Does global warming make your baby smaller? 800 years from now babies may weigh 17g less!

A new study uses a  ‘high resolution air temperature estimation model’ to figure out (guess) the daily air temperature pregnant women in Massachusetts might have been exposed to during their pregnancy. A whopping increase of 8.5C in the last three months was associated with a 17 gram drop in birth weight. Given that global temperatures have risen by about 1 C in the last 100 years, at the current rate, that amount of warming will arrive in 850 years. Then if this correlation has any causal role, the average 3kg baby will weigh about 0.5% less. Scared yet?

Since the researchers are talking about outdoor temperatures, I’m guessing this study will especially concern pregnant women who will be homeless, or without electricity in the year 2850. Obviously the solution is cheap coal powered air conditioners

 

. Why risk it?*

The Daily Mail  h/t Colin

Is climate change affecting birth weights? Exposure to warmer weather during pregnancy leads to smaller babies, study claims

  • Researchers uncovered a link between air temperature and birth weight
  • Found exposure to high air temperature during pregnancy increases the risk of lower birth weight and can cause premature birth
  • An increase of 8.5 °C (47.3°F) in the last trimester was associated with a 0.6 ounce (17g) decrease in birth weight of babies born full term, study claims

By Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline

I think it says something about the science sub editing here that conversions were done through some kind of google app: an  8.5 °C increase is not “plus 47.3°F”.

As Dailymail commenter  Gregg, from Wichita, said: “The science is sketchy.. The taxes are real.”

The original press release:

The paper, “Using Satellite-Based Spatiotemporal Resolved Air Temperature Exposure to Study the Association between Ambient Air Temperature and Birth Outcomes in Massachusetts” was recently published in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal.

Together with his colleagues, Dr. Kloog developed a “high resolution air temperature estimation model” to predict daily air temperature by kilometer and address level exposure during various prenatal exposure periods from date of conception through birth for each mother.

“With the increase in temperatures over the last century and continued emissions from greenhouse gases, more attention is being focused on effects from heat,” Kloog says.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

*I am not forgetting the 1.6 billion people without electricity right now. This study may apply to third world pregnant women (if their model works, the populations are similar, and the signal is larger than the noise). But the answer is still cheap coal fired air conditioners.

8.4 out of 10 based on 48 ratings

100 comments to Does global warming make your baby smaller? 800 years from now babies may weigh 17g less!

  • #
    Meghal

    This does not make sense to me. In last century, carbon dioxide levels have gone up. At the same time, average human size has gone up in all continents. Moreover, jurassic time had 10x CO2 concentrations; and jurassic time hosted huge size flora and fauna.

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    • #
      Peter C

      You seem to make a good argument there for reemergence of megafauna ( including huge human babies) as CO2 levels increase!

      90

    • #
      aussieguy

      You maybe onto something…

      Macrosomia (big baby)
      http://www.babycentre.co.uk/a1015615/macrosomia-big-baby

      More and More Women Giving Birth to Giant Babies
      http://jezebel.com/more-and-more-women-giving-birth-to-giant-babies-1154143242

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    • #
      stargazer

      Letssee…. if I were to ‘research’ the evolutionary track (future) of fetal/infant size would I place more weight (no pun intended) on the possible effects of increasing temps due to CO2 or more weight on the affects of good diet and aggressive prenatal care?

      I think I would be more concerned with a quality diet over CO2 affecting temps… any day. Past, present or future.

      ‘estimation model…’ I ain’t even gonna touch that one. I don’t think I could without using some very salty language.

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      • #
        Just-A-Guy

        stargazer,

        You wrote:

        I think I would be more concerned with a quality diet over CO2 affecting temps… any day. Past, present or future.

        If you read the press release linked to in Jo’s O/P, you’ll notice that there is no link there to the original study. Not even to an abstract. It’s clear they don’t want people to actually see the study for fear of it being debunked.

        What’s even more interesting is this:

        put the question “Is climate change affecting birth weights?” into the google search box with the double quotes and you’ll see just how many MSM ‘outlets’ have latched on to this story. They clearly want to scare young pregnant women into believing in the cc hype. How low and morally reprehensible can you get?

        I guess if you’ve got billions of dollars/euros invested in the ‘Climate Change Industrial Complex’, there’s nothing you won’t do, no moral red-lines you won’t cross, to protect your bottom line.

        Abe

        30

    • #
      Andrew McRae

      That’s not the only confusing aspect.
      “An increase of 8.5 °C in the last trimester was associated with a 17g decrease in birth weight of babies”

      Smaller babies make smaller adults which are composed of less carbon and require less agriculture to maintain.

      So does emitting CO2 increase the carbon footprint of humanity or decrease it? 0_o

      40

    • #
      Geoff

      Exactly. CO2 promotes growth. Is anyone investigating this? The trees all got bigger. They used the CO2. The CO2 levels fell. The big trees (and reptiles) all died. No comet or meteor involved!

      Now we have idiots who want to reduce CO2 levels. What happens if they are successful. What would happen if CO2 fell below 150ppm? Would most life end?

      10

  • #
    mwhite

    If that’s true babies should get bigger the further away from the tropics they are. (assuming similar nutrition)

    Babies born in the temperate and arctic zone should be bigger than those born near to the equator????

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    • #
      Gee Aye

      You’d need a twin study to verify that contention: the identical twins are separated pre zygotically then are placed into the wombs of identical twins living in the same latitude who then immediately separate to different latitudes.

      Seriously though, the genetics of the people – their evolutionary history – needs to be considered. The birthweight/ temperature association will pop out as a multi ordered residual if it is a real thing at all.

      I am skeptical that it is a real thing and put this down to the media being both unable to resist a good story versus one that needs to be reported and unable to report on it well.

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      • #
        Manfred

        Absolutely Gee Aye, and the interquartile range is also an odd metric to use here.

        I think that there exists ample evidence to suggest that the ‘perfect parasite’, which is the physiological human developing foetus managed a full term to a healthy delivery under hideous and far more adverse conditions, to the insignificant variation modeled in this “study” by these authors, the recipients of a political subsidy grant from the Harvard EPA PM Clean Air Research Center.

        In any event, the ‘average’ neonate at full term delivery will weigh between 2700 to 4000 grams. These climate clowns are suggesting a variation of 16.7g (approximately 1.9% of the natural range (1300g) in average weight). It is doubtful whether this is of any statistically significance whatsoever. It certainly has no clinical significance.

        Pure desperation embodied by fevish suckling at the financial nipple of the EPA Climate Warriors publishes this nonsense in eco-peer reviewed literature, and unadulterated, uncritical fanaticism publishes it again in the MSM.

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        • #

          All OK Manfred but your 3rd paragraph does not fit with usual statistical parameters. I am guessing this is a 95% CI or some such. If you sample well enough a rise of a few grams could be detected despite this level of variation and you might even find the the CI changes to, say, 2701 to 4005 (for this example you have to pretend thatthat the figures you state are exact and not rounded)

          00

          • #
            Ben of Houston

            This is medicine, not exact counts. The 16g is within the error of the measurement itself (a wiggling baby on the scale easily moves the weight more than 20 grams), so it’s a non-meaningful result. You cannot say if a child was affected because the change is less than the error of a single measurement.

            Just because something is detectable on an average does not mean it is clinically significant. Beyond the most premature of neonates, 16 g means nothing. It’s the story of the 65 million and 36 year old dinosaur all over again.

            00

      • #
        Tim Hammond

        You don’t need a twin study, you can simply look at very large reasonably similar samples that are accurately recorded, e.g. Norway and the southern states of the US.

        00

        • #
          Just-A-Guy

          Tim Hammond,

          You wrote:

          You don’t need a twin study, you can simply look at very large reasonably similar samples that are accurately recorded . . .

          If they did that, it would put a lie to this obviously ridiculous claim.

          Abe

          20

        • #

          Tim… it was a joke

          00

    • #
      aussiepete

      Ok i’m buying into property in Tasmania with a view to building extended stay accommodation units for pregnant ladies when the market demand comes on. I should make a killing with this. The 850 years is a bit of stumbling block but i’m working on it. Strike me pink, are we all mad.

      20

  • #
    LeeHarvey

    Hmm… I was born in April, in the ‘States, so the better part of my gestation happened during the winter. I weighed 4.63 kg at birth. I think they may be on to something!

    ‘Course it would be neat if only there were some way to test their hypothesis on a larger sample…

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      LeeHarvey,

      You wrote:

      I think they may be on to something!

      Yes they are. People eat more when it’s cold out. That includes pregnant women. The measurable but insignificant weight difference can be attributed to this factor alone.

      Oh the comedy!

      Abe

      30

  • #
    Scott Scarborough

    If this is true (Yuk Yuk) babies born in the summer should be 4 or 5 ounces smaller than babies born in the winter for most temperate areas. That is an easy one to test. Don’t need any “Satellite based Spatiotemporal Resolved Air temperature.” All you need are some hospital records with birth weight and birth date. Of couse you might have a hard time getting a grant for something any grade school student could do.

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    • #
      diogenese2

      “you might have a hard time getting a grant” Well Ben Gurion University seem to have got this down to a fine art! 0.6 of an ounce FFS, has no-one a sense of proportion? My first grandson was born on Saturday and his togger was bigger than that. Still, if the 17g is selective, perhaps this would solve the population problem that Hans Schellnhauber has just persuaded his Holiness to address. How this squares with current RC doctrine has yet to emerge, though Italian speakers can find out courtesy of Bishop Hill.
      Anyway, how is the population of Massachusetts representative of anything except Democrats.

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      • #
        Just-A-Guy

        diogenese2.

        You wrote:

        Well Ben Gurion University seem to have got this down to a fine art!

        Ben Gurion University, as well as the other Universities in Israel, are well known for their left-wing socialist agenda. I know. I’ve lived here for 23 years. They, and the media, don’t even make an effort to hide this fact. They all seem to be proud of their political bent.

        Therefore, any ‘studies’ this supposed ‘center for higher learning’ may produce will invariably and unashamedly have that left-wing socialist idealogy woven into it.

        That this study was undertaken in ‘cahoots’ with Harvard, another left-wing paragon of ‘higher learning’ is no surprise.

        These two institutions were made for each other.

        From the press release:

        BGU is a university with a conscience, where the highest academic standards are integrated with community involvement, committed to sustainable development of the Negev.

        And there it is, Agenda 21’s sustainable developement.

        Why am I not surprised.

        Abe

        20

    • #
      Manfred

      Polynesians appear to be recognised to have the largest most muscular physiques on the planet.

      The interesting thing is that Polynesians are thought to have come from considerably colder environments…

      At Otago University’s Anatomy Department, Professor Phillip Houghton has for 10 years been studying Polynesian People’s evolution, the subject of a book he published in October, People of the Great Ocean.

      Houghton’s theory is that their muscle comes from their ancestors enduring extremely cold temperatures while exploring and settling the Pacific hundreds of years ago. Today’s Polynesians have inherited their body types from those early navigators.

      “The Pacific can actually be a very cold place, especially for people who’re exploring it at sea with Neolithic technology and little protection from the cold winds and wet weather,” says Houghton.

      20

  • #
    Leonard Lane

    From the narrative in the press release no information on sample size, dates of birth of babies, and so on. Thus, it is impossible to say anything beyond this is a press release.
    Yes 8.5C is 47.3F but a change of 8.5C is a change of 15.3F.
    As Scott said above, all you need is hospital records of birth date and birth weight for babies born in the Spring when temperatures are rising in Boston.
    Now if a similar study was made in the first three months of fall when temperatures were falling you would have a comparative study to test the hypothesis that increasing temperatures in final 3 months of pregnancy causes weight reduction in newborns. And, did the study account for prenatal care and tobacco and marijuana smoking, and alcohol and drug use by the mothers and fathers?

    Of course, in areas of the world where about 2 billion live without air conditioning and hospitals, what do we know about ambient temperature and birth weight?

    131

    • #
      LeeHarvey

      Holy mother of… That’s where they got the 47.3 number from?

      And this person is ostensibly a science writer?

      The stupid… it burns.

      140

  • #
    Yonniestone

    So in 8,500 years we will have a 50% drop in birth weight?, by that time we’ll probably have Hobbits and Elves anyway….

    120

  • #
    Ruairi

    To know what a baby should weigh,
    At the start of its very first day,
    I’m afraid you must wait,
    For a warmist update,
    More than eight hundred years,by the way.

    251

  • #
    John_in_Oz

    Sample size? Standard deviation? Margins of error of their ‘temperature estimator? The likelihood of their results being robust is highly implausible.
    Do we see this in geographical contexts? Are Swedes larger at birth than Fijians?
    Their report leads me to wonder; how has improved nutrition affected baby size over time, and how has that impacted on pregnancy and Cesarean rates? Are children today above optimum birth weight?
    In the unlikely event of their results holding up, might this not actually turn out to be yet another benefit of ‘Global Warming’?

    111

  • #
    Peter OBrien

    NEW GLOBAL WARMING THEORY

    By environment reporters Rachel Harminny and Salvador Ballenas

    A new study, released last week, casts doubt on the importance of CO2 as a driver of global warming. Two researchers at the University of Inner Western Sydney have uncovered a link between the playing of cricket and prolonged periods of hot weather over the past 100 years in both northern AND southern hemispheres.
    Professor Quince Flummery and Dr Norm Couchpotato say the correlation is particularly strong between the late 20th century warming and the development of One Day Internationals and, more recently, 20/20 matches. “It cannot be mere co-incidence,” insists Professor Flummery.
    Flummery also sees a link between the frenzy of cricket recently played in Australia, including the World Cup, and the severe storms which hit Sydney and Brisbane in recent weeks, but says considerably more research funding will be required to develop this idea.
    “In the meantime,” say the pair, “if the world is not willing to give up playing cricket, we must strongly caution against the development of further forms of the game.”
    When asked what could be done, Flummery is cautious. “It’s possible,” he suggests, “that playing more football, which seems to be associated with cold weather, could counteract the warming effect of cricket, but it could also have unintended consequences. We think the two sports are not well mixed in the atmosphere. Again, it will take a lot more research, which won’t come cheap.”
    Newly elected Greens leader, Pixie Stalin, has called upon the government to immediately ban backyard cricket or, at the very least, to severely regulate it. “This is just a sensible precaution,” she says.
    A further complication is the question of the climate debt owed by the cricketing nations to the rest of the world. This research has already created waves in India, the world’s major cricketing nation but also one of the poorest. A spokesman for the Indian government, Dilmah Charwallah, has ruled out any reduction in matches, claiming that cricket is now intrinsic to Indian culture. Furthermore, he ruled out any compensation being paid by India.
    “Cricket was foisted on this country by Britain when they brutally colonised us in the 18th century,” he pointed out, “in much the same way they introduced opium to China. If this link between cricket and global warming is proved then Britain has a moral obligation to assume the debt on India’s behalf.”
    Nonetheless, despite the controversy, the university’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Paul Ponzi, is upbeat.
    “This paper lays the groundwork for a whole new field of research,” he claims. “CO2 has become a bit passe – frankly it’s been done to death – so this discovery will allow a whole new generation to enjoy the sort of career that they aspire to – years of publicly funded research without the stultifying need to justify results.”
    Head of the university’s School of Creative Writing, Ersatz Professor Jules Hyper-Bowl, agrees. “We’ve just announced a new post graduate course in research grant application writing,” he tells us. “Frankly the old paradigm of just chucking in reference to ‘climate change’ probably won’t cut it in the research grant application of tomorrow.”

    160

  • #
    Peter Miller

    ‘Climate science’ at its very best, or….

    Let’s create a scare story about nothing in order to support our grant addiction.

    141

  • #

    Great news! This should mean an end to all those Pacific Island kids dominating in junior Rugby League. Sometime this millennium, in any case.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      And think of the benefits – if people weigh less, the islands “threatened” by climate change will float higher in the water….

      Huh? What rising sea levels…win-win

      /sarc

      40

  • #
    Manfred

    The level of significance is not given and the confidence interveal is wide enough to drive a coach and horse through with room to spare. No self-respecting MSM sockpuppet would check this.

    From the paper itself the results as follows:

    Method (truncated):

    We used linear and logistic mixed models, and accelerated failure time models, to estimate associations between Ta and the following outcomes among live births

    Results:

    Predicted air temperature (Ta) during multiple time windows before birth was negatively associated with birth weight: average birth weight was 16.7g lower (95%CI: –29.7, –3.7) in association with an interquartile range (IQR) increase (8.4°C) in Ta during the last trimester. Ta over the entire pregnancy was positively associated with preterm delivery (PT) (OR = 1.02; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.05) and LBW (OR = 1.04; 95% CI: 0.96, 1.13)

    The researchers from Harvard University include, Steven J. Melly, Prof. Brent A. Coull, Dr. Francesco Nordio, and Prof. Joel D. Schwartz.

    This study was funded by the Harvard EPA PM Clean Air Research Center (CLARC) (R- 834798), NIEHS ES000002, and the following R21 climate grants ES020695 and AG040027.

    71

  • #
    Dennis

    Off Topic: Outback Magazine June/July 2015

    Photograph with caption: A Roo bounds through bucketing snow in the Snowy Mountains, NSW

    There’s likely to be less snow falling this winter, as Australia moves back into an El Nino weather phase. The Bureau of Meteorology doesn’t usually issue official long term weather forecasts, but manager of climate prediction services Dr Andrew Watkins says: ” Typically El Nino years give the shallowest snow cover. We just don’t get enough precipitation – we don’t get enough of the white stuff falling out of the sky.” He says warmer temperatures in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia in August-September can lengthen a snow season by sending bands of moist airtight across the country to the Snowy Mountains and Victorian High Country, but indications in early May were that this was unlikely to happen this year.

    70

  • #
    el gordo

    ‘A Japanese study found that more baby girls are born, compared to boys, when temperatures rise in the country.’

    If we take this at face value, then there will be a lot less women around when a cool trend sets in.

    40

  • #
    Neville

    Tongans have the largest body mass of any race on the globe. Now we know that they live in a hotter climate than most of the people on earth.
    But Maoris also have a large body mass and they live in a much colder area than Tongans. So it doesn’t make much sense does it?

    100

  • #
    Neville

    Many years ago I had a short email response from Peter Brown about earlier human brain size and height etc.
    He told me that most humans were taller and had larger brain size about 10,000 years ago. I still find this very hard to believe, but he’s an anthropologist and I’m not. BTW this also applies to Aborigines in earlier times as well.
    Here’s his site, very interesting stuff and the OZ index is well worth a look. IOW he informed me that Aborigines were smaller at the time of white settlement than the examples from the same area shown in the OZ index. Hard to understand.

    http://peterbrown-palaeoanthropology.net/index.html

    60

    • #
      el gordo

      Neanderthals had bigger brains than homo sapiens, not that I’m drawing any conclusions except that they were well adapted to cold climes.

      50

    • #

      Neville, humans were taller 10,000 years ago. Then the agricultural revolution kicked in, they ate a high grain (carb) diet, got shorter and picked up a lot of other conditions. Bit transition from hunter gatherer to farmer. I believe we have regained much of that height in the last 100 years through better diet (more protein). That’s currently occurring in Japan and China now.

      40

      • #
        RoHa

        When I taught in older classrooms in Japanese universities (classrooms in which the desks and seats were bolted to the floor), I was constantly falling over the students’ legs as I walked around. There simply wasn’t room for them to put their feet under the desks.

        On the underground, I could look over the heads of the older men. The younger men could look over mine.

        30

  • #
    handjive

    Who said you could have babies?
    . . .
    Vatican speaker and California Governor in push for massive depopulation… talk of ‘Planetary Court’ and removal of 6 billion people under new ‘Earth Constitution’ and ‘World Government’
    (June 15, 2015, naturalnews.com)
    ~ ~ ~
    UN Climate Change Official says “We Should Make Every Effort” to Depopulate the Planet

    Comments are made at 4.20 into the following Youtube video.

    50

    • #
      Dennis

      What about UN employees showing initiative and leading the exit?

      80

      • #
        Leonard Lane

        Never happen. Our dear and precious leaders in the UN must stay on to keep control. It is the less valued in their high-minded opinions (though probably higher valued by the rest of the world because of their contributions to mankind)who must go.
        Whenever someone proposes to harm others for the common good, it is always proper to ask them to lead by example.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Their most valued contribtions to date keep the room warm through production of hot air…….

          30

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      I disagree completely with her assertion we have exceed the planets capacity to carry population.

      Case in point – if you got every person on the planet and relocated them into just NSW, they would have a 3m x 3m space each. And this is just one state in one country.

      http://www.overpopulationisamyth.com

      Its well known in places liek Africa, nutrition issues are more likely to be a result of governance or war, than actual ability to grow food, so me thinks Ms Figurers speaks pure political Agenda 21 nonsense……

      80

    • #
      Bill

      Read Larry Niven’s “Tales of Known Space”, specifically the references to the UN and the A.R.M. Doesn’t seen so much like fiction now.

      00

  • #
    tom0mason

    For those of you that feel the need, at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1308075/ is the abstract with a link to the free pdf document.
    A truly appalling waste of time and money that can not in any way be called medical science.

    90

    • #
      ScotsmaninUtah

      tomomason thank for the interesting link..

      Intriguing why would one would target a satellite or ask for time on one to measure the effect of temperature on a person (pregnant or not) when the resolution of the satellite is 1 Km.
      apparently the limitations of the study declared that they were unable to monitor the temperature indoors or gather information on the weight or BMI of the person under the study.
      The effect of smoking cigarettes on birth weight was discounted due to not enough heat generated.

      A truly worthwhile study indeed …

      next door to this article was a study on the relationship between suicide and air temperature (in Asian countries).
      Just for fun I Googled suicide rates by country and:
      in the alternative list Greenland was first ! 😮
      Naturally we all knew this, and TBO, I would want to throw myself under an ice cube with all those scientists prodding about.

      50

  • #
    toorightmate

    Go to Nigeria to see the little babies and then off to Norway to see the really big babies.

    60

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Agreed…my friends whose parents are Maltese are quite short compared to him ( who was born & raised here ). He mentioned one day nutrition was scarce in WW2 Malta, and as such they didnt grow that tall…..

      Certainly genetics makes a big difference too, although having met his parents I’d be inclined to give his views some support.

      50

  • #
    handjive

    ‘Twin’ Ice Age Infants Discovered in 11,500-Year-Old Alaska Grave

    A tenderly decorated grave discovered in Alaska holds the remains of two infants dating back 11,500 years, the youngest Ice Age humans yet found in the Western Hemisphere, archaeologists say.

    Interred together inside an ancient residence, one child was about 12 weeks old at the time of death, the other, a late-term fetus — the first known instance of a prenatal burial in the Americas.

    Researchers say that the babies were memorialized with an array of goods that was, by Paleoindian standards, rather lavish.

    “This mortuary treatment is the first of its kind in the New World — no other Paleoindian burials share this feature,” said Dr. Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, referring to the burials being found inside a residence.

    http://westerndigs.org/twin-ice-age-infants-discovered-in-11500-year-old-alaska-grave/

    30

  • #
    ROM

    Sounds like the author of the article “Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline” is quite worried as to how much lighter the birth weight of her baby at will be when she gets herself pregnant in 850 years time.

    Sarah Griffiths as a media person could of course check those figures from the researcher Dr Kloog [ if anybody could ever bring themselves to call that clown a “researcher” at any level with that sort of no doubt, tax payer funded complete and utter crap. ] by looking at the contra increased birth weights of babies born in the much colder Nuuk. capital of Greenland where the mean average annual temperature is minus 1.3C.

    And scientists are starting to wonder why the reputation of science and scientists are fast going down the sink hole of public esteem like something very stinky being flushed down the toilet and good riddance to it.

    50

  • #

    Massachusetts eh!

    Low birth weight! Could be put down to Democrats fretting. (over any number of things I guess)

    I guess that sort of cancels out the recent finding that Mississippi is now the most obese State in the U.S.

    Because of that, Mississippi has now changed things. The new State bird is the, umm, Fried Chicken!

    Boom tish!

    Tony.

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    • #
      Dennis

      Former Australian Prime Minister Gillard has advised Hilary Clinton to deal with sexism swiftly as she campaigns to become POTUS

      10

      • #
        toorightmate

        Julia should also advise Hillary the Crook to get John McTiernan on the job.
        He could come up with another “the blackest day in USA sport” to send the hounds down a blind alley.

        10

    • #
      Dennis

      Former Australian Prime Minister Gillard has advised Hilary Clinton to deal with sexism swiftly as she campaigns to become POTUS

      20

  • #
    Ursus Augustus

    You mean it got warmer as Massechusetts went from late winter and spring to mid summer! Does this happen every year? Is it that mommies metabolise ever so slightly differently at different times of year? Is this the end of the human race??

    OMG!!

    40

  • #
    pat

    from the land of negative birth rates due to the use of contraception banned by the Catholic Church!

    15 June: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: Themes of the Pope’s Encyclical on Climate, Equity and the Environment Emerge in Italian Leak
    Read on for a few important lines, starting with Francis’s reference to, if not direct acceptance of, scientific reports concluding that humans
    are the dominant driver of recent warming of the climate…
    The Guardian has translated several noteworthy passages, including one that essentially endorses the reports of the Intergovernmental
    Panel on Climate Change and the conclusions that emerged a year ago at a four-day meeting on sustainable development and climate change
    hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Science meeting last year (which I reported on at length)…
    Senior United Nations officials had told me in recent weeks that they were very eager for this kind of language, in hopes that Francis could
    help drive an agreement in climate treaty negotiations in Paris in December…
    Addendum | It’s also clear (no surprise) that the encyclical will not focus on population growth as a factor driving environmental and
    social stresses. While warnings of an exploding global “population bomb” have not played out, high fertility rates are still a big driver of
    rising human vulnerability to environmental threats in the world’s poorest places…
    http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/themes-of-the-popes-encyclical-on-climate-equity-and-the-environment-emerge-in-italian-leak/?_r=0

    16 June: Salon: Lindsay Abrams: A draft of the pope’s big climate encyclical leaked early — and it has a damning message about humankind’s environmental destruction
    An early version of the forthcoming religious text doesn’t pull any punches
    But this early draft is about as damning as climate activists could have hoped for (and climate deniers could have feared), combining the science of climate change with a moral imperative to act. It acknowledges that human activity is the main cause of global warming, and that fossil fuels — coal, oil and even natural gas — are evil, their use permissible only as a temporary solution while the world transitions to a renewable energy economy…
    “If the current trend continues,” it warns, “this century could be witness to unheard of climate change and unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us.”…
    In one uncharacteristic section, the encyclical makes a specific policy directive: it rejects the use of carbon credits, arguing instead for the direct reduction of emissions…
    An encyclical, as Charles Reid Jr., an expert on Catholicism and canon law, recently explained to Salon, ”is the highest form of papal teaching. It is solemn, it is expected that Catholics should take it very seriously: They’re obliged to read it carefully, and to ***follow it.” …
    http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/a_draft_of_the_popes_big_climate_encyclical_leaked_early_and_it_has_a_damning_message_about_humankinds_environmental_destruction/

    Pope Francis warns of destruction of world’s ecosystem in leaked …
    The Guardian-7 hours ago

    Pope warns of ‘unprecedented damage’ from climate change in leaked encyclical document – Europe – World – The …
    The Independent‎ – 5 hours ago

    Change your lifestyle to stop climate disaster, urges Pope
    The Times (subscription)-4 hours ago

    Pope Francis climate change encyclical ‘leak’ condemned as ‘act of sabotage’
    Telegraph.co.uk – ‎5 hours ago‎

    ‘We Are Not God’: Pope’s Encyclical On Climate Change Reportedly …
    CBS Local-5 hours ago

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      handjive

      The Rapture Index

      You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer.

      The higher the number, the faster we’re moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

      COMMENTS ON ACTIVE CATEGORIES:

      38. Wild Weather
      The US sets a record for the longest span without seeing landfall of a major hurricane.
      41. Drought:
      California will run out of water in one year’s time.
      42. Plagues
      The Ebola Threat is diminishing in West Africa.
      43. Climate
      There has been a decrease in the level of deadly weather.
      44. Food Supply
      Record corn and soybean harvest expected In U.S.
      45. Floods
      The lack of activity has downgraded this category.
      . . .
      Sorta reminds me of 4HiroshimaBombs

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    The Four Horsemen

    I would hate to point out the bleedin obvious BUT has it occurred to them that women eat more calorie laden foods in the cooler months than the warmer ones?

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    Rollo

    OT but did anyone see Four Corners ” The End of Coal? ” ?

    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/06/15/4253096.htm

    It might be worthwhile to leave a comment when it comes up on their forum.

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    I’d expect that chicks in a nest would be more vulnerable to changes in temperature than humans in a womb, but…

    Over the past 26 years, our study population has experienced increased temperatures, increased frequency of heatwaves and reduced rainfall – but the mean body mass of chicks has not changed. Despite the apparent stasis, mass was associated with weather across the previous year, but in multiple counteracting ways. Firstly, (i) chick mass was negatively associated with extremely recent heatwaves, but there also positive associations with (ii) higher maximum temperatures and (iii) higher rainfall, both occurring in a period prior to and during the nesting period, and finally (iv) a longer-term negative association with higher maximum temperatures following the previous breeding season. Our results illustrate how a morphological trait may be affected by both short- and long-term effects of the same weather variable at multiple times of the year and that these effects may act in different directions. We also show that climate within the relevant time windows may not be changing in the same way, such that overall long-term temporal trends in body size may be minimal.

    Loeske E. B. Kruuk, Helen L. Osmond, Andrew Cockburn
    Global Change Biology 05/2015; DOI:10.1111/gcb.12926

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    maurie

    Now so many have chosen to blindly repeat all these blatant lies
    just like a disc jockey reading from a record cover, even those supposedly sensibly among the gullible in our current government seem weak to go against the flow, & that makes it very dangerous for our society.

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    Lord Jim

    Does global warming make your baby smaller?

    More pertinent research question would be: ‘Does ‘climate change’ make scientific research less scientific?’

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      OriginalSteve

      CAGW funding seems to de-activate scientists minds…maybe a field for study? It seems a reproducable result….

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        llew Jones

        Could be the funding but is it not just possible that global warming may be the cause of that specific deactivation? There certainly seems to be an abundance of evidence to support that hypothesis.

        If only Abbott was willing to fund such research say from a small tax on wind power.

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    ExWarmist

    Could someone in the 13th century accurately predict the science and technology that would be available 800 years later in the 21st century.

    Just saying.

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      el gordo

      The answer is probably no, but a few hundred years later Leonardo came up with a plane, submarine and parachute.

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        The Four Horsemen

        Yeah but they didn’t bloody work.
        History has shown that all manner of clever gadgets came about anciently , but they either didn’t work efficiently or were too costly to make or the technology couldn’t be harnessed eg steam calculating engines etc.

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    Eugene WR Gallun

    Too funny. — Eugene WR Gallun

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    RoHa

    Global Warming ate my baby?

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    Jeef

    Long time reader, long time not posting, but this just floored me. Presumably some dumb schmuck paid for this?

    At least that wasted cash hasn’t set the skeptic movement back any!

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    A serf’s ‘Thought fer Today:’

    ‘The science is weak, the idea is strong.’

    Postscript:

    ‘And the medja are sheep.’

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    TedM

    Another example of taxpayers money paying for pseudo research into what is pure bovine faeces.

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      James Bradley

      TedM,

      “Another example of taxpayers money paying for… (insert socialist cause of choice)”

      And that right there is a perfect example of the difference between capitalism and socialism.

      Capitalist are happy to tell you how much you can do with their money.

      Socialist are happy to tell you what they can do with your money.

      And the proof is:

      The 2015 Midwinter Ball Auctions.

      The leftist hype and social militia would have us believe that Mr. Abbott has no support and that the working man’s union secretary and best buddy, Bill Shorten is the alternative Prime Minister… until it comes time to put their hand in their own pockets.

      Billy ‘No Friends’ has no bids, not even an Employer Donation sorry, a Union sympathy bid.

      Meanwhile Mr. Abbott is going strong.

      http://www.ebay.com.au/usr/bid_for_good

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    Sunray

    Thank you Jo, it would be illuminating to see the reasoning behind the “need” for such research.

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    Sonny

    So Climate Change TM will solve the epidemic of obese babies?

    This is the science that just keeps on giving! THANKYOU

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    Andrew

    LOOOOL 47F!! Hahahaha

    As for the 8.5C thing, dya reckon women (even pregnant women) eat more in winter than when the weather is warmer? Might that make babies a few grams heavier in colder weather?

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    Roy Hogue

    An increase of 8.5 °C (47.3°F) in the last trimester was associated with a 0.6 ounce (17g) decrease in birth weight of babies born full term, study claims

    By the way, an 8.5° C rise is only 15.3° F, not 47.3. Jo, is this a typo? Otherwise the researchers must be close to brain dead.

    These are normal temperature swings that the human race has been exposed to for its entire history. How can global warming even be mentioned in this context?

    A few years ago they were saying that our more reliable and more adequate food supply in modern civilization was responsible for larger everything, even earlier puberty. Now suddenly global warming?

    ROFLMAO 🙂

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      Roy Hogue

      I am not going to believe my grandson’s 8 lb + birth weight was caused by global warming. I’d sooner believe little green men from the planet Zorch sprinkled magic dust on his mother in an evil experiment to create mutants who would take over the world for them.

      But there you go being hasty again, Roy. The mutants are already here and taking over the world. Where is Superman when you need him?

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      Fluctuations in temperatures seem completely ignored in all of this. Many of our trees died over the winter when temperatures went from 58F to −20F in a couple of days and it stayed cold for a week. The trees couldn’t prepare for winter. Those that are tougher survived. It’s an unusual drop, but from 58F to 32F is common and easily tolerated. Considering pregnancy takes 40 weeks, unless one lives on the equator or at the North Pole, there is NO temperature measurment that is applicable. Average all you like, it’s completely irrelevent. And folks wonder why the science is called suspect.

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        jorgekafkazar

        Science is suspect?? She’s dead, Jim. Papers like this killed it years ago.

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        Roy Hogue

        Sheri,

        I’m sure glad I live in Southern California. 58 down to -20 in a couple of days scares this warm climate boy out of his wits. 😉 I had my time in the snow in Massachusetts back in 1963 and ’64 and that taught me that I didn’t like it. And the lowest temperatures there were around +16 F (-9 C). I suspect you’d call that a warm day.

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        • #

          I’m happy to leave you to your wam southern California. I love the cold! Right now, we are having rain and more rain. This is usually the “dry” season, but we are still waiting for that! The sudden cold was hard on trees, as noted. Many evergreen trees died in town and Chinese elm. The problem of what to do with all these dead trees remains—one strong wind and we’ll have property damage everywhere, especially with all this rain.

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        Roy Hogue

        Sheri,

        The science looks more like irrelevant. Could we not spend that money on something more productive? I know you and I could both come up with at least one research project that ought to have a lot higher priority than this climate change madness.

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          Roy Hogue

          But of course, climate change research is easier, isn’t it? 🙁

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          • #

            Yes, of course climate change research is easier—fewer exacting standards. The science money could be better spent elsewhere, starting with teaching researchers about cause/correlation and what consistutes legimate research (obviously, this does not). Even the medical research has been tainted with bad studies. If only we could return to science work and stop feeding the government and media appetites, we might get some useful studies.

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    ROM

    Tips & notes for Jo!

    From the on line Journal “Heart”

    Cardiac risk factors and prevention

    Habitual chocolate consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease among healthy men and women

    Conclusions;
    Cumulative evidence suggests that higher chocolate intake is associated with a lower risk of future cardiovascular events, although residual confounding cannot be excluded. There does not appear to be any evidence to say that chocolate should be avoided in those who are concerned about cardiovascular risk.

    Also Science Daily for the laypersons version

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    Just-A-Guy

    Jo,

    You wrote:

    This study may apply to third world pregnant women (if their model works, the populations are similar, and the signal is larger than the noise).

    Why would you even bother to give these clowns the benefit of the doubt? They haven’t even provided access to their original paper.

    Abe

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    jorgekafkazar

    ‘high resolution air temperature estimation model’

    High resolution model? The scientific equivalent of a gold-plated t*rd.

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    Is climate change affecting birth weights? Exposure to warmer weather during pregnancy leads to smaller babies, study claims

    This claim can easily be corroborated by checking the following.
    1. Babies born in Australia will be on average be born earlier and weigh less than those born in Britain.
    2. Babies born in Florida and Texas will will be on average be born earlier and weigh less than those born in New York and Quebec.
    3. Babies born in the Autumn will be on average be born earlier and weigh less than those born in early Spring.

    For the first two it is possible to control for other factors, such as standards of living and racial group.

    However, I think this is another example of what economist and Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase once said:-

    If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

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    Mike Smith

    If barely measurable increases in temperature really harm human health we’re gonna need a ton of the cheapest energy to keep those life saving air conditioners running.

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