Kick up your recliner chairs because you’re not going to believe this one! TIME magazine is out with a new report prophesying that climate change threatens to make us all lazy slobs!
“Scientists Warn of Health Risks As Climate Change Reduces Physical Activity,” read the knee-slapper headline from TIME reporter Simmone Shah. Shah waved around a new wacky study published in Lancet Global Health to foam at the mouth over how “rising global temperatures due to climate change could lead millions of people to be less physically active” and will supposedly lead to an increase of half a million deaths by 2050.
Yes, they’re actually projecting this nonsense out 24 years into the future, giving the misleading implication that humanity writ large is completely incapable of adaptation. But as Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg argued in November 2022, “Around the world, far more people die each year from cold than heat.” And that’s according to — get this — another report by The Lancet that Lomborg cited at the time. So which is it?
Climate Depot founder Marc Morano blasted Shah’s propaganda in comments to MRC Business. “Here we go again. TIME magazine just keeps churning out the most simplistic climate fears based on ‘models’ and ‘projections.’ It’s hard to believe that the magazine can even write this stuff anymore.” Countering Shah’s underlying thesis, Morano retorted, “What if we work out in air conditioning? Wouldn’t AC make this argument moot?” But as Morano pointed out to MRC, Shah is on record pushing to get rid of AC units too, as her February 2026 headline clearly illustrated: “New Study Finds Air Conditioners Will Exacerbate Climate Change As Planet Warms.” Incredible.
In her latest piece, Shah apparently forgot that correlation doesn’t equal causation, and used the climate change boondoggle to lecture readers about the dangers of obesity, which now is apparently being worsened by Mother Earth's wrath:
Physical activity plays a crucial role in overall health and wellbeing. Limiting the amount you move your body is associated with reduced muscular strength, impaired cognition, and poor sleep, all of which can translate into lower on-the-job performance and higher absenteeism. Inactivity is also one of the leading modifiable risk factors for non-communicable diseases like raised blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity.
It’s not until the fifth paragraph of Shah’s eco-bile that an important caveat to the study’s underlying conclusions was noted: “The study did not reveal an impact in high-income countries, where adaptive measures are more likely to be in place.” Eureka! Who knew humans can adapt!
Did Shah bother to mention who financed this so-called study to begin with? Nope. One of the major backers of this study was The Wellcome Trust, an eco-activist global foundation that partnered with the climate-fanatic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2024 to “accelerate global health equity” in part by “Advancing climate data, sustainable agriculture, and food systems. To better protect people globally from the devastating effects of climate change on health, solutions that draw across climate, health, and agricultural science will be needed.” Stranger still is that this connection wasn’t enough for the authors of the latest climate-causes-laziness study to admit that Wellcome’s involvement presented somewhat of a conflict of interest.
“Rising temperatures create inopportune circumstances for exercise,” Shah railed, apparently ignorant to how sweating works. “Heat exposure is linked to elevated cardiovascular strain and heightened perceived exertion, along with dehydration, heat cramps, and heat exhaustion. Researchers found that if the world reaches 2°C above preindustrial temperatures, more than a quarter of the global population could experience an extra month of severe heat stress each year,” she continued.
That’s interesting, because as Muay Thai cardio kickboxing studio Hit House analyzed April 2024, “you may gain significant benefits by working out in the heat, such as an increase in oxygen, blood volume, and temperature tolerance. You may find that the changes give you a larger reserve of strength and stamina for exercise or your favorite sport.” Cleveland Clinic also noted in 2020 that “Warm, sunny days are perfect for outdoor exercise.” Even Outside Magazine reported in 2016 that “Heat training not only does a better job at increasing V02 [volume of oxygen] max than altitude, but it also makes athletes better at withstanding a wider range of temperatures.” Who knew!
Does this mean you should exercise to the point of heat exhaustion? Not at all, but Shah’s insinuation that the exact opposite could happen (wearing out the La-Z-Boy chairs) due to climate change is overreaching conjecture at the least and lowbrow scareporn at best.
As Morano concluded:
Even Time cannot stand behind their usual tripe anymore, noting that the idea that we are all going to be sloths by midcentury are only based on ‘a projection, and there is still some uncertainty about the exact real-world impacts.’
