Readers surely recall the wild claim yesterday made by researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley who reported in the journal Science that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation have greatly increased the risk of personal violence and social upheaval throughout human history:
Claim: 2°C temperature increase will make people angry
Dr. Indur Goklany writes:
Regarding climate change and violence, here are a couple of slides you should link to on WUWT. Apparently, during the “hottest decades” as some claim the 1990s and 2000s have been, U.S. homicide rates dropped!
Figs. 1 and 2: Source: Claude Fischer, A Crime Puzzle, http://thepublicintellectual.org/2011/05/02/a-crime-puzzle/, May 2, 2011
Fig. 3: Indicators of homicides per 100,000 population in England, thirteenth to twentieth centuries. Note: Each dot represents the estimated homicide rate for a city or county for periods ranging from several years to several decades. Source: Michael Eisner, Long Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime based on Gurr (1981)
It seems that real world data doesn’t support the conjectures from the hallowed halls of academia.
Related articles
- Scientists say global violence could rise with global warming (upi.com)
- Hot and bothered: Climate warming predicted to increase violent conflicts | @BobOHara & @GrrlScientist (theguardian.com)
- Climate change linked to violent behaviour (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
- Youth homicide rate hits lowest mark in 30 years (onlineathens.com)
- Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak (ritholtz.com)
- Gun Homicide rates are actually down, not up (buyashotgun.wordpress.com)
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As a teenager in Alaska we had to reserve our bb gun-inspired crime sprees to summer, as it was just too easy to be tracked down in the snow.
U.S. ranks 57th in a list of 70 countries in terms of handgun homicides per 100,000 (at 3 per…) That is we kill each other (albeit politely) at a higher rate than all but 13 countries – all Latin American. What do you mean “less crime”? Less than these countries?: Costa Rica 4.6, Nicaragua 5.9, Paraguay 7.3, Mexico 10, Panama 16.1,, South Africa, Brazil 18, Guatemala 34, Swaziland 37, Jamaica 39, El Salvador 39, and Honduras 64.
More germane to the topic, I doubt that that murder rate has any correlation with the tropics, though, but more with political upheaval and / or the easy availability of guns. Where those guns came from I can only guess.
U.S.ranks 67th out of those same countries for suicides committed with handguns – worse than all but two countries.
I have examined the violent crime rates in the US on a state versus state basis, looking at the strictness of firearm laws (Brady Index) versus the crime rates and winded up with a zero trend. You have strict states with both high and low crime rates and vice versa. Studies have also been done looking at gun ownership versus crime rates in countries across the world and you see very similar trends, i.e. no trend at all. Gun ownership and gun laws have little or no effect on crime. There have been some much more sophisticated research done, that shows small trends of reduced crime with more guns or less restrictive laws but the effect is small. The only strong trend is that the percent of suicides by gun increases with more gun availability but there is no trend in the total amount of suicides. Guns are just a convent way of getting the job done but there are other methods.
Clearly in the US the rate of gun crimes and accidental gun deaths have been decreasing since the late 80’s as the amount of gun ownership has increased and the laws on ownership and carry have liberalized in most states.
In the US given the high gun ownership rates, more education on safe handling of guns would be useful, the accidental gun death rate for children is small but could be smaller with more education.
Oh-noes, Anthropogenic climate change causes violent crime, we need to ban guns… /jk
@wise guy:
Your nick name does nothing to prevent you from saying stupid things. No, more guns do not prevent crimes. With your 300 million guns, you have ~100 deaths and 200 injured EVERY DAY. Got that? Good. Now let’s do the reality check and compare that with an actual civilized country, say, Germany :
Wow, it’s 9x higher in the US for 2012! As a matter of fact, the US is only surpassed by Mexiko in the world. That world with ~220 nations, you know. How does that proove that 300M guns improve anything?
See what Anthony wrote above there? He cares about data – and you don’t.
Another inverse hockey stick!
Mebbe people are like dogs – lazy when hot. (Well, different creatures, dogs to not stand heat well, including because they cannot cool by sweating.)
😉
@ur momisugly Matt says: August 4, 2013 at 5:54 am
I’m sorry Matt, but clearly you don’t know what you are talking about. You claim 100 firearm homicides per day. That would be 36,500 gun murders per year. Quite a trick considering there were only a total of 14,612 homicides in 2011, from ALL methods/sources even including non-negligent manslaughter, not just guns. So you’re at least three times too high in your claims.
Similarly your claim about supposedly the USA being the next to highest murder rate in the world, with only Mexico being worse, is grossly off base. As of 2004/2005, there were at least 150 nations with higher homicide rates than the USA – and then our homicide rate was 5.6 – as of 2011 it was down to 4.7 which would have dropped us even lower on the list. See: http://murder-rates.findthedata.org/
As to the correlation between guns per capita and homicide rates, in fact, worldwide there is a negative correlation (e.g., more guns = less homicide), not a positive correlation. The correlation probably isn’t causal, and the cause is almost certainly far more complex, but it is a negative correlation both world wide and within the USA itself. See my earlier post on this thread for references: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/about-that-warmer-temperatures-increase-violence-claim/#comment-1379581
If I remember correctly, as of a few years ago, around 50% of US homicides were drug gangs fighting turf wars. I doubt that’s changed much. I felt much safer in Florida with my friends who carried guns than I did many places in London, where only criminals had them.
And the ‘OMG, America has lots of suicides with guns!’ thing is just plain silly cherry-picking. Obviously, if you’re going to kill yourself and have a gun handy, you’re going to use it. If you don’t, you’ll use one of many equally lethal methods. What counts is the total number of suicides, not how they’re committed.
@ur momisugly MarkG says: August 4, 2013 at 2:17 pm
I don’t have references for it, but supposedly when it comes to suicide, men tend to use guns (if available of course), women tend to go for less messy methods. But you’re absolutely right, people find a way, whether they have access to guns or not – for either suicides or homicides, unfortunately.
…latest oceanographic research from Russia proves that the warming climate is producing violent monkfish!
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/russian-diver-gets-hand-caught-in-fishs-mouth/