The article presents a very interesting idea. That a warmer world is a more violent one. The fact that such small changes (“0.05°C rise in temperature, and 0.1 millimeter reduction in daily rainfall”) can have such a huge effect on conflicts leads to some major concerns for our warming world. While it does state that there is a huge difference between El Niño and global warming another study mentioned in the article had found “Significant increase in warfare during hot weather in sub-Saharan Africa”. This proves that El Niño is not the only climate effecting change that can impact conflict. On top of its interesting topic the article uses multiple researches and quotes many leading minds in the worlds studies to create its report. And like most articles on the Whyfiles its presented in an effective formatting that allows for both in depth information as well as prominently displayed main points that allows for easy skimming.
September 4, 2011
Cycles of war = cycles of weather?
Zane R. -- Climatologists have long theorized that changes in local climate can effect conflict in that area. It has been shown that countries effected by El Niño have an increase of up to double as many conflicts in such seasons. Previous efforts had studied a correlation between historical environmental change with major conflicts as well as the rise and fall of civilizations. However, the studies were all case by case and researcher Solomon Hsiang pointed out “even if every conflict or collapse happened at random, some would occur during a period of environmental change, so this isn’t compelling evidence”. Because of this he decided to study the issue more systematically, by finding which nations responded to El Niño, took records on all civil or intrastate conflicts that at least 25 people were killed that took place between 1950 and 2004, and compared the two to find a correlation between them. The studies showed that twice as many conflicts happened during El Niño months and that 21% of all conflicts can be attributed to it. While the motivation of the study was to “peer through the keyhole of time” and anticipate the effects of global warming, Hsiang admits that El Niño is very different in the way it effects the world, and says that the prediction power gained by this study is actually fairly limited.
The article presents a very interesting idea. That a warmer world is a more violent one. The fact that such small changes (“0.05°C rise in temperature, and 0.1 millimeter reduction in daily rainfall”) can have such a huge effect on conflicts leads to some major concerns for our warming world. While it does state that there is a huge difference between El Niño and global warming another study mentioned in the article had found “Significant increase in warfare during hot weather in sub-Saharan Africa”. This proves that El Niño is not the only climate effecting change that can impact conflict. On top of its interesting topic the article uses multiple researches and quotes many leading minds in the worlds studies to create its report. And like most articles on the Whyfiles its presented in an effective formatting that allows for both in depth information as well as prominently displayed main points that allows for easy skimming.
The article presents a very interesting idea. That a warmer world is a more violent one. The fact that such small changes (“0.05°C rise in temperature, and 0.1 millimeter reduction in daily rainfall”) can have such a huge effect on conflicts leads to some major concerns for our warming world. While it does state that there is a huge difference between El Niño and global warming another study mentioned in the article had found “Significant increase in warfare during hot weather in sub-Saharan Africa”. This proves that El Niño is not the only climate effecting change that can impact conflict. On top of its interesting topic the article uses multiple researches and quotes many leading minds in the worlds studies to create its report. And like most articles on the Whyfiles its presented in an effective formatting that allows for both in depth information as well as prominently displayed main points that allows for easy skimming.
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