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A Climate of Violence?
Rambo Tribble writes "U.S. researchers have come to the conclusion that a changing climate can drive increased violence in human society. Their findings are to reported in Science (abstract). 'They report a "substantial" correlation between climate and conflict. Their examples include an increase in domestic violence in India during recent droughts, and a spike in assaults, rapes and murders during heatwaves in the U.S. The report also suggests rising temperatures correlated with larger conflicts, including ethnic clashes in Europe and civil wars in Africa.' Marshall Burke, one of the authors, said, 'This is a relationship we observe across time and across all major continents around the world. The relationship we find between these climate variables and conflict outcomes are often very large.' Add this to the developing scarcity of water due to global warming and the prospects for a peaceful future do not bode well."
That temperature affects violence, according to many studies?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/hot-weather-violence/
Solution: move everyone to cold places!
Can't this explain the South and the Middle East all in one fell swoop?
Yes it can! But only if you're willing to be intellectually lazy and refuse to acknowledge multi-input systems. Today, I'm feeling exactly that lazy.
So if a mega blizzard struck on the next winter, leaving thousands isolated and on short supplies... they will be chanting "peace and love"?
Maybe the correlation can be explained just by time: there are social factors that are leading to increasingly more violent societies (e.g. increasing awareness of social rights).
Sometimes it's better not having signature
facepalm....
Just like anything else that causes stress, it causes people to get upset and lash out.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/06/wildling_egalitarianism_why_bad_weather_leads_to_more_economic_equality.html
Besides the fact that the DoD already incorporates climate change in their threat assessments (see http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/green_energy/dod_sustainability/2012/Appendix%20A%20-%20DoD%20Climate%20Change%20Adaption%20Roadmap_20120918.pdf and http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/green_energy/dod_sustainability/2012/Appendix%20A%20-%20DoD%20Climate%20Change%20Adaption%20Roadmap_20120918.pdf), there's the bleedingly obvious conclusion that if an area goes through enough environmental changes that mass migration is better than staying put, conflict with the surrounding areas is guaranteed.
I mean, when New Orleans was evacuated during Katrina, that already sparked enough conflict. Now imagine that the change is permanent and that it's not just a major city evacuating, but an entire geographical area. We'll find out just how far we have evolved from chimps (hint: not very much).
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think either the BBC article or the /. summary is incorrect. It's well known /damn obvious that extreme climactic events cause violence in society. What's new is that they can correlate with numbers, "for each 1 standard deviation (1) change in climate toward warmer temperatures or more extreme rainfall, median estimates indicate that the frequency of interpersonal violence rises 4% and the frequency of intergroup conflict rises 14%." The /. summary is misleading and could cause the casual reader to pass by the article because it seems over obvious.
It's not the heat, it's the humanity.
Now I know why I punch my air conditioner when it's not working!
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77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
So you are gonna explaim that poverty happens due to heatwaves and hot tempareatures.... Not because there is strong political-economical exploration by superpowers... make sense.
I guess this is why hot, sunny and sweltery northern Ireland has had such a violent past...oh wait, it's freezing cold and pisses with rain most of the time.
How strong is the correlation?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I can imagine future forcasts, "Cloudy with a 50% chance of homicide". I would imagine 0% chance of homicide in a blizzard or hurricane, so it kinda makes sense. Kinda.
Change increases violence....
love is just extroverted narcissism
. . . . is there ANYTHING it can't do ???
The last paragraphs are a pretty strong refutation:
Instead, Dr Halvard Buhaug, from the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway, concluded that the conflict was linked to other factors such as high infant mortality, proximity to international borders and high local population density.
Commenting on the latest research, he said: "I disagree with the sweeping conclusion (the authors) draw and believe that their strong statement about a general causal link between climate and conflict is unwarranted by the empirical analysis that they provide.
"I was surprised to see not a single reference to a real-world conflict that plausibly would not have occurred in the absence of observed climatic extremes. If the authors wish to claim a strong causal link, providing some form of case validation is critical."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Duh.
I heard about a similar study a decade ago ... and because someone has to say it ... correlation != causation.
it has been well documented, in Iraq and Afghanistan for examples, that violence picks up when it is hot.
Now what is all the fuss about climate change causing violets? I happen to think that violets are a lovely flower, and there should be more of them. In fact I think the world would be a more beautiful and peaceful place if there were more violets. More violets would mean more good jobs and satisfying work .... Eh?..... Just a minute ......
I have just been informed that climate change may cause more violence. Well then... never mind.
It was an homage.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
All that extreme heat over the Pentagon for the past 70 years.
Yes, i also suspect climate may effect the violence levels in a population but i am amazed that BBC (and the rest of the "political correct" -usualy left-wing!- crowd) systematicaly choose to ignore the more obvious, and probably most significant, reasons...
In the US, violent crime rates have been decreasing for decades, while temperatures have been breaking records.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1
So now that we've hit the low in average temperatures, global re-heating is going to reverse this disturbing trend?
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-crime-declines-in-america/
but since it's climate CHANGE, the effects will cancel out. You're stuck with the old global warming paradigm.
When I was a kid, I heard that Nostradamus sorta predicted the world wars ("Hissler" did the second one). For the unknown future, he wrote something about a 3rd world war, then a drought, followed by an eerily worded "everlasting peace".
But I have no citations.
This is the only real reason I can think of for the NSA program spying on Americans. They think things are going to get very ugly. Very ugly.
If you *really* care about freedom and civil liberties and don't just enjoy getting apoplectic over those *ideas* , you might want to consider doing everything you can to make sure the environmental preques for those things continues to viable. No food, no liberty. Trust me.
Does it apply here?
Rising temperatures means you can grow more crops in northern lands. Over all it means more total arable land, not less. It also means a more hospitable climate to live in up north so it's not like you lose livable habitat either, that also expands.
Thus the whole basis of the claim the article makes is nonsense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"a spike in assaults, rapes and murders during heatwaves"
Ummm it's way too hot outside to assault, rape, or murder anyone actually. This cannot be a correct correlation.
EVERYTHING is apparently related to 'global warming' - wait a minute! They slipped up there, they're supposed to say "climate change", because the climate is ALWAYS changing, so they can never be wrong, no matter what happens!
But they forgot to put 'man made' in front of 'global warming'.
There is no such thing. The entire thing is a sickening scam.
www.climatedepot.com
This has to be one of the more ridiculous claims to come out of the alarmosphere about climate change I've ever heard. There's a cool list of things that are supposed to be attributable to climate change (according to the alarmists): http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/17/global-warming-ate-my-homework-100-things-blamed-on-global-warming/ . I guess we can add this to the list.
planet texture maps and more
New Orleans had to be evacuated in days.
With climate change, you are talking about sea levels rising an inch or two per DECADE. Or heat / cold profiles of an area changing also over decades. Plenty of time for people to move on if they decide they don't like whatever changes are occurring.
But most people will stay, no matter what particular climate you find "unlivable" you'll find plenty of people already living in those conditions...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just what we need! Another excuse for lack of personal responsibility.
So can I sue the automobile manufacturers and various production industries for liability in causing climate change that thereby lead to violence that thereby lead to the death of a family member?
Jeez! Give me a break. I gotta stop reading /.
"I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire. The day is hot; the Capulets, abroad; And if we meet we shall not 'scape a brawl, For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring." - Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1, right before a massive and fatal fight.
The science is clear: Climate crisis is coming; We're making it happen; Onset may take only decades from now. Desertification, devastation to agriculture, habitat loss, ocean damage, increasing competition for resources, violence (and quite possibly wars), and billions of human fatalities. We choose to put CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. We superstitiously reject the technology which has the most power to save us: nuclear energy. Nuclear energy emits no greenhouse gas. Nuclear "waste" is a fallacy; current reactors burn their fuel only 4%; the rest can be burned by fast reactors. And if you think nuclear is expensive, think about about a carbon tax, and stop NIMBY litigation. A vote against nuclear is a vote for climate crisis.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
Again another great reason why we can blame everyone and everything else and never ourselves. The increase in violence is because people don't want to "display" self control. It could be 100 degree's C and that doesn't mean you can go rape someone. You're just are responsible at 20 degree's C as you are at 100, science just wants to give you away out of being responsible for your actions. I will love the day when a new survey finds that people who want a scapegoat use surveys like this to justify why they act the way they do.
Anyone who's ever driven thru the west side of Chicago in winter and in the summer would've been able to tell you this, all for the price of a gallon of gas (and maybe bullet proof vest?) instead of who-knows how-much was spent for some sciencey-type people to do this "research"
Elsewhere in the city of wind, people get to be very bad, aggressive and stupid in their driving on especially hot days. Cant be too much different elsewhere I would imagine. The real focus though is change - if it is hot for sufficiently long, things return to normal, but a "wave" wreaks havoc. For some reason, the west side is excepted from this - as long as its hot, expect to see shootings.
"I was surprised to see not a single reference to a real-world conflict that plausibly would not have occurred in the absence of observed climatic extremes. If the authors wish to claim a strong causal link, providing some form of case validation is critical."
Global Climate change is a serious issue, but 'science' like this only strengthens the opposition to any real change. Once again, climate 'science' is now just fear mongering. Way to go!
Australia has an expression for this erratic behaviour in increasing temperatures, they call it: "going troppo"
Though I think the heat is just an excuse to explain that they are drinking too much alcohol instead of water, it is the alcohol that is making them bat-shit crazy.
Different cultures handle excessive alcohol differently; some like to beat the shit out of each other; some like to get darwin awards.
Russians like to drown in heatwaves cooled by vodka.
I was surprised to see not a single reference to a real-world conflict that plausibly would not have occurred in the absence of observed climatic extremes.
In related news, Dr Halvard Buhaug has released definitive evidence that chemotherapy and cancer are not correlated as he could find cases where chemotherapy patients did not have cancer.
Unless you are growing crops that thrive in the northern latitudes. Then the rising temps damage your crops and you have to figure out what crops you can now grow. It also can mean that the quantity of arable land declines due to lack of water. As the breadbelt heats up and since we have already used a lot of the available water we could lose a large section of our agriculture. Drought and depleted aquifers are our biggest threat when it comes to food production and rising temperatures do nothing to help that situation out.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
It's funny how supposed scientists claim to derive causal relationships (a changing climate can *drive* increased violence in human society) from correlation, however substantial.
If I were to extrapolate on this pattern, I would claim a substantial correlation between changing climate and stupid and unwarranted conclusions. Clearly, climate must be driving an increase in stupidity.
What ever it takes to sell more guns and justify more surveillance
I suppose you've seen this already and simply chose to ignore it:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The spontaneous and unspontaneous eruptions of violence, they may well be caused by ionised wind. Especially east winds. The sun inonizes them, and people commit all sorts of violent crimes. This is old research done by either Oxford, or MIT.
Look at that list.
Some of the items are solved by simply adjusting the genetic makeup of crops (rice output). Or you can just move where rice grows to someplace that has the cool nights required.
Other issues are very very local (water in Colorado river basin) and ignore the fact that climate CHANGE means unknown adjustments to any given region - overall warming may bring more water to some region even as it warms. There's been no real change in snowpack levels over the decades so far.
Increases in wildfire have very little to do with agriculture, but there it is I guess to pad out the list and distract you from how bad the rest of the arguments are.
Once again the alarmists like you like to wear the mantle of "science" while not actually using science in any way - the list is entirely fear based and has a bunch of inty regional issues to balance out a massive benefit like "Russia and Canada and Northen Europe and China can grow vastly more crops"
You're like a five year old with a superman cape, pretending you are saving the world while meanwhile you are just pissing all over the globe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Drought and depleted aquifers are our biggest threat when it comes to food production and rising temperatures do nothing to help that situation out.
It just means adjustment of where you grow, and the lands potentially opening up for growing food are a lot wider than the lands lost.
Drought is less common if the seas really rise and the earth warms, because it means more water vapor entering the atmosphere. Cooling is what removes water from the ecosystem, not warming.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Its just neat how science can make up all sorts of reasons why people do the voodoo they do and completely ignore the most basic one; choice.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
...of "Duh" magazine.
"Sorry it was hot out and I don't have AC, please refer to the following studies stating it was not my fault"
So by this logic then, it makes sense because WW2 started in the tropics and desert! (Oh wait, no it didn't.)
Well, WW1 then certainly? ...ah, no.
-Styopa
This was already discovered in the movie Predator 2, we didn't need science to back up a well known fact already.
You can expect things to get worse faster and faster, and you can expect the government to state one day "We can no longer afford to send FEMA out to you" and relief will be up to you.
Fewer people, the only answer.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Winter keeps the riff-raff indoors. Summer drives them outside, to prey upon each other and other, relatively more innocent, folks.
We need Globular Cooling. For the Children.
It is directly related to stress levels.
High levels of stress with no way to release that stress always results in violence.
Any temperature change from what the individual finds comfortable changes the amount of stress on that individual.
The violence is not directly caused by global warming but by the conditions to lead to global warming and social injustice across the planet making people angry.
I mean, global warming and the causes - insensitiveness to that issue, isn't the same callousness cause for increasing accumulation of wealth and power to less and less individuals on the top of the pyramid, depriving the increasingly larger lower parts of basic necessities? Just look at US "minimum wage" not covering basic living expenses at full hour work week? There may be many examples, not only on wages, but also on social (female, racial, political and minority suppression) issues.
This is just another transparent attempt to link ANYTHING to the climate change politics. And the only people that will buy this are the gullible or the choir of political advocates.
My statement has nothing to do with climate change itself. That's a totally different debate. The issue here is that there is a tendency to link ANYTHING to climate change. Economics, politics, social issues... anything.
And how do you know its crap science? Because it isn't falsifiable. Anyone that knows anything about science... actual science... knows that if an argument isn't falsifiable it is invalid by default. Its not a rational argument if there is no way to prove it wrong. For the benefit of the dense, I am not saying that true arguments are invalid. I am saying that arguments that CANNOT be proven wrong are invalid. For example, if I said "the color blue is pretty" that is not a valid argument. That's my opinion but pretty doesn't really mean anything. In this case they're saying changes in climate can lead to violence. Well, what is that based upon? And are there not many examples where changes in climate either have a reduction in violence or no effect at all? And what is our input data? Questionable statistics... The best source for any scientific argument... Garbage.
Look, I simply object to political advocacy masquerading as science. Have your opinions and your grinding axes. That's fine. Just don't call it science because it devalues the very concept. It doesn't elevate your argument. It demeans science. If you have any respect for science AT ALL... you won't do it. If you see science as merely a tool to brow beat idiots into submission then its been reduced to rhetoric. Nothing more.
Science deserves a little more respect then that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
there you go... one of many references to the same sort of study... http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/01A.pdf
Good on ya, mate !
From TFA: "there could also be a physiological basis, because some studies suggest that heat causes people to be prone to aggression."
If you didn't notice this, it probably says something about how you interpret information about subjects for which you feel strongly.
Until you realize that the farms and the farmers aren't in 'the north'...
Oh, and there are a bunch of trees and rocky soil in 'the north'. Plus you have daylight issues where it will get really cold and dark in the winter, but the Sunlight still won't be quite as bright, just the temperature will be higher.
Funny how you only point out localized problems on one side when they're on both sides of the chart.
Benefits side - first item alone applies to entire northern hemisphere. I ignored the other two as equally stupid as the whole drawback side.
Downside - applies to patches of a few countries.
Funny how you can't think!
Like I said - pissing all over yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, crime should be falling in the U.S. Midwest, right, since it's August and only in the 70s?
You can have a drought even if the precipitation increases, if the evaporation rate increases faster. The vapor pressure of water (roughly the evaporation rate) is an exponentially increasing function of temperature. Also note that the precipitation isn't always in a useful form. That is, if the evaporation has increased 10% and the annual precipitation also increased 10%, but the extra comes in a couple big storms whose water just floods rivers and doesn't have time to be absorbed into the soil, you'll still have a drought.
SB
Thus the whole basis of the claim the article makes is nonsense.
In other words: I can make up an argument with a different conclusion on the spot. Any argument I make must be better than whatever arguments these bozos have made. That's true regardless of what their arguments are (because I don't know what they are). So they are talking nonsense. Never mind that these people did the research. Because I'm the rational one, damn it, so whatever way my knee jerks, that's the right way!
I thought Gary Busey mentioned Predators were present during every major heat wave which seemed to also coincide with war/conflict.
Watch it - everybody is sweating all the time, everybody is aggressive. A movie about Global Warming.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
All we had to do is summarize the data we have on global violence and derive the formula that would allow us to calculate when civilization would go into free-fall because we can no longer cooperate due to the effects of ambient heat on our capacity for sufficient agricultural irrigation and aggregate irritation toward each other.
I guess we really didn't need MIT to do the 30 year update to the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth after all.
Mahatma Ghandi was right, Western civilization would have been a good idea.
Religion, Politics, Natural Resources.
Just a guess, but it might not be
climate change -> violence
so much as:
climate change -> ecological disaster -> famine -> poverty -> desperation -> violence
Most of us don't live in a hunter/gatherer society, and even when we did, we didn't just go out and pick whatever happened to grow. Agriculture started in the jungles and on the plains thousands of years ago when people figured out that it was nice that the seeds they'd tossed were plants when they returned after a few seasons or years. Now, Big Ag raises most of the global food supply, and if the climate shifts faster than it can acquire suitable replacement lands and develop the supporting infrastructure (think irrigation and transportation), the financial consequences won't be limited to the equities markets. It will ripple throughout the supply chain with food prices showing the biggest leap just like then did when gasoline hit $4/gal a few years ago. (Notice those prices didn't come down much even after fuel prices abated).
There's a huge web of inter-related business interests that will be destabilized. Everything from feed, seed and weed manufacturers & distributors to the grain elevators, transportation and local banks and insurance brokers that service the industry. The likes of Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and United Fruit are worldwide and have considerable pull. They don't just stand by and watch, and they don't fight fair, either.
It's not the climate per se that leads to the predictable intergroup conflicts, it's the economic instability that drives one geopolitical entity to risk war when diplomacy fails or necessity of the starving masses threatens to upend their apple carts. That's why China has invested in countries on every continent and they've been developing a massive military along with an inquisitive cyber-spying ring. They have well developed culture of power and historical appreciation for the long term implications of the interesting opportunities that come with rapidly shifting geopolitical advantage.
I find it interesting that a few posts up the /. board, there's one that deals with the evolutionary advantage or cooperation over competition. Especially as it comes during a period when anthropogenic climate change may require a mindset reset in terms of the failing nationalistic economic financial competition which nearly unraveled completely due to the irrational exuberance in the derivatives markets which has yet to be addressed in any real of meaningful fashion. Alan Greenspan may have unknowingly led us to an evolutionary tipping point for which history my be incapable of acknowledging the depth or breadth of his contribution.
And so it goes... *
Violence drives climate change!
the word economy has also been tanking during the period of the "study." but the advantage of these kinds of "studies" is that they distract people from the real problem, i.e., the sociopaths who pay for such "studies."
tom arnall
> "Add this to the developing scarcity of water due to global warming and the prospects for a peaceful future do not bode well."
"The short period of relative peace in a small section of human society won't last much longer into the future."
FTFY.