from climate realism
Author: Linny Luken
The conservative-leaning women's publication “Evie” magazine recently published an article titled “Climate Change Anxiety is the Cause of Declining Birth Rates.” The author claimed that man-made global warming is causing climate anxiety, thereby misleading people about climate change. Worry. This is mostly wrong. Climate change does not create the anxiety that false and misleading alarmist media reports do, but it is true that blaming extended families for severe weather is just as wrong.
At the beginning of the article, writer Carolyn Ferguson claims that “last year was the hottest year the world has ever seen,” the United States is warming faster than the rest of the world, and “many people are feeling the effects of global warming” this year. “This is wrong.
The idea that any one country is heating up faster than the rest of the world has been thoroughly discredited, and nearly every country on Earth is thought to be this way. Clearly, no place on Earth is likely to warm faster than the rest of the world. Scientists are selecting regions and comparing them independently different time framesusing different data sets and methods, whatever time frame is the best to show the greatest warming. This makes these comparisons essentially worthless.
The fact in the United States is that records of heat anomalies (i.e. extreme heat) have not shown an increase in these heat events since the best records were available in 2005.
Based on long-term data, heat waves in the United States today are less frequent and less severe than they were in the 1930s, as follows:
Likewise, as discussed in this article climate realism After the release, the number of days with temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit actually dropped in much of the country. Only 10 U.S. states are showing growth trends.
Even looking at global proxy data for ancient temperatures does not suggest we are in a period that could be described as “the hottest on record.” According to some sources, today's temperatures appear to be similar to those of the Medieval or Roman Warm Periods, about 1,000 to 2,500 years ago, respectively. Media claims to the contrary are just propaganda.
Much of last year's unusual warming occurred in Antarctica, where temperatures remain well below freezing but are just “colder” than normal in some months, especially September. A significant portion of last year's global heat was largely due to the natural El Niño phenomenon, which is known to increase average temperatures across much of the world. This effect is easily traced in temperature records.
That's not to say that average warming hasn't occurred over the past hundred years or so, but it's not unprecedented, and it's not worrisome.
Evie's post goes on to claim that aggression increases as temperatures rise, writing that “one of the most overlooked corollaries is the increase in group anger and aggression.”
The idea that heat makes people crazy has been floated many times over the years, but even the article linked to Evie's post acknowledges that heat may not be a major factor in most studies that find aggression. Social science and psychology experiments are full of uncontrollable variables. Without attempting any research, the obvious fact that places like Florida, Mexico, the Bahamas, and other hot tropical locations are popular recreational destinations seems to throw cold water on this assumption. Why would someone go on vacation to a place that makes them angrier or more aggressive?
Of course, discomfort may increase, but it's not just caused by rising temperatures. Ferguson then claimed that mental health professionals are “seeing an increasing number of patients experiencing symptoms of climate change anxiety, which is cited as a source of anger for many campaigners towards extended families.”
climate realism Much has been written about how misleading climate anxiety diagnoses are, for example here , here and here , often deflecting blame away from the real culprits. There is such a thing as “climate anxiety” – but it is a media-driven phenomenon, driven by the constant drumbeat of impending doom rather than from actual experience of warming. There are constant media reports telling people that we are heading towards a “global boil” and that every extreme weather event is caused by you and your neighbors using gasoline, including reports from typically conservative publications such as Evie Magazine , which caused people's anxiety.
While Evie is right that climate activists should not direct their anger at large, traditional families, they wrongly believe that climate anxiety is a legitimate phenomenon.
As Ferguson rightly concludes in her article, if someone decides not to have children, “that's their prerogative, but they should know that decision may do little to save our planet.”
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