You’ll laugh, you’ll cry … you may even shoot somebody

To understand the headline of this WaPo piece, you need to know that the new, new theory is, when the mercury hits 90 degrees, that’s when all this climate change caused violence stops:  When is it too hot to kill? Above 90 degrees. Forget that temperatures vary all over the world and this is your typical, woulda, coulda, mighta, shoulda non-science of which climatologists are so fond. But I have a theory of my own. Any increase in violent crime over the last 20 years is due to idiot non-scientists filling people’s heads with mush until they explode. Go ahead. Make my day. Prove me wrong. Do you feel lucky punk? Well, do ya?

After this summer’s many shooting incidents — the massacre in Aurora, Colo., followed by attacks near Texas A&M, at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, at the Family Research Council in Washington and at the Empire State Building on Friday — Americans have pondered possible explanations. Gun laws. Psychological problems. Economic distress.Consider one more. July was, after all, the hottest month on record. Might higher temperatures and global warming spur more violent crime?

“There is good reason to believe that climate change will become one of the major forces driving crime as the century progresses,” Emory University sociologist Robert Agnew writes in “Dire Forecast: A Theoretical Model of the Impact of Climate Change on Crime,” a study published in Theoretical Criminology last year. Citing droughts, famine and extreme weather, Agnew predicts that “as individuals, groups, and states struggle to cope with the effects of climate change, their ability to legally adapt to further effects will decline.”