Publication Date March 2, 2015 | Mashable

Seeds of war: Global warming helped trigger Syria's bloody civil war

Syria
A Syrian refugee woman is seen between a line of tents in a refugee camp near Azaz, north of Aleppo province, Syria. Photo: Manu Brabo, AP
A Syrian refugee woman is seen between a line of tents in a refugee camp near Azaz, north of Aleppo province, Syria. Photo: Manu Brabo, AP

Manmade global warming helped spark the brutal civil war in Syria by doubling to tripling the odds that a crippling drought in the Fertile Crescent would occur shortly before the fighting broke out, according to a groundbreaking new study published on March 2. The study...is the first to attribute the drought in Syria in large part to global warming. In doing so, it provides powerful evidence backing up the Pentagon and intelligence community’s assessments that climate change is likely to play the role of a “threat multiplier” in coming decades, pushing countries that are already vulnerable to upheaval over the edge and into open conflict