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Nono and Punkbuster -- I'm going to concede that you're probably more right than I am on some points. Indeed, Senegal and rest of Suharan Africa have been Muslim since Suleman. Islam is, however, expanding into Central and South Africa... Ethiopia, Congo, Uganda, Nigeria, Niger, Zimbabwe, etc.
And indeed al-Qaeda is out to wreak havoc wherever the west maintains vital interests in Muslim countries, which, although oil is certainly important, includes a variety of strategic minerals, such as cobalt, chromium, manganese, platinum, industrial diamonds, etc.
And yes, Africa absolutely has been a basketcase for generations. But the affects of climate change on African agriculture is going to be what completes the perfect storm of chaos on that sad continent. Witho or without Nigeria's oil, if we can keep mineral rich South Africa stable, that may be the best we can hope for, because we don't have nearly the resources to rescue the rest of them.
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Quote by: Punkbuster And on climate change thats off topic but have many other threads that cover it. |
Not really... climate change is moving rapidly from "could happen" to "is happening now" -- it's affects are being seen in a thousand ways around the globe -- and one of the places it's happening is Africa, because they have so little economic resiliance to even minor changes.
I'm predicting that within 10 years or so, almost everything that happens politically in Africa will be connected in some way to climate change.
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Quote by: Punkbuster In the billions of years of the earths existence the swing from predicted Ice Age to predicted melt down in 30 short years seems a little too much of a pendulum to me. |
Actually, we
should be on a 25,000 year downward trend towards the next Ice Age. But that was interupted by the man-made anomoly that began 200 years ago. It seems too much for you because you can't comprehend the affect of THIS on the earths environment...
...and because what you
also have to imagine is that this curve represents not just human poplation, but also our
industrial/technological capacity to pillage and pollute the planet.
.