No, Yahoo News, “Extreme Calories” won’t speed up aging, and things aren’t getting worse – Watt Watt?

In other media outlets, Yahoo News recently published an article on CBS News Boston, “Extreme calories may speed up aging in older people,” the USC study said, saying that “extreme calories may speed up aging and increase the risk of disease.” This is false and misleading. Although long-term exposure to severe environmental conditions can affect health, the claim that “extreme heat” is an increasing threat due to climate change is not supported by historical data. In fact, there is evidence that extreme heat waves in the United States are not becoming more frequent or severe, and that cold weather still poses greater threat to human health.

The story is based on a press release from the University of Southern California (USC) entitled “ Study: Extreme calories may speed up aging in older people

In the press release, the author states “Scientists are increasingly concerned about the long-term health effects of climate change, and new research shows that extreme calories can speed up aging and cause many other medical problems.” This speculative language is common in climate alert narratives—using vague phrases such as “increasing attention” and “can” instead of providing reliable, proven evidence.

In published studies Science AdvancesThe authors of the study claimed to be able to detect enhanced DNA changes in blood tests performed by older people. The basis of their research is:

The researchers used mathematical tools called epigenetic clocks to analyze methylation patterns and estimate biological age at each time point. They then compared the participants' biological age changes to the calorie index history at the location and the number of calorie days reported by the National Weather Service from 2010 to 2016.

They provide this map of the United States showing the number of days with heat risk over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not surprisingly, the map looks like the normal high temperature distribution in the summer of the United States, with days above 90°F in southern latitudes. That's not news.

But climatic data at a glance suggest that in the 1930s, the United States, especially in the Dust Bowl years, the heat waves in the United States were much worse than anything we see today. NOAA's temperature records confirm that nearly a century ago, the highest temperature and longest heat waves were recorded. If “extreme heat” is indeed an escalating crisis, we will see an upward trend in heat wave frequency and intensity consistent, but that is not the case.

The story and research completely ignore this and other factors, such as the effect of urban heat islands, which has grown over the past few decades as urban populations grow. Please note the similarity between the map of Figure 1 and the map of Figure 2 below.

Note that most areas of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arizona and Southern California have cities with strong UHI signatures that match the same area as the maps provided by the study. UHI is not a product of climate change, but rather increases the tendency of infrastructure to retain heat and lead to higher temperatures.

Furthermore, the study mistakenly argued that temperature increases were the only reason for changes in DNA aging in the people they studied. Several environmental and personal factors are known to help accelerate aging, including exposure to pollutants, UV radiation, diet, physical exercise, poor sleep quality, poor air quality, and lifestyle-related stressors such as alcohol consumption, obesity and smoking. The study did not take any of these into consideration, resulting in a conclusion that could not be proved to be a temperature-related conclusion.

Finally, the study used only data from 2010 to 2016. This short-term data does not even come close to the 30-year requirement of the World Meteorological Organization defined climate dataset. So short-term impacts can work here, rather than long-term climate change. For example, the El Niño phenomenon held in 2015 and 2016 saw strong events, with temperatures significantly increasing in the United States. The El Niño phenomenon in 2015-16 is one of the most powerful El Niño events observed since 1950, thus increasing the higher temperatures people experience in the United States. In 2015, more than 4,000 daily record highs were set nationwide in 2015, and in 2016, the United States experienced 5,350 high temperatures.

Searches of the study show that the authors completely ignored the El Niño incidents in 2015 and 2016 and their effects on high temperatures, misleading them to climate change. Researchers are merely fake science to achieve their false conclusions.

While researchers and the media like to focus on the health risks associated with heat, they always ignore well-documented cold weather hazards. Posted in The Lancet The number of deaths related to cold was found to far outpace heat-related deaths, with a gap of nearly 10 to 1. Cold temperatures aggravate cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, resulting in significantly higher mortality rates in winter than heat waves. In the United States, extreme cold events, winter storms and power outages caused by “green” energy policies limiting reliable fossil fuels, risk of public health more than summer. But rather than addressing the real dangers (how restrictive climate policies make heating more expensive), it is an existing threat to keep the media fixed on “extreme heat.”

This kind of report has nothing to do with science. This is a narrative about driving the climate crisis. Rather than examining long-term historical data and other factors, the media selectively highlights short-term research and worst-case scenarios of flaws to cause climate alerts. This article is just another example of this trend – causing fear without looking at the full picture. If the media really focus on public health, they will focus on the deadly impact of cold weather and policies that make energy more expensive, rather than pushing suspicious claims of heat waves to “accelerate aging.”

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior researcher in the Environment and Climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business in front of and behind the camera since 1978 and currently broadcast forecasts are being made every day. He created a weather graphics demonstration system for television, professional weather instruments, and co-authored a peer-reviewed paper on climate issues. He operates the world's most popular website on the award-winning site wattsupwiththat.com.

Originally published in ClimateRealism

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