From the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SAN DIEGO and the “correlation is not causation unless we take a survey and plug the results into a model and ignore UHI” department comes this “anything goes” paper that has the magic words for making headlines, but very little if any real science in it.
Losing sleep over climate change
Climate change may keep you awake — and not just metaphorically. Nights that are warmer than normal can harm human sleep, researchers show in a new paper, with the poor and elderly most affected. According to their findings, if climate change is not addressed, temperatures in 2050 could cost people in the United States millions of additional nights of insufficient sleep per year. By 2099, the figure could rise by several hundred million more nights of lost sleep annually.
The study was led by Nick Obradovich, who conducted much of the research as a doctoral student in political science at the University of California San Diego. He was inspired to investigate the question by the heat wave that hit San Diego in October of 2015. Obradovich was having trouble sleeping. He tossed and he turned, the window AC in his North Park home providing little relief from the record-breaking temperatures. At school, he noticed that fellow students were also looking grumpy and bedraggled, and it got him thinking: Had anyone looked at what climate change might do to sleep?
Published by Science Advances, the research represents the largest real-world study to date to find a relationship between reports of insufficient sleep and unusually warm nighttime temperatures. It is the first to apply the discovered relationship to projected climate change.
“Sleep has been well-established by other researchers as a critical component of human health. Too little sleep can make a person more susceptible to disease and chronic illness, and it can harm psychological well-being and cognitive functioning,” Obradovich said. “What our study shows is not only that ambient temperature can play a role in disrupting sleep but also that climate change might make the situation worse by driving up rates of sleep loss.”
Obradovich is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. He is also a fellow of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Obradovich worked on the study with Robyn Migliorini, a student in the San Diego State University/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, and sleep researcher Sara Mednick of UC Riverside. Obradovich’s dissertation advisor, social scientist James Fowler of UC San Diego, is also a co-author.
The study starts with data from 765,000 U.S. residents between 2002 and 2011 who responded to a public health survey, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study then links data on self-reported nights of insufficient sleep to daily temperature data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. Finally, it combines the effects of unusually warm temperatures on sleep with climate model projections.
The main finding is that anomalous increases in nighttime temperature by 1 degree Celsius translate to three nights of insufficient sleep per 100 individuals per month. To put that in perspective: If we had a single month of nightly temperatures averaging 1 degree Celsius higher than normal, that is equivalent to 9 million more nights of insufficient sleep in a month across the population of the United States today, or 110 million extra nights of insufficient sleep annually.
The negative effect of warmer nights is most acute in summer, the research shows. It is almost three times as high in summer as during any other season.
The effect is also not spread evenly across all demographic groups. Those whose income is below $50,000 and those who are aged 65 and older are affected most severely. For older people, the effect is twice that of younger adults. And for the lower-income group, it is three times worse than for people who are better off financially.
Using climate projections for 2050 and 2099 by NASA Earth Exchange, the study paints a bleak picture of the future if the relationship between warmer nights and disrupted sleep persists. Warmer temperatures could cause six additional nights of insufficient sleep per 100 individuals by 2050 and approximately 14 extra nights per 100 by 2099.
“The U.S. is relatively temperate and, in global terms, quite prosperous,” Obradovich said. “We don’t have sleep data from around the world, but assuming the pattern is similar, one can imagine that in places that are warmer or poorer or both, what we’d find could be even worse.”
###
The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, grants no. DGE0707423 and TG-SES130013 to Obradovich, DGE1247398 to Migliorini, and BCS1439210 to Mednick. Mednick is also funded by the National Institute on Aging (R01AG046646) and the Department of Defense (Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award).
In the press release, they give this DOI link, which seems to be DOA: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1601555
But I dug out the article and here is the link: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/5/e1601555.full
The SI is here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/highwire/filestream/195722/field_highwire_adjunct_files/0/1601555_SM.pdf
Abstract
Human sleep is highly regulated by temperature. Might climate change—through increases in nighttime heat—disrupt sleep in the future? We conduct the inaugural investigation of the relationship between climatic anomalies, reports of insufficient sleep, and projected climate change. Using data from 765,000 U.S. survey respondents from 2002 to 2011, coupled with nighttime temperature data, we show that increases in nighttime temperatures amplify self-reported nights of insufficient sleep. We observe the largest effects during the summer and among both lower-income and elderly respondents. We combine our historical estimates with climate model projections and detail the potential sleep impacts of future climatic changes. Our study represents the largest ever investigation of the relationship between sleep and ambient temperature and provides the first evidence that climate change may disrupt human sleep.
There isn’t a single mention of UHI or Urban Heat Island in the paper, but they do say this in a roundabout way in the SI for the paper: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2017/05/22/3.5.e1601555.DC1/1601555_SM.pdf
Some might desire that we control for common demographic covariates. Unfortunately, as these demographic characteristics may also be impacted by the climatic variables within a locality (for example, if a particular demographic sorts into living in less extreme environments), including these variables has the potential to bias our coefficient of interest on nighttime temperature anomalies (making the variables ‘bad controls’). As a result we exclude them from our specification in Equation 1 in the main text.
They reference “climatic variables within a locality”, i.e. “microclimates” or UHI if one considers that. The IPCC stated in AR3 that
“it is well-known that compared to non-urban areas urban heat islands raise night-time temperatures more than daytime temperatures”
In the abstract of this study, Obradovich posits:
Might climate change—through increases in nighttime heat—disrupt sleep in the future?
It’s as if this kid never heard of UHI as a factor for increasing nighttime temperature. Mind-boggling.
I wonder how many of the respondents were from major cities, like Las Vegas, NV? There, the city has been booming, and if you consider the usual “climate change” metric, i.e. average temperature, yes it looks like it’s gotten warmer there since about 1973-75, before that, the trend is mostly insignificant.
But if you look at the Maximum and minimum temperatures separately, a clear UHI signal emerges that correlates with the building boom. Maximum temperatures are actually lower than in 1937.
While minimum temperatures are upwards
Increasing minimum temperatures are a sure sign of UHI, the city government itself even acknowledges it¹. ((see references). UHI increases nighttime temperatures due to there being more concrete, asphalt, and other impermeable surfaces storing daytime heat and releasing it at night -this is not “climate change” in the sense they use it, yet they don’t seem to even be aware of it as a possible confounding factor. Did the author, Obradovich, control for city dwellers vs. country dwellers? It doesn’t look like it.
The graph they cite “The effect on sleep of warmer than usual nights is most acute during the summer and among lower-income respondents and the elderly.” also isn’t about climate change. It’s about affordability for air-conditioning – not only for purchase, but for powering it. Low income and fixed income people (elderly) often can’t afford to purchase and/or run an air-conditioner. But instead of factoring in that, they immediately jump to climate change” as the culprit. Interestingly, in Table S4 of the SI for the paper, they show that low-income people tend to have about 4 times the rate of sleep loss as the financially well of. This could be due to lack of air-conditioning, or simply worrying how you are going to pay your bills and keep your kids fed – the things that really keep people up at night.
In a story in Psychology Today, they list the most common reasons for less sleep:
Increased sleep deprivation, or sleep deficit, has sometimes been described as a symptom of the recent decrease in leisure time in American society (see, for example, Juliet Schor’s bestseller The Overworked American). Working hours increased during the second-half of the 20th century, along with sharp growth in American productivity and prosperity. A doubling of productivity could have translated into both higher incomes and decreased working hours, yet today employees rarely have a choice between getting paid in time or money. Instead, Americans, relative to the past, work more, earn more, and spend more. This focus on work and consumption over leisure time has brought about an increased “time squeeze.” While this is especially true for the average American woman, the time squeeze cuts across gender, social class, and marital status.
Moreover, the recent growth of digital media and smartphones has dramatically raised productivity expectations and blurred the line between work and personal life. This decrease in free time and increased pace of life and stress has brought with it reduced sleep, with real consequences for physical and mental health, performance at work, and quality of life. For example, in the 1960s, the average amount of time Americans spent sleeping was between 7 and 8.5 hours a night, while today 50% of the population averages under 7 hours, and, according to a 2008 survey, 1 out of 3 Americans say they get a good night’s sleep only a few nights a month or less.
But Obradovich doesn’t seem to look at any of those factors, such as having a cell phone waking you up at night, or the general trend for less leisure time and more work. No, Obradovich jumps right on the correlation with temperature, thinking that is the only cause, seemingly excluding other more confounding factors. Then, they take that data from the survey and plug it into a model of their own design, and bam – instant conclusion – we’ll all get less sleep due to “climate change”.
Finally, Obradovich commits the cardinal sin of climate alarmists everywhere conflation of weather and climate in his thinking:
The study was led by Nick Obradovich, who conducted much of the research as a doctoral student in political science at the University of California San Diego. He was inspired to investigate the question by the heat wave that hit San Diego in October of 2015. Obradovich was having trouble sleeping. He tossed and he turned, the window AC in his North Park home providing little relief from the record-breaking temperatures. At school, he noticed that fellow students were also looking grumpy and bedraggled, and it got him thinking: Had anyone looked at what climate change might do to sleep?
Kid, one HEAT WAVE does not equate to “climate change” it’s weather, and weather is NOT climate.
In my opinion, this study by Obradovich is garbage, and was a conclusion looking for a paper to support it. How this sort of junk gets past peer review I have no idea.
References:
(1) Summary Report, Urban Heat Island Effect, City of Las Vegas, Office of Sustainability, April 2010
From: http://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/files/UHI_Report_2010-2.pdf
(2) Source for data: NOAA/NWS Las Vegas, from
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/climate/LasVegasClimateBook/index.php
(3) Losing Sleep in the 21st Century
In a rapidly evolving American society, people are sleeping less and less. May 07, 2013
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/limitless/201305/losing-sleep-in-the-21st-century
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Now we need a study to see how many sleepless nights are caused by all the end-of-the-world fear mongering about climate change. Then we can compare the two studies to see which is worse.
+97
People cannot sleep at night because of all the artificial lights. The more LEDs are burning the midnight oil the more sleep gets lost. But LEDs are good for saving energy and thus the environment and thus the climate. No wonder that artificial light is not the culprit but global warming.
I know.
The expectation that peer review provides any kind of good effect is badly misplaced.
It is in “Science Advances”. One of these open access offshoots of reputable journals, in this case about 2 years old. The deal is that authors pay a lot of money and get quick turn-around. The thinly disguised promise is light reviewing.
“The thinly disguised promise is light reviewing.”
Climate science to a tee , hey Nick !!
Thanks, Nick. I had my suspicions. This nails it.
How ironically lovely that Mr. Obradovich provides the solution to insomnia within the four corners of his paper….
🙂
Keyboard Warning! LOL
🙂
I have the perfect solution for those suffering from climate-caused sleeplessness;
Read this paper.
Hey, Bruce! That is a GREAT idea! 😉
When ever I get “Lucky” on a Friday night…I definitely get less sleep !
Butch MacGillicuddy! Young man, the librarian wants a word with you in her office. If you please.
1. “WTH” will get across your point just as well and not needlessly offend. (yes, I saw your cute little quip the other day (smile))
2. This is a family site so…. THIS is Lucky! 🙂
And no wonder you get little rest — he’s only 12 weeks old! 🙂
Take care, up there.
btw: I am still regularly praying that you find “her,” and are “lucky” every night for the rest of your life (after you are married, I mean!). I know you never asked me to pray!
#(:))
…ROTFLMAO …thanks.
Hot temperatures, brownouts caused by intermittent electrical capacity (e.g .twilight periods), and blackouts caused by night time conditions, is a recipe for not only sleep loss but also heat exhaustion and hyperthermia.
re: irregular electrical capacity
The solution is literally blowing or gone with the wind.
Anecdotal, I know, but I’m 76 and hot nights do not stop me sleeping. If anything I sleep longer because the preceeding hot day tires me out more.
[yawn] Yet another applied linear no-threshhold hypothesis malfeasance that allows armchair statistician advocates to inject tiny probabilities into extremely large populations to come up with integer ‘victim’ counts, despite no shortage of victims surrounding them by other (much more likely but Not Presently Under Discussion) means. The next step is to choose a stock photo of a drooling infant and float it over the press release so people conclude this is the baby that won’t get enough sleep. The step after that is for climate-hungry researchers to siphon off money that would have been spent exploring more significant causes of sleep deprivation.
Like researchers hiking over whole gelatinous mountains of chemically induced cancer to gather in the tiny spot where a hypothetical cell division might be affected by beta decay so they can write a radiation scare paper.
Credo of the 12st century:
“If we claim this to be statistically possible, we can pretend to have seen it.”
WORSE THAN THE CHURCH EVER WAS
My favorite: the deeply tanned activist protesting anything to do with a nuclear facility for anything. Where’d you collect all that radiation poisoning on your skin there, friend?
It’s this increasingly crazy world due to the Internet. Nothing to do with weather or climate.
Times of London
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D’Arcy, J. P.
Sevenoaks
All-India average temperature also present similar pattern to Las Vegas wherein the night temperature showed higher raise. The met stations are more concentrated in urban areas. The system in India [British legacy] is that where Revenue officials are located, for ease of measurement and record to serve their interests, met stations were established. Thus Indian temperature is contaminated with UHI effect. Thus the rural impact is less reflected in All-India temperature. However, rain gauges were spread far and wide.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Where can one find maximum and minimum temperature graphs by city like the one shown in this article?
Just kill the Nation Science Board, the National Academies of Science (include Engineering and Medicine), the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation.
These “bureaucracies” can be shown, and have been, to be linked to the Islamic State in USA! (Follow The Money! pssst pssst Western Union wire transfers via iPhone!)
Problem solved.
Jajajajajajaja
…So, you are admitting that you are nuts ?? OK, I’ll go along with that ….
They can predict sleep patterns 82 years out??
What if more people drink a cup of Chamomile tea before bedtime? Can they predict how much of each kind of tea will be consumed to offset the effects of ‘additional warmth’?
Will people sleep better knowing their onerous winter heating bills will be reduced? Science isn’t as easy as it used to be when sleep forecasting was only good for about three days.
Wasn’t all of this laid out in the opening minutes of “The Big Heat” (1953) ?
“The study was led by Nick Obradovich, who conducted much of the research as a doctoral student in political science”
Poli Sci. For the stupid kids on campus who flunked out of a real major. Which explains why they would think that with 80 years of warning, northern Minnesota residents STILL wouldn’t have bought an air conditioner, if this scenario came to pass.
Considering the existing dichotomy between estrogen-based and testosterone-based units WRT comfortable sleeping temperatures, mitigated or exacerbated by more or less covering(s), about half the population will be more comfortable and sleep better if it is warmer.
Simple advice: GET AN AIR CONDITIONER THAT ACTUALLY WORKS !
Mmm. I’m feeling a bit hungry now, and it’s really warm outside. Warm weather, thus, must cause increased hunger. Increased hunger causes obesity. Hence, human-caused global warming is causing the obesity epidemic.
My dog is panting. … warm outside. Hence, human-caused global warming is causing dogs greater heat stress.
My lip itches. … warm outside. Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah …
“Garbage” is a bit too polite.
I got a million of ’em.
My butt feels numb. Oh, I’ve been sitting quite a long time reading all the research about human caused climate change catastrophe.
Conclusion: Human caused climate change causes numb ass syndrome.
To all grant-seeking humanitarians, you are most welcome. And, hey, I’m not greedy — a fifteen percent tip will do just fine.
It is not warm temperatures that cause people to lose sleep. It is above average temperatures that create a problem.
We humans are very adaptable. Temperatures that are suddenly 10-15 degrees warmer than the summer average (a heat wave) create a problem, temperatures that are a degree or two warmer than they were when you were a kid are no problem at all. They are now the average temperatures that your body has adapted to without any effort.
This adaptability is the thing that allows humans to move to different parts of the world many times during a lifetime without losing much sleep. The fact that a college graduate might not understand this simple concept may cause me to lose some sleep. Three fact that a journal would publish this stupidity will certainly cause me to lose some sleep.
Know what keeps me up at night? Not the climate, or temperatures, or sea levels. What keeps me up at night is wondering if I took the garbage out. And the cat, wanting out, or in, or out. Pesky beeatch. The stupid [pruned] these kinds of idiots keep prattling on about is totally meaningless.
Well, I think it is pretty obvious that the election of Donald J. Trump as POTUS is causing liberal greenies and Eco-Terrorists around the world to lose a whole lotta sleep !!… D’oh !
If its hot at night and cant sleep buy a ceiling fan like i did. Cheap to run and very effective
except my ceiling fan goes clunk, grind, clunk, grind, clunk, grind… etc etc etc etc
Maybe I should get it replaced ??? 😉
No, but it means it’s high time to get rid of that pile of empty beer cans 😉
Yep Nick Obradovich lives off us.
He’s likes carbon spewing aeroplane travel.
All AWG academics should disclose their carbon footprint as an addendum to any study they publish.
Furthermore they should annually declare how they’ll reduce their carbon footprint year on year.
Naturally this this would include:
Abstaining from travel to conferences.
Disposing of their motor vehicle.
Disconnecting their home from the electricity grid.
Rejection of portable devices including cell phones etc.
Can anyone add to this list and we’ll email it to Nick Obradovich when it reaches 50 actions he can take to set an example to us.
Remember AWG science is all about setting examples.
You know like the West must cut emissions to set an example to China & India.
To see the inane topics, juvenile level of research and the thought processes and logic of PhDs displayed in today’s supposedly technical papers that are accepted and pass peer review is disgusting. Anthony ticked off half a dozen confounding factors killing off this shameful piece of nothingness.
I began to notice the anti-intellectual mindset first in high schools in the 1970s and 80s when my children attended. Bright children were discriminated against and at the end of the year, everybody got a trophy and even valedictorians were drawn from students of second or third rank. Then Universities threw open their doors in this continuing trend of industrial democracy where “everyone has something to offer”. Prizes were given out for ‘participation’ in classwork. Egads! When I was a school boy you got the strap if you didn’t.
Then Nobel Prize value plummeted to zero when they started giving them out to terrorists, BSers, con artists and in one case as a bribe to a new US president to bring him into the plot to destroy America. Crackerjack(™) offers prizes of superior quality. Alfred Nobel, an industrial icon, has rolled over in his grave so often he’s likely propelled himself out of the graveyard.
Progressive women are carrying on the fight against we-of-no-membership in the diversity klatch (and long vanquished already!) . They created scores of faculties for women with fields of study that defy definition and understanding. They are neither afraid or embarrassed to produce papers on feminine glaciation and the like and of course such faculties are not open to men, at least of the non diversity class, not that I would be interested in Victimhood 101, or the like. Apparently they are not yet satisfied with their 70% majority in scholarly pursuits.
I’ve often remarked on the enormity of the task of righting the ship of science. What does one do with PhDs in smoke shoveling held by little more than average IQed folks who don’t know they never received an education nor were really up for one? Build new institutions with higher standards, new filtered, discriminating scholarly journals that run in parallel with the rotted out ones. Do Harvard, Oxbridge, and the lot become higher high schools? Cheesh, I don’t think it can be saved.
RE: ‘feminine glaciation’
Whoo Boy! I’ve experienced that!
Did it cause, ummm, shrinkage?
I’m likely to be sleeping 24 hours a day, by 2050 or so….. Does that make me an ‘out-lier’?
It might have been easier just seeing if people in San Diego are more sleep deprived than those in San Francisco. Twit.
“But Obradovich doesn’t seem to look at any of those factors, such as having a cell phone waking you up at night,”
Yep. Not me, though. I’m still living in a world of landline phones with a ringer on/off switch – mostly “off”.
I have to wonder, though it’s a bit off-topic: has the access to modern technology actually engendered any better quality of communication between people? My daughter has one of these smart phones (that she sleeps with) and for the rare call that I do get, I have to ask her to stop washing her vegetables, sit down, and speak into the microphone. Is it a wonder they take their “multi-tasking” mindset to bed with them?
http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/sleep-banks-smartphones/
“Here’s how many Americans sleep with their smartphones”
Fortune Magazine.