A couple of days ago, a friend sent me a link to a story at The Conversation. Its title:

“How unexploded bombs cause environmental damage – and why climate change exacerbates the problem.”

Now, I’m going to go and wash up, and while I’m doing that, I’m going to make a prediction about what The Conversation thinks it is about climate change that is going to make the problem of UXO worse. (I’ve already got one strong idea, but you never know. I might come up with a better one with my hands in the Ecover bubbles.) Then, I’m going to read the article and see how well I did.

So, while I’m washing up, I want you, dear Cliscep reader, to make a hypothesis of your own. Just what is it about the inexorably-rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that is causing the trouble?

Five minutes later

Here are my ideas.

First, and most obvious, the increased storminess we are supposed to be living with in the new normal is going to cause floods, which pick up the mines, being of increasingly lightweight design, carry them to unexpected places, and drop them there. Unexploded bombs in unexpected places.

Second, the global increase in temperature that is nothing to do with urban heat islands etc – this will lead to more rapid degradation of the chemicals involved in the explosive mixture, making it less stable. Ya know, like sweaty gelignite. Mind you, I can’t help thinking that this might also degrade the trigger mechanism too. Swings and roundabouts?

Third – well, there isn’t a third. Well, there is, but it’s too absurd: that climate change is affecting people’s behaviour and bringing them into more contact with mines etc than otherwise. An example: climate change is making people hungry, so they go digging for roots, and get blown sky high. Like I said: absurd, but I place it here just in case The Conversation finds it a plausible angle.

Ideas lodged on paper – all right, in Notepad, so I could very easily rewrite the above to make myself look smarter than I really am – I can now read the article itself. So stand by, and I’ll report back in five minutes.

Another five minutes later

Here’s The Conversation’s first climate claim (quite a way down the article):

Floods and heavy rainfall can unearth landmines and other unexploded ordnance, sometimes displacing them into areas previously considered safe.

So much so obvious – but it isn’t obvious at all that this really has anything to do with climate change, and is not just weather.

Second:

High temperatures from heatwaves can also cause abandoned munitions to explode.

An example given is of heatwaves of 45C that caused munitions to detonate in Iraq in 2018-19. Well, if a munition goes off at 45C, I think I’d like to store it somewhere far away, or preferably, blow it up in a controlled way. And such heatwaves have occurred before, notwithstanding determined efforts to erase such data from the annals of history.

Plus, the explosions were in arms dumps, not UXO. They were not abandoned. Sorry, that does not count: it’s a fail.

Third:

Wildfires can detonate old ordnance. Here, we have to make the assumption that wildfires are more likely to explode ordnance thanks to climate change. But flammable habitats will burn anyway, eventually, and the fine fuel load (=time since last burn, up to a point, when it starts to decline) is far more important than ambient temperatures (you may call this an assertion without evidence, but I have such evidence in my pocket somewhere and can rummage for it if necessary). An example given is of recent explosions on the North York Moors.

Er, fourth?:

The first three allegations may be thin gruel, but the evidence against climate change grows even thinner, and the hollow sounds of barrels being scraped get louder, as we reach the end of the essay.

Climate disasters and environmental change can also prevent communities from benefiting from land that has been cleared of explosive remnants after the end of war.

That’s because the climate of the new is causing droughts or rising sea levels that ruin the fertility of land cleared of munitions, meaning that the locals can’t grow their crops there. Examples: drought in Angola and increased salinity in Sri Lanka.

Here is how the nameless authors (nameless here; they are named at The Conversation) ended their account:

Explosive remnants of war have a lasting impact, not only on human life but also the environment. Climate change is only making the threat more unpredictable and challenging to address.

It’s more important than ever that measures to restore land, tackle climate change and manage the impact of armed conflict – including explosive remnants of war – are addressed together rather than in isolation.

Unfortunately this is all a large nothing. It is perhaps what we should expect from experts: that their knowledge of nth-order effects make them inclined to place great weight on things that don’t matter. In this case, the UXO is 99.99endlessly_recurring% of the trouble and the climate change is whatever is left.

Link to The Conversation article.

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