From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent post at far-left news outlet Mother Jones, “There’s a Powerful, Hidden Force Behind Migration: Climate Change,” claims that climate change is a powerful driver of mass migration from the third world. This is false. The migrants themselves who were interviewed only bring up weather at all when pressed to do so, economic factors are the usually cited reasons for both illegal and legal attempts at migration to western countries. Extreme weather is not at all new to the regions discussed.

The author claims that recent mass migration to Spain and other countries from places like Morocco is secretly being spurred on by climate change, and suggests that media does not often discuss that factor. This is immediately absurd, of course, because the mainstream media often cites climate change as a driver of both legal and illegal immigration. Climate Realism has recently debunked such claims regarding migrants from Somalia, here, for instance.

Undermining the initial claim of the headline and introduction, the author admits “[t]hat is not to say that the effects of climate change caused tens of thousands of people to risk their lives by attempting to swim to Ceuta. Economic forces were much more urgent motivators for Mohamed to leave his home.”

The migrant interviewed by Mother Jones says that the reason he is trying to leave Morocco is because of limited job opportunities. He does not mention climate change at all. But the author goes on to insist “after another summer of extreme temperatures and wildfires in the northern and southeastern provinces in Morocco, severe flash flooding and landslides in rural communities throughout the High Atlas Mountains, and the culmination of a seven-year drought after a winter of heavy rainfall across the country, climate change also may be an underlying factor in creating the economic crisis forcing so many to leave their homes.”

This is completely backwards. The reason these severe weather events have such a large impact on Morocco and other poorer countries is because they are weak economically in the first place, making it difficult or impossible for communities to invest in weather hardened infrastructure. The cited extreme weather events are not new to the region, and happen all around the world regardless of climate change.

Flash flooding is a feature of desert environments, once dry seasons are over. Likewise, drought for that matter is an obvious feature of the desert, especially lengthy droughts, which the author admits recently came to an end. Alternating periods of extended drought and deluge are the norm for Morocco in particular. The southeastern Morocco desert has recently seen dry lakebeds refill with water, when they have been mostly empty for a long time due to the recent drought period. Those lakebeds would not be there in the first place if they did not sometimes fill. Trying to claim that these natural patterns are evidence of climate change is nonsense.

As for the wildfires, again wildfire is not new to the region, and data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency joint project Copernicus show that there is no trend towards worsening wildfires in Morocco, neither in area burned nor number of fires. (See figure below)

Despite 2022 seeing a record bad fire year, 2024 was a record low for wildfires in Morocco since records begin in 2002 according to Copernicus data. Mother Jones is not interested in that, only the high years.  Good scientists would not claim that 2024 represented a trend towards the elimination of wildfire, and likewise 2022 is not indicative of a trend towards climate catastrophe.

The Mother Jones post goes on to make the dubious claim that “North Africa and the Middle East are warming faster than the rest of the world, and Morocco’s agricultural sector—the cornerstone of the country’s economy—is particularly vulnerable to climate impacts like soil degradation and depleted groundwater.”

As discussed in “No, Atlantic Council, Climate Change is Not Making the Middle East and North Africa “Unlivable”,” even if the dubious claim that those regions are “warming faster than the rest of the world,” which has been claimed about every region of the whole world, the Middle East and North Africa have actually been seeing improving economic and agricultural conditions amid modern warming, disturbed only when violence and political unrest occur.

Soil degradation and depleted groundwater are resource management impacts, not climate impacts. For example, the same claim was made about depleted water resources in Nigeria, but population growth stressing the water supply around Lake Chad and other countries upriver building dams were the real cause. Natural drought under those conditions is bound to make things worse.

The most notable part of this article is the straightforward dismissal of the actual complaints of the migrants themselves, in order to push the climate claim. The so-called experts that the author interviews insist basically that the migrants don’t know what they are talking about, that climate change is the real background issue, instead of things like political corruption and violence making economies unstable in the region and hindering development.

The data do not show anything unprecedented happening with the weather, but it is clear that Mother Jones is not interested in facts.