"Creative" warmist scientists finally find a way to show that global warming increases violent conflicts

"Global warming leads to wars and increasing violence" has been one the warmists' favorite propaganda claims already for years. The problem, though, is that this claim is not supported by serious studies. 

This is e.g. what Nils Petter Gleditsch, Centre for the Study of Civil War, PRIO & Norwegian University of Science and Technology, says in the summary of a recent study, "Whither the weather? Climate change and conflict", published in the Journal for Peace Research:

Overall, the research reported here offers only limited support for viewing climate change as an important influence on armed conflict. However, framing the climate issue as a security problem could possibly influence the perceptions of the actors and contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, now six creative scientists from the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have finally found a way to get the results warmists have been longing for:

A study relating climate to conflict in East African nations finds that increased rainfall dampens conflict while unusually hot periods can cause a flare-up, reinforcing the theory that climate change will cause increased scarcity in the region. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How have the six warmist authors been able to succeed where others have failed? 
The answer is: By using a new database, in which the criteria for violence have been "relaxed" in order to get the results that suited their needs:


Compared with other datasets with high battle
death thresholds, such as Correlates of War (threshold of 1,000
battle deaths/y) (3) or the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and
Peace Research Institute Oslo (UCDP/PRIO; threshold of 25
battle deaths/y), the criteria for including violence in the ACLED
data are relaxed (4). The number of deaths or amount of property
damage associated with violence was not recorded in ACLED
because of unreliable data reporting in news outlets. Furthermore,
setting a fixed death threshold often does not make sense, because
conflict emerging in the face of ecological stress might include
small-scale skirmishes resulting in few deaths or injuries. The
Correlates of War and UCDP/PRIO data record conflict only
where it takes place between the government of an internationally
recognized state and a cohesive rebel group. For our purposes, we
identify and code violence that is not perpetrated by organized
rebels or government forces; conflict often takes place between
two nonstate actors, such as communal groups.

(I would not be surprised if family quarrels are included in the new dataset)

But even with the manipulated criteria, not everything went according to the wishes of the creative scientists:

Nevertheless, the researchers stressed that the contribution of climate is minor compared with other economic, political and social factors, which also went in to their models and explained conflict far better than changes in precipitation or weather.

Read the entire article here