Is Conflict Declining Even as Global Warming Occurs
At a recent event at the University of Central Florida, Dr. James Carafano argued that global political violence was declining.
Carafano, a historian, said that the idea of looking forward and accurately predicting the effects of climate change is unrealistic. The issues of climate change and environmental impact are not new, he said. When you look at the declining levels of global political violence, things have been getting better instead of worse, he said.
As with many arguments about global warming, it all depends on how you slice the data. While it is true, for instance that there has been no global warming if you compare the year 1998 to the present, an analysis that begins in either 1997 or 1999 does show warming. It is always, possible, in short t0 cherry-pick data in order to make a point. The same is true with the issue of political violence or conflict.
According to data compiled by the Center for the Study of Civil War, there has been in a decline in civil conflict since the early 1990s. However, compared to the year 2000, there has been an increase. Compared to 1975, an increase. Compared to 1965, an increase. Compared to 1955, an increase. Compared to the average number of conflicts per year since 1946, an increase.
If looking at political violence more broadly, to including terrorism, we see the following trend according to data maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, terrorism is down from its peak in the early 1990s, but up from the early 2000s and dramatically higher than the levels recorded in the 1970s.
The point isn’t that climate change causes conflict anyway. The point is that climate change is likely to exacerbate existing conflicts. The end of the Cold War was clearly a more significant influence on trends in conflict than climate change has been thus far. Nevertheless, political violence has increased significantly over the last decade, and while the levels are lower than in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they are higher than the average level over the past 50 years.
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So basically the point is that there is no measurable correlation between conflict and climate.
Carafano (and you guys) are looking at this is in a way that is just too simple. No political scientist would ever claim that there is a direct 1-to-1 causational relationship with something that is a
Clearly there are many things that lead to conflict, like economic dislocation, religious differences, class conflicts, or others. In science terms, there is more than one independent variable in this equation. However, climate change and environmental security is part of the equation. In fact, it is rightly called a ‘multiplier’ that can exacerbate all the other parts of the equation.
So, to say that climate change won’t cause conflict isn’t true, just like like saying that climate change will cause conflicts is also too simplistic. I’ve written about this here: http://tinyurl.com/yjsjw54.
Also, its interesting to note that Carafano apparantly is conceeding that climate change is happening, by saying that ‘things have been getting better’ even as climate change happens. This is new for a Heritage scholar to concede that climate change is cause by man. Good to see they’ve joined the 21st Century.