Climate Change Update: El Nino weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean double the risk of civil war across Africa, Asia and the Americas

Radio Australia:Pacific Beat:Story:Link between climate change and conflict: HARPER: Historians have suggested that changes in climate may have contributed to the collapse of various ancient kingdoms. Now, researchers at Columbia University are looking at whether unusually hot and dry weather conditions contribute to civil war today. A new study has found El Nino weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean double the risk of civil war across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

The report's lead author is Solomon Hsiang.

HSIANG: What we found was that when we look at tropical countries, when the globe is in its cooler and wetter La Nina state the risk of conflicts throughout the tropics was about 3 per cent per year. So that means three out of one hundred countries were to be expected to begin a new civil war. But when the global climate shifted into it's hotter and drier El Nino stage the risk of civil war rose to about 6 per cent. So that's actually a doubling. And this is actualy a very large effect in absolute terms. What it means is that about one out of five civil conflicts since 1950 were in some way influenced by El Nino.

Wellness Tip 4d Changing Climate: Increase your Vegetable Intake & prevent Lifestyle Disease

From nature’s garden: Simple way to a healthy body - www.daily.bhaskar.com: Vegetable like bitter gourd are very effecting in fighting stomach worms and tomatoes increases blood and makes your skin glow. Lemon helps improve digestion and spinach makes our bones stronger.

Apart from these, green leafy vegetables are a rich source of iron and should be included in our diet.

Cucumber purifies blood and improves blood flow. Garlic helps reduce chances if blood clot and heart diseases.

Climate Change Update: The Center for Public Integrity: SLIDESHOW: A guide to the Republican candidates' views on climate change

The Center for Public Integrity: SLIDESHOW: A guide to the Republican candidates' views on climate change: Many if not all scientists and climate specialists agree that the Earth's climate is changing and that humans have driven those changes. Both the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Change Research Program , the leading international and domestic climate research organizations on climate change, report similar conclusions. "Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years," noted the U.S. research program in a 2009 report . "This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases."

Of the front-runners, only former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has gone on the record as accepting climate change; he stresses the importance of reducing pollution that contributes to global warming. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry take the opposite view, criticizing the EPA, which Bachmann vows to shut down except for overseeing conservation. Congress and President Richard Nixon, a Republican, created the agency in 1970, in response to growing public demand for cleaner air, water and land.