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:
Any salesmen of reverse osmosis around, just to enlighten those armageddonian nuts about the availability of water?
An interesting take on climate change and war can be found here:
Global climate change, war, and population decline in recent human history
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/49/19214.abstract
Abstract
Although scientists have warned of possible social perils resulting from climate change, the impacts of long-term climate change on social unrest and population collapse have not been quantitatively investigated. In this study, high-resolution paleo-climatic data have been used to explore at a macroscale the effects of climate change on the outbreak of war and population decline in the preindustrial era. We show that long-term fluctuations of war frequency and population changes followed the cycles of temperature change. Further analyses show that cooling impeded agricultural production, which brought about a series of serious social problems, including price inflation, then successively war outbreak, famine, and population decline successively. The findings suggest that worldwide and synchronistic war–peace, population, and price cycles in recent centuries have been driven mainly by long-term climate change. The findings also imply that social mechanisms that might mitigate the impact of climate change were not significantly effective during the study period. Climate change may thus have played a more important role and imposed a wider ranging effect on human civilization than has so far been suggested. Findings of this research may lend an additional dimension to the classic concepts of Malthusianism and Darwinism.
********************************
You can access the full paper at the link. Note that it was edited by that notorious denier, Paul Ehrlich…
Fundamentally, these (mostly Chinese) scientists looked at over a thousand years of Chinese and European history (both climate and political) and did find a relationship between climate and war. But what they found was that the warm periods were relatively peaceful and propserous, and the cool periods were violent and poor. In particular, they found that the cold 14th and 17th centuries were absolutely catastrophic for both China and Europe, with each losing over a third of its population in each period.
Their posited chain of causality: colder climate leads to crop failures, leads to famine, which leads to both pandemics from a weakened population and war in a scramble for reduced resources. Given the many other factors that go into political strife, I remain skeptical of these arguments, but they certainly make it hard to argue that there is any evidence that warming increases warfare in the temperate latitudes, at least.
Now it is possible that tropical areas could be different, even opposite, but you would need a much longer period of data to even start to make a case.
Gwynne has turned into an embarrassment…..when this book came out, i took the 3 books of his off my bookcase, took them out to the fire pit, poured some diesel on em and burned em up. He’s turned into a propagandist marketing shameful nonsense, embarrassing to Canada.
Typo alert:
[Climate change] Economic chaos would put growing pressure on fresh water and food over the coming century, he wrote, triggering social disorder, mass migration and violent conflict.
Fixed.
Curt says:
September 10, 2010 at 1:04 pm
That’s what I said in one paragraph.
It was dog-gone hot in Nam.
Harry Eagar says:
“About 30 decades ago, an animal ecologist, Paul Colinvaux, published a book …”
30 x 10 = 300
2010 – 300 = 1710
Paul Colinvaux, n 22 Sep 1930
http://www.amazon.com/Africas-World-War-Continental-Catastrophe/dp/0195374207
I recommend this book to anyone trying to seriously understand the situation. DRC is the remnant of Zaire, which collapsed after the Rwandan genocide crushed Zaire under the weight of refugees, many of whom were genocidal maniacs during the slaughter of Tutsis.
Anyhow, if anyone is interested in a factual account of Africa’s troubles, this is the book.
Not sure if my post took, so sorry if this is a double:
http://www.amazon.com/Africas-World-War-Continental-Catastrophe/dp/0195374207
This is a serious factual account of much of the trouble in Africa, and anyone who was serious in studying the subject would stop and consider this work. The trouble is mostly political, unsurprisingly.
I generally find Mr. Dyer’s writing on history, politics, war interesting and thoughtful and well researched but he’s completely off the rails once he gets on to climate change. I don’t know the motivation but its almost a Jekyll and Hyde thing.
Water….boarding AGWrs. we’ĺl find out their war plans…Though, as they are VIP’s, it should be Champagne_boarding 🙂
Mr. Dyer used to write about war.
Then he started writing about climate change.
At the height of the climate debate he writes a book about Climate Wars. Cha-Ching.
His next book will be about how the media is working with government to push a liberal / conservative The hasn’t decided which angle) agenda on an unsuspecting population.
At least he’s aging honestly.
Who drew the short straw and is supposed to handle NeilT’s distractions this time? Come on, fess up and get it over with.
😉
Manitoba Ken
Agree with your comments . Mr Dyer seems to be a “johnny come lately”occasional global warmist writer who does not seem to do sufficient homework to check and verify all the facts from other independent sources. Never replies to e-mails or communicates all issues of the global warming in a balanced way in his articles . When he writes about politics he gives the views of all sides . Yet when he comes to global warming he only gives the alarmist point of view mostly and the public catch on that he is writing only from the warmist point of view and that he is a biased journalist. He knows a lot more about history and writes good articles.
Climate War. Hmmm.
Oh, yes, the Pacific Ocean is preparing to clobber us over the rivers of plastic we launched at it.
The Pacificans watched a couple of sci-fi movies, and decided that revenge was a dish best served cold.
They’ve joined forces with the Articans, who are really ticked off after getting repeatedly attacked by icebreaker destroyers and submarine hole poppers. Their coalition further includes the Greenlander and Antartican IceCappers, who are outraged by the incessant holes being gored into thier backsides.
It gets worse: The Precipitants are furious about the launching of rain & snow seeding causing the loss of billions of drops on thier migration routes. The Animilians are in a froth about the captives languishing in the Zoo prison camps.
So what really broke the camels back here?
It was the talk of popping the Vulcan Hill Dwellers with nukes.
Enough is enough. To war. Unconditional Surrender or face annihilation.
– Gulp –
A recent sampling of Gwynne Dyers writing on global warming “runaway” and “point of no return” as he puts it.
http://www.straight.com/article-335913/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-we-are-passing-climate-change-point-no-return
Lucy Skywalker : “.. I’m interested if there is correlation between climate and persecution of witches. They used to get blamed for crop failure.”
Sallie Balliunas makes the link : “When the Maunder Minimum took effect .. Middle Ages superstition took hold. So called witches were accused of cooking up the weather ..”
http://www.uwo.ca/sci/publications/news/Nerenberg09.html
juanslayton says: Harry Eagar says: “About 30 decades ago, an animal ecologist, Paul Colinvaux, published a book …”
30 x 10 = 300
2010 – 300 = 1710
Paul Colinvaux, n 22 Sep 1930
And yet, somehow, I knew what Harry meant. Must be ESP.
AC says:
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.
Whereas Rome had spent its time at peace for the period before? And after the cooling Europe was again peaceful, and the Moslems didn’t explode out of Arabia? Sigh.
At very best the climate change that brought down the Roman Empire altered the targets. It sure didn’t increase violence overall.
Regg_upnorth says:
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.
You might mean “all”, but you would be wrong.
The Poles captured and held Moscow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Muscovite_War_(1605%E2%80%931618)
The Mongols conquered all Russia, from the other side.
The Germans attacked Russian in 1914 and by the start of 1917 had forced them out of the war, despite it being a secondary front. They could easily have captured the capital St Petersburg at the time – but chose not to. Instead they forced a humiliating treaty on Russia, which was forced to cede much of its best territory. Only the later victory of Allies in the west prevented this settlement being permanent.
Stalin wrote up the harshness of the Russian winter because he was scared of the West. Not because it is too big an obstacle to properly prepared enemies.
The lesson from this? Technology can overcome many of weather’s problems. Not all, sure, but it is stupid and defeatist to claim that bad weather spells the end of humanity.
Regg_upnorth says:
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.
You might mean “all” but you would be wrong.
The Poles captured Moscow in the early 1600’s. The Mongols did so, from the other side, in a few brief years.
In 1914 the Germans and Austrians attacked Russia. Despite it being a secondary theatre, Russia was forced out of the war by 1917. The Germans could have taken St Petersburg – then the capital – but chose not to. They instead forced the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took much of Russia’s best land from them. Only the later victory of the Allies in the west prevented this being permanent.
Russia’s winter is no barrier to properly prepared people. Climate rarely is.
The Russians talk up the winter thing because they want to scare people. The reality is that it is spring that is the difficult season in Russia because of the mud. Historically winter was, in fact, a campaigning season (Mongols, Teutonic Knights, Swedes, Poles etc all fought by choice in winter).
How objective is the term ‘civil war’?
When does a ongoing tribal dispute (sometimes hundreds of years old) become a civil war?
(After 1981 but before 2002 – but only if it is warming?)
kadaka
This whole thread and all the others around it are a distraction from the main show today. The near total collapse of the ice up in the Arctic.
YET, now it doesn’t fit WUWT theories of “regrowth”, it is not to be mentioned.
So handle me……
But the point about “cheap and safe” Nuclear is a point worth making. One of the experimental reactors in South Africa was shut down on safety concerns.
So how’s about it. A WUWT article on the state of the Arctic, the predictions on this site and how completely wrong they were.
Then an honest “we got it totally wrong” to start the ball rolling.
I won’t hold my breath.
It was Hitler’s ill prepared assault that did the Whiermarcht in . He hadn’t realized that,
Like Napoleon, you can’t fight in winter unless you are prepared. I had the privilege to hear a talk by an old Stuka driver that survived WW2 and Russian imprisonment.
Had he not split his forces, south and north, the would’ve likely,taken Moscow-what was left of it after the Russians torched it-which was the plan. This guy fought all the way to the bitter end. Only to be captured-on the ground by the Russians in Germany. He felt had the Luftwaffe been prepared-and they got better as the war went on, they could’ve dealt with the cold..
Oh he had one eye shot out and half of a right ear-from a Russian .50 -in 1943 as I recall…
Its nice to see the climate changing and PNAS debunking a spurious linking of climate change as the issue behind wars. Bit of ho hum, though its about time!!
It a sign of the times that journalists desperately try to link issues and when cold wet weather intervenes, global warming will, yes, become Climate Change.
I watched our Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Stateline report on the extensive flooding in areas of the State of Victoria. The young female reporter paddled around in her gumboots (Wellies for the UK and Rubber boots? for US?) and pratled on breathlessly about the strange? floods, and …It’s Climate Change !! completely ignoring that in Australia prolonged drought (and bushfire) periods are followed with ..yes extensive flooding, but these extremes of weather are now Climate Change!!. Then we have the edited clips of the BOM guy with the ominous “more extremes to come and the “scientist” clip on the same meme.
Boy the gullible here lap that doom and gloom up, but it is distressing to see the ABC, our tax paper funded National broadcaster get away with this deception.
We Australians usually fight other peoples wars for the freedom and liberty of all, perhaps our ABC are trying to incite a tribalistic war on Climate Change, the bias is so bad!!
While good fiction plays off reality, it’s still fiction.
The reality of Africa’s troubles (IMHO):
1. Unenlightened tribalism.
2. Worthless leadership.
3. Repeated flirtation with socialism and marxism.
4. The ‘weaponization’ of food distribution (and humanitarian food aid).
5. [Add your point here.]
If I were to write a fiction piece, a far more interesting scenario would set during the third decade of a 50-year cooling period.
That would be one ugly, scary future; especially I added a nuclear-armed Islamic super-state into the mix.
Mr. Dyer has no idea what dark and scary can be.
Unfortunately, I can.