WILL WATSON: Climate change isn't simple, but it's real

Many people insist that man-made global warming cannot be real unless it's hot everywhere all the time.

So, if it's cold somewhere, you can bet someone will announce that the cold temperature "disproves global warming." They'll be serious, too, but they'd have an extremely simplistic idea of global warming to say such a thing. In reality, nothing is that simple.

Global warming reveals the intricacy of not just of our climatic systems but of our society and politics as well.

Which brings us to ISIS, the Syrian refugee crisis and Bernie Sanders' recent assertion that terrorism and climate change are directly related.

The fact that so many consider Bernie's idea ridiculous says less about Sanders than it does about the lousy job our media outlets do explaining climate change to the average American, who hates complexity more than TV commercials.

Sanders' link between terrorism and climate change is, actually, quite sound. It reflects a number of scientific studies that found global warming fingerprints all over the disastrous Syrian droughts of 2006-11. To sum up Sanders' reasoning: Climate change caused the droughts, and the droughts created social unrest in Syria, so social unrest led to civil war, and the civil war caused Syrian society to disintegrate, creating a spawning ground for ISIS.

This is exactly what the Pentagon had in mind when it described climate change as a "threat multiplier" and called climate change an "urgent and growing threat" to U.S. security. Sanders may be a cranky old socialist, but his conclusions differ little from the U.S. Department of Defense.

In other words, Syrians seeking asylum in the United States are climate refugees. There will be others as droughts, floods, fires and rising sea levels unravel societies around the world, leading to instability, war and chaos.

This is what climate change looks like. It's not simple, but it is undeniably real.

WILL WATSON

Long Beach

This story was originally published November 21, 2015 at 7:10 PM with the headline "WILL WATSON: Climate change isn't simple, but it's real ."