Discussion on:

Study finds link between climate and conflict

It's good to put some quantitative numbers on this but it's a pretty obvious conclusion that when resources shift, particularly water and arable land the chance of conflict is going to go up. Climate change has probably been a factor in the Darfur conflict. When people become desperate they can do horrible things.

Historians have noted the connection between weather and conflict going back to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with Volume 1 written in 1776.

It is well known that the conditions of famine that fueled the French Revolution were brought on by the Little Ice Age.

...although the various "proxy wars" that took place during the "cold war" were pretty much strategic ideological conflicts that had little to do with climate.

But at times conflict has grown out of conditions beyond politics. I would say the fight would often be more internal rather than nation verses nation.

As in the French Revolution. Poor harvets over an extended period of time brought on by the Little Ice Age mixed with a bad government incapable or unwilling to deal with the situation brought on food riots that grew out of control.

The so called proxy wars during the Cold War were local conflicts between local players who found a global players to arm & finance them. Sometime it was necessary to claim ideological allegiance to a global player, sometimes not. It's a pattern that persists to the present day, only the names have changed.

...like all those throughout Africa, but Korea & Vietnam? I don't think so.

If this were true, you would expect to a delay by a couple of years from the onset of El Nino. It takes a year for crops to fail, and more time for a country to go through its food stores. For example, the current crisis in Somalia didn't just happen this year, famine (again) has been building there for years. So rather than occurring the same year as El Nino, you might have conflicts start even as La Nina is beginning. The degree of conflicts is also influenced by the weather. During wet, rainy years it's difficult to mount a major campaign, especially with the poor infrastructure of many of these countries. There's a reason why the war in Afghanistan shuts down every winter. The same happened with the Civil and Revolutionary Wars in America.

Most of the major conflicts of this period (Korea, Vietnam, the two Iraqi wars, the two wars in Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, etc.) were not motivated by food shortages. They were either proxy wars between the US and the Soviet Union, or wars over terrorist acts. Hence most of the wars in this article have to be the small regional wars that erupted in Africa and elsewhere. Many of these were former British Commonwealth or French controlled countries in Africa and Asia. While these countries deserved their independence, most of them were left with very weak governments that fell apart under regional and tribal pressures. They were powder kegs just waiting for a spark.

Developed areas such as the US and Europe have lots of ways to deal with the stresses of crop failures. While the situation there could break down to the point you have active civil unrest, it won't happen for a long time. There's no evidence El Nino caused any conflicts there because there have been no conflicts (the article conveniently left out that agricultural production in the US at least is very much affected by El Nino).

Rather than climate change, the biggest factor by far in causing future conflicts will be global population growth. The global population by 2050 will grow to about 9 billion, which is beyond the current means of the planet to feed itself even without global warming.

Climate change moves the location of arable land, which in turn changes the economic relationships between areas. Within a large nation like the USA, farming can migrate. That may not be possible across borders or even between areas of a nation occupied by people of different ethnicities and/or religions. Ideology is justification for conflicts that are generated by economics.

Dear Mrs Zackers,
This article is about 93 countries affected by El Nino. I am color blind so I might just be way off, but I do belive North America is NOT infected by the red coloration of these so called war zones from people being just TO DANG OH HOT. Food shortage my lily white no entry exit only! I been in places where when it gets HOT people get ANGRY, FAST. Hello 911? We got problems here better send more cops. Ok hold please,. long time after holding, you get asked. What is your location? What the HECK, Don't you know it's HOT, and your gonna ask me a ignorant question like that? Let me ask you something, Whats YOUR location?

Deleted because the system posted my previous comment twice.

I remember a study thirty or thirty-five years ago the matched violent crime statistics against temperature in several large cities. There is a very similar correlation. Interestingly, though, there was a break point somewhere around 95 degrees Fahrenheit; hotter than that, the numbers started dropping again. Maybe it was just too hot to do anything.