UPDATE: WUWT commenter P Wilson points out one single map that refutes this entire theory, see below the “read more” at the end of the post. – Anthony
To add to the Numberwatch big list of things supposedly caused by global warming, there’s now an oddball “irrefutable” (their words) story circulating around the net since Friday from Craig Anderson, a psychologist from Iowa State university known for video game violence studies, shown at left.
A Google News search reveals a number of news outlets picking this story up. The source for all these stories seems to be this one article in Newswise:
Researchers Present Study on How Global Climate Change Affects Violence
In that article, they cite it as:
Released: 3/19/2010 1:00 PM EDT
Source: Iowa State University
Problem is when you go to Iowa State to look for the source of the press release, it can’t be found. For example look at the Iowa State News site at: http://www.news.iastate.edu/ it is not listed on the page, nor if you look at the release page http://www.news.iastate.edu/releases/ page. Or do a search using their search engine.
On that search I found a vignette done apparently on Feb 26th, but no official Iowa State news release. Here’s the meat of the vignette, which looks like it was written for an internal newsletter:
He found that increases in average annual temperature or global warming, has an increasing effect on murders and assaults in this country, even after controlling for a variety of other factors.
“For every one degree increase in average temperature, we can expect an increase of 4.58 additional murders and assault cases per every 100,000 people,” Anderson said.
“There are obviously other factors involved,” he continued. “I would never claim that temperature alone would be the main factor that causes violent crime to be higher. However, there is now considerable evidence from a variety of sources that suggesting that high temperature is one cause that contributes to violent behavior, including violent criminal activity.”
Note to Anderson: correlation is not causation
Iowa State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences news page also does not list the story about Anderson’s claims on global warming driving increased violence. I did find a mention that Anderson has a paper in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science but the latest 2010 edition is apparently not online.
It appears Anderson may have done his own press release, because I certainly haven’t been able to find any evidence that Iowa State official made any sort of news release of Friday March 19th, as cited by the “ground zero” Newswise story.
It is odd that Iowa State doesn’t have any official release. Maybe something will turn up Monday at the Iowa State News site.
In the meantime, his last offical news release on video games and violence gets a thorough drubbing from Techdirt:
===================================
from the except-for-the-details dept
excerpt:
So it seems a bit ridiculous for anyone — especially a professor who has been solidly on one side of the debate for many years, to stand up and claim that he has conclusively shown that violent video games make kids more “aggressive” (found via Slashdot). First, note the choice of words: not violent, but aggressive. Iowa State psychology professor Craig Anderson, who has already staked his reputation on saying that violent video games have a negative impact on kids, isn’t about to back down. He claims that he went through 130 studies and concluded that the support is unequivocal:
“We can now say with utmost confidence that regardless of research method — that is experimental, correlational, or longitudinal — and regardless of the cultures tested in this study [East and West], you get the same effects,” said Anderson, who is also director of Iowa State’s Center for the Study of Violence. “And the effects are that exposure to violent video games increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in both short-term and long-term contexts. Such exposure also increases aggressive thinking and aggressive affect, and decreases prosocial behavior.”
Of course, reality is a bit more fuzzy. The same journal that is publishing Anderson’s new paper is also publishing a commentary from other researchers who disagree and suggest that Anderson has a pretty bad selection bias problem. But the biggest problem — as we noted above, is that all of these “violent video games are bad” studies seem to show incredibly weak effects that don’t appear to be significant in any meaningful way. As the commentary shows:
Psychology, too often, has lost its ability to put the weak (if any) effects found for VVGs on aggression into a proper perspective. In doing so, it does more to misinform than inform public debates on this issue.
Meanwhile, just last year, two Harvard Medical School professors also went through a whole bunch of different studies on violent video games and came to the exact opposite conclusions as Anderson did. It found little actual evidence to support Anderson’s claims, and found significant problems with research suggesting there was a serious link between violent video games and actual violence. Among that report’s findings:
- In the last 10 years, video games studies have been overwhelmingly popular compared to studies on other media.
- Less than half of studies (41%) used well validated aggression measures.
- Poorly standardized and unreliable measures of aggression tended to produce the highest effects, possibly because their unstandardized format allows researchers to pick and choose from a range of possible outcomes.
- The closer aggression measures got to actual violent behavior, the weaker the effects seen.
- Experimental studies produced much higher effects than correlational or longitudinal studies. As experimental studies were most likely to use aggression measures of poor quality, this may be the reason why.
- There was no evidence that video games produce higher effects than other media, despite their interactive nature.
- Overall, effects were negligible, and we conclude that media violence generally has little demonstrable effect on aggressive behavior.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention. Dr. Anderson has apparently embraced a whole new type of science called “Human Thermodynamics”. Here’s an encyclopedia cover at the EoHT Wiki of which he is a member:
There’s even has an equation to quantify the human thermodynamic effect, nicely presented in a non-violent manner. From the EoHT Wiki main page:
Tattoo (or inking) of the Clausius inequality; photo by Marco Fantoni (March, 2008); an example of art thermodynamics. In the photo, showing a hand holding both a new and burnt match, “the hand represents the capacity of the human mind to analyze and understand natural phenomena [such as] the power and imperative of irreversibility.” [3]
He found that increases in average annual temperature or global warming, has an increasing effect on murders and assaults in this country, even after controlling for a variety of other factors.
“For every one degree increase in average temperature, we can expect an increase of 4.58 additional murders and assault cases per every 100,000 people,” Anderson said.
“There are obviously other factors involved,” he continued. “I would never claim that temperature alone would be the main factor that causes violent crime to be higher. However, there is now considerable evidence from a variety of sources that suggesting that high temperature is one cause that contributes to violent behavior, including violent criminal activity.”
UPDATE: WUWT commenter P Wilson shares this map circa 2009 and asks:
What does it show? Rather than Austrialia havin inexorable crime rate, the highest crime rates seem to be in relatively cool countries.
WUWT?
Indeed, according to the map, the top ten countries for crime are:
1. Iceland
2. Sweden
3. New Zealand
4. Grenada
5. Norway
6. England and Wales
7. Denmark
8. Finland
9. Scotland
10. Canada
With the exception of Grenada, all are cooler climate countries. So much for Dr. Anderson’s theory of heat in the form of AGW = crime.
Maybe that’s why Iowa State never published a press release, they were just too embarrassed to do so.
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And if this were true, then it would be possible to find a temperature where violence tapers off. This could be the climatic ‘norm’ for people.
I loved this part of his article …
Statistically controlling for sweat??? How on earth would you do that? Haven’t these guys heard of the smell test, or its cousin, the laugh test? Because that paper doesn’t pass either test.
I don’t that map was best one to use since it seems to include too many kinds of crime. So I looked up a global murder rate map on google and got this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map-world-murder-rate.svg
Note his increase in violent crime per degree is greater than the murder rate for all of Western Europe. Maybe he averaged in WWI and WWII along the way.
According to FBI statistics, murders in the US are down by 20% since 1988. This trend is opposite the temperature trend.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_01.html
“Austrialia [sic] havin [sic] inexorable [sic] crime rate …”
Inexorable: Not to be persuaded or moved by entreaty or prayer; firm;
determined; unyielding; unchangeable; inflexible; relentless (as in relentless increase?)
P Wilson must have been very tired when he posted.
@ur momisugly Willis Eschenbach (16:55:53) :
Easy, you sweat onto the baseball, and then crank off a 90mph heater, and if it doesn’t hit where you threw it, then it was sweat, or you were trying to kill someone. Did these guys even consider that most baseball is played in ‘sweating weather’? I have an idea for a study. Me and you. We will prove that warmer temperatures cause people to drive faster, and as proof, we will compare peoples driving in the winter to people’s driving in the summer, and conclude that global warming is causing an increase in speeding tickets.
No warming in NZ last few decades, so no link here. I know quite a few of these nations have high rates of tax relative to income, could that be the link? Taxation and meddling governments?
I can not believe NZ ranks to high, might be the fact that most of NZ’s population is located in only a handfull of cities which skews the results?
hunter (16:18:21) :
Actually yes, it is very easy to believe. Per capita crime in Sweden is very high compared to many places for a variety of reasons that it is not relevant to discuss. However it is fair to note that the map leaves out most of the world; parts of Africa wouldn’t have particularly good records and the reported crime rate vs the actual crime rate would probably vary quite a bit, I’m sure. Russia is no doubt much more violent and criminal than western europe and north america, for instance.
However, that really does prove the thesis doesn’t it? Russia is bloody freezing, on average, yet it has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the world if I remember my figures right.
Another map linked above posits a crime rate per capita for the United States that doesn’t ring true: the reason it doesn’t ring true is because it’s been assaulted with statistics – the US should be considered per-state rather than as a single gelatinous blob (no sniggering at the back). Again I don’t recall the exact figures, but I believe that Texas, with the highest rate of gun ownership, has the lowest crime rate in the united states, and New York, with relatively strict gun control, has the highest or second highest.
But again this can all be proven in any direction you like with statistical manipulation. The biggest manipulation is reported vs actual crime. In some places it’s not worth reporting most crime, as the police don’t usually bother to deal with it, which leads to a very low reported crime rate. Sweden is one of those places.
And Iceland? A law-abiding nation with a very efficient and responsive police force. Reported crime per capita will be higher as a matter of course, because the police actually do something about it.
stumpy (17:25:13),
I could certainly agree that taxes have something to do with global warming: click
Dave F (16:53:47) :
And if this were true, then it would be possible to find a temperature where violence tapers off. This could be the climatic ‘norm’ for people.
Rates of violence tend to approach zero once you go past plus or minus 100 deg C. There are however factors like time to be considered. For example, as you leave a group of people at 0 deg C with minimal clothing (for modesty only), the rate of violence will also approach zero but there may be spikes until the sample settles down. You may have to wait five or more days before the readings will stop arbitrarily changing.
That mess about temperature and criminality somehow bound is bullshit (of course). However, the map is the same case – It is first time I see Scandinavia, Iceland, New Zealand as top 10 countries with crimes (not crimes, but relevant ranking:
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/2009/ ) If the data are not made up completely (I wouldnt be suprised), it says something about quality of police statistics only…
Dont ruin your posts with such mess…
A quick Google reveales this data on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate which gives a very different crime rate (intentional homicides). This list does seem to relate more to our daily experiences.
This list (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita) provides different data.
One wonders what data set(s) was used to arrive at their conclusions. In that sense, this story fits well within more regular climate change discussions.
This is silly. These people have NO SHAME and they are nothing more that climate prostitutes, selling themselves to the highest funder.
Why not look at suicide rates and see if there is correlation between warming and suicides? I bet they won’t find it; perhaps the opposite. What a joke.
Sorry, I can’t be bothered to find references as I got to go to bed, but I think that some of the highest suicide rates in the world are in the colder countries. Eg Finland, Belarus etc., but I can’t be sure right now.
peterr (16:26:58) :
@ur momisugly Peter Wilson (15:49:15) :
You are correct to focus on the “reported” crime aspect of the statistics. The notion that this has anything to do with actual crime or violent crime or serious crime is ludicrous. What common elements do
Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Grenada, Norway, England and Wales, Denmark, Finland, Scotland, and Canada share? Deference to authority, trust in civic institutions like the legal system, social attitudes that mix a kind of polite concern for neighbours with a lack of interest in getting directly involved.
These are societies that are more likely to report crime, not experience it.
—————
Last time I looked, the US is south of Canada, and I believe that the legal system is no more respected in one nation than in the other, yet Canada has a higher reported crime rate. What a phenomenally brain-dead study.
Of course, what these studies ignore are human social factors: Canadian justices are notoriously soft on crime – one of the Toronto terrorists even merited a sentence of just one day on top of time served while awaiting trial. Because we do not have enough prisons, prison sentences are short, and life is cheap in Canada – murder can net you a sentence of as little as two years. Our Youth Criminal Justice Act soft-peddles consequences of even violent crime for young offenders, so with few consequences for crime, there is little incentive to moderate one’s criminal behavior. The theory is that placing offenders in prisons will train them to become more effective, violent criminals. Go figure. Temperatures don’t even enter into the equation: murders happen year-round in Toronto in the club districts.
Craig Anderson is an argument for academics (especially those in the social ‘sciences’) being more productive if they stopped doing ‘research’ and publication.
latitude (13:44:52) :
“For every one degree increase in average temperature,”
Good Lord, how did we ever make it from winter to summer?
———–
Indeed, how did we make it from night to day? The Medieval Warm Period should be known as the Very Violent Warm Period. Forget the Roman Warm Period. :o)
Now wait a second.
First he says that video games cause more violence.
Then he says that global warming causes more violence.
Did he subtract the video game contribution from his data? Has it not increased exponentially in the last 50 years just like global warming?
….and back there a few. I see little value in your experiment with people with minimal clothing at 0 degrees. Of far more interest is starting with fully clothed people and raising the temperature slowly to determine if there is a linear relationship with amount of clothing shed. I’ve tried to do this but my obervations only seem to be complete for about half the people….
While I agree that video games don’t cause aggression may I respectfully disagree with Al Gore’s Holy Hologram’s statement that “Many violent people had completely benign childhoods.” If my memory serves me (it doesn’t always) I recall reading that in prison populations 80% of inmates reported being abused as children. Since humans naturally tend to suppress the memories of particularly unpleasant experiences (i.e. victims of particularly brutal crimes oftentimes don’t remember the event), and for survival will unconsciously befriend the aggressor (aggressor identification) I would suggest the real number is virtually 100%. While some abused children may seek not to replicate that behaviour it is a Herculean task since they have no reference point. A child from a kind and considerate home does. That is their world and they will know nothing else.
And that poses a question for Mr. Jacobson (I will no longer refer to him as Prof). Lots of otherwise decent parents when faced with a stressful situation (such as foreclosure due to job loss) may actually become abusive may they not? So, what are your calculations on the increase in abuse rates should job dislocations and other “wrenching transformations” in society occur due to carbon legislation. What are your calculations on the resultant violence rates? Care to give it a go? Or too much work?
Steve Goddard (16:59:06) :
According to FBI statistics, murders in the US are down by 20% since 1988. This trend is opposite the temperature trend.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_01.html
——–
Steve Goddard’s comment would appear to falsify this crazy hypothesis / specualation / tom foolery.
So 20 years of AGW has caused a dramatic ……decrease in crime in America. While Europe has seen a dramatic increase. The American decrease is associated with a very large increase in law enforcement and imprisonment. The European increase is associated with a large decrease in imprisonment and predatory behavior by Muslim immigrants. Neither has to do with the weather.
peterr (16:26:58)
It is not the case that these are the only examples of civic minded countries, as France and the USA are built on civic identity – England being one of the most surveilled people in the world, outside Russia and China.
Otherwise, the only criteria which Craig Anderson could possible use are official statistics – which show the 10 leading crime rate nations. The USA or France are not in the top 10, although chilly Scotland is certainly one of the most violent countries in the world.
What constitutes violence in Iowa? Someone doing donuts in the cornfield? Might as well have Eskimos study palm trees.
incidentally since you ask, I always feel safer in Istanbul than in Glasgow for some reason.
perhaps the correlation is between cool climate and civic mindedness in your books, although you’ll find there are civic manners regardless of temperature. Must say – its a novel causal connection to make.
DCC (17:16:35)
inexorable in the sense of unyielding crime rate as related to temperature re: this supposed correlation with temperature. Thanks for pointing it out nonetheless
I skimmed all the comments. Not one person noted that most of the countries in the top ten crime list are some of the most socialist countries on the earth. Coincidence? I think not. It’s my experience when travelling through socialist countries (Wales, England, Norway) that petty crime is rampant. It sort of makes sense since socialism is a form of crime anyway (i.e., steal from the productive to give to the nonproductive).
Jimbo (19:19:44) :
“Steve Goddard’s comment would appear to falsify this crazy hypothesis / specualation / tom foolery.”
Well, no, it wouldn’t. Most crime rates, including murder, are a function of age almost more than anything else … crime rates rose with the boomers reaching puberty and declined when they hit maturity. Culture models of crime note that the South and the Southwest, with higher murder and violence rates, were settled by different kinds of people than those that settled the North and Midwest. Anomie theory is supported by higher crime rates in urban areas than rural.
Let’s try this approach (sometimes referred to as “differential opportunity”)… crime most often occurs in summer rather than winter… when more people are out… hotter weather, more people outside their homes and interacting with more people… more opportunity for fender benders, spilled drinks, misinterpreted looks… or predators doing what predators do.
This is why psychologists should stay out of criminology. Crime is a SOCIAL phenomenon, not a psychological one.
Again I don’t recall the exact figures, but I believe that Texas, with the highest rate of gun ownership, has the lowest crime rate in the united states, and New York, with relatively strict gun control, has the highest or second highest.
I like picking cherries for cherry pie. Otherwise it is a bad thing to do. Especially if you aren’t good at distinguishing cherries from poisonous fruit.
The biggest Texan cities have a very high crime rate. Meanwhile Buffalo, NY has a low one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate
Make of it what you will, but the relationship between gun control and crime is close to zero. By city, by state or by country come to that.