Sunday, August 4, 2013

Violence and Climate Change

An "I told you so" moment - how I love them!  In fact, that was a large part of the reason I started this blog, truth be told.  If I'm right early, I want the credit.  Get those A's, young man!  I don't think I'll ever get it out of my system, and why try?

The point in question: in a previous blog I asserted that global warming plus population explosion will lead to more and more violence -- and even more than that, an entire change in the cultural beliefs and mores of humankind, as the conditions of existence are so severely changed that it could be called a point of inflection for the entire human culture.  The paradigms that we have been accustomed to, where the earth was big and the human race was small, will be changing.

Apocalyptic?  Yes, I guess it is.  But these are our times.

I'll have more to say on this in the next day or two, but in the meanwhile, here is collaborative evidence from the Huffington Post, via Skepticalscience.com:

Climate Change And Violence Linked

Shifts in climate change are strongly linked to human violence around the world, according to a comprehensive new study released Thursday by the University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University.
The research, which was published in Science, examined 60 previous studies from all major regions of the globe. The results suggest that changes such as drought, flood and high temperatures strongly correlate with spikes in conflict.
Researchers noted examples including increased domestic violence in India and Australia, assaults and murders in the United States and Tanzania, ethnic violence in Europe and South Asia, land invasions in Brazil, police violence in the Netherlands and civil conflicts throughout the tropics.
Climate Change And Violence Linked, Breakthrough Study Finds by Robin Wilkey, The Huffington Post, Aug 2, 2013.

Budd Shenkin


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