Bill Nye Explains Link Between Climate Change And Terrorism

One of Bill Nye‘s largest fields of interest is climate change, and that’s putting it mildly. Nye feels so strongly that he recently strutted down the highway in a walk of doom while mourning the end of the human race. He also attributes many weather phenomena, including isolated areas of increased flooding, solely to climate change using various analogies.

Nye will use science to illustrate any point, and now he’s tied his biggest concern to the Paris attacks. More generally speaking, Nye sat down with HuffPostLive to explain why terrorism is linked to climate change. Nye isn’t joking around here (although he knows how to do so). Instead, Nye sciences it up to explain how water shortages in Syria led to the coordinated attacks that killed more than 125 people. Here is part of Nye’s lengthy explanation:

“It’s very reasonable that the recent trouble in Paris is a result of climate change. This water change in Syria — there is a water shortage in Syria, this is fact based — small and medium farmers have abandoned their farms because there’s not enough water, not enough rainfall. And especially the young people who have not grown up there, have not had their whole lives invested in living off the land, the young people have gone to the big cities looking for work. There’s not enough work for everybody, so the disaffected youths, as we say, the young people who don’t believe in the system, believe the system’s failed, don’t believe in the economy are more easily engaged and more easily recruited by terrorist organizations, and then they end up part way around the world in Paris shooting people.”

Nye goes on to claim “a very reasonable argument” that climate change and terrorism are “not that indirectly related.” He also stresses that, yes, the two are “related,” and the further the world dives into climate change, the more terrorism will happen. Well, does Nye have a point? A lot of people will say his analogy goes too far. Twitter is feeling mighty skeptical.