Slashdot Mirror
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."
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 un-PC - it's just incorrect. It's not just about temperatures going up. It's about wild variations in the weather patterns (droughts in some areas and floods in others), melting of the ice-caps wiping out coastal cities (where most people live), and impaired food production in countries that already have borderline temperatures.
The problem is that the negatives heavily outweigh those positives:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm
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