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.”
Read the entire story at:
Interesting that PNAS is standing behind Borlaug on this paper. This suggests some very welcome shifts:
(1) climate debate may be ok again
(2) supporting skeptism may be ok again
(3) challenging a warmist view is ok here
(4) a study with a lot more roundedness, human scale and commonsense, with a 50-year span, is preferable to a study with a 20-year span that declares a correlation relevant to policy-makers has been found.
THUMBS UP FOLKS!!! (i hope)
“jorgekafkazar says:
September 10, 2010 at 8:54 am
The notion that a single 21 year period can give a meaningful correlation between war and climate is beyond ludicrous.”
Yes, as ludicrous as the notion that a single 30 year period can give a meaningful correlation between artic ice extents and climate.
TonyB, I’d love to hear if you have some work showing historic correlation between (cooling) climate and unrest. In particular I’m interested if there is correlation between climate and persecution of witches. They used to get blamed for crop failure.
Tony, you referenced Hubert Lamb’s great pre-Climageddon-times book that is a joy to look at, to see how in those days climate scientists paid attention to the evidence of history and archaeology. How he would be dismayed at what has happened to his beloved CRU.
I wonder how much Dyer factored in the notion of unsustainable and environmentally damaging population growth as opposed to “climate change”. You need to give this guy a break though – he had to write this swill so he could afford to buy himself a new leather jacket!!! (Fellow Canucks will know what I’m referring to!!)
Regarding the Burke paper from last year: “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 et al proposes a correlation between unusually high temperatures and war. The computer models predict higher temperatures. Do they predict unusually high temperatures occurring more frequently?
If I have understood the paper correctly all they get from the models is that temperatures for 2020-2039 are expected to be higher than temperatures from 1980-1999. That alone isn’t enough to suggest wars will increase because the original hypothesis was that unusual high temperatures cause war to increase. According to the models what is unusual today will not be unusual in 2030. If variability stayed constant war should actually decrease! The models would have to be projecting more variable temperatures relative to the 2020-2039 average (rather than just higher temps. relative to the the 1980-1999 average) for Burke et al to be correct. Can anyone spot that in the paper?
Gwen Dywer is Canadian and fellow Newfoundlander. Don’t hold that against me.
As a fellow exile from the Great White North, I wish to include my comment on the mis-attribution of Mr. Dyer’s country of origin. He is indeed a native of Newfoundland, and while many Newfies might bristle at being referred to as Canadians, the far off island did join Canada in 1949 (some say after a rigged referendum which gave the island’s citizens a choice between the US and Canada).
About 30 decades ago, an animal ecologist, Paul Colinvaux, published a book called ‘Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare.’ It might not seem by its title to have anything to do with this post, but it does.
Colinvaux predicted that Africa would be the scene of many wars, and gave reasons, none of which were related to climate change. His predictions, and the reasons behind them, look pretty good today.
“…a study published last year that claimed to have found a causal connection between climate warming and civil violence in Africa.”
Two guys, sitting around in Africa:
1st man: “Man, oh man! It’s HOT today! What do you say we start a civil war?”
2nd man: “Sure. Why not?”
(Okay. Research done. Can I get an “amen” from anybody reading this that’s about my age? I want to call it peer reviewed, ya know.)
Having lived in Africa for 32 years and worked in 19 African countries I have notice a few things. One is that “climate change” (meaning a change in the climate, not annual weather patterns nor the 19 year Lunar-induced cycles) has nothing to do conflicts whether within or between countries. Prolonged droughts did not start or stop wars. The wetting of the regional climate after the Ethiopian drought 30 years ago saw more conflict. The cause was imported foreign ideolgies and cold warriors none of whom give a hoot about climate.
The core claim of warmists is that the AGW will make Africa ‘dryer’, and this Burke dude says it will promote conflict and he has even detected a correlation showing it and accuses Buhaug of cherry picking…. Well I would say that too if my stupid claim was immediately contradicted by a better researched paper pointing out the obvious: it is about tribe, tithes and title, not climate. Duh.
Richard Sharpe says:
September 10, 2010 at 9:12 am
“The primary causes of civil war are political, not environmental,” says Buhaug.
How strange, then, that the environment (and climate) has become so political.”
Not really strange at all. This has been a political issue from day one, with the old moneyed elite wanting an issue which would unite the world, and make the idea of world governance acceptable to the vast majority of the population. However, CAGW has become a divisive issue so will be quietly consigned to the history books, while work continues for the next try.
Have always respected if not always agreed with Gwynne Dyers analysis of wars and warefare. He should have stuck to that rather than this foray into climatology.
While I do not doubt that climate change can be relevant to human conflict, particularly as it appears to have affected mass migrations (and thus conflict) during past cooling periods, the premise in the current debate was that recent warming in central Africa was relevant to civil war in that region.
The Borlaug paper refutes that premise, and does so quite well by analyzing the available data. His issue with Burke is that the latter is simply arm waving.
It taste pretty funny. I don’t know maybe that is good for something.
On the particular issue of ‘Water Wars’ that have been drummed about for some time now, history has tended to show the opposite i.e. water promoting co-operation, agreement and peace between countries. Conflict over water resources tends to be within a country’s borders.
——————-
Everyone knows that fossil fuel burning has produced more war. Why things in the olden days were much more civil, ah, like the Civil War.
Barrie Harrop would gladly inform you that everything from hangnails to global warfare is due to lack of fresh water. Of course, he is selling windmill driven reverse osmosis purification plants. [Read the comments section in the WSJ for any article that mentions the word climate or water.] I think that there is a grab for money and power in this thing, rather than a realization of reality. Barrie’s plants would actually be good for where there is no electrical infrastructure and a lack of pure water along with the presence of some brine or polluted water. However, he is doing the usual AGW carpet bomb ad campaign for them.
@ur momisugly Lucy Skywalker says:
September 10, 2010 at 11:06 am
(4) a study with a lot more roundedness, human scale and commonsense, with a 50-year span, is preferable to a study with a 20-year span that declares a correlation relevant to policy-makers has been found.
———————————————————————————————
Better go back at least 6000 years if the intent is to establish a cause/effect relationship re: warfare. 50 years won’t even get you back to the reasons for Vietnam, which began in the mid ’50’s btw as far as US involvement goes; although people in the USA think it didn’t start till the mid-’60’s. I was there before most people even knew there was such place.
—————————————————————————————————–
Through a Glass, Darkly
Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.
In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.
I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.
I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.
I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.
I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.
Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I’ve called His name in blessing
When after times I died.
In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.
While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.
Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite’s leveled spear.
See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.
Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.
Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.
I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.
Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy’s field I lay.
In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.
Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.
I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.
And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor’s Star.
Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it’s quivering gloom.
So but now with Tanks a’clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell’s ghastly glow.
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.
And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o’er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.
So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.
General George S. Patton
If African coutries are not going to war with each other over water then are they going to war because of the rain, drought, heat? The rest of the scare is about the FUTURE POSSIBILITIES of war. A typical AGW tactic – speculation and cherry picked correlation.
It does not take a great deal of average temperature cooling to move marginal growing belts, like in parts of Russia or Canada south by hundreds of miles. Growing seasons start later and end sooner. Lack of food will cause folks to beat their plowshares into swords, in my humble opinion. Starvation breeds violence as does oppression. Unless you oppress hard enough or starve too fast. Nothing like a starving child to make you pick up a gun and go get some food from someone. Warming? Not so much. Climate change, whatever that is, I have no idea. Seems that would cause local disruptions due to moisture issues etc. Global cooling, lack of food, weakened populations, disease, revolution, war are at least logical even without statistical proof.
I read some of Gwynne Dyer’s book and believe he is in over his head on enviromental issues. It is sad to see no research was done on climatic issues . Makes me believe he just wanted to jump on the warmist gravy train.
@ur momisugly R. Shearer says:
September 10, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Everyone knows that fossil fuel burning has produced more war. Why things in the olden days were much more civil, ah, like the Civil War.
I believe you are referring to the War of Northern Aggression ( re: what is now the United States ), correct?
Would another Little Ice Age or the full blown real McCoy promote peace or war?
Water resources and co-operation.
The book is a symptom. C.G.Jung said that when a subconscious content becomes “constellized” it creates something which represents it in the outside world. In this case it would reveal an urge or perhaps an expected self destruction; as such it only would relate to the country where the author was born or the culture he/she belongs to.
Armageddon won’t be universal: It would involve either the US alone or the occidental culture as a whole, or both those worlds as he/she knew it. So a radical change is coming or it is already happening, which he/she unconsciously feels disturbing.