Climate change debates seem to threaten mental health at times, but this is a different angle, on the effects of extreme weather events related to climate change on mental health.
Ronald Fischer, from the School of Psychology at Victoria University (I think it’s still called that) has given a lecture on this.
Newsroom: What climate change could do to mental health
Heatwaves and other extreme weather events caused by climate change could have profound implications for personality traits and mental health, Ronald Fischer warned in his inaugural public lecture as a Professor of Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington.
Referencing an article published earlier this year in Scientific Reports, an online journal from the publisher of Nature, Fischer spoke about research showing that people with the same genetic make-up might have very different personalities depending on the climate where they live.
The article, based on research by Fischer, Victoria University of Wellington Master’s student Anna Lee and Dr Machteld Verzijden from Aarhus University in Denmark, says the impact on personality of genes regulating dopamine, an important neurotransmitter in the brain, is most pronounced in climatically stressful environments.
“If you are in a challenging climate and your genetic system is not as efficient in processing rewards or regulating potential challenges, then you might feel more stressed and more likely to be unwell,” said Fischer in his lecture.
“On the other hand, if you have a system that is not so well off but you live in an environment where life is very chilled out, there’s no challenge, so basically there shouldn’t be a strong effect on how you feel.”
He warned: “If you have followed the news – for example the incredible heatwaves in Europe – what kind of challenges will we see in the near future when climate becomes more extreme and we have to create more mental health services for people who might need that?”
An interesting question.
If we have more and worse ‘extreme weather events’ people will get more stressed, during those events and for some people adversely effected by things like flood and wind damage, those stresses can have longer effects.
On the other hand there is also the potential for less stress.
Driving on frosty streets, especially when trying to get to work at the time on a winter morning when frosts can be at their worst, can be quite stressful, as can the occasional snowstorm. We have had five consecutive unusually non-severe winters in Dunedin, and very few frost stress mornings.
People could also stress unnecessarily over possible future problems that don’t eventuate.
Or if are not suitably prepared and we get unexpected weather severity it could raise stress levels.
Then there’s the stress of getting your next house insurance bill that has escalated due to perceived climate change risks.
Sit comfortably, breathe gently, then debate.
Your NZ 
Pete George
/ 21st August 2018Gerrit
/ 21st August 2018Problem is not the climate or extreme events but people having less resilience, adaptability and capability to any sort of change.
These climate events have occurred many times in the past and will occur again in the future.
What has changed is the peoples ability to adept to change.
And we have many more academic wasters pontificating about our current inability to change to pile on the guilt.
In the past when rising sea levels threatened people they build dykes to protect themselves, now facing rising sea levels they hand wring in despair and gnash their teeth in anguish.
Same with extreme heat and bush fires, go out and do something (clear the bush line around populated areas). There was a reason the early Queensland settlers build their houses on stilts with wide covered verandas. Made the houses cool. Now they build concrete pad foundations and no eaves yet complain about heat.
But the underlying problem, that creates these anguished souls, wont be addressed. The planet is over populated and needs at least a 50% cull of the human species.
Address that and the ability to move away from, or conquer the adversities,is much easier.
robertguyton
/ 21st August 2018This man-made climate change we are experiencing the early stages of now, is an adversity that won’t be “conquered” by much of humanity, Imo. My concern, with regards the effects on the mental health of humans affected by the rough stuff ahead (and now) is that it will manifest as despair and depression on a global scale. When the realisation fully hits, that we’ve boxed ourselves in by our gas-creating behaviours, there will be more than just a sinking feeling felt across the global human community; keep your chin up, everyone; most people won’t be able to. Imo.
Gerrit
/ 21st August 2018It does not need to be conquered, people need to gear up to alter their circumstances to suit. It suggests a naive superiority complex by humans the think they can control climate. Has never happened and wont happen in the future.
Long term the climate will cull many and the remaining climate adoptees can restart the next cycle.
There could be easily be had an argument to accelerate climate change and start the inevitable cull early..
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018I
We have dug up mega tonnes of hydro carbons and burnt them.
The resulting by product CO2 is changing the climate.
This is a scientific reality known for over a hundred years.
As long as we continue to emit greenhouse gasses we will continue to disrupt the climate .No amount of denial from nutters will change these facts. As we can and will find alternative sources for energy we are presently choosing to change the climate knowing the repercussions.
admiralvonspee
/ 21st August 2018No amount of alarmist nonsense will change the fact that every prediction over that same hundred years has spectacularly failed to materialise.
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018ROFL
yess
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence .
But
Here is some predictions from published science rather than the depths of your ignorance .
Hansen et al. 1981
Hansen, J., D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell, 1981: Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213, 957-966, doi:10.1126/science.213.4511.957.
Northwest Passage. book your cruises today
We are inviting you to set sail for the Far North, well beyond the Arctic Circle, to a legendary, highly coveted maritime route: the Northwest Passage, the only possible shipping route between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
https://en.ponant.com/cruises/the-arctic-the-northwest-passage-s270818-kn0645-2
Erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet
Satellite measurements by ESA’s CryoSat-2 revealed that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is losing more than 150 cubic kilometres (36 cubic miles) of ice each year. The loss is especially pronounced at grounding lines, the area where the floating ice shelf meets the part resting on bedrock, and hence affects the ice shelf stability and flow rates.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet
The creation of drought-prone regions in North America
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
And central Asia
Drought in Northern China Is Worst on Record, Officials Say
PartisanZ
/ 21st August 2018Paradoxically Gerrit, the very same economic system you no doubt uphold and champion has caused both the population growth and ‘safety and security neuroses’* you now decry …
Not to mention the same economics has also caused the climate change …
Your answer – Kill off half the people …
One of the most telling comments about Capitalism I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 21st August 2018If you don’t read or watch climate alarmism you will suffer much less stress.
robertguyton
/ 21st August 2018I don’t suffer from climate change news related stress. There are people who cope with the over-whelming anxiety that the realisation of what climate change might mean, by denying it exists at all, but that’s natural too, in any population: there are ostriches even in the human community.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 21st August 2018More people recognise that climate is always changing and relative to historic variations nothing much is really happening.
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018David
/ 21st August 2018Who,s CPI. Why not put adjust for population growth it should at least adjust for GDP growth which has been 10% in China alone for over a decade although slowing lately. Why not adjust from moving from a more agrarian economy in much of the world to a more urban based one. Adjust it for net income increases for insurance premiums.
And who did the graph in the first place and how they managed to capture the closed off communist countries in 1980.
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018It is for only the USA.
Zedd
/ 21st August 2018the ‘ostrich syndrome’ again from C-C deniers
😦
Kitty Catkin
/ 21st August 2018People don’t deny CC, they deny that man can change it completely.
Gezza
/ 21st August 2018My money is on the bacteria doing the best out of all of us.
robertguyton
/ 21st August 2018Backing the bugs? Might as well; bacteria have done best to date.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 21st August 2018Meanwhile Australia scraps its Paris Accord targets citing need for cheap energy. Fantasy meets reality
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018How endearing a childish rebuttal.
AKA Nah nah nah.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 21st August 2018Your speciality being unable to cope with any contrary opinion. Get over it.
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018Yess alan
Its not my contrary opinion Alan as I have pointed out untold times .
Trying to make out it is only me you dispute is your mental gymnastics denying how nutty your world view is .
These organizations are only a partial list of who you have a difference of opinion with.
It is the worlds scienfic establishments position that you dispute .
Guess what that makes you?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 21st August 201899.9% of those have no more expertise in climate science than you do and probably far less interest. The list is pointless. As was once “A Hundred Authors Against Einstein”. Ill-informed numbers are not science, they are politics.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 21st August 2018Oh, and I might as well repeat that the statement most of them signed up to is so vague and general that most climate sceptics could agree with it.
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018Mental contortions so you can continue to support your fantasy world view .
How totally smeggin surprising. ….Not.
Griff.
/ 21st August 2018So you agree with these Alan?
I can find many other strong statements from organizations that do contain expertise well above my own limited understanding .
No you dont agree with any of these you just refuse to let reality enter your fantasy world view so make up bullshit to convince your self .
That is a mental problem my poor self deluded friend.
Corky
/ 21st August 2018These scientists have said that the observed warming is more likely to be attributable to natural causes than to human activities. Their views on climate change are usually described in more detail in their biographical articles.
Cook et al have been discredited. There’s way more names in Wiki
Khabibullo Abdusamatov, astrophysicist at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Sallie Baliunas, retired astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.Timothy Ball, historical climatologist, and retired professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg.
Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.[
Vincent Courtillot, geophysicist, member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Doug Edmeades, PhD., soil scientist, officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.[
David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester
Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University.
William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy; emeritus professor, Princeton University.
Ole Humlum, professor of geology at the University of Oslo.
Wibjörn Karlén, professor emeritus of geography and geology at the University of Stockholm
William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology.
David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware.
Anthony Lupo, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri.
Jennifer Marohasy, an Australian biologist, former director of the Australian Environment Foundation.
Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.
Ian Plimer, professor emeritus of mining geology, the University of Adelaide.
Arthur B. Robinson, American politician, biochemist and former faculty member at the University of California, San Diego.
Murry Salby, atmospheric scientist, former professor at Macquarie University and University of Colorado
Nicola Scafetta, research scientist in the physics department at Duke University
Tom Segalstad, geologist; associate professor at University of Oslo
Nir Shaviv, professor of physics focusing on astrophysics and climate science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Roy Spencer, meteorologist; principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Henrik Svensmark, physicist, Danish National Space Center.
George H. Taylor, retired director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University.
Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, professor emeritus from University of Ottawa