Bruno Tertrais

The Climate Wars Myth

The first decade of the 21st century was the hottest since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Global warming is real and, if present
trends continue, its possible effects worry publics and governments around the
world. Could it foster armed conflict for resources such as food and water? Will
Western armies be increasingly called upon to mitigate the effects of natural
catastrophes, humanitarian disasters, and floods of refugees?
Think tanks have enthusiastically embraced this new field of research, and
militaries around the world are now actively studying the possible impact of a
warming planet on global security. Books with titles such as Climate Wars predict
a bleak future.1 A well-known French consultant claims that a five degree
Celsius increase in average global temperature would generate no less than a
‘‘bloodbath.’’2 Former World Bank economist Lord Nicholas Sternthe author
of the 2006 ‘‘Stern Report’’ on the possible economic impact of climate
changeeven declares that failing to deal with climate change decisively would
lead to ‘‘an extended world war.’’3
However, there is every reason to be more than circumspect regarding such
dire predictions. History shows that ‘‘warm’’ periods are more peaceful than
‘‘cold’’ ones. In the modern era, the evolution of the climate is not an essential
factor to explain collective violence. Nothing indicates that ‘‘water wars’’ or
floods of ‘‘climate refugees’’ are on the horizon. And to claim that climate
change may have an impact on security is to state the obviousbut it does not
make it meaningful for defense planning.

Dr. Bruno Tertrais is a Senior Research Fellow at the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique
(Foundation for Strategic Research), and a TWQ editorial board member. He may be reached
at b.tertrais@frstrategie.org.
Copyright # 2011 Center for Strategic and International Studies
The Washington Quarterly • 34:3 pp. 17
29
DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2011.587951

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 Bruno Tertrais

What History Teaches Us

Since the dawn of civilization, warmer eras have meant fewer wars. The reason is
simple: all things being equal, a colder climate meant reduced crops, more
famine and instability.4 Research by climate historians shows a clear correlation
between increased warfare and cold periods.5 They are particularly clear in Asia
and Europe, as well as in Africa.6 Interestingly, the correlation has been
diminishing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: as societies
modernize, they become less dependent on local agricultural output.7
Moreover, if there was any significant link between warfare and warming, the
number of conflicts should have been rising in the past two decades. It has not
quite the contrary. Since the end of the Cold War, the total number of wars, after
having steadily increased since 1945, has diminished. Statistics published by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which come from
work done at the Uppsala University, clearly show such a decrease. Today, there
are half as many wars as two decades ago (17 in 2009 versus 35 in 1989).8 This
result is mainly due to the rapid decrease in the number of internal conflicts.9 As
with the number of interstate conflicts, civil wars began to decline from the end
of the 1970s onwards. Classic international war has, statistically speaking,
disappeared from the modern world. According to the SIPRI/Uppsala University
data, in 2009, for the sixth year in a row, there was no ongoing interstate war.
(Iraq and Afghanistan do not belong to that category.) Such conflicts
represented, in the 2000s, three out of a total of 30 wars, thus 10 percent of
the totalin a world where the number of states has tripled since the end of the
Second World War.
There is even a reverse correlation. The average global temperature
diminished between 1940 and 1975: during that period, the total number of
conflicts was on the rise. Correlation is not causation. (It may be tempting to
argue that the modernization of societies leads to two separate, parallel
outcomes: global warming and global peace.) But the existence of these data
points should contribute to extreme caution about the hypothetical equation
according to which a warmer world would be a war-prone world.
In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was attributed jointly to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and to former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore. Rarely was the attribution of a Nobel Peace Prize so blatantly
out of sync with geopolitical realities.

A Flawed Concept

Of course, some local changes of the climate can have an impact on the stability
of societies, and thus increase the propensity to collective violence, generally in

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a marginal way and mostly in developing countries. Such is the case, for
instance, for droughts in countries which are heavily dependent on rain-fed
agriculture.10 But drawing deterministic conclusions from this observation would
be a stretch. There are examples the other way round. At the border of Kenya
and Somalia, conflicts are more numerous when the resource (pastures) is
abundant.11 This fits with a well-known pattern. Resource-rich countries are
more likely to be involved in conflict: oil, minerals, or timber attract predators,
and revenues from their exploitation fuel civil war.
Darfur is the poster child of ‘‘climate conflict.’’ It is appropriate to consider that
local variations of climate and the natural environment in western Sudan were
part of the conditions that led to collective
violence in the region. But they were not a key
reason or root cause.12 For if that were the
case, how would one explain that conflict
V ariations of the
erupted nearly 30 years after the current period climate were not a root
of drought began? Moreover, the conflicts that cause of conflict in
took place in the Sahel region in the 1970s
clearly show that political and human factors
Darfur.
are the key to understanding most if not all
wars. In that region, the two preceding decades
(the 1950s and 1960s) had seen abundant precipitations; local governments had
then deliberately encouraged the development of agriculture in steppes,
something which moved cattle-raising toward the north. When rain decreased,
cattle-raisers sought to reclaim their lands, but faced farmers who were battling the
drought. These tensions happened against the background of a traditional rivalry
between nomads and settlers, which was frequently instrumentalized by local or
national governments. And in northern Mali, the Tuareg rebellion would probably
not have happened without the radicalization of young Malians who had
emigrated to Algeria or Libya because of the drought.13 Human and political
factors trump climate and environmental ones.
In seeking to demonstrate that climate change will lead to more instability,
experts sometimes stretch causality chains to the breaking point. A good
example is the recent attempt by two researchers of the International Institute
for Strategic Studies to show that climate change played a significant role in the
Arab Spring of 2011.14 According to them, extreme weather events of 2010
record rainfall in Canada, droughts in the former Soviet Union, a cyclone in
Australialed to an increase in food prices, which in turn fueled discontent in
the Middle East. But there are three problems with their proposition. First, there
is no evidence that the 2010 events deviated so much from traditional weather
patterns in these regions that they had to be attributed to climate change.
Second, as the authors themselves acknowledge, other factors were at play

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behind the spike in food prices, such as speculation or the demand for biofuels.
Third and most importantly, while food prices may have played a role in the
Arab discontent, the authors offer no evidence for their contention that they
played a ‘‘necessary’’ role.
Most experts of the links between the environment and conflict refrain from
adhering to dire predictions about impending climate wars. They show extreme
caution about what the historical record shows regarding those links, which
are deemed to be at best ‘‘highly speculative.’’15 A careful review of the issue
concludes that ‘‘the concept of environmentally induced conflict is itself
fundamentally flawed.’’16 More precisely, as explained by two researchers, ‘‘the
suggested causal chains from climate change to social consequences like conflict
are long and fraught with uncertainties. One could ask whether it is indeed
conceptually fruitful to be talking about climate change and conflict at all.’’17
Talking about ‘‘climate wars’’ is not only unsubstantiatedit may be harmful.
When United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, along with others,
claims that climate change is probably one of the key causes of the Darfur
conflict, those who perpetrated the massacres should applaud, for it partly
absolves them of their own responsibilities. Environmental security expert
Geoffrey Dabelko argues ‘‘Characterizing climate change as producing a new
type of conflict is both wrong and counterproductive. For instance, simply
labeling the genocide in Darfur a ‘climate war’ ignores political and economic
motivations for the fightingand unintentionally could let the criminal regime
in Khartoum off the hook.’’18

Beware of Catastrophic Scenarios

Some of the most catastrophic scenarios of climate change-induced conflict just

do not stand up to scrutiny. To study the possible political consequences of
changes in the geography of the Arctic region due to climate change is one
thing. To imagine this could lead to armed clashes between Russia and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is another. First, the diminution of the
maximum extent of summer sea ice will not transform the North-Western
Passage and the Northern Maritime Route into vital maritime trade arteries:
they will be open only a few weeks or a few months a year. Second, the real
quantity of hydrocarbon resources in the region is still very much open to debate;
and such resources are, for the most part, located within national maritime areas.
Third, the attitude of all neighboring states regarding this region, including
Russia, reflects a clear preference for settling possible disputes in accordance
with accepted international law. Fourth, the scope of these disputes is not
increasingrather the opposite: in April 2010, Norway and Russia settled their

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decades-long dispute on the delimitation of their respective maritime areas in

the Barents Sea.
The interruption of the North Atlantic Conveyor Belt (‘‘Gulf Stream’’) due
to global warming is a favorite of thrillers and science-fiction writers. The study
of its consequences by a consulting firm at the request of the U.S. Department of
Defense’s Office of Net Assessment a few years ago was widely noted.19 The
problem is that the credibility of this scenario is close to nil. Recent scientific
research has shown that the Gulf Stream is animated much less by thermohaline
circulation (differences in the temperature and salinity of water) than by the
winds. Moreover, its role in shaping and regulating the climate of Northern
Atlantic regions has been seriously put in doubt.20
Finally, the argument according to which
global warming will lead to an increase in the
number of natural catastrophes, with grave T alking about ‘‘climate
humanitarian consequences, should be taken wars’’ is not only
with a heavy pinch of (marine) salt. The only
unsubstantiatedit may
available evidence that global warming will
lead to more extreme weather events relies on be harmful.
modeling. Data do not really sustain this
hypothesis so far. There has not been any
increase in global precipitation in recent decades.21 Neither have droughts
become more frequent or severe.22 Hurricane activity is not stronger, and its
variation remains within the range of natural variation.23 The number of
hurricane events has tended to evolve downwards since 1970; in accumulated
intensity, 2010 was its lowest in 30 years.24
The Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) maintained at the Leuwen
University in Belgiumone of the most widely used databases for natural
disastersshows a clear rise in the number of weather-related catastrophes over
the last 30 years. However, this rise can easily be explained by demographic,
economic, sociological, and political factors. EM-DAT only takes into account
events that have caused a significant number of victims (which is rising due to
population increase and the growing number of humans living on exposed areas),
for which a state of emergency has been declared, and a call to international help
has been made (the frequency of which is rising for political and media
reasons).25 Furthermore, the number of reported catastrophes has also
increasedas compared to what it was say, a century agodue to improved
detection and attention. There is every reason to believe that the human, social,
and economic consequences of natural catastrophes will be increasingly severe,
but this has little to do with climate change.
It should also be noted that natural disasters do not necessarily have only
negative consequences on national and international security. Quite the

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contrary: disasters appear to prevent rather than promote civil conflict.26 A case
in point is the 2004 Asian tsunami, which indirectly contributed to the
stabilization of the decades-old secessionist conflict in the Indonesian province
of Aceh (a peace agreement was signed in August 2005).

No Wars Over Water

An avatar of the notion of climate war is that of future wars over water. Such
wars have been forewarned since the late 1980s, but the theme has gained
popularity since the end of the Cold War.27 If some commentators are to be
believed, ‘‘the lines of battle are already being drawn for the water wars of the
future.’’28 It is true that the map of predicted water stress at the 2025—2030
horizon reveals a close match with the map of major geopolitical risks: the
Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia are among the regions which are most likely
to be affected.
Warming will not change anything about the global availability of water
resources, but will probably induce changes in the geographical distribution
of precipitation. However, this will not necessarily be for the worse: in many
regions, the resource for agriculture will
increase.29 Other regions will see more drou-
C limate change has ghts. However, recent studies have shown that
only a small climate changewhatever its originhas only
a small part of responsibility for water crises:
responsibility for
population increase is by far the main cause.30
water crises; Will the melting of Himalayan glaciers lead
population increase is to a severe water crisis in South Asia, one of
the most dangerous parts of the world? On this
the main cause. point, the IPCC included a serious error in its
2007 report, due to a series of confusions. The
text claims that these glaciers could be
reduced by 80 percent in 2035. The date came from a 2005 report by the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF), for which primary sources were press articles and
unpublished communications. (The WWF report now includes a correction
retracting its claims.)31 As to the proportion of glaciers which could disappear by
that time, it came from a 1996 UNESCO Report, which mentioned a possible
80 percent reduction of the global total of non-polar ice (not just Himalayan
glaciers), but by the year 2350, not 2035.32 Resorting to non-peer-reviewed
publications is also what led the IPCC to wrongly claim, based on an
unsubstantiated assertion included in the Stern Report, that water availability
in South Asia was highly dependent on glacier melt.33 But recent studies have
shown that Himalayan glacier melt accounts for only three to 25 percent of the

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volume of rivers in South Asia: monsoons and local seasonal snow melt are by far
their main sources.34
And water crises do not mean water wars. The issue of access to water
resources is undoubtedly a major dimension of numerous regional crises, in
particular in the Greater Middle East, as testified by decades-old disputes
between Turkey and Syria, or Egypt and Sudan. The value of strategic locations
such as the Golan Heights or Kashmir is not a small part of tensions between
Syria and Israel, or India and Pakistan. And water sharing can be the cause of
local disputes sometimes degenerating into small-scale collective violence in
Africa or Asia. However, experts from the University of Oregon, who maintain
the most complete database on this topic, state that there has never been a ‘‘war
over water’’ (that is, large-scale collective violence for the sake of a water
resource) in the past 4,500 years.35 The last war over water opposed two
Sumerian cities in the middle of the third millennium B.C.E., about sharing the
waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. There are good reasons for such a scant
record. Any country seeking to control the upstream of a river would need to
ensure complete and permanent domination over it, which would be an
ambitious goal. In the modern era, resorting to arms over water (like resorting
to arms over oil) is just not worth the cost. Especially for those whose
geographical location and budget can afford to build desalination plantswhich
is the case for some of the most water-stressed countries, those located on the
Arabian Peninsula.
One should therefore not be surprised that access to water has always
generated more cooperation than conflict. Since antiquity, thousands of
agreements and treaties have been signed for water-sharing. And cooperation
between adversaries has stood the test of wartime, as was seen during the 20th
century in the Middle East, South Asia, or Southeast Asia.

Climate Barbarians at the Gates?

What about ‘‘climate refugees’’? Dire evaluations already existed in the middle of
the 1990s: British environmentalist Norman Myers claimed at the time that such
refugees already numbered 25 million, and that their number might double
15 years later, to reach perhaps 200 million by the middle of the century. This
number has been used by many publications since then.36 Another widely-
quoted previsionwhich claims to be an update of Myers’ ownis that of the
non-governmental organization Christian Aid, which foresees 250 million
climate refugees between 2007 and 2050 (out of a total of one billion
environmental refugees).37 Lord Stern himself reportedly stated that a
five degree Celsius rise in average global temperature would lead to ‘‘billions’’
having to move.38

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But the idea of massive waves of refugees

W aves of refugees
triggered by climate change does not square
well with the reality of migration. There is no
triggered by climate doubt that environmental change can lead to
change does not massive displacements of populations. Such
displacements have always existed, including
square well with the in industrialized countries. Remember the
reality of migration. Dust Bowl, which led to the migration of
two to three million from the Great Plains to
the West in the United States. But such
movements are slow (we are more accurately
talking about migrants as opposed to refugees), very much dependent on
economic opportunities existing elsewhere (the ‘‘pull’’ factor is as important as
the ‘‘push’’), and generally of a limited geographical scope (most people want to
stay in the same country or region).39 They are sometimes due to non-climate
related factors: desertification or degradation of the soils is often due to
urbanization or intensive agriculture.
The same reasoning can be applied to the rise in sea levels. First, the
hypothesis of a future constant rise in average sea levels due to global warming is
not the likeliest one and is being seriously challenged.40 Second, even if one
accepts the scenario of a constant rise, is it inconceivable that mankind would be
able to adjust and adapt to a rise of a few millimeters per year, as it has done for
many decades? Catastrophist analyses evoking massive floods of refugees do not
square well with an average rise of two to six millimeters a year (the range of
IPCC scenarios). And given such a slow pace, some countries will balance the
rise of sea level mass by sedimentation. Take the example of Bangladesh, a poster
child of the possible consequences of climate change. The idea that the densely
populated coastal regions of that country could be flooded by the rise in sea
levels does not take into account the parallel accumulation of sediments brought
by the great South Asian rivers, which amount to about one billion metric tons
a year.41
Such are the reasons why experts of environmental migrations generally agree
that climate change in itself is rarely a root cause of migration.42 Major
population displacements due to environmental and/or climatic factors will
remain exceptional except in the case of a sudden natural disaster.43 And most
importantly for the sake of this analysis, they are rarely a cause of violent
conflict.44
It is not even certain that the very concept of ‘‘climate refugees’’ is relevant.45
Atmospheric or hydrological catastrophes can create massiveand most of the
time temporarypopulation displacements. But such catastrophes have always
existed. Why then attempt to create a separate category for their victims, which

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would distinguish them from those of geological catastrophes (earthquakes,

tsunamis, volcanic eruptions) for which human activities bear no responsibility?
The concept of climate refugees says more about Western fears of ‘‘barbarians at
the gates’’ than it does about the foreseeable reality of the consequences of
climate change.46

Is Climate Change Even Relevant to Defense Planning?

So much for ‘‘climate wars.’’ But the idea according to which climate change is
nevertheless a new, important factor to be taken into account in defense and
security planning is itself questionable. Of course, nothing precludes us from
including it in the growing list of non-military issues that may have a bearing on
global security. But this has to be done in a realistic way. It is not unreasonable to
state that climate change may be a ‘‘threat multiplier,’’ for instance.47 However,
stating this says nothing about the probability of increased violence or instability
either at the global level or for a given crisis, or about the likelihood of state
failure. Such consequences depend primarily on the reaction of governments and
societiesa factor which is impossible to calculate in advance.
There are no data to support the vague idea that climate change can have a
key role in triggering collective violencethat is, be the proverbial straw that
breaks the camel’s back, as argued by an alarmist study (citing once again the
example of Darfur).48 Climate is ‘‘one of myriad factors in a complex causal web
underlying conflict,’’ and the environment is just ‘‘one of manifold and non-
essential causal factors’’ which may lead to war.49 The main causes of
contemporary conflict are societal, not natural (in the broadest sense of the
term, i.e., including man-made).50 Conflicts are borne out of human choices and
mistakes.
Could regional previsions of the impact of climate change at least inform
policymakers and planners about the areas of the world which are more likely
all things being equalto suffer from them? The answer is no. Regional effects
are extremely difficult to predict with the degree of probability which can be
useful for planning.51 The IPCC itself underscores that current models do not
have the ability to deliver useful previsions at a higher scale than the continental
one.52 Nobody knows, for instance, whether African monsoons will move
northwards (with positive effects on agriculture) or southwards (with
negative effects). Here, as noted by a contributor to the IPCC, ‘‘there is
complete disagreement between the various models.’’53 And when the IPCC
attempts to give regional previsions on the evolution of agricultural output, for
instance, it is in a way which does not buttress the case for alarmism. Its 2007
report mentions a possible reduction by 50 percent of rain-fed agricultural output
in some African countries in 2020. But the sole source it cites to support this

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claim is a report produced for a Canadian non-governmental organization in

which it is mentioned that (unpublished) studies evoke this scenario for three
Maghreb countries.54
There are indeed, it seems, some causal links between climate and warfare.
But they are of a seasonal nature: ‘‘nations address seasonal climate change in
terms of where they fight, rather than through when or whether disputes occur.
. . . Fighting moves to higher latitudes in the summer, and lower latitudes during
the cooler months of the year.’’55
The stakes of climate change are importantand that is why this area should
not be the object of intellectual fantasies or fashions. It is appropriate for defense
and security planners to monitor the evolution of the scientific and political
debate on its possible consequences. But there is no objective reason today to list
climate change as a key issue for defense and security planning.

Notes

1. Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars (Toronto: Random House, 2008); Harald Welzer,
Klimakriege: Wofür im 21. Jahrhundert getötet wird (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 2008).
2. Jean-Marc Jancovici quoted in Antoine Robitaille, ‘‘Les changements climatiques: vers
la guerre?’’ Le Devoir, November 19, 2009.
3. Quoted in Charles J. Hanley, ‘‘Lord Nicholas Stern Paints Dire Climate Change
Scenario: Mass Migrations, Extended World War,’’ The Huffington Post, February 21,
2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/21/lord-nicholas-stern-paint_n_168865.
html.
4. Richard S.J. Tol and Sebastian Wagner, ‘‘Climate change and violent conflict in Europe
over the last millennium,’’ Climatic Change 99 (2010): pp. 65 —79, http://metapress.com/
content/e78581pv740rx500/fulltext.pdf
5. David D. Zhang et al., ‘‘Global climate change, war, and population decline in recent
human history,’’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 49 (2007),
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/49/19214.full.pdfhtml.
6. David D. Zhang et al., ‘‘Climatic change, wars and dynastic cycles in China over the
last millennium,’’ Climatic Change 76 (2006), pp. 459—477; Zhibin Zhang et al.,
‘‘Periodic climate cooling enhanced natural disasters and wars in China during AD 10-
1900,’’ Proceedings of the Royal SocietyBiological Sciences 277 (2010): pp. 3745—3753,
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1701/3745.full.pdfhtml; Halvard
Buhaug, ‘‘Climate not to blame for African civil wars,’’ Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 107, no. 38 (2010), http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16477.
full.pdfhtml.
7. Tol and Wagner, ‘‘Climate change and violent conflict in Europe over the last
millennium.’’
8. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), SIPRI Yearbook 1989—
2009.
9. Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, ‘‘International System and Technologies of
Rebellion: How the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,’’ American Political Science

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 The Climate Wars Myth

Review 104, no. 3 (August 2010), http://stathis.research.yale.edu/documents/Kaly

vas_Balcells_APSR.pdf.
10. Edward Miguel et al., ‘‘Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: An Instrumental Variables
Approach,’’ Journal of Political Economy 112, no. 4 (2004), http://www.econ.
berkeley.edu/emiguel/pdfs/miguel_conflict.pdf.
11. ‘‘Climate Wars,’’ The Economist, July 8, 2010.
12. Michael Kevane and Leslie Gray, ‘‘Darfur: Rainfall and Conflict,’’ Environmental
Research Letters 3, no. 3 (July —September 2008), http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/3/
3/034006/fulltext.
13. Tor A. Benjaminsen, ‘‘Does Supply-Induced Scarcity Drive Violent Conflicts in the
African Sahel? The Case of the Tuareg Rebellion in Northern Mali,’’ Journal of Peace
Research 45, no. 6 (November 2008), http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/45/6/819.abstract.
14. Sarah Johnstone and Jeffrey Mazo, ‘‘Global Warming and the Arab Spring,’’ Survival 53,
no. 2 (April —May 2011).
15. Clionadh Raleigh and Henrik Urdal, ‘‘Climate Change, Environmental Degradation
and Armed Conflict,’’ Political Geography 26, no. 6 (2007): pp. 7 —8.
16. Tobias Hagmann, ‘‘Confronting the Concept of Environmentally-Induced Conflict,’’
Peace, Conflict and Development 6, no. 6 (January 2005): p. 4.
17. Ragnhild Nordås and Nils Petter Gleditsch, ‘‘Climate Conflict: Common Sense or
Nonsense?’’ Human Security and Climate Change Workshop, Oslo, June 21 —23, 2005,
p. 24, http://waterwiki.net/images/d/d8/Nordas_Gleditsch.pdf.
18. Geoffrey D. Dabelko, ‘‘Avoid hyperbole, oversimplification when climate and security
meet,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 24, 2009, http://www.thebulletin.
org/web-edition/op-eds/avoid-hyperbole-oversimplification-when-climate-and-security-
meet.
19. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, ‘‘An Abrupt Climate Change and Its Consequences
for United States National Security,’’ Global Business Network, October 2003, http://
www.gbn.com/articles/pdfs/Abrupt%20Climate%20Change%20February%202004.pdf.
20. Richard Seager et al., ‘‘Is the Gulf Stream responsible for Europe’s mild winters?’’
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 128, no. 586 (October 2002), http://
www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/Seager_etal_QJ_2002.pdf; Richard Seager,
‘‘The source of Europe’s mild climate,’’ American Scientist 94, no. 4 (July —August 2006).
21. Thomas M. Smith et al., ‘‘Variations in annual global precipitation (1979—2004), based
on the Global Precipitation Climatology Project 2.5 analysis,’’ Geophysical Research
Letters 33 (March 18, 2006).
22. Justin Sheffield et al., ‘‘Global and Continental Drought in the Second Half of the
Twentieth Century: Severity-Area-Duration Analysis and Temporal Variability of
Large-Scale Events,’’ Journal of Climate 22, no. 8 (April 2009): pp. 1962—1981.
23. Thomas R. Knutson et al., ‘‘Tropical cyclones and climate change,’’ Nature Geoscience 3
(February 21, 2010): pp. 157—163.
24. Ryan N. Maue, ‘‘Global Tropical Cyclone Activity,’’ Center for Ocean-Atmospheric
Prediction Studies, Florida State University, http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/maue/tropical/.
25. See http://www.emdat.be/.
26. Rune Slettebak and Indra de Soysa, ‘‘High Temps, High Tempers? Weather-Related
Natural Disasters & Civil Conflict,’’ Draft Paper for the Conference on Climate Change
and Security, Conference of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters,
Trondheim, June 21 —24, 2010, http://climsec.prio.no/papers/Slettebak%20and%20de
%20Soysa%20-%20Temp%20and%20Temper.pdf.
27. Joyce R. Starr, ‘‘Water Wars,’’ Foreign Policy 82 (Spring 1991): pp. 17 —36, http://
www.ciesin.org/docs/006-304/006-304.html.

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28. Colin Mason, A Short History of the Future: Surviving the 2030 Spike (London: Earthscan,
2006), p. 62.
29. Nigel W. Arnell et al., ‘‘Climate change and global water resources: SRES emissions and
socio-economic scenarios,’’ Global Environmental Change 14, no. 1 (April 2004): pp. 31 —
52.
30. Matti Kummu et al., ‘‘Is physical water scarcity a new phenomenon? Global assessment
of water shortage over the last two millennia,’’ Environment Research Letters 5, no. 3
(July—September 2010).
31. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Nepal Program, ‘‘An Overview of Glaciers, Glacial
Retreat and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China,’’ March 2005 [with
correction], http://www.panda.org/downloads/climate_change/glacierssummary.pdf.
32. Vladimir M. Kotlyakov, ed., ‘‘Variations of Snow and Ice in the past and at present on a
Global and Regional Scale,’’ UNESCO, 1996, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/
001065/106523e.pdf.
33. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ‘‘Climate Change 2007: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability,’’ Chapter 10, ‘‘Asia,’’ http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-
report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter10.pdf.
34. Pallava Bagla, ‘‘No Sign Yet of Himalayan Meltdown,’’ Science 326, no. 5955
(November 13, 2009): pp. 924—925; Walter W. Immerzeel et al., ‘‘Climate Change
Will Affect the Asian Water Towers,’’ Science 328, no. 5984 (June 11, 2010): pp. 1382—
1385.
35. Jerome Delli Priscoli and Aaron T. Wolf, Managing and Transforming Water Conflicts
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
36. Norman Myers, ‘‘Environmental refugees in a globally warmed world,’’ BioScience 43,
no. 11 (December 1993): pp. 752—761; Ibid., ‘‘Environmental Refugees,’’ Population and
Environment 19, no. 2 (November 1997): pp. 167—182.
37. Christian Aid, ‘‘Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis,’’ May 2007, http://
www.christianaid.org.uk/Images/human-tide.pdf.
38. Quoted in Hanley, ‘‘Lord Nicholas Stern Paints Dire Climate Change Scenario: Mass
Migrations, Extended World War.’’
39. Cecilia Tacoli, ‘‘Not only climate change: mobility, vulnerability and socio-economic
transformations in environmentally fragile areas in Bolivia, Senegal and Tanzania,’’
International Institute for Environment and Development, February 2011, http://
pubs.iied.org/10590IIED.html.
40. Paleo Sea Level Working Group, ‘‘The sea-level conundrum: case studies from palaeo-
archives,’’ Journal of Quaternary Science 25, no. 1 (January 2010): pp. 19 —25.
41. ‘‘Bangladesh gaining land, not losing: scientists,’’ Agence France-Presse, July 30, 2008,
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Bangladesh_gaining_land_not_losing_scientists_999.
html.
42. Elisabeth Meze-Hausken, ‘‘Migration Caused by Climate Change: How Vulnerable Are
People In Dryland Areas?’’ Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 5, no. 4
(2000): pp. 379—406.
43. Clionadh Raleigh et al., ‘‘Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Migration and
Conflict,’’ The Social Development Department, World Bank, undated, http://
siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/Resources/SDCCWorking
Paper_MigrationandConflict.pdf.
44. Ibid.
45. Richard Black, ‘‘Environmental refugees: myth or reality?’’ New Issues in Refugee
Research, Working Paper no. 34, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
March 2001, http://www.unhcr.org/research/RESEARCH/3ae6a0d00.pdf.

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 The Climate Wars Myth

46. Cecilia Tacoli, ‘‘Crisis or adaptation? Migration and climate change in a context of high
mobility,’’ Prepared for Expert Group Meeting on Population Dynamics and Climate
Change, UNFPA/International Institute for Environment and Development, June
24 —25, 2009, http://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/users/schensul/public/CCPD/
papers/Tacoli%20Paper.pdf.
47. Kurt M. Campbell et al., ‘‘The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National
Security Implications of Global Climate Change,’’ Center for Strategic and
International Studies / Center for a New American Security, November 2007, http://
csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/071105_ageofconsequences.pdf.
48. ‘‘National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,’’ CNA Corporation,
2007, http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/National%20Security%20and%20the%20
Threat%20of%20Climate%20Change.pdf.
49. Jeffrey Mazo, ‘‘Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens security and what to do
about it,’’ International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper no. 409, March
2010, p. 40, p. 12, p. 40.
50. Raleigh and Urdal, ‘‘Climate Change, Environmental Degradation and Armed
Conflict.’’
51. Demetris Koutsoyiannis et al., ‘‘On the credibility of climate predictions,’’ Hydrological
Sciences Journal 53, no. 4 (August 2008).
52. IPCC, ‘‘Climate Change 2007: Synthesis ReportSummary for Policymakers,’’ p. 10,
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf.
53. Quoted in Sylvestre Huet, ‘‘Des temps incertains,’’ Libération, November 13, 2007.
54. Ali Agoumi, ‘‘Vulnerability of North African Countries to Climatic Change:
Adaptation and Implementation Strategies for Climate Change,’’ International
Institute for Sustainable Development, 2003, http://www.iisd.org/cckn/pdf/north_
africa.pdf.
55. Erik Gartzke, ‘‘Does Climate Change Whether, When or Where Nations Fight?’’ Paper
prepared for the Climate Change and Security Conference, Royal Norwegian Society of
Sciences and Letters, Trondheim, June 21 —24, 2010, p. 1, p. 28, http://climsec.prio.no/
papers/climate_for_conflict_06202010.pdf.

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