ABC News: Global Warming ‘Helps Taliban, al Qaeda’

by Warner Todd Huston | October 13, 2009 1:13 pm

Increasingly, the Old Media appears to be engaged in satire and here is another story that could serve as an example of it. ABC News has published a purportedly serious story claiming that global warming “helps” the Taliban and al Qaeda[1] in Afghanistan and terrorists all over the world.

For ABC, writer Bill Blakemore makes the leap of logic that droughts and other climate situations in countries in which the U.S. Military is engaged is “man made.” Speaking about military studies that have been conducted into how climate is affecting the military situation, Blakemore writes, “a number of U.S. intelligence and military studies recently made public describe how man-made climate change plays into the hands of terrorist groups in many countries.”

The reports Blakemore is talking about do speak to the droughts around the world that are causing headaches for the U.S. Military, but Blakemore does not deliver any actual quotes that members of our Military are saying that it is because of “man-made global warming.”

There is little dispute that droughts and other climate situations add to the situations that our military must overcome and/or deal with. But to say these climate problems are “man-made” is a leap of logic that does not seem to be based on what is in these reports. And in a day when more and more scientists in the world are coming out[2] in doubt that climate change is man-made, it may not even be based in clear science.

Still, throughout the report Blakemore conflates the climate situations that the U.S. Military is facing with “man-made global warming.” Of course, Blakemore doesn’t have any quotes from the studies or members of the military that make the claim that global warming is man-made. That is Blakemore’s spin on the story, not those members of the military he’s quoting.

One wonders if the next article that Blakemore writes will charge anyone that doesn’t believe in man-made climate change is somehow pro-terrorist?

Endnotes:
  1. global warming “helps” the Taliban and al Qaeda: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8786346
  2. coming out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/democrats/abc-news-global-warming-helps-taliban-al-qaeda/