Scientific Study: When People are Hungry and Hot they get Mad
Posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 1:17 PM by Richard Schitts
That's right! A study published by Nature says that when it's hot and people are hungry they get mad. They conducted their study during El Nino years, which is a cyclic tropical weather event that makes things hotter.
The Data: Most countries have a 2% chance of armed conflict a year (wow!). BUT Tropical countries have a 3% chance of conflict during (relatively) colder weather (La Nina). Tropical countries in El Nino (hotter weather) have a 6% chance of conflict. Yikes! Also, somewhat randomly - if a pitcher in baseball has had a person on his team beaned with a baseball he is more likely to bean somebody from the other team the hotter it is.
Quick, turn on the AC!
Their reasoning: hotter weather in Africa makes it harder to grow food. Farms make less money farming and more money as a mercenary. At the same time there is less food - which apparently makes everyone mad.
Basically when people who live in shitty places are hot and hungry they make things even shittier. The cyclic nature of the events must discourage planning - which leads to tougher times when things get bad. The people who did the study were quick to point out that their data is for cyclic large temperature increases. Not small constant increases. For example Saudi is consistently hotter than South Africa but people in both places survive well.
The solution is pretty obvious- make sure people have food. GM crops could help with this....
Link to article: http://www.economist.com/node/21526787
Edited on: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 1:34 PMPosted in Global Warming (RSS)