Essay by Eric Worrall
Well meaning researchers not checking their facts carefully enough.
5 reasons why climate change may see more of us turn to alcohol and other drugs
Published: November 20, 2023 5.59am AEDT
Helen Louise Berry Honorary Professor, Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Macquarie University
Francis Vergunst Associate Professor, Psychosocial Difficulties, University of Oslo…
Extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, storms and wildfires, are becoming more frequent and severe. These affect our mental health in a multitude of ways.
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We outline five ways climate change could increase the risk of harmful substance use.
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1. Mental health is harmed
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2. Worry increases
With increasing public awareness of how climate change is endangering wellbeing, people are increasingly worried about what will happen if it remains unchecked.
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Politicians take note
As we head towards the COP28 global climate talks in Dubai, climate change is set to hit the headlines once more. Politicians know climate change is undermining human health and wellbeing. It’s well past time to insist they act.
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- supporting vulnerable individuals, especially young people, and marginalised commmunities, who are hit hardest by extreme weather-related events
- focusing health-related policies more on broadscale health promotion, for example, healthier eating, active transport and community-led mental health support
- investing in climate-resilient infrastructure, such as heat-proofing buildings and greening cities, to prevent more of the destabilising effects and stress we know contributes to mental health problems and harmful substance use.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-why-climate-change-may-see-more-of-us-turn-to-alcohol-and-other-drugs-217894
If warm weather was a significant cause of mental health issues, Singapore would be a lunatic asylum. So the suggestion warm weather on its own causes mental health issues is absurd. Our bodies are built for extreme tropical heat, that is why we need to wear clothes for warmth. Far more people die from cold than heat, even in warm countries like India. But warm weather coupled with absolute acceptance of the fake climate crisis does cause genuine distress, and is likely exacerbating mental health issues.
There is also no doubt that fear of climate change is contributing to the drug crisis. Keep telling teenagers they’re all doomed to an early painful death, and eventually they’ll look for an alternative to doing their homework.
But I wish the researchers had checked their facts before parroting harmful climate propaganda.
If they had, they might have added a few more options to their list:
- Educate kids that nearly every prediction of doom made over the last few decades has utterly failed. Claims we are in the midst of a climate crisis are wildly exaggerated.
- Remove political roadblocks to the availability of cheap energy. If global warming is now inevitable, as the researchers appear to claim, then people might as well be comfortable. Access to a bountiful supply of cheap coal electricity to keep air conditioners affordable would help with maintaining comfort during the “climate crisis”.
- Check the evidence behind claims that extreme weather events are becoming more severe, instead of parroting baseless green propaganda.
Future historians will look back on our age as a time of mass hysteria, a period of history in which adult authority figures and educators failed their duty of care, and fed the imaginary climate crisis delusion by amplifying baseless propaganda. They will struggle to understand why learned authority figures didn’t make more effort to check their facts before feeding harmful climate crisis narratives.
Yep, the old saying those who don’t learn from history will repeat history. Just like Salem witch trails the giver of life are accused of the opposed. Young women who can bear children move society forward, without them it all crashes. That is who they burned in Salem. Co2 is the giver of all life as we know it and now the left want to burn that that also. Of course with the history of the left, they murdered somewhere around 200,000,000 people in the twenty century and want to kill over 6 billion this time, why should we be surprised they lie about CO2 and climate.
That is not who were burned in Salem. And those executed were not burned but hung.
The Salem executions were not of young women, and were not for the reason you give. They were almost all over child bearing age, when female. In fact 6 men and two dogs were among the 20 or so executed. They were hung, they were not burned. The dogs I think were shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_of_the_Salem_witch_trials
It was mass delusion and hysteria. It is in some ways comparable to the current net zero mass hysteria in parts of the West. One of a number of such hysterias, we can mention financial bubbles, and more recently the Satanic Child Abuse mania. But think also the smaller ones, the repeated Jehovas Witnesses frenzies of the end of the world, the Branch Dravidians… etc. Our species is prone to it.
The left are in the grip, many of them, of climate hysteria. But your post is at an almost equivalent level of derangement. They are deranged, but there is no evidence they want to kill over 6 billion. Their chosen remedy for the stuff of their delusions may result in that, if adopted. But its mass delusion, its not intentional mass killing.
Nazism was intentional mass killing, as were the Soviet purges. Different.
Its important to get it right. You can only remedy it if you understand it.
What you say is what I have heard about the Salem witches. However, they did burn them in Scotland; if the accused was lucky the executioner/firemaster strangled her (while tying her to the stake) before he lit the fire.
You forgot Mao’s socialist depradations.
The Great Leap Forward probably accounted for 30 million. The Cultural Revolution maybe another 15-20. An informed observer thought it had been worse than Stalin. The Russian purges probably 15-20 million. That was Conquest’s estimate, some think it is on the high side. The Ukraine famine about 5 million.
The real bill of socialism/communism is probably in the region of 100 million. Not 200 million, as the post says.
Again, its not that 100 million is any better than 200 million. The idiot Seamus Milne thought he could excuse Stalin by arguing that the purges were no more than 7 million or so. As if that could excuse it.
Its just that accuracy matters. You can’t make a credible argument by making up numbers. You destroy the force of what would be, made with the right numbers, a decisively correct point.
The right is missing in action when it comes to so-called “climate change.”
When the left makes errors the right is supposed to correct them with the truth.
Maybe the right has invested in windmill stocks and solar stocks themselves and doesn’t want to rock the boat.
Good observation. Whoever owns the banking industry is too invested in the current narrative, and this includes a lot or rich folks on all sides.
Crony Capitalism.
The official right is all-in on climate change. You have only to listen to them to know that. the rest of us–the non-official right/skeptics–are lone voices in the wilderness.
What causes Mental Health Issues with respect to Climate Change is Media Hype of ANY weather event with “Made worse by Climate Change” AND “Will only get worser in the decades to come” with the final tagline “unless we stop our Climate Sins of Emission”
As we head towards the COP28 global climate talks in Dubai, climate change is set to hit the headlines once more.
So it is COP28 climate talks causing the change?
supporting vulnerable individuals, especially young people, and marginalised commmunities, who are hit hardest by extreme weather-related events
“Show on the teddy bear where the Extreme Weather touched you”.
Future historians will look back on our age as a time of mass hysteria…
Revealed: the huge climate impact of the middle classes
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/revealed-huge-climate-impact-of-the-middle-classes-carbon-divide
Repent, repent and repent again
The aim was a little wide but close enough….
“”People who stuck by UK Covid rules have worst mental health, says survey
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/people-who-stuck-by-uk-covid-rules-have-worst-mental-health-says-survey
very similar sorts of words aren’t they ‘covid vs ‘climate‘
iow: ….blah blah….people who stuck by climate rules...blah blah blah
You will own nothing and be truly miserable…
I would be curious about the overlap between the covid rule adherents and the climate anxious. I would bet on a very high correlation.
Those “climate journalists” have a tough job- trying to say something new and different every day. Like a priest preparing his weekly sermon- what can he say about avoiding Satan that he hasn’t already said hundreds of times?
I think this is right, we are living in the age of hysteria. Another latest snippet of evidence, Oxford now intends banning gas hobs and cookers in new build housing.
Oxford City Council has said the new rules for builders, part of a wider scheme for the city to hit net zero by 2040, would help tackle the “existential threat of climate change”.
Appliances that use fossil fuels in heating and cooking are to be forbidden from being installed in new houses and commercial developments with only limited exceptions, under the proposals.
The Labour council wants to bring forward its previous 2036 date for the ban on gas and oil in new builds, going further than what has been set out by the Government.
The hysteria is thinking this could possibly make any difference to the climate.
I always figured that the authorities would not be able to guarantee the supply of nat-gas to new developments. New developments require larger pipe upstream to replace the existing trunks.
Governmentleviathon has gotten so huge and sclerotic that it can’t build roads, can’t maintain current infrastructure, and certainly can’t find the political will to replace miles upon miles of existing smaller diameter gas lines for greater downstream capacity.Similar problem applies to making everything dependent on electricity. The UK has 333,000 low voltage substations, about 1m feeders and 450,000 miles of buried cables. About 80% of these low voltage networks are built for ‘lighting plus’ (c,1.2kW loads) and not the 7kW EV or 9kW heat pump.
Much of this network will therefore need to be replaced. Some time ago it was calculated this would cost £60bn and involve digging up most of the non motorway roads in the country.
link is to a discussion by a rep of v2g and a doctor of engineering at Southampton University
https://v2g.co.uk/2021/05/electric-vehicles-as-energy-smart-appliances/
How fortunate that absolutely no-one apparently worries about the blatant consequences of relying on weather dependent, extremely expensive ruinable energy going forward.
Or even the consequences of the last Plandemic and the others, ready to be launched on us, by BigPharma and the WEF, UN and WHO.
Perhaps the “Honorary” and “Associate” Professors could explain? They both seem insoucient about being lied toabout stuff they obviously don’t even understand.
“5 reasons why climate change may see more of us turn to alcohol and other drugs”
Well, then, obviously, health researchers need billions in new funding.
Lockdown – imprisonment in your own home – saw more of us turn to alcohol and other drugs – home deliveries, Netflix etc etc. What did they expect people to do?
The real crime is what it did to school children.
Please don’t tell the Professors that according to actual data readily available to anybody, even
Professors, that floods, fires, droughts and storms are not gettin stronger or more frequent. Talk about such things is getting stronger and more frequent, but not the actual events. Do these people not know the truth? Have they even looked?
You don’t look if your paycheck (or size of your bureaucracy) depends on you not looking. If it isn’t in a UN IPCC or U.S. NCA report it doesn’t exist.
Helen Berry of Macquarie, aspiring scientist,
You do Australian science a disservice by stating without data your belief that floods, droughts, storms and wildfires are increasing. Increasing since when, compared to when? Fires adjusted for arson? Storms adjusted for harm on a constant or growing population affected?
I have researched Australian heatwaves for many years. The pop-science slogan is that they are getting longer hotter and more frequent.
The 6 Australian capitals plus Darwin and Alice Springs, accounting for where some 70% of Australians live, do not follow this chant.
Here is the story told with 128 graphs. Study them, then arrive at your own conclusions, but do more than repeat the dogma, please.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheat.xlsx
The link says not found.
Sorry, my bad typing.
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheatwave2022.xlsx
Geoff S
learned authority figures
While these figures, the academics in climate science, are indeed learned, they have no authority, that being given to popularly elected officials in much of the world. The elected officials are, however, responsible for the disbursement of public funds that go to academia to enable their influence by the construction of research facilities, hiring of administrators, faculty and staff, and distribution of anti-science. The authority figures enjoy the control they exercise over the fates of the unwashed masses and the opportunity to be participants in a vast re-distribution of wealth in which they will be among the beneficiaries.
In the irrational West, the climate Cassandras, Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, Michael Mann, Mario Molina, John Kerry and a host of others will bear no responsibility for the inevitable energy disaster. They didn’t make the decisions. Elected officials did and do. Yet these frauds will retire with astonishing benefits and posthumous acclaim, government buildings, airports and highways bearing their names, That’s what representative democracy is all about.
Decades ago we had several very cold winters in the US upper midwest. A friend who was an ER doc at the time remembers the unusually large number of un-housed people (poor and/or substance abusers) brought in because they had been found in very bad condition in back alleys and under bridges. Many never made it to the ER — they went straight to the morgue.
Cold Kills.
If one looks at the Mortality Statistics reports of the Commerce Department from the 1920s and 1930s the average number of opioid deaths was 35 per year when opioids were legal for consumption, the cost was low, and syringes weren’t easily available. There were even opium dens in the major cities.
Example: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsushistorical/mortstatsh_1925.pdf
The population was about a third of what it is today so that translates into about 105 deaths today if nothing had changed. Acetaminophen(Tylenol and generics) has about 500 deaths per year in the US for comparison.
Some people whose ancestors came from opium-producing regions of the world don’t produce as much endorphins as those from countries where there was no opium production. At methadone clinics, patients choose the dose that they are comfortable with and the dosages can range from 1 mg per day to over 200 mg per day.
When the government made opioids illegal without a prescription and doctors stopped writing prescriptions the price for illegal opioids rose dramatically. That caused people to have to inject opioids to afford them and that has caused around 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the US.
story tip
I wonder what effect the legalizing marijuana is having on our kids. The high potency
weed is said to be like being on a heavy duty tranquillizer. Its a self medication thing
with no relation to climate/weather IMO.
Back in the early 70’s the drinking age was lowered to 18 because of the draft lottery and the impact on school kids was significant. Now with fentanyl around and seeing groups of young
people in the obits I have to wonder if there is a connection to the weeds shops.
In my legal career, I noticed two things about young people in the criminal system. The first is that no matter what the legal matter was, they used some sort of mind altering substance, usually weed and/or alcohol. They could rarely stay clean while being tested on probation. The second was that most if not all of them had been put on Ritalin, Adderall, or other psychiatric drugs, usually in their childhood. And states can’t legalize weed fast enough. This will not have a good ending.
“Claim: High Cost Green Policies will Reduce the Drug Epidemic”
No! Crime will increase.
Tax payor funded free access to suboxone for all without expectation of participation in recovery services, turns suboxone into cash on the street for Fent. Climate and climate policies have nothing to do with with opioid crisis; stupid social/healthcare policy does, as does turning law enforcement into a political movement.
The first sentence of the study report is an outright lie: “Extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, storms and wildfires, are becoming more frequent and severe.” Recordkeeping beginning since before the year 1900 shows that other than for normal annual and decadal variations extreme weather statistics has not changed at all.
Is that actually an argument for more and better air conditioning?
This is an example why I hold so many professors, psychologists and all others in the social sciences suspect. These people are supposed to be educated, anyone who has spent more than a minute thinking knows it is not the weather or the climate that trouble those they speak of. It is the 24/7 scaremongering, lying and cheating coming from the low life CAGW crowd and their mainstream media compatriots. The whole bunch are disgraceful.
I hope that the authors of this article are not implying that all people in tropical countries near the equator that are warm are either drug abusers, alcoholics or crazy.
Perhaps a cart and horse scenario. One might sensibly conclude that the masses of elites, political leaders and low functioning academics in the Western world who continue to push the CAGW narrative have taken to excess consumption of drugs and alcohol long ago thus fueling the current madness.