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."
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.
Just like anything else that causes stress, it causes people to get upset and lash out.
It's not the heat, it's the humanity.
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
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
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
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
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The study is weak at including other factors, such as population concentration density in its analysis. Population concentration has increased in lock step with Global Warming, and indeed density may be a key part in warming. Further, density has a much more readily measured correlation with violence. (That is you can measure the correlation it statistically in the modern era, without having to rely on sketchy records of the past).
There is still the competing theory of Tetraethyl lead, which explains not only the rise in violence, but also the recent DECLINE in violence, which the warming theory doesn't even address.
Leaded gasoline has a remarkable correspondence to violent behavior, lowered IQ, and more so in men than women. There is a 23 year lag, in the correlation. Some areas where leaded gasoline is still used correspond to the trouble spots of the world.
And yes, it goes without saying, that correlation does not imply causation, something lost in translation in the mainstream press in their rush to pin yet another evil thing onto Climate Change.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.