By Eric Utter
A new study purports to have found that warming global temperatures, fueled by man-caused climate change, are making children less physically fit and more obese than ever before. Which, in turn, makes them less able to tolerate higher temperatures.
The aptly named journal “Temperature” recently published the study results, which claimed that higher temperatures cause children to be less active, putting them at greater risk of suffering from heat-related health problems, including dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. (Well, actually, in the short-term, kids are less at risk of suffering those maladies if they are less active during exceedingly high temperatures. But I digress.)
Shawnda Morrison, an “environmental exercise physiologist” at Slovenia’s University of Ljubljana, is the author of the study. She stated, “As the world warms, children are the least fit they have ever been,” adding, “It is imperative that children are encouraged to do daily physical activity to build up, and maintain, their fitness, so that they enjoy moving their bodies and it doesn’t feel like ‘work’ or ‘a chore’ to them.”
Morrison noted previous research indicating that emergency departments at children’s hospitals in the U.S. were busier than normal on hotter days. Yes, and I’m sure they are busier during dangerously cold days, too, than they typically would be on, say, a partly cloudy day with moderate temperatures. Duh. Did we really need a study to “discover” that?
Morrison says that, as temperatures rise around the planet, parents may increasingly decide that it’s “too hot to play” outside. And in many cities in the northern climes, it is too cold for kids to play outside in the winter. Schools close because they don’t want kids to have to wait outside for a bus, lest they get frostbite…or worse. But Morrison thinks rising temperatures may explain why she found that children’s aerobic fitness is 30 percent lower than that of their parents at the same age.
Really? Could there be other factors, like, say, the fact that kids are glued to their smartphones, computer screens, and video game consoles for many hours each day now, in addition to television sets? And perhaps the fact that many neighborhoods, especially in urban areas, are far less safe than they used to be even a few short years ago? (I’m sure “marginalized peoples” and communities of color are most affected by the decline in childhood fitness.)
The study did find that there was less physical activity during the coronavirus pandemic. You think? When experts and rulers shut down schools, closed playgrounds and fitness centers, and locked everyone in their houses for nearly two straight years?
In light of all this, experts still have the nerve to tell us man-caused global warming/climate change is responsible for kids’ declining physical (and mental) health?!
I am sick and damn tired of experts telling us that the COVID-1984 vaccines are safe and effective. And mandatory. I am sick and damn tired of being told that all white people are (inherently!) racist, that men can be women and vice-versa, and that “abortion is health care.” Or “love.” And that I am a “domestic terrorist” simply for holding these views.
And I am sick and damn tired of being told that—in addition to floods, droughts, extreme heat, and extreme cold—man-caused climate change/global warming is demonstrably responsible for: the coronavirus, Monkeypox, cedar apple rust, inflation, Russia invading Ukraine, the sudden rise in polio cases, distrust of our institutions, Jan. 6, supply chain issues, food shortages, Liz Cheney’s defeat, falling spermatozoa levels in males in Western nations, Chinese aggression, stock market volatility, homelessness, painful rectal itch, loneliness, the opioid crisis, the decline in the popularity of Major League Baseball (MLB), Lyme disease, solar flares, and acid reflux.
Is climate change also to blame for Joy Behar, Jerry Nadler, MSNBC, the Impossible Whopper®, and Nicki Minaj?
And for…studies like this one?