How does rising atmospheric CO2 affect marine organisms?

Click to locate material archived on our website by topic


Conflict and Climate Change in the Tropical Pacific
Reference
Field, J.S. and Lape, P.V. 2010. Paleoclimates and the emergence of fortifications in the tropical Pacific islands. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29: 113-124.

Background
The authors note that it has been repeatedly suggested that in many parts of the world climate change has "encouraged conflict and territorialism," as this response, in their words, "serves as an immediate means of gaining resources and alleviating shortfalls," such as those that occur when the climate change is detrimental to agriculture and the production of food.

What was done
Field and Lape write that "periods of cooling and warming related to hemispheric-level transitions (namely the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age) were identified in sub-regions of the Pacific and compared with the occurrence of fortifications at the century-level."

What was learned
The two researchers report that "the comparison of fortification chronologies with paleoclimatic data indicate that fortification construction was significantly correlated with periods of cooling, which in the tropical Pacific is also associated with drying," noting that "the correlation was most significant in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, the Southwestern Pacific and New Zealand," where "people constructed more fortifications during periods that match the chronology for the Little Ice Age (AD 1450-1850)," as opposed to the Medieval Warm Period (AD 800-1300) when they say the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool was both warm and saline "with temperatures approximating current conditions (Newton et al., 2006)."

What it means
Field and Lape's new study provides more evidence for the gradually emerging fact that periods of greater warmth have generally led to more peaceful times throughout the world, while periods of lesser warmth have typically led to greater warfare, as is demonstrated by still other materials we have archived under the heading of War and Social Unrest in our Subject Index.

Reference
Newton, A., Thunnell, R. and Stott, L. 2006. Climate and hydrographic variability in the Indo-Pacific warm pool during the last millennium. Geophysical Research Letters 33: 10.1029/2006GL027234.

Reviewed 5 May 2010