Community Corner
University Of Colorado Boulder Study Finds Global Warming Will Increase Violent Crime In U.S.
Researchers Ryan Harp and Kris Karnauskas mined an FBI crime database to understand the connections between global warming and crime rates.
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) – Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have published a new study linking climate change to an increase in crime. The new study was published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters. Researchers Ryan Harp and Kris Karnauskas mined an FBI crime database to understand the connections between global warming and crime rates, especially in winter. They found warmer winters appeared to be setting the stage for more violent crimes like assault and robbery, likely because milder weather created more opportunities for interactions between people.
“Depending on how quickly temperatures rise, we could see two to three million more violent crimes between now and the end of the century than there would be in a non-warming world,” said Ryan Harp, researcher at CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).
