Wishing For War

Global warming is in disgrace. It’s been done in by falling temperatures, a public grown skeptical of the religious zeal with which “environmentalists” proselytize on the issue, and now proof that the high priests of climate change were manufacturing their evidence. So what is a global warmist to do? How about try a new sales pitch: did you know global warming will lead to WAR? In fact, over the next two years, you’ll begin hearing a lot about how “climate change causes war.”

In 2013, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report which actually includes a chapter addressing “threats to human security” from climate change. This includes the “existential threat” of war for resources and 200 million climate refuges.

To lay the groundwork for this propaganda, several books are being published with alarmist titles and totally false arguments. Obama himself beat this drum when he accepted his anticipatory Nobel Prize: “climate change will fuel more conflicts for decades.”

But there’s a problem with this: it’s never fueled a single conflict in the past and there is no evidence to think it will in the future. In fact, the evidence runs the other way.

When the alarmists preach their case, they rely on a study conducted by the University of California (a formerly great university turned clown college), which concluded that global warming led to war in Africa. This study, done by Marshall Burke, compared African wars from 1980 to 2002 against the effects of global warming. Burke claimed to have found that rising temperature are associated with crop failures and economic decline, which resulted in a sharp rise in war.

Said the study co-author “earth scientist” David Lobell:

“Given the strong historical relationship between temperature rise and conflict, this expected future rise in temperature is enough to cause big increases in the likelihood of conflict.”

Indeed, the study suggested that a one degree rise in temperature could translate into a 55% increase in the risk of civil war by 2030. Because of this, Burke wants us to shower Africa with money to stop this horrible certainty. . . never saw that coming.

Of course, predicting civil war in Africa is a bit like predicting that the sun will rise in the morning. And now we also know that all that warming data they relied upon (which showed Africa heating by 0.5 degrees C in 50 years) is flawed. But that’s not even the real problem with this study. The problem with this study is that they cherry picked their time period.

Consider this: the colonial wars in Africa dragged on from the 1950s until the 1960s, when the Marxist sponsored civil wars began. By the 1980s, these had all died down and Africa settled into a relatively calm period. Indeed, you couldn’t have picked a calmer period to begin your study than 1980. In other words, the authors picked an anomaly period as their baseline for their study, i.e. they picked the calmest moment in recent African history to start their study, ensuring that it could only get more violent during their study period. And indeed, the Africans did not disappoint: they began fighting in the Congo, in the Sudan, in Rawanda, in Liberia and a dozen other places.

What’s worse, the authors stopped their study in 2002, right before a noted period of peace and calm in Africa, which ran from 2002-2008. So basically, the authors picked the calmest moment in recent African history to start their study, and then stopped their study to avoid a second calm period. Nice huh?

But there’s more. If natural disasters lead to war, as these environmentalists claim, then the world would be awash in wars. But that hasn’t happened. It hasn’t happened after earthquakes, it didn’t happen after the tsunami, and it doesn’t happen after hurricanes or droughts. In fact, a study of the hurricane activity in Haiti and the Dominican Republic showed no increase in violence when storms got worse. This lack of war is damning.

Even in Africa, the evidence runs counter to their claim. They claim that Darfur shows that violence has increased during the same time that temperatures rose. BUT they ignore the fact that Darfur is a religious genocide brought on by an aggressive Islamic religion that is supported by Islamic terrorist organizations that did not exist during the first half of the study period.

Moreover, a more reliable study showed that violence actually fell in the Horn of Africa during times of drought and increased during times of plenty. . . the exact opposite of what they claim should have happened.

So what we have here is a total lack of evidence of any correlation between violence and disasters, droughts or rising temperatures, despite thousand of opportunities for such evidence to exist. In fact, not only is there no evidence to support their claim, the evidence we do have points in the other direction. . . that droughts reduce violence. But as usual, this isn’t about evidence or truth. This is about a political agenda. So no matter what the truth is, expect to start hearing stories on how our failure to cure climate change will lead to wars followed by hopeful reports of possible conflicts.

And if you ask me, it's kind of sick to be praying for war.