'Climate Change' - Is There Anything It Can't Do?

The Leftist obsession about the non-existent “problem” of “climate change” may have passed its high-water mark, legislatively (except of course in California), but the madness lives on in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, where this gem appeared today:

I recently followed a drone through the ruined Syrian city of Aleppo, courtesy of YouTube. The destruction was sobering, to say the least. The camera glided by exploded apartment buildings and streets piled with rubble, block after city block. The political situation in Syria is contemptible, the impact of war on human lives horrendously tragic, all silently conveyed in the aftermath captured on video. It also captured something more subtle, something that could easily go unnoticed: Aleppo was built almost entirely of concrete. Concrete dominated every shot. That observation might seem strange, but bear with me.

Whenever I read “bear with me” or “let me explain” in an op-ed piece, I usually stop reading right there, on the grounds that the writer has already wasted enough of my time. So let me cut to the chase:

The amount of fossil fuel required to make cement is astonishing… concrete industry accounts for 5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. When I see all the concrete used to build Aleppo, I think of what has been released into the air to produce it.

Never mind that nearly every building across the technologically backward Third World is made out of concrete, because it sure beats mud and wattles or grass huts.

From numerous studies, scientists know that climate destablization — from the burning of fossil fuels in places such as the U.S., China and India — is causing drought in the Middle East. In fact, for the last decade or so, Syria and the eastern Mediterranean have been in the midst of their worst drought in nine centuries. The effect has been to turn Syria’s once-productive soil into hard-baked clay…

Climate change as an underlying cause of social conflict is rarely front and center in the news, but it has been documented by a variety of experts….

In Aleppo, the blasted concrete walls are not just an outcome of conflict. They are also, unexpectedly, part of the cause…

The ruins of Aleppo graphically illustrate our species’ current misguided path. But properly understood, they are also an opportunity for clarity, redirection and hope.

So now you know. Concrete — not the business-as-usual murderousness of the Muslim Arabs, which has been going on since once-Christian Syrian fell to the Islamic conquest. And it’s all our fault, as usual.