Global warming isn’t just about more violent storms, said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe at Bowling
Green State University Monday night.
It’s about violent conflicts caused by a lack of resources and people forced to migrate.
Climate change isn’t just about polar bears, she said. It’s about her son’s future, about his not
experiencing the same world she grew up in, and maybe being drafted to fight as global conflict spreads.

"One of the greatest threats to peace today is the issue of climate change," said Hayhoe, who
directs the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University.
The military agrees, she noted. One admiral says it posed "an existential threat to civilization as
we know it."
Hayhoe, who was recently included on a Time Magazine list of the 100 most influential people in the
world, visited Bowling Green to deliver the annual Lamb Peace lecture.
In a systematic presentation, she explained the science behind global warming, noting it is not based
solely on recent findings, but rather to papers written in the early 19th century.
"Over 97 percent of the papers ever published agree that humans are the primary cause of climate
change," she said, "and over 97 percent of scientists agree humans are the primary cause of
climate change."
Hayhoe went through the "what abouts," the other reasons posited for climate change. In each
instance, whether the idea that the world is just emerging from another ice age or that increased
temperatures are caused by the cyclical changes in the Earth’s rotation around the sun, she showed how
studies do not support those explanations.
While Ohio and the Midwest and eastern United States are just emerging from an abnormally cold and snowy
winter, this weather should not be taken as disproving global warming. Rather this area was an outlier
in a world that saw record warm temperatures this year.
"One year it may be colder, one year may be warmer. That’s weather," Hayhoe said. "But
over 10, 20, 50, 100 years we see our planet is warming."
In chart after chart, the long-term patterns were clear: temperatures are rising. That rise is caused by
the increased burning of coal, gas and oil, which creates carbon dioxide, traps heat and warms the
globe.
"We are adding an extra blanket to our planet that it does not need," she said.
Civilization – where humans grow food, how homes are designed, where roads, bridges, power lines and
water and sewer lines are built, that cities are located just a few feet above sea level – is based
"on the assumption it’s all going to be stable, and it isn’t."
Hurricane Sandy last year demonstrated the danger. Global warming didn’t cause the storm, but it made its
damage more severe. Places flooded that hadn’t before.
Using projections, Hayhoe showed that by 2095 scientists expect the weather in Illinois will be more like
what’s now experienced in East Texas. Large parts of Florida will be underwater. The prime rice-growing
region of Bangladesh will be underwater.
When that happens, people will move somewhere else, causing conflict as they fight over increasingly
scarce resources in areas where governments will not be able to respond. Those conflicts, she said, will
have their most damaging effects on the developing countries in Africa, southern Asia and South America.

The key is to move toward more renewable sources of energy and government action to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions. It means relying more on wind power, or even as simple as switching to more energy-efficient
light bulbs.
But people don’t want to be told they can’t buy the truck they want or have to pay higher taxes, Hayhoe
said.
She’s experienced the depth of the resistance. The "nastiest emails" she’s received have been
over climate change, some so threatening she had to go to the police. She doesn’t disclose the location
of her office.
As an Evangelical Christian, Hayhoe has seen the resistance close at hand. When they first married, her
husband, Andrew Farley, a pastor and professor of applied linguistics, didn’t believe humans caused
climate change.
Their discussions led them to write "A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-based
Decisions."
Hayhoe advised addressing people who doubt global warming not by "whacking them over the head with
facts" but "from the heart."
She said she tries to appeal to their Christian values about caring for the poor, because poor people
will be the first the bear the brunt of the coming catastrophe.
Just as the human and fiscal costs of health problems related to carbon dioxide admissions, she said,
"financially it makes sense to end the use of coal today. Why don’t we? Because people bearing the
costs are not the people making the profits."