Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Another day, another bizarre claim about global warming – this time a study which claims that global warming is making our children shorter.
According to a study performed by scientists from [Johns] Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Medicine;
“El Niño is responsible for natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks worldwide. During the 1997–1998 El Niño, northern Peru endured extreme rainfall and flooding. Since short stature may occur as a result of undernutrition or repeated infections during childhood, both of which are highly prevalent during natural disasters, we sought to determine if the 1997–1998 El Niño had an adverse effect on stature and body composition a decade later. In 2008–2009, we measured height, weight, and bioimpedance in a random sample of 2,095 children born between 1991 and 2001 in Tumbes, Peru.
Results
Height-for-age increased by 0.09 SD/year of birth between 1991 and 1997 (P < 0.001), indicating overall improvements in health over time in the study area; however, this rate fell to 0.04 SD/year of birth during and shortly after El Niño, less than half the rate prior to El Niño (P = 0.046). Height shortfalls were even greater in children residing in households most likely to be flooded after El Niño. Any improvement over time was completely blunted and became negative in children living in households with flood likelihoods of ≥7% (P = 0.001). In the subset of 912 children with bioimpedance measurements, those born after the onset of El Niño had less lean mass (P < 0.001), whereas fat mass was unaffected (P = 0.48).
Conclusions
”Children born during and after 1997–1998 El Niño were on average shorter and had less lean mass for their age and sex than expected had El Niño not occurred. The effects of El Niño on health are long lasting and, given its cyclical nature, may continue to negatively impact future generations.”
The study: http://www.climatechangeresponses.com/content/1/1/7
Of course, if Peru had a modern, rich, industrial economy, perhaps the Peruvian people could afford enough food, so they wouldn’t suffer nutritional shortages when floodwater messed up the household cabbage patch. But this would require evil infusions of large scale commercial investment – an unlikely prospect, given the local Peruvian political climate.
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Severe rainfall and floods disrupt agricultural production in small rural villages.
Children from these rural villages born during the period of disrupted crops show signs of malnutrition.
And…?
Rainfall effects genetics on a decade scale due to “man made global warming” you see it’s all so crystal clear! why bother going to school.
I just tried to find a Mercedes Benz add that they used in print media about 20 years ago, but I failed.
It pictured a line-up of people of the day and their cars. On the one end, there was a very early model, probably late 1800s (first Benz 1880?) and a dude that looked about 1.50m short (tall?!) in some dorky Charly Chaplin-look-a-like outfit. And so it went on, with every new generation of cars, the car depicted was slightly bigger than the previous model, and so was the driver depicted with it. At the other end of the line up, there was a contemporary Mercedes S class (I believe), and a fairly tall dude to go with it…
The body armours on display in the museum at my local castle are so small, you can’t fit them on a ‘normal’ 12 year old European kid; makes you wonder how they conquered Europe and the rest of it… so arguably, we are too tall anyway.
What would really shrink our kids would be to give in to the agenda of extreme environmentalists. If they are successful in making the cost of energy skyrocket, restricting land and water use, and forcing us all to become vegan, we will all shrink to the point that most of us will completely disappear.
It’s some irony that they did a study on height in Peru. If you’ve ever been there, you could not help but notice that people are really, really short.
Typo: “John” Hopkins University should be “Johns” Hopkins University. Actually The Johns Hopkins University, if you want to be precise.
[Done. Thank you. .mod]