Global Warming Science - www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming
MSM Refugee News Fakery
[last update: 2018/09/29]
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Mainstream Media Promote Fake News About Refugees
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-climate-change-refugees-united-nations-20180923-story.html
“climate change is stoking environmental disasters around the globe and uprooting millions of people a year”
“hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific have steadily worsened,” (The usual alarmist lies about hurricanes – see: http://appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Hurricane2018.htm )
“An estimated 20 million people are uprooted annually by environmental conditions… The total includes victims of some disasters, like earthquakes, that are unrelated to climate, but Thomas said the intensity and frequency of giant storms and droughts is a leading cause of the migration.”
So they conflate “some disasters… unrelated to climate” like earthquakes, with climate!
Of course it is always Trump’s fault – But, where are the climate refugees? (The LA Times article doesn’t really say.)
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Zimbabwe
From the LA Times article: “drought has nearly wiped out Zimbabwe’s staple crop, maize” (nothing about refugees though).
And what do they say in Zimbabwe?
http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2016/01/hunger-in-zimbabwe-drought-or-disastrous-policies/
From the Zimbabwean article (bold added):
“There are so many factors involved in a nation becoming food deficient, but in Zimbabwe, the main reasons are the very disastrous economic and political policies by the President Robert Mugabe-led ZANU PF government since 1980. …
The lack of regard concerning the serious issue of the land and agriculture by the ZANU PF government is primarily why there is such food insecurity in Zimbabwe. …
Although most southern African counties are being adversely affected by this season’s El Nino-induced drought, there is no doubt that Zimbabwe is being affected more mainly due to these poor government policies …
If the government had sincerely embarked on sound policies that seriously economically empowered the people, the effects of drought would hardly have been felt, as people would have been able to import their own food. That is how people in arid/desert countries, like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc survive – we do not hear them crying about drought every year.”
Other African sources: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The decline in Zimbabwe’s maize production and trade balance worsened following the introduction of the country’s Fast-Track Land Reform Programme in 2001.”
https://africacheck.org/2017/11/28/analysis-zimbabwe-ever-breadbasket-africa/
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Comparing Zimbabwe maize production with the neighboring countries to the east and west (which have been equally as affected by drought):
https://www.cgdev.org/files/2918_file_Zimbabwe_Crisis.pdf
The above study states: “An alternative explanation, and a favorite of President Mugabe (as well as some relief organizations and even visiting IMF missions), is that severe drought is primarily responsible for the collapse in output in Zimbabwe. On the face of it, this seems possible, especially since so much of Zimbabwe’s economy is based on rain-fed agriculture and the country faces a regular cycle of rainfall variability.
Economist Craig Richardson, using rainfall data from Zimbabwe’s own Department of Meteorology, has shown that this argument does not hold up to the evidence. He shows that the ‘drought’ of 2000/01 was only about 22% below average, and less severe than at least twelve other recent low rainfall periods. More importantly, Richardson shows that the tight historical relationship between GDP growth rates and rainfall cycles over two decades no longer held after 1999. Indeed, when rainfall recovered, the economy continued to decline.”
And:
“Conclusion: Misrule kills… The list of misgovernance is long. The policy of land seizures and the chaotic disruption on the farms is likely the main reason the staple maize production fell by three-quarters. This impacted rural incomes, exports, and food security. Indeed, Zimbabwe once exported food, but now requires massive food aid. In addition to the frontal attacks on agriculture, the rest of the economy suffered from the undermining of property rights and absurd macroeconomic management. … Political troubles combined with the abandonment of sensible economic policy also closed off most of the aid tap, scared away most foreign investment, and chased much of the talented workforce out of the country.”
So the LA Times conflates bad governance with climate. That is a large disservice to the truth – i.e. the LA Times promotes lies and fake news.
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Sahel Africa
From the LA Times article: “In Africa, herders and farmers are fighting as Lake Chad evaporates” (nothing about climate refugees though). Lake Chad is on the border of Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria in the Sahel region of Africa.
And what do they say in the Sahel?
“The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), a regional body that regulates the use of the basin’s water and other natural resources, maintain that inefficient damming and irrigation methods on the part of the countries bordering the lake are partly responsible for its shrinkage.” https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2012/africa%E2%80%99s-vanishing-lake-chad
The New Yorker had a 2017 article describing the crisis around Lake Chad. There are refugees here – and it’s in large part due to violent insurrection.
“The Sahel is rife with weapons and insurgencies, and some states are beginning to collapse. …
The battle against Boko Haram spans the borders of four struggling countries. It is being waged by soldiers who answer to separate chains of command and don’t speak the same languages as one another, or as their enemies, or as the civilians, in the least developed and least educated region on earth.
According to the U.N., the region’s population, which has doubled in the past few decades, is expected to double again in the next twenty years. …
Still, on the Chadian side of the lake, it is better to be any nationality but Chadian. Just outside Baga Sola, the second-largest town in the Lake Region, there is a camp for displaced Nigerians. Around five thousand people live there, most of whom fled the massacre in Baga, across the lake. Because they crossed an international border, they have refugee status, which makes them eligible for funding and legal protections that are not available to the internally displaced. ”
“Vigilante groups in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad play a major role in the fight against Boko Haram, but their presence raises concerns. They make military operations less blunt and more effective and have reconnected these states somewhat with many of their local communities, but they have also committed abuses and become involved in the war economy. In Nigeria in particular, vigilantism did much to turn an anti-state insurgency into a bloodier civil war, pitting Boko Haram against communities and leading to drastic increases in violence.”
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The Guardian:
“See what happens when climate change drives people out of Africa – the Sahel [sub-Saharan area] especially – and we’re talking now not just one or two million, but 10 or 20 [million]. They are not going to south Africa, they are going across the Mediterranean”
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Scientific American:
“Refugee workers in the Sahel region where thousands of Malian refugees are fleeing violence in their country said this week they are witnessing firsthand the knotted challenges of food security, climate change and conflict in Africa. …
According to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, more than 300,000 people have fled Mali since fighting erupted in the north in January between a Tuareg rebel movement and Malian government forces. Burkina Faso has accepted about 61,000 refugees; in Niger there are 41,000; and in Mauritania, 64,000. Meanwhile, the Algerian government has reported that about 30,000 Malian refugees have crossed into the country.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/malians-fleeing-drought-famine-war-climate-refugees/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So the refugees are fleeing violence within the Sahel and fleeing to other countries in the Sahel.
These are not climate refugees – they are fleeing violence – and the Sahel is experiencing increased rainfall and greening in recent decades. (See: http://appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Sahel.htm )
Even the normally alarmist National Geographic admits it: “Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?”, July 2009 [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html]: “Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear. Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent. Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. … Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences. … "Now you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back," he said. "The trend has continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable."”
A 2012 study documented how maize production has been increasing in the Sahel: “According to aggregate data, since 1961 total maize production in Mali has increased more than ten-fold; bringing maize from being a minor crop to one on par with traditional Sahelian crops of millet and sorghum (see Figure 1). This ten-fold increase in production has come about through both a major increase in acreage and impressive improvements in yields. Maize yields in Mali have doubled in this period while those in Burkina Faso have tripled; in contrast yields in Senegal, Mauritania, and Niger have barely increased. The maize revolution in the Sahel has gone relatively unnoticed in research circles.”
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17801
2014: “A number of recent Earth observation (EO)-based studies reported positive changes in biological productivity in the Sahelian region in relation to increased precipitation, triggering an increased amount of herbaceous vegetation during the rainy season.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 263035658_Using_earth_observation_based_dry_season_NDVI_trends_for_assessment_of_changes_in_tree_cover_in_Sahel
2017: “A significant summer rainfall increase over the Sahel during warm phases of the AMO was observed, with large increases during the typical monsoon onset period in June. In spring of warm phases of the AMO prior to monsoon onset, strengthening of the Saharan heat-low and its associated shallow meridional overturning circulation is observed. The intensified shallow meridional overturning circulation increases moisture flux into the Sahel from the south during spring while increased westerly winds from the Atlantic increase westerly moisture flux into the Sahel during spring and summer. The strengthening of the heat-low is accompanied by increases in Mediterranean sea-surface temperatures during warm phases of the AMO that lead to increases in moisture flux convergence in the northeast Sahel.”
“The most important natural factor seems to be a cyclical shifting of ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic. Every three decades or so, the North Atlantic switches from being dominated by a patch of relatively warm water to having a patch of relatively cool water—a phenomenon that climate scientists call the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO).
The reasons for this swap are poorly understood, but the consequences for the Sahel are not. When the North Atlantic is warm, large-scale weather patterns shift and bring more rain to the Sahel; when the North Atlantic enters a cool phase, the rains stay just to the south of the Sahel. During the worst droughts between 1960 and 1980, the North Atlantic was in a cool phase.”
The AMO has been in the warm phase for about 20 years. The warm phase generally lasts about 30 years or so. Thus there should be another decade of rain and crops in the Sahel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
Increased rain and crop production, increased insurrection / violence, extreme population growth rate… these are not climate refugees.
So the LA Times, The Guardian, etc. conflate violent insurgencies with climate. That is a large disservice to the truth – i.e. the MSM promotes lies and fake news.
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