A Climate of Violence?

Rambo Tribble writes "U.S. researchers have come to the conclusion that a changing climate can drive increased violence in human society. Their findings are to reported in Science (abstract). 'They report a "substantial" correlation between climate and conflict. Their examples include an increase in domestic violence in India during recent droughts, and a spike in assaults, rapes and murders during heatwaves in the U.S. The report also suggests rising temperatures correlated with larger conflicts, including ethnic clashes in Europe and civil wars in Africa.' Marshall Burke, one of the authors, said, 'This is a relationship we observe across time and across all major continents around the world. The relationship we find between these climate variables and conflict outcomes are often very large.' Add this to the developing scarcity of water due to global warming and the prospects for a peaceful future do not bode well."

Isn't this well known?

[mozumder]

That temperature affects violence, according to many studies?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/hot-weather-violence/ [wired.com]

Solution: move everyone to cold places!

What?

[tyroneking]

I think either the BBC article or the /. summary is incorrect. It's well known /damn obvious that extreme climactic events cause violence in society. What's new is that they can correlate with numbers, "for each 1 standard deviation (1) change in climate toward warmer temperatures or more extreme rainfall, median estimates indicate that the frequency of interpersonal violence rises 4% and the frequency of intergroup conflict rises 14%." The /. summary is misleading and could cause the casual reader to pass by the article because it seems over obvious.

Re: Weird

[O('_')O_Bush]

I would agree with this. Something else that tends to happen (super unsubstantiated blanket anecdote) is that people tend to drink more hard liquor in the cold, because it warms the body (feeling). That also increases rates of domestic violence and rape.

I am also growing weary of all the doom saying. I acknowledge that AGW is a serious problem that needs to be solved ASAP, but there are also many positive benefits to a warmer climate (such as extended growing seasons in the world's breadbasket zones, and expanded growing areas as warm moves to higher latitudes), but these things seem very un-PC for the scientific (and Slashdot) to talk about.

Re: Weird

[RazzleFrog]

It's not un-PC - it's just incorrect. It's not just about temperatures going up. It's about wild variations in the weather patterns (droughts in some areas and floods in others), melting of the ice-caps wiping out coastal cities (where most people live), and impaired food production in countries that already have borderline temperatures.

Re: Weird

[GameboyRMH]

The problem is that the negatives heavily outweigh those positives:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm [skepticalscience.com]

Re:Opposite trend in US

[frank_adrian314159]

The authors didn't say that increasing temperature was the only factor involved.

Unless one is completely brain-dead, one can see that things like population age distribution, better/worse social safety net, more/less income disparity, economic opportunity, political oppression, etc., also have an impact on interpersonal and cross-group violence. The surprising thing about the study is that it shows that the correlation is so great.

Therefore, climate change deniers must discount and mock the article because if climate change has negative impacts of any kind, we might have to do something to stop it - and that would be awful.