The words "climate change" mean different things to different people, everything from hoax to crisis, from a way to waste more federal dollars to the key to keeping a career.
But one thing the words haven't been linked to is childhood obesity.
Until now.
Last week, "CBS Mornings" co-host Nate Burleson, in introducing a study published in the peer-reviewed journal "Temperature," said that "climate change, specifically warmer temperatures, is making our children more inactive and more obese."
Meanwhile, The Hill's headline read: "Climate change causing poorer fitness in children: study." The News International headlined its article: "Too hot to play? Physiologist says climate change causing physical inactivity among kids."
However, what the study actually concluded was that children were 30% less "aerobically fit" than their parents and that aerobic physical fitness is important for tolerating higher temperatures. In other words, less fit children have more difficulty coping in warmer weather -- something we've always known.
What it did not say was that climate change caused reduced fitness in children.
We don't think the backwards reporting was unintentional because it fits the political narrative pushed by those whose careers are linked to the religion of climate change and the media that support them.
But there's too many other potential causes for childhood obesity for even the most zealous climate change supporter to give the false reporting -- though it supports their position -- any credence.
What role, after all, might video games play? Cellphones? Social media? Overprotective parents? Poor food choices?
Those are the more likely culprits.
A study reported at the American Heart Association's scientific meeting in Dallas in 2013 drew the same conclusions about children's aerobic fitness without bringing in climate change.
Children's aerobic fitness, it concluded, had declined by 5% since 1975. The increased weight in children explained 30% to 70% of the decline, the study said. Lower levels of physical activity, either in organized sports or at play, accounted for the rest.
Children should be getting 60 minutes of active play every day, according to U.S. health authorities at the time, but only a third were doing so.
Even Burleson of CBS, who'd gotten the story backwards, acknowledged, "It's one thing not to go outside, but these kids don't go outside because they can stay inside and be on their phones, play video games, and be social without having to go outside and be social."
And the study itself also pointed to the lockdown measures put in place -- longer in some areas than others -- during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Data analysis clearly demonstrated the detrimental impact of COVID-19 lockdown on children and adolescents' body weight and BMI," a study posted in the July National Library of Medicine noted, "children with pre-existing overweight/obesity being more at risk of gaining weight."
So how much has the temperature changed since 1975, the beginning year of the 2013 study?
Using the government's own figures, as reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth's temperature has risen 0.14 degrees per decade since 1880, though NOAA says it has risen 0.32 degrees per decade since 1981. That would mean the average temperature change since 1981 would be 1.28 degrees hotter.
It begs the question about how an average rise of 1.28 degrees over 40 years could have changed a generation of people from one which spent hours outside, got aerobic exercise, participated in team sports and was involved in active play to one that was a third less aerobically fit than their parents, was more obese and was forced to stay inside by searing heat.
Unherd, an unaligned British online magazine that says it "push[es] back against the herd mentality, put the national reporting on the "Temperature" study this way: "Obesity, discussed as a cause of difficulty in adapting to climate change, is reported as the effect of climate change itself, while ignoring politically inconvenient factors cited in the paper itself as contributing to poor fitness.
"But this is only an especially egregious example of how even supposedly respectable media can't be relied on to read even the abstract of a research paper, before editorialising on it in terms that align with established political narratives. And arguably whether or not such specious editorialising qualifies as 'misinformation' mostly depends on your political priors."
We hope parents see through the backward reporting, and instead of less, see that their children get more playtime -- and aerobic exercise -- outside. And here's a thought: Take the time to go out and play with them.