Retired U.S. Army Gen. Bob Scales says he is concerned at the claims made by President Barack Obama during the recent Climate Change Summit in Paris that rising global temperatures cause wars.
Writing on Fox News Opinion page, Scales says there is no causal connection between climate change and war, and that the President's statements could be misinterpreted in a different way as deviating resources away from waging a war against extremist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS).
While agreeing with scientists on the dangers of global warming, the general described such connection with war as "silliness.''
"I really don't care about the [Obama] administration's silliness over the connection between war and climate change,'' he said. "My real concern is that the administration might translate this silliness into a deflection of resources away from fighting a war against ISIS to a contrived war against global warming. That would cause real harm to our soldiers who are trying to win a real war.''
"Never in the written history of warfare, from Megiddo in 1,500 B.C. to the Syrian Civil war today, is there any evidence that wars are caused by warmer air,'' he added.
Obama, according to Scales, has asserted that a warming planet causes drought, which leads to mass migration away from areas of creeping desertification.
But he said the displacement of people in Central Africa was not a result of war, but misery.
He said even terrorists like Boko Haram which have been creating conflicts in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in Somalia was motivated by the "usual suspects'' like religious hatred, centuries-long tribal animosities, and political greed—not hot weather.
He also described as "ridiculous'' the arguments raised by environmental radicals against bombing ISIS oil trucks for fear of environmental consequences.
Scales also noted that the threat made by environmental groups prior to the 1991 Gulf war that a decade of global cooling would come from burning Kuwaiti oil fields did not happen.
Moreover, Scales said the testimony made by Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, before Congress should serve as a warning for the Obama government to amplify its campaign plan to kill the ISIS leadership rather than lower the global temperature.
"In contrast to his boss, he confirmed that ISIS, not climate change, is our greatest enemy and that ISIS is in fact not on the run,'' he said.
"Perhaps now that a realist (and a proven combat Marine) is providing advice to the president we might amplify our campaign plan to kill the ISIS leadership rather than lower the global temperature,'' he added.
Scales is a military analyst for Fox News. He earned a Ph.D from Duke University in Military history and have written seven books and over 300 scholarly articles on the subject of human conflict, the report said.
