Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research claims that every day over 80F per year dramatically reduces your chances of getting lucky.
According to the NBER;
Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks, Climate Change, and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates
Alan Barreca, Olivier Deschenes, Melanie Guldi
NBER Working Paper No. 21681
Issued in October 2015
Dynamic adjustments could be a useful strategy for mitigating the costs of acute environmental shocks when timing is not a strictly binding constraint. To investigate whether such adjustments could apply to fertility, we estimate the effects of temperature shocks on birth rates in the United States between 1931 and 2010. Our innovative approach allows for presumably random variation in the distribution of daily temperatures to affect birth rates up to 24 months into the future. We find that additional days above 80 °F cause a large decline in birth rates approximately 8 to 10 months later. The initial decline is followed by a partial rebound in births over the next few months implying that populations can mitigate the fertility cost of temperature shocks by shifting conception month. This dynamic adjustment helps explain the observed decline in birth rates during the spring and subsequent increase during the summer. The lack of a full rebound suggests that increased temperatures due to climate change may reduce population growth rates in the coming century. As an added cost, climate change will shift even more births to the summer months when third trimester exposure to dangerously high temperatures increases. Based on our analysis of historical changes in the temperature-fertility relationship, we conclude air conditioning could be used to substantially offset the fertility costs of climate change.
Read more: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21681
The press release in Reuters;
Control over the climate at home might make a difference. The researchers suggest that the rise of air conditioning may have helped offset some heat-related fertility losses in the U.S. since the 1970s.
The paper’s title is about as lascivious as the National Bureau of Economic Research gets: “Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks, Climate Change, and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates.” The researchers assume that climate change will proceed according to the most severe scenarios, with no substantial efforts to reduce emissions. The scenario they use projects that from 2070 to 2099, the U.S. may have 64 more days above 80F than in the baseline period from 1990 to 2002, which had 31. The result? The U.S. may see a 2.6 percent decline in its birth rate, or 107,000 fewer deliveries a year.
Just when you thought climate change policy couldn’t get any less sexy (PDF).
The main paper is paywalled, but it seems bizarre to conclude that high temperatures reduce libido and birth rates, given that the highest birth rates in the world are mostly found in tropical countries. I can believe that an abrupt transition from cold to warm weather has an impact, warm weather can knock you about until you acclimatise – but to try to infer an absolute temperature scale from seasonal variations seems a bit of a stretch.
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“temperature shocks” ? Really. Well this is some wishfull thinking.
…Unless you’re a recently neutered brass monkey in Longyearbyen.
The Spouse Default Swaps (STDs … oops, I mean SDSs) were supposed to compensate for any loss in activity amongst the Trading Partners. But those on the ‘street’ are claiming business is down. In response the Fed is no longer signaling a ‘tightening.’ Instead, the Fed will be ‘loosening’ the constraints on availability. That is, unless the market, once again goes into an orgy of “irrational exuberance.”
P.S. Doesn’t it seem like a contradiction in terms to have bankers perform a study relating to s.e.x activity?
From The Center for Biological Diversity …
My bold.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/climate/
Problem solved.
So, the authors don’t seem to understand what the word “fertility” means. Nothing in their study (not sure they understand that word either) even examines whether or not a woman’s fertility is affected by temperature change, but they continually refer to the “temperature- fertility” correlation. Idiots.
If this were true it would imply that nine months after the hot months would have the lowest numbers of births in the northern hemisphere. The Europeans seem to have the highest birthrates between March and July.
This must be true since there are so few people in countries that already are at that temperature range like China and India.
This will be balanced by all the extra babies that invariably follow power outages, following our shift to wind and solar.
Srga – it probably varies all over the world depending on culture and various other factors. In the US, there are lots of outdoor activities late into the evening. In the winter, perhaps there is a little more indoor activity:
“The biggest month
In 2013 more newborns arrived in August than in any other month. The second, third, and fourth most popular birthday months were July, October, and September, in that order”.
So month of conception in the US in declining order: November (Welcome to winter, Thanksgiving), October (Halloween) , January (Happy New Year), December (Merry Christmas).
Canada is slightly different:
“After averaging out the reports from the last five years, it seems this is the pecking order when it comes to birth months and popularity:
1. August 2. September 3. July 4. May 5. October 6. June 7. March 8. April 9. November 10. January 11. December 12. February “
Similar to the US but in Canada it looks like Summer Vacations and tailgate parties have an effect on the time of birth 😉
Below are the Australian records – which say September and October are the highest birth months.
However, the devil is in the details. There is actually not a lot of difference in the month to month numbers:
As one of the foremost practitioners of prenatal, newborn, baby, and family photography in Perth, we keep an eye on trends, such as the question in the title. Asking what month the most babies are born, though, is sort of a trick question. The short answer is that highest number of babies, both in WA and across Australia, are born in September and October.
However, those statistics are somewhat misleading, because there really isn’t any month that is more than 11.2% higher than any other month, according to the last reliable numbers, which were for births in 2009. The numbers are amazingly close:
January 24,316
February 23,646
March 25,202
April 24,949
May 24,854
June 24,852
July 25,769
August 24,383
September 25,760
October 26,272
November 24,235
December 25,042
NOTE: That means the most babies in Australia are conceived in the SH SUMMER – December and January. But as the writer noted, it may not be significant.
And I really doubt a variation of a couple of degrees will affect coupling – at least it doesn’t seem to from the Australian data.
Have fun with this, I don’t think it is a serious “threat”. 😉
I’m sure that there’s a report somewhere which says that warmer weather increases birth rate. It’s like rain, a warming climate causes draughts, a warming climate causes more rain, less wind, more wind, less snow, more snow, etc etc.
So . . did the study bother to check to see if the US birthrate plummeted during the 1930’s heat-waves?
See EPA’s U.S. Annual Heat Wave Index from 1895 to 2014.
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/indicator_figures/high-low-temps-figure1-2015.png
Well – I probably should have looked first. actually the birth rate did take a dive. Oops. However, there was something else going on at the time (besides the dust bowl) – the Great Depression.
I’m not going to say all that much.
Since this is patently as daft as a box of frogs.
And anyway, as observed by both Nelly, in the appended popular song, and by oil industry analysts more widely:
“can’t nobody stop the juice, so baby, tell me, what’s the use?”
The U.N. should take note.
Of course, a rap song may only be an anecdotal account, but I would suggest that the relationships between temperature, clothing and propensity to engage in sexual activity are representative of wider observable trends.
And I am more than willing to conduct a more thorough and extensive research project on this topic…
less clothing, more kids. Gosh stop making sense. And good luck with your research 😉
Increased wealth also results in reduced birthrates. You have to wonder…
Meanwhile, a rather amusing bit released by NPR last week: Alaska is beginning to report benefits of warmth attributed to the longer growing season. This is a curiously positive story against that backdrop of environmental problems of a warming Alaska. If farming is as successful as this story indicates, a changing climate could signal one of the most profoundly positive changes in Alaska since their discovery of oil. Oil gave them the ability to import all their food at high prices. Expansion of agriculture on a vast scale opens up many possibilities, including self-sufficiency and even export, as they grow their own.
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/01/453337333/rising-temperatures-kick-start-sub-arctic-farming-in-alaska
“I hate to say that…” made me smile.
Burn him!
Oh, yess. Cool regions have the highest birth rate, warm ones the lowest. Not.
http://www.climate-charts.com/images/world-temperature-map.png
Counterfactual thinking rulez.
Professor Cole Porter, more than fifty years ago:
According to the Kinsey Report,
Every average man you know,
Will prefer to play his favorite sport
When the temperature is low.
But when the thermometer goes way way up
And the temperature is hot
Mr Pants
for Romance
Is not.
Cause it’s too darn hot, it’s too darn hot, it’s too . . . darn . . . hot.
Bonus – the video, “Watch Next: A Brief History of Global Warming,” plastered in the article is quite entertaining; for instance we learn that they predicted, 2001, that 21stc century warming will leave the 20th, in the dust, and that over the next decade – poof – sea levels started to rise.
“Research claims that every day over 80F per year dramatically reduces your chances of getting lucky.”
Not if you have the best fossil-fuel powered air conditioning money can buy. Then your chances go up.
What about afternoon siesta?
Doesn’t seem to be working in Africa…or India…
Good. That’s what I call a “positive” feedback mechanism. There’s enough people on the planet.
From what I’ve learned about global warming, population control is a big part of it. This ought to make the believers want more AGW…
Why do people in Central America violate settled science? Don’t they listen to their betters?
Well NH did have a miniature baby boom after being buried in snow for 6 months… but that could be correlated to a few other things….
Well duhhhh…
I’m worried that I might be even more paranoid than the average skeptic here! I see this entirely in a different light. The big day of reckoning for failing Malthusians is virtually here: we are already 80 to 90% of peak population of 8 to 9 billion in the latter half of this century. There is no contest that economic development IS the “control knob”. This article is a brazen (they are getting more brazen- witness the transparently fraudulent pause buster, even to using well-known poorest quality data to cook the bust) attempt for global warming to get ahead of this parade before they miss the march entirely. These egghead elitist will have their fraudulent forecast borne out.
“Dynamic adjustments could be a useful strategy for mitigating the costs of acute environmental shocks when timing is not a strictly binding constraint.”
What does this mean?
Africans seems to have no problem reproducing. Central and South America have no problem reproducing. Philippines doe not have any problem reproducing. It is interesting that the places with the highest birth rates are also the hottest places on Earth, but climate “scientists” argue that heat will cause fewer births.
These “Scientists” retain stature far above what they have earned with far too many people.