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CBS highlights study that claims climate change behind rise in childhood obesity

August 14, 2022 | | Print Article

Pseudoscience may be alive and well but the backlash for those peddling correlations as causation has been unrelenting as evidence by one recent study trying to make the claim that children are out of shape because of climate change.

The scientific journal “Temperature” recently published a study conducted by Slovenian University of Ljubljiana environmental exercise physiologist Shawnda Morrison wherein she asserted that warmer temperatures are leading to childhood obesity. “CBS This Morning” covered the study with cohost Nate Burleson reporting on the findings.

“The study, published in the journal ‘Temperature,’ found today’s children are 30 percent less aerobically fit than their parents were at their age. Fewer children are reaching the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 60 minutes of exercise a day,” he explained about the study, “showing how climate change, specifically higher temperatures, is making our children more inactive and more obese.”

The trouble was, the claim was so outlandish even Burleson who tried to maintain the climate extremist narrative had to admit that it didn’t pass the sniff test. “Now listen, it has been a lot hotter and the weather has been crazy, but I think it also has to do with technology, you know?”

“It’s one thing not to go outside,” he went on, “but these kids don’t go outside because they could stay inside, be on their phones, play video games and be social without having to go outside and be social.”

Morrison’s claims were said to be drawn from more than 150 scientific studies on how kids cope with heat and maintain physical activity and how rising temperatures might change those findings which sounds an awful lot like drawing a conclusion and then seeking out data to support that predetermined notion.

Ice Cream sales were once shown to rise in correlation with an uptick in shark attacks but does not mean the one caused the other. So too could examining Morrison’s evidence that hospital emergency rooms saw more children on hotter days. The claim was not made that it was because of the heat because in all likelihood the kids got injured any number of ways that kids get hurt during the summer when they are not stuck behind a desk in a classroom.

Journalist Kyle Becker called out the report using first hand experience as he asked, “How much fraud can you put into a report?”

“I exercised for hours in 100 degree+ weather in 90% humidity when I was growing up in South Carolina over thirty years ago. Maybe it’s the screen time? Or your idiotic Covid hysteria? No, it couldn’t be. You con artists.”

The report actually did raise the onus of COVID lockdowns, but still, climate change was the first love of the zealots still selling panic porn and so no other conclusion could be found save for the need to take drastic measure to combat it.

Kevin Haggerty
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