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Violence and climate

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Global warming contributed to Syria's 2011 uprising, scientists claim. The prolonged and devastating drought that sparked the mass migration of rural workers into Syrian cities before the 2011 uprising was probably made worse by greenhouse gas emissions, US scientists say. The study is one of the first to implicate global warming from human activities as one of the factors that played into the Syrian conflict which is estimated to have claimed more than 190,000 lives. The severity of the 2006 to 2010 drought, and more importantly the failure of Bashar al-Assad’s regime to prepare, or respond to it effectively, exacerbated other tensions, from unemployment to corruption and inequality, which erupted in the wake of the Arab spring revolutions, the scientists say.

“We’re not arguing that the drought, or even human-induced climate change, caused the uprising,” said Colin Kelley at the University of California in Santa Barbara. From 2006, the Fertile Crescent, where farming was born 12,000 years ago, faced the worst three year drought in the instrumental record. ‘By 2050, 20% jump possible in risk of hunger due to climate change’ The risk of hunger and malnutrition could increase by 20 per cent due to climate change by 2050, endangering the lives of millions of people, a UN agency has warned.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says climate change is making disasters, such as floods and droughts, more frequent and intense, land and water more scarce and difficult to access, and increases in agricultural productivity even harder to achieve. The WFP study comes as nations are making efforts to finalise a draft text for a global deal on climate change in Paris this year aimed at reducing carbon emissions. “These impacts are increasing the risk of hunger and the breakdown of food systems. Without considerable efforts made to improve people’s climate resilience, it has been estimated that the risk of hunger and malnutrition could increase by up to 20 per cent by 2050,” it says. The WFP says climate disasters disproportionally affect the most vulnerable people at risk of hunger, especially women and children.

Call climate change what it is: violence | Rebecca Solnit. If you're poor, the only way you're likely to injure someone is the old traditional way: artisanal violence, we could call it – by hands, by knife, by club, or maybe modern hands-on violence, by gun or by car. But if you're tremendously wealthy, you can practice industrial-scale violence without any manual labor on your own part. You can, say, build a sweatshop factory that will collapse in Bangladesh and kill more people than any hands-on mass murderer ever did, or you can calculate risk and benefit about putting poisons or unsafe machines into the world, as manufacturers do every day.

If you're the leader of a country, you can declare war and kill by the hundreds of thousands or millions. And the nuclear superpowers – the US and Russia – still hold the option of destroying quite a lot of life on Earth. So do the carbon barons. The message is that ordinary people will behave badly in an era of intensified climate change. Climate change is violence. EnviroSociety | Anthropology, the Anthropocene, and the Military. White House: Climate change threatens national security. The Obama administration looks at climate change as a threat to national security on par with terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and disease outbreaks. President Obama’s national security strategy released Friday updates the previous plan published in 2010, with focuses on Russia, Islamic militants and health. “Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water,” the White House says in the 35-page strategy document.

“The present day effects of climate change are being felt from the Arctic to the Midwest. Increased sea levels and storm surges threaten coastal regions, infrastructure, and property. In turn, the global economy suffers, compounding the growing costs of preparing and restoring infrastructure.” The administration argues that effective action against climate change will bolster the security of the United States and its allies. Will climate change trigger endless war? | Nafeez Ahmed | Environment. British soldiers might be deployed more frequently to respond to new climate-induced disasters in remote regions. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA A new study published in the journal Science finds that climate change is strongly linked to human violence around the world.

Based on more data than ever studied before - and looking at all major regions of the world from the United States to Somalia - the study unearthed a pattern of conflict linked to even minor climatic changes, including increased droughts or higher than average temperatures. The study covered all major types of conflict, from the standard "Intergroup violence and political instability, like civil wars, riots, ethnic violence, and land invasions" to the less studied categories of "Personal violence and crime such as murder, assault, rape, and domestic violence" - and even covered: "Institutional breakdowns, such as abrupt and major changes in governing institutions or the collapse of entire civilizations.

" Climate change will increase threat of war, Chris Huhne to warn | Environment. Climate change will lead to an increased threat of wars, violence and military action against the UK, and risks reversing the progress of civilisation, the energy and climate secretary Chris Huhne will say on Thursday, in his strongest warning yet that the lack of progress on greenhouse gas emission cuts would damage the UK's national interests. "Climate change is a threat multiplier. It will make unstable states more unstable, poor nations poorer, inequality more pronounced, and conflict more likely," Huhne is expected to say in a speech to defence experts. "And the areas of most geopolitical risk are also most at risk of climate change. " He will warn that climate change risks reversing the progress made in prosperity and democracy since the industrial revolution, arguing that the results of global warming could lead to a return to a "Hobbesian" world in which life is "nasty, brutish and short".

Huhne believes the UK and other countries must act urgently to prepare for the threat. Climate change linked to violent behaviour | Environment. Bring on the cool weather – climate change is predicted to cause extreme weather, more intense storms, more frequent floods and droughts, but could it also cause us to be more violent with one another? A new study from scientists in the US controversially draws a link between increased rates of domestic violence, assault and other violent crimes and a warming climate.

That conflict could be a major result of global warming has long been accepted. As climate change makes vulnerable parts of the world more susceptible to weather-related problems, people move from an afflicted region to neighbouring areas, bringing them into conflict with the existing populations. That pattern has been evident around the world, and experts have even posited that conflicts such as Darfur should be regarded as climate related. But the authors of the study, published in the peer review journal Science, have departed from such examples to look closely at patterns of violence in Brazil, China, Germany and the US. Rise in violence 'linked to climate change'

2 August 2013Last updated at 03:18 ET By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC World Service The researchers believe that war and personal conflicts are links to shifts in climate Shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world, a study suggests. US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war. The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place. The study is published in Science. Marshall Burke, from the University of California, Berkeley, said: "This is a relationship we observe across time and across all major continents around the world.

The researchers looked at 60 studies from around the world, with data spanning hundreds of years. They report a "substantial" correlation between climate and conflict. Biological root? Continue reading the main story “Start Quote. Climate change is here now and it could lead to global conflict | Nicholas Stern. The record rainfall and storm surges that have brought flooding across the UK are a clear sign that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.

Many commentators have suggested that we are suffering from unprecedented extreme weather. There are powerful grounds for arguing that this is part of a trend. Four of the five wettest years recorded in the UK have occurred from the year 2000 onwards. Over that same period, we have also had the seven warmest years. That is not a coincidence. A warmer atmosphere holds more water.

But it is not just here that the impacts of climate change have been felt through extreme weather events over the past few months. Argentina had one of its worst heatwaves in late December, while parts of Brazil were struck by floods and landslides following record rainfall. This is a pattern of global change that it would be very unwise to ignore.

What we have experienced so far is surely small relative to what could happen in the future. Delay is dangerous.