Two days ago, the Huffington Post featured an oped titled, "How Climate Change Helped ISIS," co-written by an attorney at John Jay's Center on Terrorism and a history professor. Jeff Dunetz wrote an article in response that has been making the rounds in the deniersphere attacking the climate connection to Syria's drought, which preceded the current conflict and contributed to the instability of the region.
Dunetz begins his rebuttal with the familiar denier adage, "I am not a climate scientist BUT," only to claim "it's not getting warmer" (notwithstanding the NOAA report stating the summer of 2014 was the hottest on record) and there has been "no increase in droughts world-wide." He then quotes Roger Piekle Jr. saying, "It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally."
Perhaps Dunetz should check out the new special issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, released the same day as the HuffPo article, which investigates the climate change connections of a variety of extreme weather events. In the studies, climate change is implicated in worsening several droughts, including Europe's hot dry summer and New Zealand's 2013 drought.
As for Syria and extremism in the Middle East, a paper published earlier this year by the international security and environmental expert, Peter Gleick, states: "as early as 2008, there were indications that drought frequency and intensity in the eastern Mediterranean area had changed from historical climate norms." Gleick finds that, "water and climatic conditions have played a direct role in the deterioration of Syria's economic conditions."