Climate Change Not Linked To African Wars
Excerpts from: Quirin Schiermeier, Nature News, 6 September 2010
In his popular 2008 book Climate Wars, the US journalist and military historian Gwynne Dyer laid out a daunting scenario. Climate change would put growing pressure on fresh water and food over the coming century, he wrote, triggering social disorder, mass migration and violent conflict.
But is there real proof of a link between climate change and civil war — particularly in crisis-ridden parts of Africa — as many have claimed?
No, says Halvard Buhaug, a political scientist with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway. In research published today [this week] in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he finds virtually no correlation between climate-change indicators such as temperature and rainfall variability and the frequency of civil wars over the past 50 years in sub-Saharan Africa — arguably the part of the world that is socially and environmentally most vulnerable to climate change. “The primary causes of civil war are political, not environmental,” says Buhaug.
The analysis challenges a study published last year that claimed to have found a causal connection between climate warming and civil violence in Africa. Marshall Burke, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues, reported a strong historical relationship between temperature and the incidence of civil war. They found that the likelihood of armed conflict across the continent rose by around 50% in unusually warm years during 1981-20022. Projected future warming threatens to offset the positive effects of democratization and eradicating poverty in Africa, they warned.
…
Burke maintains that his findings are robust, and counters that Buhaug has cherry-picked his data sets to support his hypothesis. “Although we have enjoyed discussing it with him, we definitely do not agree with Halvard on this,” says Burke. “There are legitimate disagreements about which data to use, [but] basically we think he’s made some serious econometric mistakes that undermine his results. He does not do a credible job of controlling for other things beyond climate that might be going on.”
Buhaug disagrees vigorously. “If they accuse me of highlighting data sets in favour of my hypothesis, then this applies tenfold more to their own paper.”
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I am embarrassed to say Gwynne is of the Great White North citizenry . . . [.] snip . it looks insulting and irrelevant .mod.
And to add to our embarrassment, he’s a Newfie and people there are well known for pragmatic realism not sensational fear mongering hysteria baiting “journalism”.
The notion that a single 21 year period can give a meaningful correlation between war and climate is beyond ludicrous.
Has Halvard Buhaug ever read about the history of Africa? In my opinion, linking historical civil violence with climate change is irresponsible to the people living in these regions. It would do nothing to address the real issues and, in fact, should this argument be used to enact policy for climate change aid it would only provide corrupt governments and militia with more funding.
How strange, then, that the environment (and climate) has become so political.
Anything to avoid the fact that the WUWT guesses at the Arctic Ice this year are way, way on the high side of the reality of vanishing cyrosphere.
But of interest all the same……
After collecting all sorts of data available (climatic and non-climatic), normalising and adding together for each of two hemispheres, got a graph showing regular oscillations in and out of phase.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HGOI.htm
Solving the problem with Africa:
1.Hang all UN supported kleptocrats.
2. develop modern farming methods-(i.e. Borlaug’s way)
3. Allow the development of Atomic Power-as in pebble bed
or the new Toshiba 4S reactors.
4. Pursue the idea that healthy, happy, prosperous, dark-skinned people
is a good thing.
sorry about the rant-I have some deep issues with the way things have been done.
mainly due to my own mixed race heritage (all three)..
It is silly to say that climate has no impact on wars/political action. The whole fall of the Western Roman empire is attributed to nomadic tribes coming out of the north (northern Russia, etc) and into the Empire. These nomadic tribes were driven by a need to find food that was scarce to to global cooling. Hm. Maybe Cooling then is still more of a threat – I don’t remember off the top of my head if Europe was more at peace or more at war prior to 1300 (somewhere between 1300 and 1350, the MWP ended and the Black death also showed up). Again, global cooling.
Any how for someone to say ‘this war was political only’ misses that war is a way of getting all the resources, and even religions wars are fought of a scarce resource – people. Of course climate changes can cause resource limitations, although the two periods I can think of in western civ are more associated with cold coming than with warm.
Sounds like Burke has taken a temperature dataset, found a correlation between wars and hot days, and concluded that, obviously, warming causes wars.
But what would you expect when you put an economist in charge of an anthropological subject? I would rather listen to a political scientist – at least they would have the common sense to look at the history books, do a bit of research and find out what the wars were really about.
It shouldn’t be that hard.
The reasons for war, civil or otherwise, are many and varied. Too many to list here. Trying to point to any single cause such as “climate change” is ridiculous. In fact, I’d say the most common cause throughout history is religious/political (same thing, both are about power ). The ages old game of King of the Hill.
“Its the weaver wot made me do it!” Now that would be an intersting defence plea for those African dictators mired in corruption and with genocidal tendencies.
Shocked? Not really. This story was always the most tenuous.
If wars were linked to increasing temperature, then what the hell was going on in the Little Ice Age when wars were just as frequent in Europe and elsewhere?
Another study came out last year in Nature debunking the notion that nations could go to war over water (“Do nations go to war over water?”, Nature 458, March19, 2009, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/full/458282a.html). It’s funny how they can come up with a causal link between war and climat, just because war happened while temperature was rising.
A minor point, but I think Gwynne Dyer is actually Canadian.
Another example of overly simplistic pseudo-answers to highly complex problems. We know that natural systems, especially chaotic and dynamic ones such as climate are poorly understood. My experience and the historical record suggests, to make things really complicated it takes the human touch. Then, I tend to be a misanthrope anyway.
this guy deomonstrates how simple answers serve simple minds really well.
It might be a wording issue, but climate is not related to any war/warfare – however, bad and good weather has been a big player in war history.
All (i mean really all) attempts to conquer Russia failed during harsh winter seasons. Look at Bonaparte, or even Hitler’s wars/attacks against Russia. Same goes for the Brit’s trying to takeover France in Canada – they were only able to achieve it during summer. Just look at how bomb raids were delayed during the second war, or were bombing the wrong areas because of heavy or low cloud cover.
Even with modern warfare, winters can be very hard on the troops and all operations on the field (ground). Look how action slows down during winter in Afganhistan… Same can be said at sea with fog – when battleship were allowed to escape from a deadly situations (before the radar era). We’ve also heard all sort of stories from aviators able to get back to the right flight path on a clear night under a full moon.
So, weather does affect warfare – not climate.
I was in Nigeria in the 1960s just after a wave of newly independent states across Africa occurred. In the period I was there, there were military coups in a dozen states (there were four in Nigeria in three years and civil war also erupted in Nigeria killing over 3 million people (many from starvation). The continent hasn’t ceased to have serious conflict at more than one place in the half century since. Also, please note that the wars aren’t with their neighbours. They are almost invariably between tribal groups within a country’s borders (although guerillas do cross into adjacent border areas where they are given sanctuary or where they are strong enough to impose themselves so that they have a quiet place to plan and amass weapons to attack their own countrymen. Also, the CAGW has pointed out that the warming would be moderate in the lower lattitudes and I agree with them there – Lagos has been around the same temp for over 50 years.
AC says:
September 10, 2010 at 9:31 am
“It is silly to say that climate has no impact on wars/political action. The whole fall of the Western Roman empire is attributed to nomadic tribes coming out of the north (northern Russia, etc) and into the Empire. These nomadic tribes were driven by a need to find food that was scarce [due] to global cooling.”
Not really. The nomadic tribes were opportunists who took advantage of a Roman Empire that was weakened–for the most part–by political inefficiency. Regardless of climate change, they wouldn’t have been able to defeat the average Roman legion that existed when the empire ejoyed its greatest political strength (late B.C to early A.D.)
But to Gwynne Dyer: I’ve read his column over the years, and I’ve always found him to be an alarmist on most issues. Recently, when the H1N1 flu scare developed in Mexico last year, Dyer called for the United States to immediately shut off all traffic between the borders to prevent the spread of the disease and thus millions of deaths. Well, we all know just how dangerous THAT little epidemic turned out to be. He always seems to see Armigeddon around every corner, as well as with the climate debate.
It’s ok to argue about which country has to take responsibility for Dyer, but not to speculate about what he would do to the average IQ of each country if he moved.
I have a lot of respect for Gwynne as he has done some amazing commentary over the years. Between him and Eric Margolis they completely dismantled the sales job the Bush administration did for the War in Iraq BEFORE they went in. But when Gwynne wades into environmental matters which he does more and more, it is painfully obvious that he is in way over his head. Stick to the war, politics and history Gwynne.
Here’s the Abstract of Borlaug’s paper. This is important.
Borlaug set out to challenge Burke.
Elizabeth says: September 10, 2010 at 9:04 am
Elizabeth, it is Burke who has made connections that are false to Buhaug and irresponsible to you. Buhaug almost certainly agrees with you.
africa is already saturated in war… not because of AGW, but because of CIA
death is our national security policy
see nscm 200, ca 1974
“4. Allow the development of Atomic Power-as in pebble bed
or the new Toshiba 4S reactors.
”
From the wiki page on Pebble bed reactor.
“Pebble bed reactors need fire-prevention features to keep the graphite of the pebbles from burning in the presence of air although the flammability of the pebbles is disputed.”
Really? Disputed? I read the IAA report on Chernobyl. It was the graphite damping core which exploded when the people managing the reactor thought it would be a good idea to cut the coolant flow back and see how it reacted to power ramp up.
There are many other options to Nuclear but it always gets touted first as “viable” and “safe”…..