Guest essay by Albert Parker
There have been many recent claims that “climate change” was the reason for conflicts, with also the war in Syria explained by the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission. However, this is not settled science, as this claim is wrong.
There have been, and there are, conflicts for other very well-known reasons. The causes of wars are many and varied, and much more complicated. From past to recent wars, the global warming explanation simply does not compute.
The world has experienced many wars. World War II, the Mongol conquests, the Qing conquest of the Ming, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Taiping Rebellion, the An Lushan Rebellion, the Germanic Wars, World War I, the Conquests of Timur, the Dungan Revolt, the Chinese Civil War, the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Reconquista, the Russian Civil War, the Thirty Years’ War, the Ottoman wars in Europe, the Napoleonic Wars, the war in Afghanistan, the Vietnam war and the Iraqi war, just to name a few. All these wars did not start because of “global warming” but for other reasons, as they did not end because of “global cooling”.
Recently, Adams, Ide, Barnett & Detges (2018), without calling “non-scientific” claims that are everything but scientific, simply uncovered several methodological problems with research related to assessing the propensity for war amid environmental changes due to “climate change”. The paper claimed that much of current research on the topic suffers from a multitude of flaws and bias. This paper then received an Editorial in Nature (Nature Editorial, 2018) of title “Don’t jump to conclusions about climate change and civil conflict” supporting some sort of “return-to-reason” also in works dealing with “climate change”. In the latest Nature of March 2018, however, three (3) correspondence letters have now been published, none of them addressing the real issue that wars have not been caused so far by “global warming”, but only harshly questioning the methodological problems raised by Adams, Ide, Barnett & Detges (2018), and, more than that, the “return-to-reason” promoted by the Editorial in Nature (Nature Editorial, 2018).
Gleick, Lewandowsky & Kelley (2018) label “a flawed oversimplification” the criticisms made in a review of the scientific and methodological challenges evaluating the links between climate change and human conflict by Adams, Ide, Barnett & Detges (2018).
For Butler & Kefford (2018), while “climate change” is not the “sole cause” of war, violence, unrest or migration, it is certainly a risk multiplier, influencer or co-factor. Environmental and ecological factors interact with social determinants, including those that are economic, demographic and political, to produce phenomena such as migration, conflict and famine. Hence, “climate change” is guilty.
Hsiang & Burke (2018), question the Editorial in Nature (Nature Editorial, 2018), that, according to them, “is based on an analysis that in our view provides no evidence for biased results”. They disagree with the Editorial recommendation that it is “undesirable” to study risk factors for populations with a high likelihood of conflict because it could “stigmatize” these regions as politically unstable, as such recommendations “could create bias in the literature by inhibiting research”.
The debate is therefore deviating from the proper track.
There has been so far, no real indication that warming temperatures are the reason for wars. These are only speculations based on very biased views of history, politics and the climate.
If we look at objective analyses, for example Roser (2018), with a purely empirical view, while the past was everything but peaceful, the second half of the 20th century was extraordinarily peaceful especially in Europe. The absolute number of war deaths has been declining since the end of World War II, when, according to the theory of “climate change”, “global warming” kicks-in. The world has recently seen an exponential population growth (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2018). While about two hundred years ago there were less than one billion peoples on earth, there are today (2011) almost 7.5 billion. For thousands of years, the population grew only slowly but between 1900 and 2000, the population increment was three times greater than during the entire previous history of humanity, from 1.5 to 6.1 billion in 100 years. The relative numbers of war deaths, accounting for the growth of world population, have been declining even faster.
Quoting Oppenheimer (1951), “We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.”
Hence, the claim that “climate change” is causing wars is everything but settled science, it is a wrong claim, that should be openly questioned, and rapidly dismissed. There are much more evident factors affecting wars that should be researched and discussed that not “climate change”. The problem are those able to void any scientific criticism of their claim for a reason or another.
Figure 1 (from Parker, 2016) is just one example of the wrongly phased anthropogenic global warming for the start and the end of World War II. Despite the progress of the “adjustocene” affecting the temperatures also in Berlin, a wrong temperature based approach could suggest World War II started because there was an extreme cold weather in Berlin, and it ended because of the anthropogenic global warming in Berlin.
Fig. 1 – Wrongly phased anthropogenic global warming for the start and the end of World War II. World War II did not start because of an early outbreak of anthropogenic global warming and did not end with more renewable energy and more carbon taxes mitigating this warming. Temperatures in Berlin were at a record low at the start of World War II September 1, 1939, and more than 3 degrees Celsius higher when Soviet soldiers raised their flag on top of the Reichstag building on May 2, 1945. Top temperature profiles from NASA GISS (GHCN V2 on left, GHCN V3 on the right) in Berlin – Temple. Middle images from Wikipedia of the start and end of the war. Bottom temperature profiles from NASA GISS (GHCN V2 on left, GHCN V3 on the right) in Berlin – Dahlem.
References
Adams, C., Ide, T., Barnett, J. & Detges, A. (2018), Sampling bias in climate–conflict research, Nature Climate Change, 8:200–203. doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0068-2
Butler, C. D. & Kefford, B. J. (2018), Climate change as a contributor to human conflict, Nature 555, 587.doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03795-0
Gleick, P.H., Lewandowsky, S. & Kelley, P. (2018), Critique of conflict and climate analysis is oversimplified, Nature 555, 587. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03794-1
Hsiang, S. & Burke, M. (2018), Conclusion of conflict and climate analysis questioned, Nature 555, 587. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03798-x
Nature Editorial (2018), Don’t jump to conclusions about climate change and civil conflict, Nature 554, 275-276. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01875-9.
Oppenheimer, J.R. (1951), Encouragement of Science (Address at Science Talent Institute, 6 Mar 1950), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 7(1):6-8.
Roser, M. (2018). War and Peace. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace’ [Online Resource]
Roser, M. & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2018). World Population Growth. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth’ [Online Resource]
Parker, A., (2016), IS THERE ANY PROOF EXTREME EVENTS AND ARMED-CONFLICT RISKS ARE EXACERBATED BY ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING?, New Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal, 4(3):492-496.
In other news, climate change causes poverty.
My studies, using perfectly valid mathematical models, demonstrate that if a farmer operates a farm at a specified fixed temperature and that temperature varies by 20 deg or more in the next year, he will be poorer if he keeps to the same planting schedule.
Can I have a lot of grant money now?
Question:
“Is “climate change” the reason for conflicts?”
Yes – endless conflicts between the deceitful, grasping criminals who have promoted the global warming (aka “climate change”) scam and the few honest scientists who have strongly opposed it.
………I think they just said climate change is normal
Politicians seem to be at the forefront of war.
+100
Ahhhhhhh – The Power of Wishful Thinking.
The true conflict is between honest science with reproducible results and the fearmongering AGW non-science abetted by man made adjustments to temperature data and the subsequent statistical chicanery applied to the adjusted data.
What a stupid bun fight! There is no “climate change”occurring that is the least bit different or more serious than the change that has constantly taken place for all of recorded history. When drought occurs in places that have other problems, it makes problems worse. In earlier times people starved until the drought broke and the rest of the world was hardly even aware.
Now we know and have the ability to help. That and the populations affected are the only differences. So many people now live in places that are semi-arid that the same drought cycles that have always occurred now affect millions.
And the warlords disrupt food aid deliveries.
Every war in human history
has happened during a period
of climate change.
That is scientific proof (that
climate change causes wars).***
*** Source: The internet,
invented by Al “The Blimp” Gore
Mr. “no ethics at all” and Mr. “pseudo make it up as you go pretend science” have dug themselves new lows. Trumps should ensure these clowns are not receiving any American dollars and that they are accountable for all American funds they have wasted.
I’d like to know who this third stooge Kelley is…?
Dr. Colin P. Kelley is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Climate and Security. Colin Kelley is a climate scientist focusing on climate variability and change, particularly drought, in semiarid and arid regions that are especially vulnerable. Kelley uses land-based and remotely sensed observations along with atmospheric and coupled climate models to examine the regional and large scale mechanisms of climate change. He also has a special interest in placing such changes within a context of vulnerability and resilience due to the many other factors that relate to water and food security in order to better understand their relative importance. He has published ground-breaking research on the relationship between climate change and drought in Syria and the broader Levant, and is a regular commentator on this subject. He has a PhD from Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and was a PACE Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
from
https://climateandsecurity.org/colin-kelley/
Auto.
For what it’s worth.
I expect he is kind to animals, too.
His problem, Auto? He can’t tie any particular drought (or lack thereof) to CO2.
Speculative IPCC climate models have proven inaccurate. And their regional downsizing is a massive joke.
Cold and drought – not warming – are surely much more associated with declining food production. A drought causes warming temperatures, but my understanding is that cooling not warming leads to less evaporation and/or less atmospheric water vapour and hence less precipitation. Loss of food production is surely a likely cause of war(?) so prime facie a war is more likely to be associated with cooling than with warming.
[But human nature being what it is, perhaps wars are much more to do with who gets into power than with anything else??].
HOLD EVERYTHING !
I think I have found HIS problem !!!
“ground-breaking research on the relationship between climate change and drought in Syria and the broader Levant”
HE SHOULD NOT BE PLOUGHING DURING A DROUGHT !!!
Along comes a wind and ALL the top-soil blows away !!!
SO……..HE HAS GOT TO STOP ALL THIS GROUND-BREAKING until AT LEAST it rains a bit !!!!!
SIMPLE !! It’s JUST common sense !
( OK…but sheesh ! It all gets SO SERIOUS..and after all..HERE.”we” are all preaching to the converted ! ).
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/43823/posts/1839199779
What do you mean, “not solid”. Bentroll has assured us that it is pure physics and chemistry!
I think that the history of the LIA makes a pretty compelling case for it being possible for climate change to be an important factor in causing social strife and wars. When times get hard and people starve, they will fight to change their condition. They have a choice. Migrate to somewhere they believe conditions are better or stay and fight. Both happened in abundance over the LIA.
That being said I do not believe that climate change is a factor in any of the current conflicts or wars. Fact is we live in a time of a very stable climate and overall the human condition is far better than it ever has been. Development helps to mitigate much.
Actually, the Dark Ages (fall of the Roman Empire) provides more vivid evidence that EXTENDED COLD PERIODS force nomadic tribes from their previously acceptable-but-cool-and-habitable steppes and forests and mountain slopes down south and west into north Italy, north Africa, Spain, France, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, etc.
The Huns, Vandals, Magyars, Goths, Germanic tribes, etc, etc all invaded the warm Roman areas from the colder, now-unusable areas to the north and mountainous east. Further north, England and Wales were re-settled (invaded) from the northern and germanic tribes into the warmer regions. France was an open invasion route to the south down the western side, the river valleys to the northeast of the Alps were the general eastern route south.
As usual with the CAGW climastrologists, the fundamental facts are (almost) present, but warped to fit their agenda: Cold kills, cold forces migrations and makes invasions from cold climates to warmer climates essential for the now-starving tribes.
But …. but …. but … The greatest American leader ever and Nobel Peace Prize winner told us that climate change is the largest strategic threat facing the U.S.
The indians of the South west – https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11828089 , the Aztecs, the Myans, Rome, China, The sahara, Eqypt, etc have had doucumented collisions with climate change. Often because of drought, usually previous overabundence of population growth, and always with denial. Precipitable moisture from warming oceans appears to be followed with dry air from cooling, followed by drought… followed by starvation, and war. I, for one, would be inclined to say the problem is too many children born on declining agricultural productivity, leading to scarcity, anger, and often invasion. War? No, greed and fear and poor decisions, like Rome, Oligarchys and faud, corruption lead the list, with war as colateral damage.
You do realize that the developed countries no longer have agrarian societies as in the past? Agricultural failure in one part of the globe is compensated by excess production in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, etc.
…And that excess food is produced and transported via fossil fuels.
Energy is Man’s best defense against Nature’s “whims”.
Mann (et al) would have us believe that Man’s energy production is the cause of Nature’s “whims”.
Therefore, Man must forsake the reliable and depend on unreliable (but “renewable”) ways to generate energy.
And the “(et al)” know just should be in control of the transition.
The LIA also demonstrated powerfully how much worse cooling is than warming for humanity.
The whole notion that climate change causes war is utterly absurd, and shows the desperation the alarmists have to maintain their narrative. Anyone who follows any conflict anywhere in the world knows the roots of that conflict. I follow several, and no war correspondent I’ve ever read has ever mentioned climate change when examining the root causes of that conflict.
Sadly, most of the public does NOT read that deeply into any given conflict (or any conflict at all). It is no different than the polar bear meme. It grabs emotions, but for anyone with a cursory knowledge of the facts, it is ridiculous.
Others, commenting above, have provided lots of evidence that climate change does indeed cause lots of social strife including war. The dose makes the poison. If the temperature goes low enough for long enough there will be trouble.
If we have to assign blame for the problems in the Middle East and North Africa, the biggest factor is a “… super-abundance of young men in the grip of puritanical self-righteousness …”. link Climate is so far behind that as to be negligible. That some people can blame climate change for the unrest is a severe indictment of the system that educated them. They are, frankly, illiterate.
Willfully ignorant, Bob.
(At risk of running afoul of Godwin’s Law) A Triumph of the Will perhaps.
commieBob is technically correct, there is ample historic evidence that cold periods cause populations to migrate and fomented war. But my comment wasn’t in regard to history, it was in regard to current conflicts, none of which have been ascribed to climate change by the very people reporting on them.
@ commieBob ..I agree with your thought on that subject. It is unhealthy to so severely restrict the normal and strong desires which young people feel as they grow up. It is one thing for an individual to accept deprivation as a consequence of wanting to join a religious order, but even then that is definitely not for everyone. It is ridiculous that the Catholic Church insisted on celibacy for all, despite their knowing that a portion of the supposedly celibate priests or nuns had issues which resulted in negative outcomes over time.
Strange.
The way wars will be caused by “climate change” would be to adopt the CAGW alarmist policies and remove the fossil fuels used to help grow food and transport it to areas that need food.
Any reference to the war in Syria that doesn’t include religion and ideology and Iran you know is a complete rubbish.
There is little evidence of wars caused by anthropogenic climate change, but lots of evidence of wars caused or precipitated by cooling. A book applying this idea to Roman times: https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Rome-Climate-Disease-Princeton/dp/0691166838/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Cooling is much more destructive than warming. Ask those who lived through years without a summer, especially in the era when subsistence farming was the rule.
Rather than whining about fossil fuels, these authors should be praising them for allowing us to live in harsh climates and survive when local crop failures threaten. They have it exactly backwards.
And yet these absurd claims get printed again and again.
They have a punch list……..wash rinse repeat
The warmists claiming the climate change causes wars allows them to ignore reality. A lot of what the CAGW crowd blame on global warming again allows them to ignore reality. World War II was because the world allowed Germany, Japan and Italy to start going after natural resources, primarily fossil fuels to run their industry and war machines. The League of Nations, created like the UN, to ensure peace, did nothing to stop them, in fact in many ways enabled them. The civil war in Syria is only another phase of a war that has been going in the Middle East since Islam split into two factions, Shia and Sunni in the 7th Century. Of course if one doesn’t bother to study history————
How do we steer the arc of humanity towards a world without war? How do we shed the blight of war from the human condition? Is that goal achievable? Does it first necessitate that a single super power become so dominant as to render any attempts of conflict futile?
Didn’t (don’t) we have Pax Americana, Thomas?
The only hope, and it’s a slim one, for ending war is nation states with rational boundaries reflecting the realities of ethnicity, religion and culture, combined with popular political institutions and the rule of law. A tall order.
The civil war in Syria has nothing whatsoever to do with climate and everything to do with Assad’s minority Alawite regime refusing to yield power, as Tunisia’s dictator Ben Ali was so right to have done in 2011. The Assad regime was willing to massacre 500,000 of its own people and drive five million from their destroyed homes rather than allow popular rule. After seizing power in a second Baathist coup in 1970, Bashar Assad’s pro-USSR dad and uncle also killed hundreds of thousands of Syrian Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen, Christians, Druze, etc in order to maintain its Soviet and Iranian-backed rule by an 11% minority. Thirteen percent, with the few other Shia sects. The Syrian army has ceased to exist, so the regime now is kept in power only by foreign intervention, ie Russians, Iranians, Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias.
“The civil war in Syria has nothing whatsoever to do with climate and everything to do with Assad’s minority Alawite regime refusing to yield power,…”
===========
Assad is a popular man in Syria, unlike the western funded jihadis.
Let’s look at how WaPo reported the numbers….
quote:
“One in five Syrians say Islamic State is a good thing, poll says
And 82 percent said that they believe the Islamic State was created by the United States and its allies.
The Syria survey was conducted by ORB International, a U.K.-based market research firm, from June 10 to July 2. The poll has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.
The majority of Syrians interviewed said they believe that the situation is worsening, and only 21 percent said they preferred their life today than when Syria was fully controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Nearly half of Syrians surveyed said they opposed U.S.-coalition airstrikes, and nearly 80 percent said that the war has gotten worse because of the influx of foreign fighters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/15/one-in-five-syrians-say-islamic-state-is-a-good-thing-poll-says
1 in 5 support the western jihadis
but 4 in 5 support Assad.
.
Who should Assad yield power to? The Neocons who destroyed Iraq?
============
The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run…
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html
============
“Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know from western media ”
Guardian, January 2012
Khwarizmi April 28, 2018 at 5:00 pm
If so many Syrians back Assad, why has he had to kill half a million of his own subjects and render ten times that number homeless in order to stay in power?
Why has he had to rely on Russian mercenaries, plus Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi Shias to massacre his own people in order to stay in power?
You have drunk the Russian and Shia Koolaid, my friend.
Khwarizmi April 28, 2018 at 5:00 pm
but 4 in 5 support Assad.
Prior to the war, the population of Syria was estimated at 23 million. 500,00 have since been killed and 5 million have fled the country rather than be slaughtered by the regime. 2 million more are Kurds who desire a state of their own. That’s nearly 1/3 of the population already and I haven’t even touched on the many other factions in Syria (including ISIS) who have the support of hundreds of thousands each. So who the F*CK did the market research firm survey Khwarizmi if they could come up with a claim like that? Do you even know what a market research firm surveying international politics does? I’ll tell you. They come up with surveys that support the narrative of the people who paid for the survey. I could point out a few other gaping holes in the claims made, but shall not bother. This has no more credibility than your average alarmist climate science claims and is as easily debunked. You’re rather intelligent in my experience when commenting on science, when you venture into politics you shed facts to support your own obvious bias which is rather unfortunate.
only 21 percent said they preferred their life today than when Syria was fully controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
So four out of five people have a worse life since the war started. This doesn’t translate into your claim that 4 out of 5 people support Assad. Stop being ridiculous.
Chimp,
Our mass-murdering foreign jihadi “rebel” insurgents appear to be responsible for most of the slaughter of Syrians, e.g. #1:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1116055/GRAPHIC-CONTENT-ISIS-executes-250-Syrian-soldiers.html
e.g. #2:
===
Some [head-chopping] “rebel” groups [funded by US/UK/Qatar/Turkey/Saudi Arabia] vowed to disrupt the elections in any way possible, including bombing and shelling polling stations and government-controlled areas.[5][6][7][8] Another statement, issued by the Ajnad al-Sham Islamic Union, the Sham Corps, the Army of Mujahedeen and the Islamic Front, said they would not attack voters but warned people to stay at home “in case the Syrian government did”; there were 50 reported deaths from the shelling by the rebels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_presidential_election,_2014
====
Assad received 80% of the vote, nevertheless, being the same percentage of Syrians who reckon ISIS is a US construct (which it is).
Let’s take a brief glance at the origins…
====
“General Bergner said that Mr. Masri’s ploy was to invent Mr. Baghdadi, a figure whose very name was meant to establish an Iraqi pedigree, install him as the head of a front organization called the Islamic State of Iraq, and then arrange for Mr. Masri to swear allegiance to him.”
– U.S. Says Insurgent Leader It Couldn’t Find Never Was, NYT, July 2007
====
And since we’re talking about the roots of war, and ways to avoid it, here’s an earlier byte from history somewhat undermining your theory of conflict resolution via ethno-religious partition (which, btw, is remarkably similar to Oded Yinon’s conflict-enhancing “Strategy for Israel in 1980s”)…
=================
WHERE 16,000 JEWS HAVE FOUND PEACE
October 1, 1938
Twenty-seven years ago, long before Russia turned to Bolshevik-socialism, the first party of Jews set out to form a primitive communal settlement. There was no Balfour Declaration or British mandate to protect them from the Bedouin.
In their relationships with the Arabs, however, this was to their advantage, because it was not until after the Great War, when other Jews were assisted to drive the Arabs from their best land,
that racial conflict broke out seriously.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12495480
===============
it was not until after the Great War, when other Jews were assisted to drive the Arabs from their best land,
The Jews were in the business of buying land on which to form a country. That is why the map of Israel the UN first drafted in the Palestine Partition Plan looked like Swiss cheese as the many Arab enclaves that had not sold were to be part of Palestine. Upon formal formation of the State of Israel, neighboring Arab countries attacked Israel. Although they were defeated, they did manage to seize the vast bulk of the land promised to the State of Palestine, with Egypt occupying Gaza and Jordan seizing the West Bank. The small enclaves (the holes in the Swiss cheese) were absorbed into Israel, the occupants became citizens of Israel, their property rights intact. But the Arabs didn’t turn the West Bank and Gaza over to the people who lived there. They instead started more wars, which they lost, and Israel wound up with the West Bank and Gaza. They’ve slowly (and incredibly painfully) been transferring power to the people who live there. If there ever is a State of Palestine, it will not be formed because of Arab generosity, but because of Jews who paid in blood and treasure for it.
Your twisted accounts of history are driven by your obvious hatred.
Assad received 80% of the vote,
If you believe that was a free and fair election, you are a fool as well as a twister of facts.
A tough question. I noticed last night that Xi Yinping met with Modi of India to start a new agreement easing tensions between the two nations. Who knows where that may lead. We can only hope that the world is capable of implementing real change in the face of known history that wars set everyone back for the most part.
Climate change “solutions” on the other hand might very well be linked. The Arab Spring was instigated by high grain prices which correspond to a diversion of grains to biofuels and the Syrian conflict may be at least partially tied to the removal of diesel subsidies making it uneconomical for farmers to pump ground water for irrigation in dry years.
I would offer this argument back at them: the wars since the mid twentieth century have been much smaller in size and number of deaths than wars from the beginning to the middle of the century. Therefore, the climate must be far more stable since mid-twentieth century than previously.
Yep! We live in a time of relative peace and prosperity when viewed from the perspective of human history as a whole. Thus if climate change causes wars then the climate must be more stable than it has during all of human history.
‘Climate change’ is not defined. I guess everyone is supposed to know what it means.
In reality, no one knows what it means.
Quoting from the post:
…”The absolute number of war deaths has been declining since the end of World War II, when, according to the theory of “climate change”, “global warming” kicks-in.”…..
============
Would it even be possible to increase the “war deaths”, from the rates in WWII ?
Western armies should never again go to war, they are too good at it, and way too polite.
Note to ROW (rest of world), don’t make the mistake of taking it as a weakness.
The decline in war deaths results from the fact that most conflicts now are internal or civil and limited by their very nature and not declared all out wars between nations or sets of developed nations which possess the means to inflict huge casualty numbers even using just the conventional weapons at their disposal. The fact is that now days all out war between developed nations means nuclear Armageddon.
Today even an A-10 which is old technology carries more conventional destructive power than the B-17 or B-24 of WW II. Before that in the 1960s the F-105 could carry a more powerful nuclear weapon than both used in WW II combined. So yes it would easily be possible to increase the rates over those seen in WW II very quickly even in the highly unlikely event of an all conventional war and if WMD are used on a large scale there would be no comparison. A cost of deterrence is the ever increasing effectiveness of the weapons of war and to some extent the soldiers that use them by the Superpowers.
https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
Global warming would have helped the Nazis in Russia.
Not sure about the context, but I posted a link a few months back here of a book on historical wars in China…which claimed that many of them were driven by cold-weather impacting good (and none due to warming).
The only wars climate change really seems to cause are of the twitter variety.
It surprises me that the author of this study did not quote the two seminal papers on the subject, one for Europe and one for China. Both of them come to the conclusion that war is more likely in cold periods than in warm periods.
Climate Change And Violent Conflict In Europe Over The Last Millennium
Richard S.J. Tol and Sebastian Wagner
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.395.1575&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Climate Change, Social Unrest And Dynastic Transition In Ancient China
Zhang Dian et al.,
http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/Sci%20Bull%20Chin/50/2/10.1360/03wd0641?slug=full%20text
Generally true for European and Mediterranean history. The Sea People wars of the Bronze Age Collapse took place during the Greek Dark Ages Cold Period following the perhaps misnamed Minoan Warm Period. While the Roman Empire was of course built by war, the Pax Romana interval of less continuous large scale conflict and disruption of civilization happened during the toasty Roman Warm Period. The Dark Ages Cold Period saw folk migrations out of frigid northern Europe and interior Asia into balmier climes, to include not only steppe nomads like the Avars and Huns, but Germanic tribes, such as Goths, Vandals and Norse.
As the Medieval Warm Period waned, not just war, but famine and pestilence stalked the continent, and throughout the LIA. The terrible 14th century was perhaps the worst overall, but for war it’s hard to beat the Maunder Minimum haunted 17th century.
Again, look to U.S., Canada, Brazil, etc. grain that wasn’t available to alleviate past cold-related starvation. This is not a criticism of your comment, Roger. Just an observation that things are different now.
The Arab spring was triggered by AGW.
Because of AGW, Western countries began to mandate ethanol blending in motor fuels.
The diversion of food corn for ethanol production drove up global food prices. Existing tensions in places with weak governments sparked into riots. And the CIA was all to happy to support “moderate” terrorists who wanted to replace “uncooperative” regimes.
Without the old oppressive regimes to keep their boot in the necks of trouble makers, “radical” terrorists now have free reign to cause havoc.
RLu,
* Arab spring was triggered by perception of AGW, not actual AGW, since it doesn’t exist.
Western countries began to…
A litany of things that western countries supposedly did that caused war. Not one thing in the list actually caused by climate change. So no, not climate change. Global food supply has never been larger than it is right now BTW, so I doubt diverting corn to ethanol production has much to do with anything (despite which i think it is insane to burn the food).
Climate is always changing.
So a story can be made of every event in history being caused by climate change. Since as every activist knows, correlation is always causation.
/sarc off
The root cause of war and violence, is people who believe that violence will get them what they want , at an acceptable cost.
If we look at history on both large and small scale, it is far more arguable that conflict is the default state of humanity in the absence of moderating factors……. such factors being social cohesion, religious morality and the potential for counter-violence.
It is also worthwhile to ask how you conduct a successful invasion, when your army is either starving or freezing. Prior to modern transport, it was only possible to operate large armies in times when food and fuel were plentiful.
Mild variations in climate may cause you to cast an envious eye on your fat neighbour. Severe variations leave you huddling in your hut, eking out the food that is left for you, because you do not have enough to march hundreds of miles while surviving in the open.
Report: Israel treating al-Qaida fighters wounded in Syria civil war
“Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war, according to The Wall Street Journal.”
-Jerusalem Post, March 2015
Syrian representative to the UN: Israel has directly supported ISIS
-Jerusalem Post, April 2017
Israel ‘giving secret aid to Syrian rebels’, report says
Direct funding, food, fuel and medical supplies allegedly provided by Israeli state to keep Isis and Iranian-allied forces in neighbouring civil war at bay
-Jerusalem Post, June 2017
“You are working for Israel”
The articles you quote from the Jerusalem Post were reports about accusations made against Israel. Mostly they were about debunking the accusations. But you quote them out of context to make it seem as though the Jerusalem Post was reporting them as fact. You have all the skills to be a climate scientist.
[snip – getting waaaaaayyyyyy waaaayyy WAAAAYYYYYYY off topic -mod]
Compared to political and military leaders simply wanting their neighbor’s land or wealth, and other power/political reasons including finding a scapegoat for your countries’ own problems, climate change is somewhere around number 30 on the list of “causes of war”, way behind religious differences, somewhere around tax on tea as a valid reason for a war….oops there was a war about that as I recall.
Cut the carp, cut right through it.
Wars are always waged by Governments because, only governments can afford them.
Wars are always about ‘stuff’
As a particular Chinese Sage is supposed to have said:
As witnessed in the Global Warming business. Its all about Dancing Faeries
Chinese Sage continued:
Hence back to ‘stuff’
Food is The Primary Number One Stuff
As witnessed in countless ‘Romantic Dinners’ arranged and conducted every single day all around The World
And what happens, or the BOY doing the paying the check usually wants to happen afterwards= sex
Hence, wars are actually, despite evryone’s coy & shy protestations to the contrary, all about sex and the acquisition of more of it.
The people being most shy and enigmatic are of course The Girls – they deliberately withhold (the amount of) sex in order to maximise the amount of ‘stuff’ they get in return for what they allow/provide.
Not without good reason of course – it requires a lot of ‘stuff’ to provide for the results of sex.
Food being the very bare minimum and most basic ‘stuff’ and heavens above, do babies need lots of ‘stuff’ or what!
A population of any critter MUST have a propensity to increase its number – otherwise it would very quickly go extinct – humans not excepted – not even the very rich and intelligent ones.
Planet Earth is getting old, the dirt especially. It weathers, erodes & dissolves and washes out into the ocean from where it never returns.
Hence there are 2 lines on your graph, people numbers going up and dirt quality relentlessly going down.
And where those 2 lines meet, as they must, there will be fights over the continued supply of stuff>sex>babies.
And Government gets involved, those fights between large and prolonged and are called ‘wars’
The Penny that needs to drop is the one connecting dirt to climate.
It went past on here recently in the discussion about the 100th meridian.
See the very words – ‘line in the dirt’
The guy linked plants & dirt with climate.
And everybody here missed it by a total, complete and perfect mile.
The Skeptics.
The (supposed) clear thinkers
The askers & answerers of awkward questions
Didn’t see it.
None of them
Not one
And if THEY didn’t or couldn’t be asred make the connection, we really are doomed.
The circle of buck passing is complete. Everybody blames everybody else for their real & imagined woes while the real cause of the woe is completely disregarded and (wilfully?) ignored.
“the second half of the 20th century was extraordinarily peaceful especially in Europe.”
What is peaceful about the EU dictatorship enslaving its population ?
I predict BIG civil unrest/wars between different cultures in the EU for the next 20 + years. The weather will not be our biggest problem.
Actually it did end because of anthropogenic warming, but it was not global. Rather, it was highly localized in places like Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo.
There is no evidence that human-caused CO2 is changing the Earth’s climate, therefore, there is no evidence that human-caused Climate Change has caused wars or the displacement of populations or anything else.
So Gleick and Lew have problems with someone’s application of the scientific method!7
It’s nice that you’ve taken so much time to refute this claim with evidence, but the claim that climate change causes wars is so self-evidently ridiculous that the appropriate response is to laugh. Laugh derisively or heartily or with complete abandon—your choice.
The claim is analogous to the silly notion that “guns kill people”. People murder and people start wars. Guns and climate change don’t do that. There is no evidence that any war in the last two centuries resulted from climate change.
WW1 was a family feud between the inter related European Monarchies, while WW2 was a group of people looking for living space compliments of their neighbours.
“The science of climate change causing wars is not solid”
Really? Who would have thought it! Amazing, isn’t it?
Undaunted no doubt, the climate industrial complex will move on to more detailed analysis to explain the Cold War, Detente, and the fall of the Berlin wall.