Open thread: Lahore, Pakistan

March 30, 2016 • 9:00 am

by Grania

There have been two really good articles that I have read since the appalling violence in Pakistan. The first is by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writing in The Guardian.

It is a very clearly written analysis of the religious and political tensions in Pakistan and why this is happening.

1

It has been pointed out by numerous commentators both here and elsewhere that blasphemy laws endanger members of minority religious groups wherever they exist. They are used to intimidate and oppress vulnerable minorities and for that reason alone, blasphemy laws should be consigned to the rubbish bin of history, wherever you find them, and no matter how benign they may appear on the surface.

The second piece you should read is by Maajid Nawaz in The Daily Beast where he examines this attack against the global backdrop of jihadist civil wars.

2

On a slightly tangential note, Wahhabism is one of the main exports of Saudi Arabia, long-time ally of many Western nations and recently the darling of the UN and more specifically the UN Human Rights Council. In a deeply troubling move, it appears that Saudi Arabia has managed to convince the UN to remove any overt mention LGBT rights and equality from its Sustainable Development Goals.

Although one is tempted to dismiss the UN as irrelevant, it nevertheless has a certain global influence and cannot be ignored. Any attempt to walk back progress made to equality needs to be highlighted and opposed as vocally as possible.

 

79 thoughts on “Open thread: Lahore, Pakistan”

  2. Saudi is controlling their country by religious fascism. I used to think they were more civilized, but that is almost exclusively because they try to be private about what they do to their citizens.

    This program is illuminating:

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/saudi-arabia-uncovered/

    I am not usually a fan of the Noble Peace Prize, but it has its moments and one supremely useful one would be to give it to Raif Badawi. Saudi’s leaders need to be globally shamed for what they do.

    1. It is pretty easy to nominate someone. (I think all university professors of political science and a few other fields can do it.) Doesn’t entail anything will come of it, though.

    2. I watched that episode. It shows clearly that that vast and populous country is highly stratified, totalitarian, and boiling with pent up resentment from the numerous poor over the rich and powerful, and Shia versus Sunni. Its gonna ‘splode.

    3. Thanks, Kevin. My curiosity of the kingdom has really been piqued of late, with the inevitable comparisons between Saudi’s capital punishment vs ISIS’ beheading of apostates.

  3. I’d like to take advantage of this open thread to ask for some advice from my fellow readers of this great site. How do you talk about religion with your children?

    I have young children and I’m trying very hard to keep religion out of their lives but society and grandparents keep trying to wedge it back in. My goal is to teach them rational thinking skills to inoculate them against the allure of religions claims. I personally became agnostic sitting in a church pew at age 12 and an atheist when I read the bible as a teenager so perhaps I’m worrying about this too much. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

    1. My kids are both adults now and were raised in an atheist household. We didn’t try to shield them from religion in any explicit way but simply were non-believing parents who showed no respect for faith. This even though they attended a Catholic school for a while. My son is a bit like me and is happy to argue a point. A funny moment came when he was in 8th grade at a new school. His home room teacher was also the science teacher and the religion class teacher. At our first parent-teacher meeting he (the teacher) was surprise to learn that we were not the least concerned that our son was expressing non-belief and pushing back at the faith. 😉

    2. I’m skeptical that merely teaching critical thinking is a reliable method to prevent religious indoctrination.

      First, it’s anybody’s guess as to how well the lessons will be learned. Just the fact that you advocate it might be enough for your children to roll their eyes at it in the future.

      Second, much of religion’s methods circumvent the intellect and tug on the emotions; the emotions often pull the intellect along after it.

      1. “Just the fact that you advocate it might be enough for your children to roll their eyes at it in the future.”

        My perception is that they take their eye-rolling cues from their adolescent peers. No one is as smart as an adolescent. Don’t want to give your (grand-) parents any credit? Fine. Pay the price of learning from experience.

      2. A young child cannot think critically very well. Like everything else, it is a skill we learn as we grow. Someone that is still figuring out that 2+2=4 simply does not have the training or mental pathways built up yet to do things like construct syllogisms (Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal).

        However, critically thinking to the correct result is not the short-term goal. The goal is to teach the kid that when they have a problem like conflicting beliefs, thinking is what you do to solve it. You are instilling the practice of doing it, you are not expecting a perfect result right off the bat.

        So if they can’t solve the problem and mommy and daddy need to hand them the answer this time, that’s okay. Treat it like you would any other problem they can’t solve; encourage them to try, but if it looks like the only thing they’re going to accomplish is screaming frustration, help them out before the situation spirals out of control.

        1. That still doesn’t address the question of whether it’s possible. Certainly some people learn to do it, but I’m not sure there’s a correlation between that and people actually doing it. Many people are capable of critical thinking when they apply it to their profession, for instance, but turn it off in their private life. It may have more to do with temperament, which has a strong genetic component.

          1. I’m critically skeptical of the assertion that critical thinking has a significant genetic basis. 🙂

          2. Is intelligence not related to critical thinking?

            Many brilliant thinkers are and have been religious. They are wrong about many things, but that doesn’t make them unintelligent, it just makes them wrong.

            And then there are former fundies who are now skeptics. They did not suddenly gain more computing power when they ditched religion, did they? They just changed their mode of thinking.

          3. Of course there will be overlap, but what we would want to see to accept the hypothesis is research showing significant innate difference over large populations. I don’t think it would mean there’s no reason to attempt persuasion, just that it would help explain how hard it is to succeed.

          4. I just the other day read an article – can’t remember where – that claimed some clinical work using brain scans showed some significant differences in brains between religious and non-religious. The claim was that the the non-religious had stronger brain circuits used in analytical thinking, and the suggestion was these did not appear to be learned strengths, but were innate. Keep an eye out for more.

    3. Growing up atheist, all I can recommend is to not talk to your children about religion, give it no credibility. I can understand that their grandparents may try to impose religion on your children, but what pressure are they receiving from society? Unless your children ask what a religion is or what function a church has, I would leave it alone. It’s no more important than a factory canning process.
      If there comes a time that anyone, including their grandparents, try to pressure them, I suggest exposing them to as many religions as possible. Start with the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs…. Let them get a feel for what religion is before someone tries to indoctrinate them. If you start with religions that most people consider myths, they’ll hopefully consider all religions myths.
      Worked for me and my son.

      1. ” It’s no more important than a factory canning process.”

        I hear what you are saying, and I’m sure this is true for you; but in my 55 years’ experience in the US, religion is much more important than that.

        It is what people organize their lives around. It’s the source of Ted Cruz’s (and many other politicians’) nonsense. It’s the root of opposition for science, science education, stem cell research, abortion rights, women’s rights, and on and on and on.

        I taught my son about all the main religions, pointed out where they are wrong/absurd.

        In the US, young people must interact with tons of religious: Fellow students, teachers, professors, bosses, co-workers. And many of them are fully ready to be offended if you say something about their beliefs or even simply do not share them (or “share a belief in a higher power”, gakkkk, vomiting). So not discussing it, it seems to me, sets them up for impactful failures to communicate in the future.

        My $0.02

        1. I’m not saying that religion isn’t important to some people, I meant that the internal functions of a church is no more important to a child, probably less so, than the canning process in a factory. It’s a building where people go and do something like any other building. Pointing out where the bible is absurd gives it and religionists credibility instead of treating them like flat earthers. I doubt my son could have a biblical debate, but he’d look at you with pity like you’re an idiot it you said you believed the bible was true.
          You seem to be arming your son to defend his position, possibly against his own relatives. I’ve never had to show deference to religion and I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in that position.

      2. I endorse lots of mythology, fiction, fantasy, literature, but I have never spoken a word of religion to my children and they are doing extremely well.

        They have no idea what a manger is. They have no idea what Easter is…none. As far as I know they do not know what a cross represents. It is most endearing to me that they want to talk about dark energy rather than superstitions.

        1. I only recently found out what a manger is when I looked up the term “dog in the manger” — which, ironically is an excellent metaphor for religion as a whole, and more valuable than anything in the bible.

          (It’s a fable about a dog who uses the feeding trough in the barn as a bed, and won’t let the animals get to their food, even though he doesn’t want to eat it himself.)

        2. I have tried to give my children some idea of Christianity and Islam. I regard this as culture, history and, in not so distant future, politics. However, today’s children are highly resistant to what does not interest them.
          In 4th grade, one of my sons has a history quiz with a question “Which emperor rebuilt a city at the Bosphorus, gave it his name and made it a capital?” The kid correctly named the city as Constantinople, but wrote that the emperor was Jesus Christ. Then, we had a dialogue:

          “What is an emperor?” I asked.
          “A person who empers.”
          “And what does it mean – to emper?”
          “To work as an emperor.”

          The following year, his literature curriculum included various myth, including Adam & Eve. Once, he asked me something, I refused and he said: “Then, I’ll ask it for God.”
          “You can ask all you want,” I said, “but remember from the textbook that this God – if he exists at all – did’t even want humans to know!”

    4. We are in a similar situation. We have a 12 year old son. We are strong (firmly decided) atheists.

      All of our relatives, except for one of my brothers and his family, are religious (Xian). Neither we nor my brother are “openly” atheist with our wider families. Mainly to spare pain to my mother (who would be pained at the idea of our not being “saved by Jesus”).

      Thankfully, my wife and I are perfectly aligned on this issue. We did not actually discuss this ahead of having our son. It came up when he was old enough to talk. We did not have him baptized (I generally have only been in a church in the last 20 years for weddings and funerals). (We did not get married in a church or by a religious person.)

      Here’s how we’ve spoken to him about religion.

      First off, we’ve been entirely open and honest with him about it. We got a book on World Religions when he was able to read (The Kids Book of World Religions, Glossop, Mantha, excellent). I sat and read through it with him (several times) and looked at the good illustrations and discussed what each group believed/es. I also discussed with him how these various religions had beliefs that were different from each other. So different they contradict each other.

      We also told him, in direct terms, and at various times (reiteration) that we do not believe in any religions and exactly why that is (there’s no evidence for them, they are mutually contradictory, they believe stuff we are firmly against (e.g. women in bags, opposition to abortion rights, assisted dying, opposition to stem cell research, opposition to science, killing for apostasy, etc.).

      We also explained to him that his grandparents believe (Xianity) and that most of his friends and their families are very likely believers. (His best friend was raised Xian and seems to accept it.) Therefore, we’ve told him that he needs to be careful. We’ve explained to him that, although it would be great to be able to be fully open about what we don’t believe in, in the US that is a risky business and you’d better take care about it.

      I have read some parts of the Bible to him. First so he can hear what it’s like, what it sounds like, etc.; and also so that if he is ever asked the direct question, he can truthfully reply “we read the Bible at home amongst our family” rather than what church, etc. We’ve also instructed him to simply avoid talking about religion (or politics for that matter). Fortunately, our relatives haven’t been trying to push religion on us or on him. I think if they did, I’d be having a very different relationship with them. I’d have to put my foot down, be open with them, etc.

      So, we’ve been: Very open with him, very explanatory, we have never told him: You must/should believe this. However, he is very scientific in his outlook, so the evidence part has convinced him. But we have been quite closed outside of our family (me, my wife, and our sons (our older son is out of the house and gone). We’ve tried to educate him about the World’s religions and about what the people around him believe. And we’ve tried to arm him against being targeted for his beliefs (lack thereof).

      He came home one day a year or two ago from school and told me this anecdote. He was in science class and the teacher was discussing some interesting animal and a peculiar feature of the animal (I forget exactly what it was) and the teacher asked, “how do you think it got that way?” (In the case of our school, this was an opening for a discussion of evolution.) His best friend blurted out, “Because god made them that way!” Yikes.

    5. We were both raised Catholic, and stopped believing at an early age. Our families generally accept this. That made it easier for us than for many others. Nonetheless, there are many family members that still go to church, and my daughter had a friend down the street whose family were fundamentalist.

      We simply did not mention anything of a religious nature when she was little. When she was around 6 years old, she became aware of Xianity through the friend down the street and at school. I simply said “There are a lot of nice people who believe those kinds of things, but there are a lot of reasons why it doesn’t make any sense.” I left it at that. 10 years later she is a full atheist.

      There were some funny moments. Some family took her to see a nativity scene, and she recognized it. “Oh, that’s Jeevus! Its a Mexican story!” She must have heard of it from hispanic kids in school I suppose.

    6. Christopher Hitchens’ kids attended a Quaker school, because he thought it was the best school available, and tehy didn’t know about his atheism until around their late teens, when they started reading some of his articles.

      Above all I would say that the best protection against authoritarian religions like Christianity and Islam is a non-authoritarian approach to learning.

      If I had children, I would, however, remove them from any religious instruction in school. Education about religions, yes, but instruction by outsiders with a conflict of interest, no way. (If they wanted to go church with friends and check it out, fine, of course.)

      I’d also give kids a good background in mythology and folk tales from all around the world, just so they can learn how to deal with that kind of thinking, and benefit from what value there is in it, without ruining it by thinking it only works if they take it literally.

    7. Alpha Neil:

      I recommend, for your research on kiddos and what Mr Christopher Hitchens (and others incl myself term .any. religious education as, that is, as its being child abuse) some of these hits on Freedom FROM Religion Foundation’s (FFRF’s) main website:

      http://ffrf.org/search?searchword=kids&searchphrase=all

      https://ffrf.org/shop/nontracts/why-women-need-freedom-from-religion

      http://ffrf.org/search?searchword=women&searchphrase=all

      I am a grandparent and have, in fact, been asked three years ago by a then – tween grandkiddo (who lives far away from me and was, solo, visiting me on his spring break then) IF I “believed”. I was frank with the one word of no. Then kept on with scrubbing up the dinner dishes.

      I see from his ma’s fb page that she and grandkiddo were in some bloody Passion play over or on what some term as a Palm Sunday within some Methodist – like building last week. My own son was pictured aside them both — inside Pontius Pilate – like costuming as well.

      I can only ‘hope’ (I altogether loathe the dictionary’s concept of ‘hope’ as it gets squat actually done — as with prayer … … that is, Reason and Rationality get things done, not ‘hoping’ / not praying) that my child was more in to the acting / the performing / the gaming – like fantasy of it all (as from his godless atheist, IT & gaming guru – and very much influencing, younger brother living in Atlanta) — — than in to his actually believing of anything magical !

      After all, he is a brilliant 37 – year – old, legal aide – attorney at the Tex – Mex border and, surely, still has the smarts deeeep inside his brain which I may have helped to instill in to it years and years and years before … … he came to be laboring there.

      Blue

    8. Exposing them to fiction where the supernatural in general is exposed as a way to con or to mislead might be useful. It seems to have been for me. Shame that it is so hard to find 3-2-1 Contact’s _The Bloodhound Gang_ segments these days.

    9. It sounds like you have a bit more pressure than we had. But perhaps a practical solution is to just openly talk to them about different beliefs (religion and other beliefs), and to do so in a balanced way so that no disrespect is afforded to grandparents. They can come to see that different people will believe different things, and so there is no one true belief when it comes to religion but there is always the power of knowledge and critical thinking.

      Maybe there are childrens’ books about the different religions. I remember seeing one many years ago, but it was from a christian publisher and it kept making snarky comments about other religions. Hopefully something is out there that is better.

      I am not one for indoctrinating kids into atheism, but there are lots of childrens’ books about science that you can read to them, and I expect there are some out there about evolution.

      Despite the cross-messaging that they can get from you versus relatives, kids are pretty resilient about hearing different things.

      1. “Maybe there are childrens’ books about the different religions. I remember seeing one many years ago, but it was from a christian publisher and it kept making snarky comments about other religions. Hopefully something is out there that is better.”

        There is: The Kids Book of World Religions, by Glossop and Mantha. This is an excellent book.

    10. I’ve talked to my children about religion in the same way I’ve talked to them about advertisements and consumerism. I’ve pointed out that almost all religions say they are the truth, but they say different and contradicting things. When particularly bad advertisement came on TV, I would point out inconsistencies, or when they attempt to persuade without giving any actual information, emotional appeals or poor arguments. I point out when they are trying to use fear to sell. I also point out when they are using social pressures.
      One of my favourite to skewer was beer commercials which often try to show if you “Drink Budweiser and you’ll be popular at parties and be close to beautiful scantily clad women.”

      Another example (although my daughter was very young) was zit lotion commercials. Some said if you don’t use it, you’ll be a social outcast and people will make fun of you for being ugly. I truly hated those commercials, they preyed on teen’s worst fears. The other later commercials tried to sell them as you’ll be popular. The earlier commercials were pulled from the air after complaints to the CRTC.

      Religious persuasion is often similar to any other product advertisement, just coached differently. Come to church and you’ll be surrounded by people who like you. Or Believe in God or you’ll go to hell and suffer forever.

      I pointed that out to my children and it seemed to work.

    11. Thank you everyone for these insightful responses. So much more than I expected!

      And thanks to our gracious host for building such an interesting and respectful community here.

    12. Briefly for myself, started off indoctrinated (as a kid) with religion, then went ‘spiritual’ (teens) then.. party time followed by, agnostic (young adult) then thankfully, atheistic.
      My advice, take a science bent to their lives, engage in wild life programmes, ecology, astronomy, cosmology, science in a word. Go to science fairs, art, music, reading science books and magazines should be encouraged. Show them how life really works without grand gestures. Show them you don’t have any connection with religion, indifferent if you will but with the conviction of someone who does not give religion any truck, arm yourself with useful info..i.e. which god is the real god? they will claim their god is the one god.
      Read Faith vs Fact, WEIT and others if you haven’t already and most important show them you are still the parent you will always be without religion.
      I ignored religion when my children were really young and then showed them by my actions, discussions, devouring science books like novels and banter that religion was irrelevant to my personal life.
      When they are older you will not have any say in the matter it will become their own personal choice. Perhaps then you will have to be up for some lively and interesting discussions.

      2. Keith, this, “My advice, take a science bent to their lives, engage in wild life programmes, ecology, astronomy, cosmology, science in a word.”

        … is the best advice I think. That’s what we did with our son. Bright young kids are thrilled to learn about how cool the world really is. (As Dr. Dawkins titled his book for young people The Magic of Reality.) It’s so much more interesting than the tiny, crimped world of the stories from the “holy” books.

        My son has always had a strong interest in the world around him. We’ve very actively encouraged this (got him cameras, a (real) microscope, books of NF (he almost exclusively read NF until he got to school and they demanded he read some fiction, which he does like now).

        He is constantly asking questions about the world. I try to always, always treat those questions respectfully (and make time for them) and answer them the best I can, ending it with, “does that make sense?” and following up if not.

        And, for me, one of the most important responses I give him is, “I don’t know [let’s look it up!]

        I always tell him that:

        It’s OK to fail (“you only learn from failure, not from success!”) It’s necessary! You will do nothing in life if you are afraid to fail! I fail all the time! [Just listen to me practicing a new guitar piece!]

        It’s always OK to question.

        It’s always OK to say, “I don’t know.”

        Never lie. (And I explain to him how, in my work (regulated industries with legally bound Quality Systems), that failure is acceptable; but lying about failure, covering it up, will get you fired quickly.)

    13. I’ve always been an atheist and my wife’s family is Catholic, but they are not at all evangelical. We took my daughter to church but she showed no interest in what was behind the rituals. Eventually, without any real prompting by me, my wife lost all interest in religion. My daughter never showed any. As an adult, she complains with great annoyance, and to my great pleasure, about the conservative religious culture around her new home in Boise.

      I suppose it could have gone another way for her, but with all the hours I spent reading to her and working on science and craft projects, I’m sure my influence set her up for thinking for herself. Osmosis more than instructively.

      I’d recommend “The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True”, by Richard Dawkins.

    14. My kid’s five. We are not religious but we don’t shield him from understanding the religious parts of culture, we explain religious references matter of factly and without judgment, and we generally teach him to respect other people’s beliefs even if he doesn’t follow them. So for example, he knows the Christmas nativity scenes he sees have to do with people celebrating Jesus’ birthday, that (the story goes that) Jesus was born in a manger etc. He knows that when he goes to grandma and grandpa’s house, the before-meal bow-your-heads period is a prayer to God and that daddy wants him to at least be quiet during that ten seconds, even if he doesn’t say the grace himself. He knows what a church is and that people go to it to worship God. He knows when he hears Leonard Cohen’s “Allelujia,” that’s someone saying the equivalent of ‘thanks be to god’.

      We also don’t pull any punches when it comes to fiction. The talking animals in Aesop’s fables? Not real. Animals don’t talk. Magic isn’t real, its just something fun and cool and interesting that happens in stories. Oh and when Zeus, Hercules, and Hermes show up in Aesop’s fables and work miracles? Not real either. Those are gods people used to believe in. Oz is a story land, not a real place. Etc.

      Now, he has yet to really put two and two together. He has yet to process “Well if Zeus isn’t real because he’s an old god, and grandma worships a god…” Or for that matter, he has yet to process “if magic animals aren’t real, then Santa’s flying reindeer…” And that’s okay with us. We avoid judgment and we avoid actively trying to take his magical beliefs away or saying religion isn’t real. Frankly, I don’t see the need. He will get there on his own, I don’t need to hold his hand and pull him down the path of atheism. And if I let him figure it out for himself, yes it will take longer and yes he might spend the next year or two with conflicting beliefs. But IMO he’ll value and remember the outcome much more strongly if he does it himself than if I do it for him.

    15. It’s of primary importance that they know that most, if not all, of the teachings are metaphorical and must not be taken literally, as the be-all and end-all ‘gospel’. It’s vital that they come to see the mythology in all the references to god, prophets, angel, heaven and hell, and what not. You’re the bulwark against delusion thinking and brainwashing.

  5. The key element to the problem within the UN is who and how you get in. If it is to have any teeth, the organization must have a mission and say that all who join take part in that mission and it’s goals. So either you have an organization or you don’t and the UN falls in the later. Instead the UN requires no commitment from anyone and it becomes chaos in spades.

    The fact that Saudi Arabia can say – It has a right to not follow any agenda that is counter to Islam Law(their version) should simply say we do not want in. That statement or any statement like it should prevent admission into the organization. Otherwise, what is the point in the membership. The UN is basically a large waste of time and has almost no authority to accomplish much of anything.

    1. I’ve always figured the UN’s primary “mission” was just to provide a context and location for nations that might not otherwise talk to talk to each other. I.e., grease the wheels of diplomacy.

      I’ve never thought it had to have policy goals that every nation must sign up for in order to be in the club. That’s what alliances are for. I mean it’s fine for them to throw out some meaningless blather about making the world a better place if that helps bring fighting countries to the table, but IMO the important part there is brining fighting countries to the table, not the statements about making the world a better place.

  6. I try not to put too much Wahhabi in the soy sauce when eating sushi or sashimi.

    Do you know that you are supposed to turn the sushi upside down and put the fish side into the soy sauce, never the rice. You also should also use your fingers, not chopsticks.

    1. I always use enough Wahhabi to blow out my sinuses.

      What about rolls? It seems you can’t avoid the rice when dipping them.

      And only bad sake is served warm.

  7. Goldsmiths again…

    UK Lecturer Defends Female Genital Mutilation As ‘A Response To Colonialism’

    “Modernity requires the reform of women. And women, in the Arab world comes to coalesce around the question of the veil. Look what’s happening in Turkey today… You create along the same lines the notion of secularism. All of these are crises that arise in the context of colonialism … and the imperative to modernise. This business of needing to reform the customs of your land because they are the markers by which the west has designated you as barbaric.”

    “In the context of circumcision, if we say that there are a number of women who are today engaged in vaginal reconstruction operations … The standard response can be, “look, it’s unfortunate, but they’re choosing to do so.”

    “We formulate all these questions around consent, free will, choosing to do things – and what she’s arguing, in a sense, is that we cannot think of agency except as a form of resistance to the norm. Built into the idea of agency is the idea that we are pushing against the norm. What then happens to agency in contexts where in fact people are in a sense, consonant with the norm, or with traditional structures? The only way we can explain their actions is talking about it as either oppression or false consciousness.”

    The article is on Breitbart but one of the students who was present at the lecture wrote about it on her blog. Audio of the lecture is embedded in the article.

    http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/28/goldsmiths-lecturer-defends-fgm/

    Good work SJWs. Start blaming everything on western colonialism and these Muslims, who are not stupid, will start justifying their barbaric practises as pushback against the oppression of capitalist white patriarchy.

    1. SJW, an oxymoron akin to Creation Scientist. I’ve met precious few SJWs who even claim to have combat training nor have they anything but disdain for actual warriors.

      Advocate, protester, snowflake /= warrior

    1. I adore anti-regressive leftist Professor Gad Saad, but he makes me sad because he discounts the effects that climate change can have on civil unrest. He thinks that climate change has had zero effect on things in Syria.

      Of course climate change will have an effect, especially if, to put it in simple terms, folks in Place A run out of resources so they move to Place B which puts people into a position where everyone is fighting over the same small supply of scraps.

    2. I’m sure this is driving the migrations from other parts of the Middle East and Africa, too.

      1. Why are you sure?

        Is not the main resource problem in Syria due to a very large increase in population over a short period of time in a state which is on a desert margin? Lots of other factors (increased water abstraction rates, lots of refugees from Iraq etc, etc). I for one am not sure that climate change is a dominant factor.

        1. Because Syria isn’t the only place with a large increase in population in a state which is on a desert margin. Climate change affects the planet, not just one country. Other places with similar geographic conditions will be similarly affected.

          And Florida will be underwater.

          1. Exactly right. There is likely to a gradual erosion of livability in many inhabited parts of the Earth which means there will always be multiple factors driving migration and conflict. It will be hard to know exactly what proportion of the disruption is directly traceable to global heating and there will be a temptation to assume other causes if it fits someone’s political agenda to do so. Watch for it.

          3. Looks like a good example. Between two possible causes, increased water demand (which may be due to increasing population), and dryer climate, there should be ways to determine the relative importance of each. In some cases it could be as simple as that. In others, dislocation and conflict may have many causes which makes climate harder to pin it on.

          4. Exactly: And desert margins are exactly where one would expect its effects to be most dramatic. In the past, they’ve had just barely enough water. Shut it off even slightly, and the tipping point is hit.

  10. And in other news, rather than spamming Jerry’s e-mail, I’ll leave this link here. My Facebook friends have shared alarmist and inaccurate scareposts about the Great Barrier Reef. The truth is bad, the bigger truth is badder, but it’s not true that 95% of the coral of the entire reef is going to die. I found this balanced & much scarier article to counter the inaccurate stuff I see on FB:
    http://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11332636/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching

  12. I once saw this guy on a bridge, about to jump to his death. I said, “don’t do it!”

    He said, “Nobody loves me!”

    I said, “God loves you!”

    He replied, “Yes, I guess.”

    I asked, “Are you a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim … ?”

    He said, “A Christian.”

    I said, “Me too! Protestant or Catholic?”

    He said, “Protestant.”

    I said, “Me too! What denomination?”

    He said, “Baptist.”

    I said, “Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”

    He said, “Northern Baptist.”

    I said, “Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

    He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”

    I said, “Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?”

    He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”

    I said, “Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”

    He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”

    I said, “Die, Heretic!” and pushed him off the bridge!

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