Tuesday, August 3, 2010

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.

24 comments:

  1. Andrew - nice post. I'll plan to file the U.N. report with my copy of Paul Erlich's "The Population Bomb."

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  2. well, thank goodness we have prince "my duty is to save the world" charles on the case. now surely we are saved!

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  3. Thanks Jed. Excellent place to file that report too. It really will be a work of science fiction. There is NO evidence of any sort to back up their conclusions.

    So you'll see all kind of things. . . "gee, global warming could lead to drought, could lead to damns bursting, buildings sliding off hot pavement, fights over sunscreen. . . and all that could lead to war! Yippee!!! We need money and socialist to stop all this stuff, which will surely happen!"

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  4. Thanks Joel, Watch for it. . . it's coming.

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  5. Patti, I know, I saw him the other day. The guy is a joke and she should quietly disappear to a cave to await the end. What a turd!

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  6. They couldn't win with "Weather/global warming/climate change will destroy us ALL", now they have to pick on the Africans again "Weather/global warming/climate change will kill defenseless poor people with war" mostly if not only in Africa. Perhaps it's the African leaders that cause the wars and starve their people into submission rather than the Weather/global warming/climate change? Maybe not, but starving people don't have the energy to make war...

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  7. Bev, You just put your finger on something they've all missed (or ignored). People who are too busy scrambling to keep their meager crops alive don't have time to go settle ethnic and religious disputes.

    And you're right about the shift in strategy. They began by saying "if we don't stop global warming, the planet will warm up and that could be bad." No one cared. So they switched to "polar bears will die." No one cared. So they switched to "it could kill us all -- wipe out NYC and starve us all." But nobody bought that. So now they're trying "you racist white Americans will force oppressed Africans to kill each other."

    Sorry, no sale. African wars have been about ethnic hate, religious hate, and pure profit as corrupt leaders and wanna-be-corrupt leaders fight over diamonds. They haven't been over weak crops or disputes over grazing grounds.

    I don't think report or their new campaign will work any better because people are sick of being called racist, they are sick of the global warming lectures, and they realize that Americans are not at fault when two African ethnic tribes decide to wipe each other out.

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  8. Andrew,

    One other thing to think about.

    The help that Africa gets in order to not gather crops. When we send food to these nations, the thugocracy du jour gets the food which helps support the genocide. Arms are sent, but it is the food that really enables these regimes.

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  9. Joel, That's very true. The same has been true of foreign aid in the past. The money disappears into presidential palaces and Swiss bank accounts. That's why a better form of aid would be direct construction of projects and demanding market reforms.

    One of the things that seems to be working well right now is what the Chinese are doing, which is a form of capitalist colonialism. Basically, they are buying up large chunks of land for use as farms or mining. And in the process, they are employing local labor (though they keep Chinese management) and they are agreeing to put in the infrastructure.

    It's proving to be a highly effective means of remaking these countries -- though that's not really China's intent.

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  10. Thanks for the tip. I can totally see this argument coming. They've tried everything else. It also fits with how they are always trying to explain away Third World failures as being our fault.

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  11. You're welcome Ed. I think they're flailing around trying to find anything that will stick to get the public's attention. This is just the latest.

    I'm sure once they refine this, we'll hear how it's causing crime and poverty in the US.

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  12. Guys,

    This is off topic but it seems that this lame duck session could be totally stymied in November. If the voters in 5 states vote out the APPOINTED Democrat Senators and replace them with Republican Conservatives, they get changed immediately. I read it on American Thinker.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/the_lame_duck_session_could_ge.html

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  13. Joel, That would be pretty funny. In fact, that would be quite the relief because they're going to try a LOT in the lame duck session. I just hope the Republicans all stick together and filibuster everything.

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  14. Andrew: How long are these nutcases going to keep trying to convince people that they have a clue what they're talking about or that they could do anything about it even if their junk science turned out to be right? I have to admit that claiming anthropomorphic global warming/climate change causes war is creative, however nonsensical and unsupported by any hard evidence. But sooner or later, somebody important is going to start laughing publicly about this nonsense, and laughter could be the clue to a final outing of just how dangerously silly this whole thing is.

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  15. andrew: seriously, if i worked in an office and read your stuff quietly UNTIL i read the word "turd" or "jerk" and then burst out laughing, they would have surely fired me by now. or at the very least made your site verbotten.

    ALWAYS makes me laugh.

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  16. Lawhawk, I think they will keep trying anything they can to sell socialism-as-environmentalism. There is no sense of shame with these people that keeps them from promoting any lousy theory they can think of, no matter what the evidence says.

    As for laughing at them, I think we're getting there. The public is slowly but surely turning on them and the politicians will follow -- especially if we do enter a cooling period real scientists say is coming.

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  17. Patti, Those are some of my favorite words! LOL! I guess we should put a disclaimer on our site?!

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  18. I can almost see them sitting around praying for a war just so they can "weep over it" and then whine that global warming caused it.

    And cherry picking their time periods is becoming a habit for these guys. Didn't they cherry-pick out the little ice age?

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  19. Mega, Yes, they did that -- exactly that. When they do their warming thing, they take out a Medieval Warming Period, where it was very hot. Because if they included that, then today's temperatures don't seem all that warm and that period cannot be explained as being caused by industrial activity.

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  20. Dumbass liberal logic! Africa is a basket case for many reasons, global warming ain’t one of them.

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  21. Stan, You just say that because you're rational. LOL! Don't you know that the cause of everything that goes wrong is Western Europe/America?

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  22. andrew: fyi, i'm linking your repeal and replace article tomorrow. it's getting closer to november. we can't let folks take their eye off the prize...

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  23. Thanks Patti! It probably is a good time to go back through the zillion articles from the last two years and dig up a few good pointers for the election!

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