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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Well, you know, the Romans were plundering and pillaging everything. Gladiators, Feeding people to Lions, and Orgies everywhere. Maybe the heat made them randy too? Just one problem…. zealots would have to admit the roman period was warmer.
If you told me warmer weather encouraged more people to leave their homes, take vacations, go out to dinner or a movie and that allowed more opportunity for criminals to victimize them… I might buy that premise, up to a point.
I lived in southern Nevada for a few years and people tended to be less active when it was really hot out.
So I guess bad guys don’t like to go out in snowstorms. Victims don’t either.
Here’s the next irrefutable proof about AGW to be discovered :
Do you know that men fertility has been dropping dramatically over the past 30 years in western countries? that’s right, my boy, from the moment the hockey stick went up. And who’s responsible for most of the current CO2 increase? yes, the Chinese commies! Do you see the pattern? they are threatening the purity of our bodily fluids.
We must act now… to save the planet, of course. Let’s bomb those commies… they will stricke back and the nuclear winter will ensure cooler temperatures and stop the AGW. Its more efficient and faster than any Al Gore plan!
Cheers
John Galt (06:18:34) :
Now, that is as good a summary of Routine Activities Theory as I’ve seen anywhere. Criminology is not rocket science, but then again, I’ve heard rocket science isn’t either.
Robert E. Phelan (20:19:56) :
Murder in the US has declined as temperatures have warmed over the last 25 years. That certainly does counter the claim of this article.
You might also want to look at this FBI table to see who it is that commits most of the murders in the US.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_43.html
I just realised what we are looking at here is a paper on Post Normal Science. The facts are not in evidence, but the stakes are high and the matter urgent. If Global Warming doesn’t destroy the ecosystem after all, it will cause rioting and bloody insurrection. Thought the chance that this may happen is small… the matter is urgent, the stakes are high… we must take action.
My I point out that UNLESS you have a degree in sociology or psychology, there is NO WAY you could get put something like this out in the public domain. It is magic elevated to, and stamped with respectability, by science.
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.
P Wilson (15:14:46) :
“http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/countries-with-highest-reported-crime-rates.html
What does it show? Rather than Austrialia havin inexorable crime rate, the highest crime rates seem to be in relatively cool countries.”
That crime rate map is garbage in that it really doesn’t give a valid picture. It’s probably not a good idea to make a ratio of crime vs. the entire poulation of a nation. It probably needs to be broken down by municipality. The map suggests that that some unpopulated part of Canada if crime ridden while some place like Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (one of the most dangerous places on Earth) is virtually crime free.
The professors study falls down due to his Whipp and Ward like linear extrapolation of the crime rate vs. temp. There is a point at which the crime rate would plateau and stabilize.
This is chemically pure Astrology: The influence of stars, sun and planets on the EMF and this, in turn, affecting human behaviour.
Perhaps somobody is thinking in these terms: “Global warming increases violence against global warmers”….In any case, as the Jose Minimum increases global warmers will decrease in numbers.
more insanity!
http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Malaysia/Story/A1Story20100322-206015.html
@ur momisugly Robert E. Phelan (20:19:56) :
This is why psychologists should stay out of criminology. Crime is a SOCIAL phenomenon, not a psychological one.
This is not entirely true. Unbalanced individuals commit crimes because they are in no need of rationalizing their actions. Without the necessity of motive, every incident can turn into a criminal one if the unbalanced would so choose. This is because this person would not, in their mind, be choosing between committing crime and not committing crime. They do not understand the concept of crime, so they are simply making a decision, metaphorically speaking, between the red shoes and the blue shoes. It only makes sense to involve psychologists in this situation. The problem is, it is impossible to tell that you are in this situation until after the crime.
@ur momisugly Enneagram (07:21:09) :
Yes, he forgot to correct for the effect of the full moon on human behavior.
More fighting will result from one of two things: not enough food to go around (animals kill when they are hungry and humans are animals at heart); or screwed-up amygdalas.
Now if there is some proper research showing that amygdala stimulation is the finest temperature sensor yet known to man, it existing within a skull in a homeostatic organism, then I will consider it on its merits.
Until then: WALOFB.
Garry (14:15:46)
A suggestion. Anderson is interested in the situation reported of violence in Australia. He has tagged along. It is likely that sociology, criminology, health and law are attracted to climate-change arguments, funding and studies.
A recent abstract demonstrates similar interest in climate change and mental health studies. Hunter E (2009) ‘Radical hope’ and rain: climate change and the mental health of Indigenous residents of northern Australia’ Australasian Psychiatry, Dec 17(6) pp445-52
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10398560903062927
Two of the three organisers for the conference where Anderson’ paper was delivered have connections to University of New South Wales (UNSW, Sydney, Australia). http://www.sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au/2010/invitation/invitation.htm
UNSW researcher, Prof Any Pitman http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/ was very outspoken during Lord Monckton’ visit to Australia, particularly that the trip had been funded by industry. Note WUWY 9/8/2008 View from AGW from The Australian
Back to the symposium organisers:
Professor Arie Kruglanski http://kruglanski.socialpsychology.org/
University of Maryland (UM) http://www.umd.edu/
UM has a study ‘Violent Race Crime Gap Narrows – but Persists in US’
Longitudinal study 1960-1990 on 80 US cities racial homicide arrests/decade ratio. The study does not cite C Anderson as an author.
Maryland – highest median h/hold income in US, National Institute for Health, biotechnology, agriculture [food production], ports, rail to west, coal, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)/NE states group developing cap n trade, Obama 61.9% vote (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland)
Professor Jo Forgas – reviewer for 22 journals including Asia-Pacific area
(?Mead/anthropology/linguistics/communication/IT) http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/jforgas-profile/
Prof Kip (Kipling) Williams http://williams.socialpsychology.org/
1995-2004 in Australia inc UNSW 1997-2000
University of Purdue – aviation and spaceflight, alternative aircraft fuels/aircraft testing (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Purdue)
Indiana (prior to 1880 NW Territories) steel, pharmaceuticals, coal, agriculture, ports and rail (shipping) observer of Mid-West Greenhouse Gas Accord. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana)
GHG Accords are managed by the Climate Registry http://www.theclimateregistry.org/
Likely the social psychologists are of the Herbert Mead school – symbolic interactionists (SI), a sloppy outgrowth from the earlier school of pragmatists who were critical. Which included of culture. The SIs are interpretivists – ‘shared worlds, intersubjectivity and communication’. Criminology has similar divisions in their theoretical bases, hence the directions which policy and funding programs take and the subject of much heated debate in the analysis of crime.
Professor Kipling is involved with Society of Australiasian Social Psychologists http://www.sasp.org.au/content/blogcategory/1/59
The summer school is to be held this year in Brisbane, Queensland (Qld), Australia.
Generally the summer schools are held outside major cities in very nice locations. http://www.sasp.org.au/content/view/33/53/
Brisbane had (has?) a a number of world leading computer games
entrepeneurs, biotech, mining, ports, agriculture and large areas of World Heritage listed rainforest and coral reef (Barrier Reef). Recently there has been uproar over the ‘Wild Rivers’ legislation, a deal done between the Greens and the Qld State government. Google ‘Wild Rivers WWF’
The Australian (national newspaper) has been publishing on the neglect and violence in remote indigenous communities of Australia. The highly urbanised population of Australia had never known the extent of the dreadful situation for many indigenous people in these places. Qld for eg has major reports on violence and incarceration rates within particularly the indigenous population. Previously the argument for horrendous morbidity and mortality (55yrs and <) had centred on colonisation, lack of funding and need for self-determination. Books such as this were written: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1983/14.html
In more recent years there is greater knowledge of what is occurring in these remote places as the media has focussed on the issue, resulting in a national intervention into one area, the Northern Territory. Until these events occurred, the academic publications written by anthropologists and social researchers predominated. These academics had the funding and entry permits to access and study areas, often for years. Telecommunication did disrupt some of this monopoly, but the debate on IT infrastructure has also been a rather contentious and lengthy debate in remote Australia.
The$e crazy Warmi$t$ do have $uch wild imagination$! In Warmland, no $tudy connecting $ome future purported man-cau$ed warming to $ome di$a$ter $cenario $hould be overlooked. They de$erve kudo$ for their ingeniu$ne$$.
007 (07:33:36),
They’ve got all the bases covered. From your link:
“Dr Abdul Latif Mahmod said recently the extreme weather change might affect the life span of trees as a result of lighter or heavier rain.”
Steve Goddard (06:58:25) :
Steve, if you read the rest of my postings you’ll see that there is nothing in that table that contradicts anything I’ve said. Take a look at another table from the UCR for the same year:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_03.html
Murder rates peak in the 20 – 24 category and decline rapidly thereafter. Murder rates started to climb dramatically in the 1960s when the boomers started to hit their teens and twenties and peaked in the late 70’s. The rates began to decline as the boomers aged out of their peak crime years. This does not mean that there is not a heat/seasonal effect, rather (to borrow a term) the aging of the population has masked whatever effect heat / seasons have. A table showing the distribution of murders by month doesn’t seem to be easily available and if someone were to locate one I’d be grateful. My guess is that it will show a decline in winter months and an increase in summer.
I really dislike “mad dogs and Englishmen” explanations, however. Routine Activities Theory, a social theory, fits the facts better than do theories suggesting that the heat has some sort of baleful psychological effect. The much lower murder rates in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, for example, suggest that heat, by itself, is a very poor predictor of murder.
Dave F (07:33:59) :
Dave, you are assuming that people who commit crimes are “unbalanced”. In fact, very few are. The “criminals are crazy” approach is just plain unsound.
I’d like to continue this, but if I don’t pry my fingers from the keyboard there will be a class meeting without its instructor. I should be back on-line after 4:00 EDT.
Iceland, Sweden, highest violent crime rate? Did anyone even proof read? Where in the heck could anyone get such a rediculous idea? Are they claiming these are rather countries with the greatest increase? These countries are in fact some if not most of the world’s lowest crime rates.
Robert E. Phelan
The much lower murder rates in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, for example, suggest that heat, by itself, is a very poor predictor of murder.>>
Yeah, its a predicter of stonings, beheadings, honor killings (that aren’t prosecuted in many cases) and there is that whole thing before the Saudi courts recently where they decided that husbands have the right to beat their wives, its only a matter of how much. Then there was that Arabic prince FILMED torturing a business accosciate over a deal gone bad and being found innocent. The notion of tying gradual temp increases to violence is ridiculous at best, trying to compare crime rates between different areas that have completely different cultures and legal systems is equally ridiculous. Under Sharia law in some countries a woman is required to present 4 witnesses to prove a rape. Then they brag that they have low incidence of rape.
C’mon.
That crime rate map is so biased! Canada only has 10% of the population that the US does. Iceland has 1/1000th of the population. So what I conclude is that crime is a constant, divided into the population. The factor that causes crime is something constant and does not scale in proportion to population.
Also, my University professor argued down that heat=violence. He showed that the number of sporting events in a city positively correlated with violent crime much better than the temperature.
@ur momisugly Robert E. Phelan (08:06:29) :
Not at all, I was just saying that it isn’t always a social phenomenon. I have read enough to know that there are many levels that contribute to criminal behavior.
Most of the time, yes, but there are enough cases of just plain crazy to prevent claiming it is entirely one thing or another. Here is what I said in the “Mean Green” post about criminology:
“I think that first, we are born with certain tendencies. Some people are genetically inclined to not care, and automatically dehumanize others. Some people are far more altruistic than others. I do not think that these tendencies are strong enough to overcome environmental factors that are extreme in the positive, negative, or neutral sense (the lack of environment actually enhances the original tendency, like allowing kids to act however they wish).
These people are then placed into their environments, and raised in them. This creates another layer from where we can draw interactional personality. Was this person subject to constant abuse? Excessive affection? Proper balance? Finally, there is the situational determination to make. Given these first two things, how is a certain person and their genetic and environmental background going to react in a given situation?”
We live in a messed up world. It is hard to get research money. If you couple it with some aspect of global warming and attach it to urgency for the melting planet, the odds of grants being funded go up.
If I do the same study and couple it with minorities, poverty and boys raised in fatherless homes, it is going to be disadvantaged for funding because of 2-3 politically incorrect presuppositions or racism.
Is the EPA sending us money to study the automobile accident death rate for light weight high gas mileage cars?
There’s a big difference between:
Violent Tendencies;
Aggressiveness;
Crime;
Murder.
You could plot/map all of these things and each of them could be at odds with one another.
I’ve done a bit of research into the crime/murder stats for the UK versed the US (As I’m a Brit by birth, but an American Citizen). One thing to note is that crime against the person is 4 times higher in the UK as the US, but murder rates are 4 times higher in the US than the UK.
But almost any statistic citing ‘violence’ in general will always be skewed by intangibles: such as the relative ineffectiveness of UK police forces leading to crimes being reported less, leading to statistics of crime built upon surveys (how do people ‘feel’ about crime). Or, the fact that most US states do not disallow personal ownership of firearms.
If the causation of actual, documented, crimes cannot be established (e.g. is gun ownership in the US a causation of lower crime?) how on earth can you then demonstrate a causation of ‘violent tendencies’ in climate change or violent video games, without simply regurgitating anecdotal evidence?
Considering this study, I would suggest that we are more sensitive to violent tendencies today than we have been previously. Matters of conflict were often resolved through the parties involved, with no outside influence (meaning the conflict, with aggression involved or not) means that the record of aggression is not made.
Indeed, I believe we have become hypersensitive to indicators of ‘aggression’, particularly with respect to children and young adults. The political climate has polarized people: when you mix politics with anything, you generate an innate defensive mechanism for people to defend their ideals. Measuring the physiological response you could interpret the results as aggression (eg. a heated argument).
This whole thing is useless. See here for an introduction to the problems with comparing crime/violence/etc statistics.
Reported crime rates can’t be properly compared between jurisdictions. Period.
In fact, often they can’t be properly compared within a single jurisdiction.
Just a few real-world factors to consider:
– Crime rates are based on resident population. So a popular tourist area will automatically have higher crime because of the visiting population that is not considered.
– Reported (vs “real”) crime rates vary based on willingness and resources to report. Higher rates may indicate more care and resources devoted to crime reporting, while lower rates may indicate reticence to report what’s happening. Or not.
– Technology improvements enable better crime reporting. Thus, one would expect higher rates in recent decades. This same factor also affected data about disaster reporting, sufficient to force Al Gore to retract the AGW-disaster link in his presentations.