And now that you're really depressed

It's long been speculated, even predicted that disruptions in food and water supplies and loss of habitable land caused by global warming could result in conflict and even wars as people struggle for the resouces to survive.

Now, according to a new study in the journal Human Ecology and reported by LiveScience.com, history may bear out the idea.

The authors reviewed 899 wars fought in China between 1000 and 1911 and found a correlation between the frequency of warfare and records of temperature changes.

“It was the oscillations of agricultural production brought by long-term climate change that drove China’s historical war-peace cycles,” wrote lead author David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong.

William Easterling, a co-author of the IPCC's most recent report on the potential impacts of climate change,

said that the correlation cited by the authors of the new study did not necessarily prove that temperature changes caused increased warfare, but that there could certainly be a relationship between the two.

He minimized the risk of all-out war as a result of resource disruption, which I can agree with if by all-out war he means the big boys going to strategic nukes. But the idea that we could experience the kinds of effects that are being predicted for global warming - especially when you add in resource depletion, the end of peak oil, and the very likely prospect of resource control being used as a political weapon - without a string of the deadliest sort of regional wars, I think is preposterous.