Written by Alec Mateo and posted on his behalf by Prof. Branco:
I was browsing Science Magazine’s website recently looking for interesting studies regarding climate change. I stumbled across a study that I found to be immediately fascinating, if not terrifying. This study claimed to have found a statistically significant correlation between levels of violence and changes in climate.
So much has been debated over the potential consequences of the more rapidly/drastically-changing climate we face in the wake of global warming, and I think that the information provided in this study adds a very unique approach in attempting to quantify effects on a social scale.
This study, entitled Quantifying the Effect of Climate on Human Conflict, was written by three scientists each from different fields including Agricultural Science, Environmental Policy, and Economics. The impetus for the study was born out of a sudden burst of interest in the connection between climate change and conflict which was accompanied by an “explosion of quantitative studies” which were then collected and added to by the authors and released as a comprehensive quantification of the correlations.
It would seem this influx of information allowed them to draw conclusions that spanned over all scales of human interaction, both in magnitude and time. That is to say they found relations between irregularity of precipitation and mild temperatures affects the occurrence of violence “from a single building to the globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium.” The conclusions go on to state the 1-SD increase in rainfall or warmth would be responsible for a 4% increase in interpersonal violence and a 14% increase in intergroup violence.
The relevance of these social implications regarding the change of climate is extremely tangible and extends beyond any personal bias, as violence is undoubtedly a universal concern, perhaps one of the biggest in the spectrum of human life. This correlation, while frightening, will hopefully bring the discussion regarding consequences of climate change to a broader audience who had trouble grasping the effects on their personal lives. Climate change is a natural process but the unnatural speed with which it is occurring can truly disrupt a lot of balances that hold the world in order in ways most people can’t imagine. It’s amazing how the ripples of macro science create waves in the lives of individuals.
Below is the link for the study, I’m interested on everyone’s take on this correlation and the methods used to derive it.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6151/1235367.abstract
