Middle East and Climate Change

The recent unreast in the Middle East, which has been attributes, in part, to high food prices, gives a warning of the type of global unrest that might result in the future years if the climate continues to warm as expected. A hotter climate means that more severe droughts will occur. We can expect an increasing number of unprecedented heat waves and droughts like the 2010 Russian drought in coming decades. This will significantly increase the odds of a world food emergency far worse than the 2007-2008 global food crisis. When we also consider the world's expanding population and the possibility that peak oil will make fertilizers and agriculture much more expensive, we have the potential for a perfect storm of events aligning in the near future, with droughts made significantly worse by climate change contributing to events that will cause disruption of the global economy, intense political turmoil, and war.