Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Daily Mail reports that climate change will result in more female births, tilting the gender balance towards women.
According to The Daily Mail;
Experts studied birth records and miscarriages in Japan between 1968 and 2012.
Overall, more girls were born compared to boys and temperature fluctuations – particularly from a hot summer to a cold winter – saw the sex ratio become temporarily more pronounced.
The study claims that temperature fluctuations have influenced the ratio, but makes it clear that climate change may not be responsible for skewing the number of girls and boys that are born.
…
If the world is getting hotter and rising temporaries do favour the birth of girls, a change to the global sex ratio may happen one day.
What a set of predictions – More beautiful young women running about, wearing less clothing, and a scorching beach friendly tropical climate. We must act now, before its too late!
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With the way the Liberals are promoting gender fluidity, does it really matter what sex the babies are born as? 😉
Haven’t you learned?
in this brave new world gender is a choice, yet we’re born with our sexual orientation.
Got it?
(I don’t)
Um, yeah. I just discovered this new nuance, too. The claim now is sex is defined by physiology, and gender is defined by the group you identity with. So if you are born physically a man, but prefer book clubs, chick-flicks, and interior design versus bar-hopping, Die Hard, and construction, then your identify with the female gender.
I guess that is preferable to being called a pantywaist as in the old days. IMO, still nothing to brag about.
Explains how the 72 virgins will be located for every man
Yee Haa Brian A, that’s a good one! Wish Jimmy Fallon would have said that on TV.
Apparently race is a choice as well. Both are just social constructs.
They think we’re friggin alligators….
I don’t see why the gay community is embracing this..
They were promoting that it’s not a choice.
The AGW claims are getting more and more hilarious with each passing day…. the end must be near.
I am reminded of that scene in Independence Day when all the airheads get to the top of the skyscraper in LA to “welcome” the lovely aliens to earth …. and the the death ray zaps them like the mosquito brains they were. Metaphorically speaking of course I wait in hope.
You must see “Mars Attacks”. It’s hilarious.
You’ll acquire a new appreciation for Slim Whitman.
That’s one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever – hilariously subversive!
And the problem is….?
Is there nothing that climate change can’t do?
If this drivel is correct:
a)Does it have the same effect on other mammals?
b) Since the sex of the child is determined at conception then in the Northern Hemisphere there should be more girls born in March, April and May and more boys in September. October and November and vice versa in the Southern Hemisphere. This should be easy to prove or in all likelihood disprove, like every other supposed ill that AGW plagues us with.
More women are born if the sperm have to swim a long ways or wait a long time to fertilize the egg. More boy babies if sperm are delivered close to destination and at the fertile moment. (Y sperm are fast but not durable, while X sperm are a bit slower at the start, but go further and hang around longer.)
I doubt they corrected for this.
(I was on the Board of a fertility clinic for a few years and this stuff was frequently discussed. The amusing way to put it was that short tools ill timed tended to girl babies and big ones energetically on target to boys. Given that, what they found was a tendency to more metrosexual men in Japan. Not surprising given BIS- phenol A and other estrogen analogs… like soy beans…)
E.M. Smith
I thought it was the other way round – a longer journey for sperm meant more males, not females.
According to this article at least:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sexratio.htm
The claim here is that the difference is simply that female sperm are about 4% heavier than male due to the X chromosome being bigger than the short Y one, thus in a “female” sperm 4% more weight of chromatin.
Another implication regards sexual position – doggy style favours females while the missionary position means more males!
“And the problem is….?”
Quite, as Mark Twain observed:-
Nothing to do with CO2. It is stress! When the going gets tough more boys are produced.
That explains my four sons!
GREAT! BRING IT ON!
Come on you guys everywhere – go burn as much carbon as possible ASAP. You know it makes sense!
Stress causes mothers to have more girls.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8830036/Stressed-women-more-likely-to-have-baby-girls.html
We have seen much more precarious employment. Companies like temporary, part-time workers because it gives them maximum flexibility and they don’t have to pay benefits. The trouble is that it is maximally stressful on workers.
The stress of precarious employment far exceeds that from any possible global warming effects. If we want more boys we should make precarious employment less beneficial for employers.
How can this be right, sex is determined by the sperm…?
IIRC (and I read this a long time ago) the claim was that the pH of the woman’s reproductive path affects whether or not the sperm of one sex or the other has an advantage. Content women have more males, stressed women more females.
Homonal responses determine both the production of sperm selection and traits that are to be passed (traits), and affect reception (changing the biology in the mother to favor/disfavor traits).
Environment cues can activate traits, responses, and biologically driven behavioral responses.
I once read about a study that suggested something to the effect that women in certain populations use oral sex to improve the chance of conception from their prefered mate.
More boys? Don’t worry, the Chinese have that covered.
so nature is taking the steps to fix a mao-made imbalance, which means i have to go take a long drive in my truck
“Man-made global warming, but only caused by man?
Aren’t women also taking part in this scam?
By excluding women is there a bias I detect?
Could global warming not be politically correct?…..
From: http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/global-warming-is-not-politically-correct/
Some good climate news at last, at least for the men 😉
Agree what’s not to like!
The next study will say more ugly women. Always bad news.
“According to The Daily Mail” is never a good start.
Although, were this to be true, polygamy would be more common in cultures that develop in hot regions.
The B.S. never stops:
Hormonal treatment for cows could reduce global warming
Pick a subject; any subject. A “link” can be found with that and “climate change”, with the greatest “threat” in the future. And people get paid for this, using our money.
Quite a racket
How do you think they manufacture the consensus? Yes, Henry Ford would be amazed at the mass production efficiencies they have achieved.
So we can replace “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with “Six Degrees of Global Warming”?
Akatsukami san,
Six degrees – by tomorrow lunchtime!
Unless that’s weather . . . .
Auto
So what’s the bad news?
It’s one of the curiosities of the climate wars that the gender demographics of either side are strikingly different. The skeptics have a normal fifty-fifty balance with equally strong female voices ie Nova, Curry, Laframboise et al. On the other hand, the role permitted to be played by women in the alarmist ranks is limited and quite submissive. They tend to be there only to wipe the brows of their heroic menfolk and cheer them on. Nobody is really interested in their opinion of the serious stuff like science. eg Niomi and her sisters.
I can only think it springs from the fundamentalist nature of climate alarmism. It’s no surprise they’re happy to bend a few stats to such a for them desirable outcome. Little boys, big egos.
Pointman
Interesting observation. For the climate worriers, the womenfolk are relegated to the marketing and communications side?
Fundamentally, we’re all “female” just after conception and when we are still a zygote (Single cell fertlised egg). What happens with males is a mutation and is largely governed by horemones in the mother. More testosterone leads to more males. It’s one reason why men have nipples, but no mammary glands (Breasts)
From a male’s DNA you could generate a female, but frI’m a female’s DNA you could not generate a male. Also during normal female development there is no need for two functional X chromosomes so one Is randomly shut off. This doesn’t happen at the single cell stage it happens later, so every female is actually a genetic mosaic where roughly half of her cells express one X chromosome and the rest express the other. I’m not sure that this has anything to do with the belief that women are of two minds about everything, but it’s an interesting genetic process.
Interesting. but then if we concider mDNA, we’re all African.
Who the hell taught you that?
Does the term “genetics” ring a bell?
IVF specialists?
No, it’s true. The SRY gene on the Y chromosome goes through and starts activating and deactivating various other genes with the intent of changing the current template (default: female) into the male form. The uterus is absorbed, the clitorus expands into a penis, and the gonads descend and produce sperm instead of eggs.
It’s about as close to mutation as you can get without going into The Fly territory.
Indeed Arsten.
Not so for mammals. Perhaps you are thinking about reptiles or insects?
Nope. Male humans are mammals too, males just do not have the glands females have.
The thing I love about science, is how many fields of science are sociopolitical activism dressed up in pseudoscience. Fetal development being yet another casuality in the kulturkampf.
1) Sex is determined by the chromosomes — full stop
2) The host hormonal environment plays a role in sexual dimorphic presentations, but does not determine sex.
3) The tissue differentiates for testes at 6 weeks, and ovaries at 8 weeks. By the arguments here presented, we all start as males, and females are just an unfortunate mutation.
4) The development begins with the Muellerian and Wolfmann ducts. A male fetus atrophies one, the female fetus atrophies the other. Consistent with the argument that a ‘male’ absorbs his uterus we can just as soundly say that the genetic defects known as women absorb their testes.
So if the weirdness presented here passes as legit argument, then we have proved that we’re all male to begin with. And that women are genetic defects. Or, I misunderstood the argument as badly as the people making it did. And it was all ‘social’ claptrap in which anything without balls is a woman. For which I give you the President of the United States of America.
“Overall, more girls were born compared to boys and temperature fluctuations – particularly from a hot summer to a cold winter – saw the sex ratio become temporarily more pronounced.”
What rot! It’s NOT temperature that determines sexes of babies in humans, turtles yes. It’s hormones! Utter gutter rot this article is.
Anyone, male/female, who has been through the IVF treatment cycle would know this.
It’s possible that temperature could affect the ratio of male to female sperm.
However, as someone else pointed out, if temperature did affect the ratio, then you would be able to see it in the ratios of males to females in cold vs hot climates and between one season and another year round.
Since no such difference has been detected seasonally or geographically, despite temperature swings 20 to 30 times greater than the 0.7C claimed by AGW advocates, that pretty well disproves the theory.
Right!
Well, if they were all looking like Nichelle Nichols, I would be happy!
If one is hot for Uhura, One is old.
zoe saldana?
I am guilty of being old. I had no choice!
Me too Patrick.
Yes and the alternative is worse!
I was thinking a few days ago about the list of things caused by alleged global warming, and was wondering if they would try the sex ratio next. Must be psychic eh.
I recall the ratio quoted in school biology in the 60s as male 104.x female 100. The teacher’s explanation went something like “boys are more likely to do stupid things, so it probably balances out.” As I and several others were experimenting with home-made bombs at the time, the comment stuck in my mind.
Bring them on, those women!
I think it’s too late for me, doubling of CO2 t yields doubling of women(IPCC6), what a bright future is awaiting.
With global cooling we can expect less women, so pent up frustration and increased competition over the dwindling number of females would boil over. This will lead to endless wars, similar to what we experienced last century before the place began heating up.
Yet again, CO2 does EVERYTHING…
Just out of curiosity I plotted sex ratio versus average temperature. Not really that satisfied with it (too many other factors that also correlate with a country’s average temperature), but there definitely ‘could’ be some effect on sex ratio from temperature. I’m sure there are thousands of papers on it, but a quick search didn’t give me anything satisfactory.
Sex Ratio data from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
Average Temperature data from http://lebanese-economy-forum.com/wdi-gdf-advanced-data-display/show/EN-CLC-AVRT-C/
http://i.imgur.com/jZthLm7.png?1
How much would this data be skewed by countries in which abortions are performed on “wrong-gendered” fetuses, like India?
Abortion in cultures that prefer males could be a significant factor. India’s sex ratio is abnormally high by a large margin (1.12). This works as a bias against the warm equals more girls trend. If we remove India and then the trend becomes stronger. So, good point!
I think the best way to do this would be to look at sex ratio for different months for the same country with strong seasonal temperatures e.g. Canada, Russia, etc.
I didn’t realize that Mathematica was not plotting the full range. Here is the plot against including all outliers.
http://i.imgur.com/a05KLmd.png?1
Here are the countries with the highest M/F sex ratios:
Liechtenstein 1.26
Curacao 1.16
Azerbaijan 1.13
China (Mainland) 1.12
India 1.12
Vietnam 1.12
Albania 1.11
Armenia 1.11
Georgia 1.10
Macedonia 1.08
Kosovo 1.08
What the heck is going on in Liechtenstein?
Liechtenstein has only abt 36000 members and a low fertility number, so I assume the imbalance is just a random fluctuation among a group of hundreds of newborns.
With such small numbers, it definitely could just be random. I think I read that sex ratio goes up (more boys) with the age of the woman at conception, which (if true) would bias developed countries towards higher sex ratios. Developed countries also tend to be those countries with lower average temperatures. There are too many factors really. Even a seasonal study of a single country would be susceptible to coincidental factors i.e. temperature is not the only thing that changes in summer.
No – something is going on in Lichtenstein.
Flip a coin n times and the variation in ratio will be the (square root of n) / n.
For 36,000 this comes to about 0.5%.
26% is much higher than this.
Except it’s not the square root of 36000. The sex ratio of 1.26 applies only to those born in last few years.
At birth – 1.26
under 15 – 1.09
15-64 0.99
over 65 – 0.76
Total – 0.94
Even given this it seems likely there is still something going on in Liechtenstein that occurred only in the last few years. Given your rule and a 1% birth rate, that is 360 babies a year or with an even coin flip, 180 males. The expected variation is then about 7.4 percent. 26% is way outside that so I agree, there is something going on.
Global warming causes an increase in the search for phenomena that are affected by global warming.
I see Exxon and BP being sued for damages by victims of climate-related gender dysphoria.
Bruce Jenner, call your attorney.
You beat me to it! Dammit!
AHA! Nature fights back against China’s “one child” policy.