NECSI President Yaneer Bar-Yam was asked to comment on a new paper in Nature showing a connection between climate cycles and civil war. El Niño oscillations can cause drought and severe weather. The social consequences may be connected with NECSI's work on high food prices triggering unrest.
"Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute in the US, said: 'It is part of the progress we are making in understanding the drivers of human social behaviour.'"
(Damian Carrington, The Guardian)
"Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Mass., argues that the new study is a good example 'of the progress that has been made in understanding how we can predict social behavior writ large. [...] A properly used and understood correlation is an important tool for understanding interdependencies in complex systems — and the world around us.'"
(Janet Raloff, Science News)
