Essay by Eric Worrall
But childhood poor quality water, disease and nutritional deficits also contribute.
DEC. 9, 2025 / 10:12 AM
Climate change might slow intellectual development, experts warn
By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News
Climate change could pose a threat to children’s intellectual development, a new study says.
Kids growing up under higher-than-usual temperatures — average temps above 86 degrees Fahrenheit — are less likely to meet developmental milestones for literacy and mathematics, researchers reported Monday in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
“Because early development lays the foundation for lifelong learning, physical and mental health, and overall well-being, these findings should alert researchers, policymakers and practitioners to the urgent need to protect children’s development in a warming world,” lead researcher Jorge Cuartas, an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University, said in a news release.
For the study, researchers analyzed data for more than 19,600 3- and 4-year-olds in the African nations of Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi and Sierra Leone; in Georgia, a nation on the Black Sea; and in Palestine.
…
These effects were more pronounced among kids from poor households, those who lacked access to clean water and those living in urban areas.
Read more: https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2025/12/09/Climate-change-might-slow-intellectual-development-experts-warn/2241765292796/
…
The abstract of the study;
Ambient heat and early childhood development: a cross-national analysis
Jorge Cuartas, Lenin H. Balza, Andrés Camacho, Nicolás Gómez-Parra
First published: 08 December 2025
Abstract
Background
Increasing evidence suggests that climate change, along with its cascading impacts on ecosystems, societies, and communities, has significant effects on both physical and mental health. However, less is known about how exposure to excessive heat early in life may influence the development of foundational skills that shape lifelong developmental trajectories. This study examined the effects of ambient heat on early childhood development across six countries, using geographic and time-stamped data on child development and ambient temperature.
Methods
Our primary outcome is the Early Childhood Development Index. We used linear probability models with geographic and seasonality fixed effects to account for baseline climatic conditions, as well as other individual and contextual covariates to address potential selection bias. The sample comprised 19,607 children aged three and four from Georgia, The Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and the State of Palestine, all participants in Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys collected between 2017 and 2020. We merged these data with temperature data from the ERA5-Land Monthly Aggregated Climate Dataset, calculating the mean monthly maximum temperature children experienced from birth to interview.
Results
We found that children exposed to average maximum temperatures above 32°C were less likely to be developmentally on track compared to those exposed to cooler temperatures, even after accounting for baseline average climatic conditions and other covariates. Domain-specific models indicate that these effects were most pronounced in literacy and numeracy skills. Subgroup analyses revealed that the negative impacts were particularly severe for children in economically disadvantaged households and urban areas, and for those lacking access to adequate water and sanitation.
Conclusions
This study highlights the potential impact of excessive heat on early childhood development, emphasizing the need for policies and interventions that enhance preparedness, adaptation, and resilience to support human development in an rapidly warming world.
Read more: https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.70081
If heat is the major negative factor in childhood development, why is Singapore so smart?
The sample – “children aged three and four from Georgia, The Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and the State of Palestine” – for some reason excluded places like Singapore.
Singapore, which sits almost directly on the tropics, is a nation of high achievers, and consistently achieves high education rankings, and is frequently cited as an example other nations should try to emulate.
There is an obvious difference between Singapore and the nations included in the study: Singapore has a stable society, good food, clean water, and a high quality medical system.
Let’s just say I’m not convinced heat alone plays a significant role.
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Increasing the average temperature by one or two degrees when the diurnal difference is maybe 20 degrees isn’t going to influence mental development.
And spot on with the comment about Singapore.
Playing badminton or table tennis ameliorates effects, if any. Apparently, playing ice hockey doesn’t.
Raising the temperature by 1°C does affect the mental acuity of major university professors though. As is evidenced by the plethora of Bad Papers being proffered as Science…specifically Climate Science.
They only have to FEEL, or be told, that the temperature has risen 1°C, to be deeply affected… It doesn’t have to be real. !
Odd though, these profs mostly sit behind the desk in an air-conditioned office.
Wonder what happens if they adjust the air-con temperature. 😉
Wonder if they are clever enough to adjust the AC temp.
New math…
1 plus 1 equals 2. How do you FEEL about that.
And let us not forget that math is racist.
Or so it has been reported.
Applied psychology…at least we know it wasn’t a scientific study.
But it does look like a racist study ….
Only if you think that children from Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Georgia, and in Palestine are all the same race.
They’re all Non White…so perhaps.
Georgians are literally Caucasians.
Very poor ex-communist country. You need to visit the Balkans to appreciate the level of poverty outside the main cities.
Hmmm.
So kids born and raised after AC units became common are smarter than kids born and raised before AC?
To bad, I grew up in central India without AC and have been “challenged” all my life.
The implication is that people from hot countries are stupid!
Obviously hiring Indian People Because of their Math Skills is simply an attempt to further Dumb Down Society at large.
There are still survivors of no air conditioning, including my generation, who grew up with severe heat,. It may be possible that those raised with it are now more susceptible, but the paper establishes a more likely reason for the results. “…… for baseline average climatic conditions and other potential confounders, there may still be unobserved factors that could have biased the results……These findings highlight the urgent need for further research, policies, and interventions….. ” Another paper stuck in the current period!
This bullshit promoting the imaginary Boogeyman of “climate crisis” highlights the “need” for more such bullshit and more stupid policies.
Rinse and repeat, it’s the same old scam.
“There are still survivors of no air conditioning, including my generation, who grew up with severe heat,”
High heat made us smarter! We are smart enough not to be fooled by Climate Alarmist CO2-phobes.
exposure to climate propaganda makes everyone stupid
Only if the accept it.
Actually just reading that tripe will make you stupid.
I lost a few brain cells just reading the abstract.
How are you still functioning! 😉 😉
I read a few more and I might not be. 🙂
STORY TIP
Well so far, not many stupid people are commenting on this usual propaganda drivel from Seth Goebbelstein and his cabal of stupid academics. 2 so far:
https://apnews.com/article/epa-climate-change-censorship-fossil-fuels-1c83071f9eea81e8e31ebad0c4444775
It would have been 3 but, surprise, surprise – I wasn’t allowed to suggest that people read Lindzen, Happer and van Wijngaarden, on an article about censorship no less.
Well done Trump Administration. Associated Press FOD.
I have no idea how to comment that BS, but there are scientists, or people pretending to be scientists with to long sunshine sessions.
How would I get in touch with the tourism board of the “State of Palestine?” I’ve always wanted to visit a non-existent country.
Concentration Camps don’t have tourism boards.
Not even the very first ones made by the brits.
And what do you want there? See the bodies of ten thousands of children that were blown apart?
Arabs were rounded up and locked away in concentration camps in the Palestine area?
Who did this to them?
Or did they congregate there of their own volition and become pawns for the terrorist groups to exploit?
“Arabs were rounded up and locked away in concentration camps in the Palestine area?
Who did this to them?”
In chronological order …
The Ottoman Turks
The British Army was responsible for maintaining order in Mandatory Palestine from 1920 to 1948.,
In 1939, at a Parliamentary Inquiry, Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, acknowledged the existence of 13 concentration camps and the detention of over 4,800 individuals, primarily Palestinians.
The British army & Zionist settlers.
More Prison camps & Ethnic cleansing 1945-1948
The UN General Assembly In May 1950 UNRWA established a total of 53 “refugee camps”, for the Palestinians driven from their lands by governments & settlers, and were then concentrated into the camps.
The Israelis
Lots of restrictions
2006, Israel imposed a blockade, sealing border crossings and placing heavy restrictions on imports, exports & UN aid; that blockade is still in force.
**
Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, wrote in his diary in 1895: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population (Palestinian Arabs) across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.”
David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, saw population transfer as a key point of the plan and added: “With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.””
All that, plus the 1917 Balfour Declaration, has ensured decades of conflict & misery.
How many Arab nations were there at the time, and are now? Any problems “Palestinians” have they brought upon themselves.
What a load of nonsensical revisionist history. None of the groups you named “rounded up and locked away [Arabs] in concentration camps in the Palestine Area”. Have you actually studied the history of the region formerly known as Palestine?
Historically it was called Judea and Samaria by the Jews who settled it thousands of years ago and who have had a continuous presence there as a majority and minority population predating the occupiers of the British, Ottoman, Roman, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires. The Ottomans didn’t force them to live in designated areas. Neither did the British, the League of Nations, the UN in their 1947 Partition Plan, nor the new nation of Israel in 1948. Many Arabs in the region ended up relocating after they lost wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973 that they initiated to drive out the Jews. When you lose a war, you don’t get to dictate your terms or your territory, especially if you were the aggressor and initiated it.
tldr;
European Jews began to emigrate to the region after the British defeated the Ottomans in WWI (think Lawrence of Arabia) and Jewish immigrants didn’t fear persecution and harassment by the Muslim Ottomans. They bought land and homes from the Arabs who lived there. Arab leaders, ever hostile to non-Muslims, were angered by the influx, and tried to prevent the legal sale of land by Arabs to Jewish settlers, even forming an alliance with Axis powers in WWII and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to prevent Jews from settling there.
Preparing for the British to withdraw, the UN drew up a plan in 1947 intended to prevent conflict between the Jews and Arabs living there to have their own autonomous governments. Jewish leaders accepted it. Arab leaders rejected it and armies from 7 Arab countries—Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, and Lebanon—tried to exterminate the Jews in a war in 1948. For the record, removing a group of people from land they legally occupy by deadly force or trying to exterminate them is called genocide; real genocide, not the fake one antisemites keep screaming about that isn’t actually happening. The new nation of Israel barely beat back the Arab exterminators and won the war, leading to changes in boundaries from the ones suggested by the 1947 UN mandate. Too bad, so sad. The Arabs tried again in 1967 to delete the Jews and their nation and lost again. They planned to do it again in 1973 but the Israelis preempted their attack and claimed the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt after a brief, decisive war, which they ceded back to Egypt in a peace agreement that is still in effect today.
The Arabs in that area eventually formed an identity as Palestinians in the 1960’s as they threw their support behind militant terrorist groups led by Yasser Arafat and others like the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Black September, Fatah (which runs the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, often called the West Bank since 1967), and Hamas in Gaza. The Palestinians who fled to Jordan and Lebanon caused all kinds of conflict, attempting to overthrow the Jordanian government and assassinate King Hussein, and supporting the incursion of the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah in Lebanon which has caused violent confrontations with Israel and massive devastation for the Lebanese. It is no accident that Arab nations resist accepting Palestinian refugees. Their culture has been terribly corrupted by decades of subjugation and indoctrination by extremists and terrorists to the point that they seem incapable of civil self-rule as evidenced by the terrorist state of Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007.
Palestinian leadership, terrorists, activists, and their useful idiot sympathizers in Western governments have inverted reality by selectively ignoring history and painting the victims (Israelis) of almost constant Arab and Palestian aggression, assault, murder, and genocide since 1948 as the aggressors and the aggressors (Arabs and Palestinians) as the “victims.” Palestinians are only the victims of their spectacularly bad choices.
SPLITTERS!!
“Have you actually studied the history of the region formerly known as Palestine?”
Yes, extensively, my wife’s family escaped Europe in 1941 and settled in British-administered Palestine.
“None of the groups you named “rounded up and locked away [Arabs] in concentration camps in the Palestine Area”.
My grandfather was a guard at both Nablus & Jaffa concentration Camps, 1935-1939.
The 1939 Parliamentary Inquiry, where Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, acknowledged the existence of 13 concentration camps and the detention of over 4,800 individuals, primarily Palestinians, is a fact of history; you can read all about it in Hansard.
You keep proving the stooopid is strong in you.
Obviously disadvantaged by today’s lower education system populated by socialist tainted teachers and professors and subjected to rigorous training in 1°C warmer classrooms cooled by Wind Power.
In a way SxysS was correct.
Gaza is essentially a prison camp.. run by Hamas.
Roger that.
They’ve all been rogered by Hamas.
(with lotsa help from the UN)
It really is sad how anti-semites will believe whatever lies they are told to believe.
There are no concentration camps. Very few children were blown up and almost all of them were killed by Hamas.
By “Children” are you referring to the Hamas Human Shields?
Please read up on the subject of “human shields”.
Ah, so tourist Greta would have had a problem if her flotilla actually landed.
“Palestinians” likely would have thrown her off the roof of any remaining multi-story building.
You assume she and her landing party would have survived the crush of people trying to get a bit of that 2 tons of “aid.”
It seems to me that childhood exposure to climatism, followed by years of higher level indoctrination, is the real reason for the results of such a “study”.
Seems like racism since darker folk come from hotter countries.
abs Eskimo Einsteins abound…
“hotter countries”
Yes, hot, but not hotter-than-usual, as the article claims. There is no evidence for that.
I thought darker skin was due to the quantity of melanin in the skin.
Melanin increase is primarily caused by UV, aka exposure to the sun.
Nothing about melanin is related to temperature.
Over generations, melanin becomes genetic based, due to natural evolution.
John Brignell’s numbers watch is the place for this nonsense. Warm List
I didn’t see anything about Justin Trudeau on that list.
For a Singapore temperature check, I went to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch/countries/singapore/average-temperature-by-year The Tmax and Tmin data from 1901 to 2024 are displayed in long table. Here is the data for the two dates:
Year—–Tmax—–Tmin—–Tavg Temperatures are ° C
2024—–31.5——25.2——28.3 30° C = 86° F
1901—–30.3——23.0——26.6
Chng—-+1.2——+2.2——+1.7
From 1901 to 2024, Tmax was never below 30° C. I have concluded that warm temperature must be a good benefit for the adults and for the children.
NB: For easy access of weather and climate data from any site in the world, go to: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com. On the home page. there are links in light blue to weather and climate data for countries, states, cities and other sites. I got data for Death Valley an Yellow Stone Nat. Park. For cities use:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/city name/
For “city name” , enter the city name in lower case letters. If the city name has two words, use a hyphen to connect the words. At the end of the home page, there is list of options for acquisition and display of weather and climate data for the city.
From the gist of this report it sounds like the paper would label Singaporeans as dumb as a box of rocks.
Only slightly more dumb than a box of Sox
But far less ignorant that a box of Sox filled with rocks
Reminds me of Fox in Socks.
Too bad Dr. Seuss has been banned.
I will not eat them, Sam I Am.
Green Eggs and Ham.
That Sam-I-Am…. sounds like name your favorite politician.
Satyendra Nath Bose?
I wonder where he was raised.
There was a physicist from India by that name. Exceptionally brilliant. Deceased.
A lot of people from India are pretty smart too.
The clowns that wrote this article need to look at socioeconomics and economic development, rather than weather. !
No, exposure to leftist ideology makes people stupid.
Some it makes stupid, others it makes dead.
Perhaps brain dead would be more apt.
I think you have be very stupid BEFORE you adopt leftist ideologies.
And it gets worse from there.
Yes, I think one has to be at least slightly mentally challenged to be a Leftist, and definitely mentally challenged to be a Radical Leftist.
Just about all of them are delusional. Aided by the Leftwing Media Propaganda Machine, the most dangerous organization on Earth. It prevents people from dealing with reality by creating false realities that gullible people live in. A democratic nation cannot govern itself properly if all the voters get are lies and distortions from the Leftwing Media Propaganda Machine. This causes voters to elect the wrong people (Leftists) and their nation goes to hell as a result. The UK being a good example.
Goebbels wrote the manual.
Looking at what has been done in government schools you have a point. Leftist ideology is a cancer that has infected the entire system.
There is no such things as “leftist ideology” any more than there is “shark ideology”.
Ahhh, you are that special kind of stooopid.
Per Google AI:
“Leftist ideology centers on social equality, collective well-being, and government intervention to address societal problems, often opposing capitalism and traditional hierarchies for more radical social change, prioritizing community over pure individualism, and advocating for marginalized groups, with core tenets like economic fairness, social justice, and workers’ rights.”
“Shark ideology” isn’t a single concept but refers to various ways sharks are perceived and used metaphorically, ranging from their real ecological roles and misunderstood behaviors (like “investigative bites”) to cultural representations as fearsome predators (like in Jaws), symbols of ruthless business (loan sharks, Shark Tank), or even aspirational models for focus and drive (like in motivational “Shark Theory”). It encompasses human attitudes, from fear and persecution to conservation efforts and personality traits like predatory efficiency or aggression.
Of course there is leftist ideology.
Because ideology and rationality cannot function in the same mind space at the same time, and leftists display zero rationality, ergo leftists must be possessed of ideology.
Simples.
Climate change propaganda could certainly pose a threat to children’s intellectual development.
The traditional argument for geographic species diversity had it that the migration into cooler climates demanded greater physical adaptation, body and brain size, cultural cooperation along with individual resourcefulness. So, according to this theory, climate did play a role, just the converse of the premise that heat makes us stupid.
AI says 1.5 billion people already live where average temperature exceeds 86 F. So do the authors assert they are all (on average) retarded?
So people living in high latitudes must be geniuses.
Where are the replicated studies used to establish this magic cutoff? Sort of like the 1.5 C climate emergency threshold.
“Might…could…less likely…” typical words used by useful idiots.
Useful?
To leftists, yes.
Claim: Childhood Exposure to Tropical Heat and Climate Change Makes People Stupid
hmm, I wonder what Mikey Mann’s excuse is?
This sounds really racist. The Southern Hemisphere is mostly African and South American. The Equatorial areas are mostly Black and Central American.
Australia doesn’t figure so much into that equation because (like New Zealand) they are too far south.
I should think the authors of this paper would have been more woke.
It also doesn’t explain Canadians.
Although.. I have met some people from Darwin… 😉
Nothing explains Canadians…
Brain Freeze…Perpetual Brain Freeze.
Warmer doesn’t cause stupidity
Warmer doesn’t spurn idiocricy
Cold does!!
Look up “politeness” in the dictionary, and you’ll get a pic of the Canadian flag.
Plant your car in the middle of a crowded intersection there, blocking all traffic movement, and all you’ll hear is the politest, timidest taps on a horn you’ve heard –
“mip, mip, mip”
rather than “BLLAAARRPP!” accompanied by a middle finger and and a cry of –
“ASSHOLE!!”
You might need to double-check your atlas.
Almost half of Australia is in the tropics.
… but a lot less than half of us live in the tropics.
That’s a point.
Perhaps it explains FNQ. I had always attributed it to a surfeit of XXXX and Bundy 😉
Who knew? Children raised in third world countries and hot climates with horrible living conditions, minimal education and healthcare don’t develop as well.
But let’s pin it all on climate change which has barely been sufficient enough to measure with any confidence.
The assumption is that a change in GAT is all there is to climate changing.
I though climate was more than temperature.
I would say rather the opposite :
Stupid people make “[anthropogenic] climate change” a reality.
I think the UN should send air conditioners immediately.
That number is less than 1/3rd of the number of COP attendees. Hmmm….
Exposure to climate change PROPAGANDA makes people stupid.
Some Christmas humor from the Babylon Bee…
It is not the heat that is causing the intelligence drop it is the attendance at schools with a woke curriculum causing the stupidity and loss of common sense in the student’s.
“stupidity and loss of common sense in the student’s“
Ahem.
Well sue me for an extra punctuation.Now you can get a life