Motherboard: Most Americans' understanding of the root of the Syrian conflict boils down to something like this: Bashar al-Assad is a sociopathic maniac who'd rather mow down his own people than relinquish dictatorship. While that's undoubtedly part of the equation, there's obviously a lot more at play than that. And some of the blame, scholars argue, can be traced all the way to climate change.
As was the case with many of the nations touched by the Arab Spring, a large swath of Syria's citizenry wasn't just...