Increasing temperatures and hot weather kills the mood faster than finding out climate change is real.

Is there anything more arousing than rampant sea level rise, biblical scourages of dead marine life, abruptly changing weather patterns and sea ice that doesn't live up to its full potential?

… Yes. Yes there is. But you're not going to hear about it, because according to climate scientists, global warming is having an ever-increasing effect on how horny we are. That effect, it seems, is to kill the mood faster than your sick cat sitting on your head when you're trying to take it from behind.

According to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, hot weather leads to diminished “coital frequency." To determine this, economists studied 80 years of U.S. fertility and temperature data and found that when it’s hotter than 80 degrees F, a massive decline in births follows within 10 months. On the other hand, people fuck like rabbits in the cooler months … but still not enough to make up for the lost fucking when it's blisteringly toasty outside.

In fact, just one hot, swamp-ass day can lead to a massive 0.4 percent drop in birth rates nine months later, which translates to around 1,165 fewer deliveries across the U.S. It's almost as if global warming were its own, hugely inconvenient contraceptive. Helluva lot cheaper than Obamacare, that global warming.

The researchers who made this boner-killing discovery summed up their findings in three important points:

1. Birth rates do not bounce back completely after heat waves.

That's a problem. As summers heat up, developed countries may see already low birth rates sink even lower. Plunging birth rates can play havoc with an economy. China's leaders recently acknowledged this by ditching the longtime one-child policy and doubling the number of children couples are allowed to have. A sub-replacement U.S. birthrate means fewer workers to pay Social Security benefits for retirees, among other consequences.

2. More autumn conceptions means more more deliveries in summer.

Infants experience a higher rate of poor health with summer births, "though the reasons for worse health in the summer are not well-established," the authors write. One possibility may be "third-trimester exposure to high temperatures."

3. Air conditioning might prove to be an aphrodisiac.

Control over the climate at home might make a difference. The researchers suggest that the rise of air conditioning may have helped offset some heat-related fertility losses in the U.S. since the 1970s.

Assuming that climate change will precede according to the most severe scenarios (since you refuse to stop driving that Astro van), the researchers predicted that from 2070 to 2099, the U.S. may have 64 more days above 80F than in the baseline period from 1990 to 2002, which had 31. Translation: The U.S. may see a 2.6 percent decline in its birth rate, or 107,000 fewer deliveries a year.

Ah, well. That makes us feel better. Here we were thinking we weren't getting laid because we're unkempt and intolerable, but it's actually just too hot outside for people to see past that. Thanks, climate change!