The conservative-leaning women's publication “Evie” magazine recently published an article titled “Climate Change Anxiety is the Cause of Declining Birth Rates,” in which the author claimed that man-made global warming is causing climate anxiety, thereby misleading people about climate change. Changing perceptions. [emphasis, links added]
This is mostly wrong.
Climate change does not create the anxiety that false and misleading alarmist media reports do, and blaming extended families for severe weather is equally wrong.
At the beginning of the article, writer Carolyn Ferguson claimed that “last year was the hottest year on record”, that the United States was warming faster than the rest of the world, and that “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 and the timeframes that best show the greatest warming. This makes these comparisons worthless.
For the United States, records of heat anomalies, such as extreme heat, have not shown an increase in these heat events since the best records began in 2005.
Heat waves in the U.S. are more frequent and severe today than in the 1930s, according to long-term dataas shown in the figure below:
Likewise, as discussed in this article climate realism postal, Variation in the number of days with temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit has decreased across much of the country. Only 10 U.S. states are showing growth trends.
Even looking at global proxy data, which gives a sense of 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 during 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.
This is not to say that average warming has not occurred over the past hundred years or so; But this is not unprecedented, nor is it 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 “calories make people crazy” has been brought up many times over the years, but even the article linked to Evie’s post acknowledges Heat may not have been a major factor in most studies that found aggression.
Social science and psychology experiments are full of uncontrollable variables.
Without attempting any research, The obvious fact that Florida, Mexico, the Bahamas and other hot tropical locations are popular recreational destinations seems to pour cold water on this assumption.
Why would someone go on vacation to a place that makes them angrier or more aggressive?
Of course, the discomfort will intensify; But it's not just higher 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 For example, here , here , and here , much has been written about how misleading diagnoses of climate anxiety are, often shifting blame away from the real culprits.
There is such a thing as “climate anxiety” – but it is a media-driven phenomenon, stemming from the constant drumbeat of impending doom rather than from actual lived experience of warming.
Media reports continue to tell 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 typical conservative publications such as Evie magazine , this is what causes 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 have little impact on saving our planet.”
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