Rise in violence 'linked to climate change'...a new tack?

[tacoman25]

Although I cannot find access to the entire paper,  a number of excerpts and quotes from the paper I have found speak directly to some of the questions you ask and provide evidence in the affirmative.

 

For example, you ask if there is a difference between a 95 and a 97 degree heatwave. The answer is yes, the greater the temperature anomaly the greater the per capita violence rate. Also, logically, with climate change, more places will experience 95 degree heatwaves (and more places will reach 70F, and 80F and 90F that have never before reached those temperatures) or they will experience those warm temperatures more frequently.

 

They also establish a firm correlation between droughts intergroup conflict. Wars, riots, and civil wars are all more frequent during droughts. Droughts will become more common with climate change. Therefore, logically, wars riots and civil wars will also become more common (of course other factors like rising standards of living may simultaneously decrease them). It's not bullet proof logic, but it is fairly sound. Of course it's possible that all these civil wars, riots and wars would have happened anyways without the droughts that kicked them off, and perhaps the drought only made them happen a few months earlier than they would have otherwise, but that seems pretty unlikely to me. At least a good portion of these conflicts that began in droughts probably wouldn't have happened without the drought that kicked them off. 

 

They present psychological evidence. For example, a 1994 study found that police officers in a warm room were more likely to draw their weapons compared to another group of police officers undergoing the same simulation.

 

Other mechanisms by which climate change causes violence are also quite logical. Climate change (warm or cold) causes disruptions in resources leading to resource competition, lower standards of living, and poverty all of which are known causes of both personal and inter-group violence. 

 

 

Our study is not saying that climate is the only cause of conflict, and there's no conflict that we think should be wholly attributed to some specific climatic event," he said. "Every conflict has roots in interpersonal and intergroup relations. What we're trying to point out is that climate is one of the critical factors the affect how things escalate, and if they escalate to the point of violence.

 

Please show me how CLIMATE CHANGE is causing greater violence during heatwaves. What you don't seem to be taking into account is that climate change is a very slow process, and therefore places that now may see more hot days are only seeing a slow increase over time, allowing time for humans to adjust. And you have not provided any evidence that a 97 degree heatwave will produce more violence than a 95 degree heatwave - or say a +12 anomaly as opposed to a +10.

 

If wxtrix was objective, she would call you out for not having actually read the paper!

[tacoman25]

This is false. The authors cite evidence from around the globe. And the violence that does occur at the equator is found to correlate to even small amounts of warming. 

 

Why should the question be "how does warmth affect places that are seeing serious warming?" Places near the equator have increases in violence in response to small amounts of warmth (1 sigma deviations) which at the equator often amounts to less than .5C difference over the course of a year.

 

The common theme found in all regions at both low and high latitude is that when temperatures fall above their normal range, violence is more frequent. 

 

Coming from someone who has not actually read the paper? Most of the examples they cite are from regions not far from the equator, so don't tell me I'm making false statements.

[skierinvermont]

Please show me how CLIMATE CHANGE is causing greater violence during heatwaves. What you don't seem to be taking into account is that climate change is a very slow process, and therefore places that now may see more hot days are only seeing a slow increase over time, allowing time for humans to adjust. And you have not provided any evidence that a 97 degree heatwave will produce more violence than a 95 degree heatwave - or say a +12 anomaly as opposed to a +10.

 

If wxtrix was objective, she would call you out for not having actually read the paper!

 

The evidence is right in the paper. The higher the monthly temperature anomaly for a county, the higher the violence rate. So yes, a +12 anomaly causes more violence than a +10 anomaly. This is in the paper. I can only direct you to the paper and suggest you read it in full if you cannot find the portion in question. I can give you a page number if you need.

 

Your point about adaptation is valid, but it does not invalidate the findings. It is possible that humans will have time to adapt fully or not at all or anywhere in between. But to assume that humans will fully adapt with zero cost to the projected accelerated warming is tenuous at best. The authors spend nearly a full page discussing the possibility of adaptation and offer suggested directions for future research in this area. They also point out that much of the evidence offered encompasses long periods of slow change over the 20th and 21st centuries and still finds a positive correlation to warming with violence (contrary to the hypothesis that humans would completely adapt to the changes). 

[skierinvermont]

Coming from someone who has not actually read the paper? Most of the examples they cite are from regions not far from the equator, so don't tell me I'm making false statements.

 

I have read several summaries and excerpts of the paper, and now I have read significant portions of it. There is much evidence away from the equator. Your statement is false.

 

Moreover, your statement was irrelevant as well. Yes warming is slower at the equator, but people at the equator were also found to be more sensitive to small amounts of warming. The common theme is that when temperatures fall above their normal range, violence is more common.

[tacoman25]

I have read several summaries and excerpts of the paper, and now I have read significant portions of it. There is much evidence away from the equator. Your statement is false.

 

Moreover, your statement was irrelevant as well. Yes warming is slower at the equator, but people at the equator were also found to be more sensitive to small amounts of warming. The common theme is that when temperatures fall above their normal range, violence is more common.

 

1. So you admit you made an assumption before actually reading the whole thing. Ok.

 

2. Your second point has been dismissed by others who have refuted the paper, especially the claims about warfare in Africa being tied to climate change. It goes against common sense anyway that people who are used to very warm temperatures will be more sensitive to small changes. There is no logical reason that would be the case. That's like saying someone here in Colorado is more sensitive to altitude change because we already live at a high elevation. Doesn't add up.

[skierinvermont]

1. So you admit you made an assumption before actually reading the whole thing. Ok.

 

2. Your second point has been dismissed by others who have refuted the paper, especially the claims about warfare in Africa being tied to climate change. It goes against common sense anyway that people who are used to very warm temperatures will be more sensitive to small changes. There is no logical reason that would be the case. That's like saying someone here in Colorado is more sensitive to altitude change because we already live at a high elevation. Doesn't add up.

 

1. So you admit you were wrong, even after reading the paper and lying about its contents.

 

2. I'd love to see some of these refutations. It also is not logical that people in hot climates would be least sensitive to changes in temperature. People in Africa have economies and cultures and lifestyles and infrastructure etc. adapted to a 95F degree climate (hypothetically). It is very rare for temperatures over the course of a year to be more than a degree higher or lower than this and thus there is very little experience or ability to adapt to such temperatures. When the mean temperature for the year is a degree higher, it has a significant detrimental effect. The people, economies, cultures, lifestyles and infrastructure have no experience with such sustained warmth. Because people in northern climates have experience and adapted to a more variable climate, they can adapt to larger absolute changes in temperature. Both people at low and high latitude have difficulty adapting to temperatures that fall outside their normal range. In Africa, this can be just a degree over the course of a whole year, at mid-latitude it might be more like 2 or 3 degrees.

[tacoman25]

1. So you admit you were wrong, even after reading the paper and lying about its contents.

 

2. I'd love to see some of these refutations. It also is not logical that people in hot climates would be least sensitive to changes in temperature. People in Africa have economies and cultures and lifestyles and infrastructure etc. adapted to a 95F degree climate (hypothetically). It is very rare for temperatures over the course of a year to be more than a degree higher or lower than this and thus there is very little experience or ability to adapt to such temperatures. When the mean temperature for the year is a degree higher, it has a significant detrimental effect. The people, economies, cultures, lifestyles and infrastructure have no experience with such sustained warmth. Because people in northern climates have experience and adapted to a more variable climate, they can adapt to larger absolute changes in temperature. Both people at low and high latitude have difficulty adapting to temperatures that fall outside their normal range. In Africa, this can be just a degree over the course of a whole year, at mid-latitude it might be more like 2 or 3 degrees.

 

1. Really? You're going to accuse me of "lying", just as wxtrix basically did the same thing by questioning where I read the paper? Hint: it doesn't make you smarter to accuse the other person in a discussion of lying just because you disagree with them. Most of the places listed in the paper and linked to conflicts/climate change are near the equator: Africa, Brazil, the Middle East, southern Asia. Not sure why you are insisting I am "lying" about this, and it's especially embarrassing that you would do so and then admit you hadn't even read the thing.

 

2. See a good summary below of refutations/critics of the study. If you want more details, they are easy to find online. For the rest of your response, I just haven't seen solid evidence that climate change is having this sort of impact. Do extended/severe droughts have significant effects on local economies, poverty, and resulting violence? Sure...but there is no definite link between droughts and global warming so far. There is much stronger evidence tying droughts to ENSO and other oceanic oscillations.

 

One of the critics is Jürgen Scheffran, a professor at the University of Hamburg who specializes in the security risks posed by climate change. In 2012, he and others also completed a study on the topic, with an abridged version likewise appearing in Science. The team analyzed 27 studies and found that "16 of them ? showed that global warming increased the likelihood of violence," Scheffran says. But 11 showed that whereas climate change could increase violence in some cases, it could lessen the chances of violence in others -- or have no provable effect whatsoever. "Hsiang and his team didn't consider eight of these 11 studies," Scheffran says. "When one shrinks one's database like that, it results in a certain image."

 

Biting critique of the study was voiced in Science as well. In a background article that accompanied the report, the Oslo-based economist Halvard Buhaug was quoted as saying that Hsiang and his team ignored certain data. "More worrisome," he wrote, is the fact that they seem to have used data "that return the strongest effects." Buhaug is the co-author of an April study that contradicts Hsiang's conclusions -- and which was not considered by Hsiang in his project.

 

Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, echoed the criticism. He said that Hsiang and his team shrugged off alternative explanations for the increase in violence and thus "maximized the apparent explanatory power of changes in the climate." In general, Marotzke said, "he is skeptical when it comes to the robustness of the results."

 

Their allegedly selective approach to existing data isn't the only accusation that has been levelled at Hsiang's team. "The second major error is that they confuse climate and weather," says Richard Tol, professor of economy at the University of Sussex in the UK. He notes that it does indeed appear that heat waves make people more aggressive, a conclusion reached by earlier studies. That, though, has more to do with specific weather events, he says, while climate change is measured in decades. Tol says that most of the studies considered by Hsiang and his team focused on specific weather events. "Their projections of the impact of future climate change strongly exaggerate the effect," he says.

 

Sociologist Nico Stehr, for his part, says that the "biggest mistake" made in the Hsiang study is that it "underestimates" human innovation "when it comes to dealing with weather or climate events."

[tacoman25]

the study seems to draw from a pretty wide swatch of the world:

in addition, your assertion that the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere is seeing the most warning is inconsistent with the science:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_global_warming#Especially_affected_regions

and here's a link to the new study from the World Bank which IDs Africa as one of the most critical future areas wrt climate change:

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/06/14/000445729_20130614145941/Rendered/PDF/784240WP0Full00D0CONF0to0June19090L.pdf

 

nothing is ever satisfactory to deniers. it's the way it goes.

 

1. For regional violent conflicts, which I was referencing if you read my original post, most of the countries they look at are tropical/sub-tropical...not far from the equator.

 

2. That doesn't say Africa will see or is seeing the most warming, it says they are expected to be one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change and variability. The science does support my assertion that the higher latitudes are seeing and are expected to see the most warming.

 

3. I am not a denier of climate change. However, I also don't believe every study published is correct (consider the fact that there are numerous conflicting scientific studies, and the newest one isn't automatically the best), and I believe catastrophic AGW is merely speculation and tends to be overhyped.

[skierinvermont]

 

1. Really? You're going to accuse me of "lying", just as wxtrix basically did the same thing by questioning where I read the paper? Hint: it doesn't make you smarter to accuse the other person in a discussion of lying just because you disagree with them. Most of the places listed in the paper and linked to conflicts/climate change are near the equator: Africa, Brazil, the Middle East, southern Asia. Not sure why you are insisting I am "lying" about this, and it's especially embarrassing that you would do so and then admit you hadn't even read the thing.

 

2. See a good summary below of refutations/critics of the study. If you want more details, they are easy to find online. For the rest of your response, I just haven't seen solid evidence that climate change is having this sort of impact. Do extended/severe droughts have significant effects on local economies, poverty, and resulting violence? Sure...but there is no definite link between droughts and global warming so far. There is much stronger evidence tying droughts to ENSO and other oceanic oscillations.

 

One of the critics is Jürgen Scheffran, a professor at the University of Hamburg who specializes in the security risks posed by climate change. In 2012, he and others also completed a study on the topic, with an abridged version likewise appearing in Science. The team analyzed 27 studies and found that "16 of them ? showed that global warming increased the likelihood of violence," Scheffran says. But 11 showed that whereas climate change could increase violence in some cases, it could lessen the chances of violence in others -- or have no provable effect whatsoever. "Hsiang and his team didn't consider eight of these 11 studies," Scheffran says. "When one shrinks one's database like that, it results in a certain image."

 

Biting critique of the study was voiced in Science as well. In a background article that accompanied the report, the Oslo-based economist Halvard Buhaug was quoted as saying that Hsiang and his team ignored certain data. "More worrisome," he wrote, is the fact that they seem to have used data "that return the strongest effects." Buhaug is the co-author of an April study that contradicts Hsiang's conclusions -- and which was not considered by Hsiang in his project.

 

Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, echoed the criticism. He said that Hsiang and his team shrugged off alternative explanations for the increase in violence and thus "maximized the apparent explanatory power of changes in the climate." In general, Marotzke said, "he is skeptical when it comes to the robustness of the results."

 

Their allegedly selective approach to existing data isn't the only accusation that has been levelled at Hsiang's team. "The second major error is that they confuse climate and weather," says Richard Tol, professor of economy at the University of Sussex in the UK. He notes that it does indeed appear that heat waves make people more aggressive, a conclusion reached by earlier studies. That, though, has more to do with specific weather events, he says, while climate change is measured in decades. Tol says that most of the studies considered by Hsiang and his team focused on specific weather events. "Their projections of the impact of future climate change strongly exaggerate the effect," he says.

 

Sociologist Nico Stehr, for his part, says that the "biggest mistake" made in the Hsiang study is that it "underestimates" human innovation "when it comes to dealing with weather or climate events."

 

 

I think those criticisms are valid, and I made some of the exact same criticisms previously in this thread. They do not, however, completely invalidate the results. I just don't think the results are robust as the study concludes. There is still likely to be increased violence with the projected warming.

 

What I object to is your saying that the study ignored mid and high latitudes, that the "real question" was what happens at mid and high latitude and that because low-latitudes are already hot, they won't be sensitive to increased heat outside of their already very hot temperatures. 

 

Also, your assertion that there has been no connection between drought and AGW thus far is false. There has been an observed 8% increase in global aridity as measured by the Palmer Drought Severity Index relative to a 1950-1979 baseline (Dai 2012). 

[Derecho!]

 

They also establish a firm correlation between droughts intergroup conflict. Wars, riots, and civil wars are all more frequent during droughts. Droughts will become more common with climate change. Therefore, logically, wars riots and civil wars will also become more common (of course other factors like rising standards of living may simultaneously decrease them). It's not bullet proof logic, but it is fairly sound.

 

The correlation between droughts and conflict of any kind is far from certain.  From the Journal of Peace Research 2012 survey article for their climate change and conflict special issue:

 

"Adano et al (2012: 77), for instance, find for two districts in Kenya that ‘more conflicts and killings take place in wet seasons of relative abundance’ and Theisen (2012: 93), who also studies Kenya, concludes that ‘years following wetter years [are] less safe than drier ones’. Butler & Gates (2012) derive a similar conclusion from a formal model. Benjaminsen et al. (2012: 108) state on the basis of the Mopti region of Mali, at the heart of the Sahel, that there is ‘little evidence supporting the notion that water scarcity and environmental change are important drivers of intercommunal conflicts’.4 Hendrix & Salehyan (2012) conclude on the basis of a new database of social conflict in Africa, that rainfall deviations in either direction are associated with conflict, but that violent events are more responsive to heavy rainfall."

 

Again, the causes of conflict is an insanely complex subject that political scientists have been controversially beating on for years, and I'm dubious that a paper in Science is a sudden advancement in understanding (though since my graduate school seems to have finally noticed I'm an alumni and not a student, I've lost my online access to Science and haven't read the article).

 

And many of your basic assumptions are questionable  - that resource scarcity leads to conflict is far from obvious (despite what's been pounded into us by popular cutlure, such as the Mad Max movies).

 

From the paper "African range wars: Climate, conflict, and property rights" in the special issue:

 

"Advocates of the proposition that ‘climate change causes conflict’ fail to offer a convincing explanation for this relationship. First, empirical evidence supporting this contention is spotty. Indeed, we find some evidence to the contrary. Second, advocates of the ‘climate change causes conflict’ camp rely on a crude causal explanation – resource scarcity leads to conflict. It’s not that simple."

 

Additionally, there's quite a bit of evidence that natural disasters may reduce conflict, as well.

 

You need to question every seemingly obvious assumption about the causes of conflict.

[skierinvermont]

The correlation between droughts and conflict of any kind is far from certain.  From the Journal of Peace Research 2012 survey article for their climate change and conflict special issue:

 

"Adano et al (2012: 77), for instance, find for two districts in Kenya that ‘more conflicts and killings take place in wet seasons of relative abundance’ and Theisen (2012: 93), who also studies Kenya, concludes that ‘years following wetter years [are] less safe than drier ones’. Butler & Gates (2012) derive a similar conclusion from a formal model. Benjaminsen et al. (2012: 108) state on the basis of the Mopti region of Mali, at the heart of the Sahel, that there is ‘little evidence supporting the notion that water scarcity and environmental change are important drivers of intercommunal conflicts’.4 Hendrix & Salehyan (2012) conclude on the basis of a new database of social conflict in Africa, that rainfall deviations in either direction are associated with conflict, but that violent events are more responsive to heavy rainfall."

 

Again, the causes of conflict is an insanely complex subject that political scientists have been controversially beating on for years, and I'm dubious that a paper in Science is a sudden advancement in understanding (though since my graduate school seems to have finally noticed I'm an alumni and not a student, I've lost my online access to Science and haven't read the article).

 

And many of your basic assumptions are questionable  - that resource scarcity leads to conflict is far from obvious (despite what's been pounded into us by popular cutlure, such as the Mad Max movies).

 

From the paper "African range wars: Climate, conflict, and property rights" in the special issue:

 

"Advocates of the proposition that ‘climate change causes conflict’ fail to offer a convincing explanation for this relationship. First, empirical evidence supporting this contention is spotty. Indeed, we find some evidence to the contrary. Second, advocates of the ‘climate change causes conflict’ camp rely on a crude causal explanation – resource scarcity leads to conflict. It’s not that simple."

 

Additionally, there's quite a bit of evidence that natural disasters may reduce conflict, as well.

 

You need to question every seemingly obvious assumption about the causes of conflict.

 

As I said, it's not bulletproof logic. 

 

I don't think you've provided much evidence to the contrary. You cite a few small studies that don't directly address the issue. The evidence that floods cause droughts doesn't contradict the probability that heat and droughts also cause droughts. In fact, it supports the general idea that climate deviations in either direction cause conflict, probably through resource scarcity and in the case of heat, psychological mechanisms as well.