Chinese Scientists Pull Off Hilarious “Climate Change” Troll?

We have a decision to make, you and I, dear reader. Is the peer-reviewed paper detailed below yet another asinine ridiculous dreary entry in the burgeoning anti-science of “climate change”, of which there are tens of thousands upon many tens of thousands of examples, or is this–and consider this seriously–a hilarious troll of Western misplaced earnestness by a group of light-hearted fun-loving wily Chinese?

I mean the latter suggestion quite seriously. Indeed, my money is on it. I am so sick of “climate change” papers I never would have agreed to review this one except that I see the distinct possibility of a good joke being played on us. See if you agree.

The peer-reviewed paper is “Rising temperatures increase added sugar intake disproportionately in disadvantaged groups in the USA” in Nature Climate Change by, get this, Pan He, Zhuojing Xu, Duo Chan, Pengfei Liu & Yan Bai. All but the last are in Western universities. Bai, whom I will call the “ringleader”, is at the School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Right after reading the title, I was laughing. You, too, right? WORLD ENDS: MINORITIES HARDEST HIT again? No way.

Let’s go through the Abstract (my emphasis):

Extreme heat may affect added sugar consumption through the increased intake of drinks and frozen desserts, but such an impact is rarely quantified. Here, using individual transaction-level data for US households in 2004–2019, we find that added sugar consumption is positively related to temperature, notably within 12–30?°C at a rate of 0.70 g °C^-1. This is primarily driven by the higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and frozen desserts. The magnitude of such impact is larger among households with lower income or educational levels. Our projections indicate a substantial nationwide increase in added sugar consumption of 2.99 g per day by 2095 (or equivalently 5 °C warming level), with vulnerable groups at an even higher risk. Our results highlight the critical need to mitigate health risks from the over-intake of added sugar and to explore dietary adaptation to climate change.

Darn right it’s “rarely quantified,” because the very idea is preposterous. Do we need Science to tell us ice cream sells better in summer? Which is a funny question.

They “find” that sugar consumption goes up 0.7 gram per degree C. In civilized units this is 0.013 ounces per degree Fahrenheit. Which is not even 8% of a teaspoon of sugar. And that, too, is funny. Or at least amusing.

Global warming is supposed to give us–they say, one of these days, who knows when, but any day now, you can bet on Experts–an average of 1.5 C higher temps. That’s not what these authors claim, but it’s the generally accepted Panic Number people use. That 1.5 higher C translates to 0.037 ounces of extra sugar. Which means that sweltering increase gets us to almost 1/4 teaspoon extra sugar. Almost.

And that is funny, too, especially when you consider they themselves claim “Individuals aged 2 years and above consumed over 70 g (17 teaspoons) [of sugar] per day in 2017–2018”. Which means global warming will push people from an average of 70 grams to—get out your calculators!—71 grams. If the worst case scenario hits. And if everybody forgets air conditioning.

Hey. It could happen.

Well now that is funny, even laugh-out-loud funny. But it becomes hilarious when they throw in the obligatory hand-wringing about “vulnerable groups”.

They might have pulled off the troll were it not pretending to care about “vulnerable groups”, which is something only the woke claim to care about. This is not a concern in China. The authors were thinking, not without cause, that only professors and NPR listeners would hear of their paper, and this is the group most prone to disinformation.

My evidence is bolstered by the writing, which sounds very like AI. One example:

These effect probably stem from physiological and psychological demand for fluids and refrigerated products in warmer weather, or weather-based promotion strategies. To disentangle these factors, we controlled the average price per 100?g of the major food groups …

You get the idea.

The conspiracy theory view is to say the Chinese government put these scientists up to the prank, in order to convince Experts to continue blowing needless time and precious resources on “battling” “climate change”. Chinese are marvelous at playing the long game, and maybe they figured if enough nitwits can be persuaded to give up oil (and gas and cheap electricity), China will gain an immense advantage over the West.

Which is true, but it’s too nice. Our Experts and academics believe mighty stupid things, it’s true. But a lot of the professed “belief” in things like “climate change” is merely performative. They affect concern because they know it’s good for their careers to do so. But put “climate change” in terms of their paychecks, say by announcing all professors must take a 5% pay cut to “battle” “climate change” and “save” the earth, and they will rapidly join Team Reality.

That leaves a joke, a troll, as the best explanation. Some bored scientists blowing off steam in an area which has become a continuous parody.

Anyway, I laughed.

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