New Zealand Celsias

 The online journal Nature   recently published a study which makes the connection between climate cycles and civil war   – a correlation that even grade school children recognize as causing man’s worst inhumanity to man when one group or another is pressed by that other Nature – Mother Nature – to the brink of extinction.

Of particular interest is El Niño, a heating of the Pacific Ocean which periodically affects global weather patterns, most notably in the Asia-Pacific region, South America, and much of the continent of Africa.  

According to Solomon Hsiang (et al) of Columbia University, New York, the climactic effects   of El Niño affect the poorest countries in its arc of influence, namely Angola, Congo, El Salvador, Eritrea, Haiti, Indonesia, Myanmar, Peru, the Philippines, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda.

Hsiang’s paper, Environmental science: Climate for conflict  , paves the way for studying the failure of civilizations not from failed politics and poverty, but simply from the ill effects of climate change. In fact, Hsiang proposes the theory that the rise and collapse of historical empires is also due to climactic anomalies – a theory that would seem to explain the fall   of the Mayan civilization better than some others which have been put forward.

The El Nino/Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is one of the largest drivers of climate on the planet, and Hsiang speculates that at least a fifth of the wars in the last half of the 20^th century were triggered by an El Niño cycle, in nations as distant from one another as Peru and Indonesia. El Niño is also recognized as a causal link between crop losses, natural disasters, and the spread and intensity of infectious diseases  .

In fact, as Columbia University professor of earth and climate sciences Mark Cane suggests, war in the 21^st century may be almost entirely about stolen or surrendered resources in a world disrupted by global warming.

Hsiang supports that view, noting that it is the poorest countries which respond to climate change with the most violence, since equally troubling weather patterns extend to Australia and New Zealand without causing the outbreak of internecine war.

Social scientists and researchers often think of global warming, or climate change, as a “threat multiplier  ”, and it is in this sense that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is best understood. Because changing climates – and they rarely change for the better – encourage human, plant, and animal pathogens, the latter two of which result in food insecurity or actual starvation.

But perhaps the greatest threat is to that most essential element; water. Climate change causes droughts, which deplete the water needed for the survival of humans, livestock and food crops. Or it causes flooding, as for example from a hurricane or typhoon, creating conditions under which potable water is mixed with ocean salt water, human and animals wastes, and debris from storms to make it undrinkable.

Scientists now know that El Niño  , which usually arises during the holiday season along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru, takes place about once every two to five years, with the strongest cycles on record (from 1903 to 2011) occurring in the 1997-98 period.

This cycle featured widespread flooding in Bangladesh and China, where it killed 3,600 people and displaced 230 million. In the U.S., halfway around the globe, the same El Niño resulted in massive flooding in the Red River watershed basin and, later in the year, a severe drought and heat wave, destroying crops and killing 189 people from Florida to Texas.

In the same period, Europe experienced a severe cold spell, with freezing temperatures, snow, sleet and avalanches. Two hundred people died as a result. To the west, the people of Manta, Ecuador went without drinking water   for three months, until the city’s water delivery system could be repaired.

In Africa, the conflict   between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Somalia to the southwest, was particularly harsh during this El Niño cycle, with border lands – which all three nationalities use for grazing and growing crops – in bitter dispute  . In fact, this triangle of nations has been involved in climate-related displacement for at least two decades, and the situation appears to be getting worse, leaving the young with no memory of anything bur war and starvation  , as El Niño itself intensifies   in both strength and frequency over time.