Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

New Research Suggests That Climate Change Can Actually Affect The Birth Gender Of Babies

As if climate change weren't already forcing us to reckon with a host of different and complex problems––displacement as a result of climate change and increasingly inclement weather come to mind––new research suggests the phenomenon will affect the gender ratio among newborns.


According to a recent study in Japan, climate change could alter the proportion of male and female newborns, with more boys born in places where temperatures rise and fewer boys born in places vulnerable to other environmental changes. Researchers analyzed the yearly and monthly mean temperature differences between 1968 and 2012.

Although the team led by Dr. Misao Fukuda, of the M&K Health Institute in Hyogo, does not know how external stress factors affect gestation, Fukuda theorized in an email to CNN that "subtle significant changes in sex ratios" occur as a result of the vulnerability of Y-bearing sperm cells, male embryos and/or male fetuses to stress.

Last year, Fukuda and his colleagues released a study analyzing how environmental stressors––like the Kobe Earthquake of 1995 and the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daichii power plant that followed––affect the ratio of male to female babies.

The researchers found that the proportion of male babies born in these prefectures decreased by between 6 and 14 percent from the previous year, when the environmental stressor took place.

According to Ray Catalano, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied babies born in Scandanavian countries between 1878 and 1914 and found that the sex ratio averages 103 to 106 males born for every 100 females, temperature affects a child's sex and overall gestational survival rate. More male babies were born during warmer years; the opposite was true for females.

Catalano concluded that "ambient temperature affects the characteristics of human populations by influencing who survives gestation, a heretofore unrecognized effect of climate on humanity."

"If you start to change the environment relatively quickly — within 100, 150 years; in evolutionary time, that's a blink of the eye — what that means is that you're going to change the environment in which human gestations occur," he said.

Whoa.




Catalano also posted that global warming will shape the selection process in utero.

"If you start to change the environment relatively quickly — within 100, 150 years; in evolutionary time, that's a blink of the eye — what that means is that you're going to change the environment in which human gestations occur," Catalano said. "What they predict is that things will get less predictable. We'll have greater swings of temperatures with higher highs, lower lows, and faster oscillations between the two extremes."

Catalano theorizes that the response to these changes will be human adaptation:

"When you change the climate the way we're changing it, you will change, profoundly, the characteristics of the population," he said.

Steven Orzack, president and senior research scientist of the Fresh Pond Research Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers a different take: He believes we still lack enough evidence to confirm that climate change will significantly affect the newborn sex ratio. While there is a trend in certain countries towards a less male-biased sex ratio at birth, he's not certain that global climate change is directly responsible for it. He theorizes the effects may be due to pollution, and that this phenomenon "may be a secondary consequence of global climate change."

More from Trending/best-of-reddit

Chris Pratt
@prattprattpratt/X

Chris Pratt Roasted For Pretending To Close His Eyes While Praying In Viral Video

Chris Pratt is being roasted once again for what many consider yet another bit of performative Christianity.

Pratt, like many religious types, has been seizing the ongoing social media discourse about Charlie Kirk's death as an opportunity to highlight his faith.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Trump Ripped After Griping About 'Sissy' New NFL Kickoff Rule In Unhinged Rant

President Donald Trump was criticized after he complained about the NFL's new "Dynamic Kickoff" rule that is designed to make playing football safer, calling it "sissy" football in a Monday morning post on Truth Social.

Under the previous rules, kickoffs began at the kicking team’s 35-yard line, with the goal of sending the ball as far as possible to pin the opposing offense deep in its own territory. The receiving team would try to advance the ball, which would often lead to high-speed collisions as players sprinted directly at each other.

Keep ReadingShow less
Mehdi Hasan; JD Vance
Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Crooked Media; Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images

Political Commentator Epically Fact-Checks Vance's Baseless Claims About Political Violence

In the wake of far-right activist Charlie Kirk's assassination, Vice President JD Vance has stepped up his attacks on leftists, this time by baselessly claiming that the far-left is more likely to commit political violence than the far-right.

Vance hosted a special episode of Kirk's podcast to attack what he referred to as “the lunatics in American politics" and said without any evidence that the suspect in Kirk's killing was motivated by far-left ideology.

Keep ReadingShow less
group of people using laptop computers in an office
Annie Spratt on Unsplash

People Open Up About The Biggest Morons They've Ever Worked With

Have you ever met someone who made you wonder how they survive day-to-day? Simple tasks seem beyond their ccapabilities.

Have you ever worked with someone whose skills are completely inadequate for sustainment of life—let alone the needs of the job?

Keep ReadingShow less
Rafael "Ted" Cruz; screenshot of video Cruz posted on X
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; @tedcruz/X

Ted Cruz Dragged Over Cringey Video Of Him Painting Over Charlie Kirk Graffiti In Houston

On Sunday, Texas MAGA Republican Senator Rafael "Ted" Cruz exploited graffiti—allegedly found on a busy roadway in Houston—that was unkind toward murdered Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, for a self-promoting photo-op and video.

He then posted both still images and the video on X.

Keep ReadingShow less