put up with a lot of shit if their bellies are full. But once they are hungry, all bets are off. Not a difficult concept.

Agreed. Syria cannot feed all of it's people. They have over-shot their population limits by at least 20% (4 million people without jobs/food/water on a regular basis out of 23 million total population). If that's a climate issue, then we really need to knuckle down on global population controls, because we can affect that a lot faster than we can affect climate change. So far, we are doing NOTHING with regard to our over-population crisis. And I'm not saying genocide, I'm talking about future controls on pregnancies.

I'm seeing a lot more projections now that global population growth is slowing.

I think the Bill Gates approach is the most realistic one. Vaccines, drinking water, and better health for the poor masses. That seems almost counter-productive, but population growth has pretty much stopped in places where people can reasonably except that their kids are going to live into adulthood. I read that in Thailand, the average family decreased from 6 children to something like 2 in just a decade or two after health standards improved, combined with the promotion of family planning. And the population growth has slowed there as a result.

The best way to reduce the birth rate is to give more education to women. It's a shame that there's too many backwards civilizations that won't even do that.

I don't think it's a problem producing the food to feed as many people as there are in the world today. It's the distribution that's the problem.

That's all good, but I never said the Syrian drought was caused by climate change, just that climate disruptions, which will be more common with climate change, can lead to political destabilization.

As lungs said, when people are hungry they don't put up with stuff.

And the legal support to not be a baby machine if they so choose.

http://www.un.org/esa/population/pub...p2300final.pdf

This report was released 11 years ago. If tracking it, you'd find that today's estimate of 7.3 billion is a little above the medium track (7.25) and well below the high track (7.6). Which doesn't mean the medium track is "right," but that we can assume the world is on a pace to add a billion people every 15-20 years, more or less.

It is also reasonable to suggest that the increase will drop, as every major group has seen reductions in the average annual reproduction rate for a while now. Keep in mind, though, that there is discussion in there that AIDS will remain a factor that makes it tough to estimate life expectancy. So they had to make a lot of guesses. The high track probably assumes any disease is not a long-term factor.

What is the theoretical global limit on population? How will technology affect that number? What happens if we are unable to invent effective sustainable energy sources?

Right now, we're living off an enormous amount of past life and energy. Life forms existed for billions of years, and we live on top of that. Some could argue that we're the ultimate recyclers, because we burn some of that former life and allow it to dissipate through our atmosphere back into space where it came from*. But, in doing so, we create our own crises. We depend on this behavior, and we'll run out of usable past energy at some point. Depending on your political or religious views, we may be altering the climate by doing so, though climate is always in flux regardless of the cause.

Science fiction involving colonization of planets often includes the concept of terraforming. Which is, essentially, taking a garbage truck filled with past life and dumping it on the surface of a rock. That's an interesting idea, but I think we're still hundreds of years from figuring out how to do that. Especially since we're already using the "good parts" of our garbage. We have to assume the laws of physics will always apply and total energy can't change. Depending on this concept to save the human race seems odd.

Also, the amount of freedom in a world may also be subject to some sort of conservation equation - the more people we have in a small area, the more authoritarian the resulting government. That's great if you like government.

What do we do today?

* - it would be interesting to learn more about theories regarding the size of the universe. We have all these stars pumping out enormous amounts of energy and we have all these rocks receiving this energy. Does the universe continually expand? Is there a source of rock? How did it all begin (and, for those of you who are religious and believe in creation, who created that source - and out of what - and what created whatever created that source, and so on).

In other words, if we can figure out the process of converting energy, everything changes. So far, all we really know is that we can create one heck of an explosion when we split an atom. We really are little children when it comes to our knowledge of the universe. But toddlers often learn a lot when they destroy their toys. The problem is, no one has set up our toddler gate.

In the US, I'm okay for increasing the population substantially - either through babies or legal/smart immigration (lets attract other countries' most educated). We have plenty of room and resources to accommodate the increased population and "human capital" is one key to sustaining our leadership.

I'm sorry but ... are you high? We have an excess of population to jobs NOW.

What you suggest might be one of the most absurdly insane things I've ever read.

Well, I think there are a lot of services that could be performed for people who are not getting them now. Healthcare, childcare, education. A ton could be done to improve infrastructure. Unfortunately those who could benefit from those services don't have the means to pay for them, so nobody has to do them.

It gets back around to one of the problems with trickle-down economics (and I would also say, a flat tax). Once you get past a certain point, people just don't need anything else. It's why you get superrich folks buying sports teams. What the heck else can they do with their money? Like, what do the Waltons do after buying some nice cars, maybe a few planes and a couple houses other than sit around in Arkansas or Missouri or wherever else they hang out?

You think this is true for the more educated workforce?

I'm not sure if Powell has the same level of respect as he once did in the GOP but it's reassuring to hear him say that he agreed with the deal.

Colin Powell: Iran Deal Is a 'Pretty Good Deal' - NBC News

My half-assed theory is that the inverted population pyramid that came from the baby boom vs. gen x in the '80s and '90s resulted in a shift towards automating and reducing service jobs, while increasing management & administration jobs to account for the glut of middle-aged educated workers, versus the relative lack of young, inexperienced workers who typically fill service industry jobs. Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to put that genie back in the bottle, as the management & administration sector are also largely the folks defining our industries and (understandably) aren't too keen on designing themselves out of jobs or profits.

It would be nice to see a shift of industry focus away from efficiency & bottom-line profitism, back to something like the more service-focus of the post-WWII era, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I don't think Powell has a lot of respect for the GOP after what Bush put him through by damaging his reputation and sacrificing his image.

That really isn't how you addressed it though

The LAST thing this country needs is more babies, of pretty much any kind. You'd have to make a very specific case in a specific field of shortage for those "most educated". I mean, we don't exactly have any general shortage I can see of "educated" bodies either, yet jobs for them are in such short supply that you find degreed individuals working basic retail & secretarial/clerical* jobs fairly frequently.

If you want to make a specific case about nuclear biochemical astronomers or something specific then I'd be open to X number of specialized exceptions


*(yes, I know there's probably an updated term for those jobs, I'm just drawing a blank on it atm & don't feel like obsessing to come up with it)

If this were the same Iran deal made by a republican president, the GOP would be loving it and the Democrats would be talking about how terrible it was. That is why we have experts in this (does anyone really believe Trump has the knowledge to assess such a deal). Too bad people would rather listen to Boehner/Cruz instead of people who have actual knowledge about it. #waronintelligence

*No idea whether this actual one is good, I just find it laughable that a bunch of people with limited knowledge of the process and everything are vowing to "tear it up on day 1" with no credible alternative.

Powell's the guy who served GWB and assured the UN that Iraq had and was about to use WMD. He used forged documents that probably wouldn't have even convinced Dan Rather. I'm not sure he has any credibility.

Are Iranian Military Bases Off-Limits to Inspection? | RealClearPolitics

I still don't see any "mission accomplished" in this agreement. We have a system of checks and balances in our governmental structure designed specifically to prevent this kind of back-room deal. Obama went directly to the UN when he should have waited.

Should we believe the Iranian leaders when they say there will be no inspections of any kind? Or should we believe the president who staked his reputation on just getting a deal done, and has already had to back off on most of his promises?

Either way, the activity in the Middle East is increasing, and Iranian officials and leaders are making more "we're going to wipe out Israel" statements than ever before. I'm not sure why we would deal with them in the first place?

Criticizing Powell and then posting a story by Judith Miller is a special kind of irony.

Yeah, there's more to the story than that. Powell was put out there to give the presentation because he was the guy that was the most credible in the administration. He had been trying to get Bush and Cheney to back off, but was frozen out of the decision making process.



This was before Scooter Libby went to prison.


Powell was misled by the facts at the administration was was spouting them, but he was also ever the loyal soldier, ready to do the bidding of the President as if it was his own. In that, you can fault him.

It is, isn't it? But the story is thoroughly sourced. Iranian officials have made these claims - officials who have considerable power within Iran. And Obama and Kerry have gradually walked back many of their promises.

As I recall, the documents Powell brought to the UN were one-source and made ludicrous claims that no one in the CIA could read with a straight face. He may have "taken one for the team," but if he really understood the situation, he probably should have resigned beforehand instead. He knew what would happen after he went before the UN.

Bush was out of control and Congress should never have given him that power. But Powell had an opportunity and he let us all down.

Thanks Hilary and Kerry

I don't know, it reads just like her Iraq work to me. She's reprinting a bunch of info fed to her with a clear ideological goal without providing any contrary information. Reprinting the 24 day thing without pointing out any of the contradictory info calls into question everything else in the piece.

Imagine the piece an Iranian could write with just quotes from GOP hardliners. All of it would be true, but the overall story certainly wouldn't be accurate.

The information Powell was working on was entrenched in our rationale long before GWB took office. President Clinton spoke of these things. Saddam Hussein was working on these things based on what our leaders...both R and D spoke of. It wasn't fabricated as much as it was based on either A.) faulty intel or B.) the reality that was easily erased by Saddam. We got owned in the fiasco.

I don't care about Powell's ideology shift, I have the utmost respect for him and know he wouldn't have given that speech to the UN if he didn't at least believe it was within the realm of possibility. General's of his caliber simply don't just lie down for a lie. It's just not possible. He gave that speech because he wanted to give that speech.

or C.) that Bush and Cheney wanted to go to war so badly and felt like the choice was already made, that they were willing to piecemeal any evidence together so that it looked like they had no other choice in the matter.

Powell did make that choice, but he was also hung out to dry by the administration because he was the thorn in the side of the decision makers. It was convenient for them to pin responsibility on him and then show him the door. Like I said before, he was a loyal soldier. He did what the President wanted and he has said he would do it again, because loyalty is something that he believes in.

Even Obama concedes the 24-day thing.

The difference between the GOP and the Iranian defense minister is that the GOP has no real power as the opposition party to the president. In Iran, the opposition party is very stiff, doesn't talk much, and is buried six feet under the ground.

You can't mention the 24 day thing without acknowledging that 24 days will only happen if we want it to. I think ten or fourteen is the longest delay if we choose to press it.

None of your quotes include the negotiators or Rouhani. Even within Iran there are different factions.

Louis Gohmert is pledging to leave Congress to await a nuclear holocaust if the Iran deal passes. Obama may finally earn that Nobel.

Are you trying to make the case that even Rouhani thinks he can make an agreement without Khomeini's approval? If so, do some research into Rouhani's past statements and activities.

24 is 24. But does it even matter if inspectors aren't allowed into military facilities, period?

That's actually a fair point. He definitely deserve it when he received it (it was more for the American people for rejecting a neoconservative foreign policy ;)), but it may have just been given early. Kerry and Obama deserve a Nobel for this deal.

I'm willing to risk it.

I think it's a little too early to be handing out awards based on this deal.

Having a deal itself, which assuredly prevented warfare (you, know what peace accords are supposed to do), is more than enough.

It's too early to say this prevented war, and I'm not so sure there would've been war without it.

Exclusive photos appear to show grisly effect of ISIS’ mustard gas attacks on Kurds | Fox News

I'm kind of surprised that so many think Obama deserves a Nobel prize (not that it's worth anything but the money that comes with it) for giving Iran everything it needs to build nuclear weapons, while it's promising to use them on a sovereign country - one of our allies.

No one seems to care about that. If Iran/Hezbollah uses nuclear weapons on Israel, the blood is on Obama's hands. I don't think there's anyone even in the Democratic party who would deny that. Every Democrat who supports this crazy deal pretends to have "deep misgivings" about this support.

We still don't know all of the side deals Obama made here, but given what the leaders of Iran say (and it's death for any who oppose them), the side deals indicate that inspectors can't inspect military complexes in any way, shape or form.

Now, obviously we can't trust Khomeini. But if he's lying about the inspections, he loses face with his top people. And the word from Washington backs further away from "anywhere, anytime" every day. My guess is the Democrats who support it just don't want to know what's in it (much like Obamacare).

If it works as well as the ACA, I'll be thrilled.

edit: And as far as the Nobel, I was just trying to make a joke about getting Gohmert out of the Congress.

If the treaty fails, it's guaranteed war, really.

Amen! I think that the ACA is one of the greatest accomplishments the US has done in a long ass time.

Well, we still don't know, because Mr. Executive Order keeps putting off the worst of it (and adding to the debt).

But remember that this celebration for health insurance company executives and their lobbyists doesn't change the affordability of health care - people still have to pay a deductible. And so the burden on emergency rooms (where they can't turn people away who can't or won't pay their bills) has actually gotten worse under this folly.

Health care inflation has dropped (which may or may not have a lot to do with the ACA)

The uninsured rate has dropped dramatically (which is closely related to the ACA)

Projected government medical costs have dropped the past few years (may or may not be ACA related)

The ACA isn't perfect, but a few years in, it looks pretty good.