Tag: Earth.com

No, Earth.com, Climate Change Isn’t Causing Dangerous Fungus Outbreaks

In the Earth.com article “Deadly fungus that will ‘eat you from the inside out’ is quickly spreading around the world,” Eric Ralls presents a dramatic warning that Aspergillus fungi are expanding their range due to climate change and threatening millions of people. This is false. The story’s most alarming claims are not based on observed fungal spread, but on model projections under a carbon dioxide high-emissions scenario. The article’s tone suggests ongoing, measurable expansion, but the underlying study only models hypothetical future distributions.

From The Climate Realism

By Anthony Watts

In the Earth.com article “Deadly fungus that will ‘eat you from the inside out’ is quickly spreading around the world,” Eric Ralls presents a dramatic warning that Aspergillus fungi are expanding their range due to climate change and threatening millions of people. This is false. The story’s most alarming claims are not based on observed fungal spread, but on model projections under a carbon dioxide high-emissions scenario. The article’s tone suggests ongoing, measurable expansion, but the underlying study only models hypothetical future distributions.

The headline claims a “Deadly fungus that will ‘eat you from the inside out’ is quickly spreading around the world.” That false and inflammatory phrase appears in the title — not in the scientific content itself. Nowhere in the body of the article does the phrase “eat you from the inside out” appear in a clinical or epidemiological context. This suggests it is clickbait framing layered onto a modeling paper.

The central numbers driving the alarm come from a carbon dioxide high-emissions scenario, specifically a derivative of RCP 8.5, an assemblage of computer model outputs that most scientists have abandoned as being highly unrealistic or unlikely. The National Center for Atmospheric Research says that RCP 8.5 is “not considered a likely scenario,” and Climate Realism has repeatedly debunked its continued use, here, here, and here, for example, pointing out that it is more than just unlikely but rather that based on the carbon stored on land and in oceans, it is probably impossible.

Still, the authors of the study used the problematic high-emissions scenario to project that the range of A. flavus in Europe could expand by about 16 percent. Under this projection, an additional one million people across Europe could possibly be placed at risk of fungal infection. That is not an observation of current spread. It is a conditional projection based on modeled climate inputs.

There is no presentation of observational data showing that Aspergillus infections have increased over the past 40-plus years of documented global warming. No infection-rate time series is shown. No continental trend data are cited. No public health surveillance datasets are presented demonstrating a statistically significant upward trajectory correlated with temperature.

This distinction matters.

Species distribution modeling, often using tools such as MaxENT, estimates habitat suitability under assumed climate inputs. It does not demonstrate present-day expansion. It produces scenario-based suitability maps. Modeling hypothetical future habitat changes is not the same as documenting real-world spread.

If warming temperatures over the past 40 years were already driving dangerous fungal expansion, we would expect to see documented increases in infection incidence correlated with temperature over decades. Instead, risk factors for aspergillosis are overwhelmingly clinical and environmental. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains on its Aspergillosis Overview page that infection primarily affects individuals with weakened immune systems and is commonly associated with hospital construction dust exposure, organ transplantation, and severe immunosuppression. Climate change is not identified as a primary driver of current case incidence.

The Earth.com article also highlights antifungal resistance. Yet azole resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus has been strongly linked to agricultural fungicide use, as summarized by the CDC in its page on Azole-Resistant Aspergillosis. That is a pharmaceutical and agricultural stewardship issue, not evidence of climate-driven geographic spread.

The article references Candida auris as an example of climate-linked emergence. The hypothesis suggesting a warming connection was published in mBio by the American Society for Microbiology in “On the Emergence of Candida auris.” That paper proposed thermal adaptation as a possibility. But, most importantly, it did not establish causation. Hypothesis is not proof.

Even the Earth.com piece concedes that fungi remain “relatively under-researched compared to viruses and parasites.” That admission undercuts the certainty implied by the headline. If surveillance gaps exist, projections should be framed cautiously — not amplified into declarations of rapid global spread.

There is no quantified demonstration in the article that infection incidence per capita has increased in Europe in step with observed warming of roughly 1°C since the late-twentieth century. If warming over the past four decades were already driving continental fungal spread, robust surveillance data would demonstrate it. It doesn’t. Invasive aspergillosis case numbers are influenced by chemotherapy prevalence, organ transplantation rates, improved diagnostics, hospital practices, and antifungal resistance — all confounding variables absent from the Earth.com narrative.

None of this minimizes the seriousness of fungal infections in vulnerable populations. Aspergillus can be life-threatening for immunocompromised patients. Antifungal resistance is a legitimate concern. The Earth.com headline declares a deadly fungus is “quickly spreading around the world.” By contrast, the research it references says nothing about any ongoing expansion of the disease. Earth.com’s conflating modeled habitat suitability under extreme emissions scenarios with present-day spread has resulted in an inaccurate, unjustifiably alarming story.

Presenting overhyped projections about future infections as if it represented an ongoing global fungal expansion is lying, not reporting and certainly not trustworthy journalism. Earth.com should be ashamed of framing this non-issue as a clickbait story designed to scare people.

Wrong, Earth.com, Cocoa Production Is Not ‘Under Extreme Climate Pressure’ It’s Improving

Earth.com published a story claiming climate change is causing cocoa production to fall in West and Central Africa. This is false. Data show that cocoa production has increased during the last few decades of modest warming, rather than falling. Part of the reason for this is improved growing conditions in those regions and carbon dioxide fertilization.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

Earth.com published a story claiming climate change is causing cocoa production to fall in West and Central Africa. This is false. Data show that cocoa production has increased during the last few decades of modest warming, rather than falling. Part of the reason for this is improved growing conditions in those regions and carbon dioxide fertilization.

In the Earth.com story, “Cocoa production in Africa is under extreme climate pressure,” writer Andrei Ionescu, references a study published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, which claims that climate change may result in a 50 percent drop in production across West and Central Africa, a region which accounts for 70 percent of global cocoa production. Ionescu goes further claiming, “Climate change is substantially affecting cocoa production in West and Central Africa.” The problem is the data falsifies this claim, and the projections are based on the worst-case scenario projections from flawed climate models.

Climate Realism and Climate at a Glance have written multiple times previously concerning the admission by climate modelers that the models run way to hot. Accordingly, projections of impacts dependent on the models and their high emission scenarios cannot be trusted. Neither scientific research nor public policies should be built upon assumptions and projections that are known to be fatally flawed.

Leaving this aside, data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show that, like crops everywhere, cocoa production varies from year. But accounting for interannual ups and downs, over the recent period of modest climate change, cocoa production has generally increased in West and Central Africa.

The research in particular focuses on cocoa production in Cameroon, the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire), Ghana, and Nigeria. FAO data for those countries show that since 1990:

  • In Cameroon cocoa bean production has grown by more than 157 percent;
  • In the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) cocoa bean production increased by more than a 194 percent (nearly doubling, and setting a new record in 2023);
  • In Ghana cocoa bean production expanded by just over 122 percent;
  • And in Nigeria cocoa bean production grew by almost 17 percent.

Each of these countries experienced multiple years of record setting production over the past three and a half decades of climate change. (See the figure below).

With these facts in mind, there is no evidence whatsoever that climate change is putting cocoa production under extreme pressure, except perhaps in the imagination of Earth.com’s Ionescu.

Globally carbon dioxide has resulted in a general greening of the Earth with significantly improved crop production. There is good reason to believe that rising carbon dioxide concentrations have significantly contributed to West and Central Africa’s improved cocoa production, as well. There is no good reason found in botany, agronomy, or climatology – outside of climate model projections– for thinking growing conditions in the region will change for the worse.

Even the researchers themselves noted that under the various scenarios they projected, some areas in the region might see little or no change in yields going forward, others might see increased production, and still others decreases. In general, the “[r]esults from the mixed-effects models indicated that effects of climate variability on both and (with and without CO2, for all GCMs [general circulation models]) were not very strong, but that effects depended on the selected climate scenario.”

In fact, the study’s authors honestly admitted that as a result of a number of factors their findings were extremely uncertain. Among those limiting factors were the spatial scale of climate models, a lack of data availability, insufficient knowledge of potential land use changes, unknown interannual climate variability, and more. In addition, they acknowledged that the cocoa simulation model they used “has not been validated in the context of climate change or CO2 rise studies.”

These important admissions were entirely absent from Ionescu’s Earth.com story, which might lead one to believe there is more certainty in the projections than, in fact, there is.

Ionescu noted that the researchers said deforestation due to burgeoning populations expanding into tropical forests and land conversions could also result in a decline in cocoa production. This may be true, it has happened elsewhere for other forest dependent nuts and fruits when land was converted to row crops or urban expansion, but that has nothing to do with climate change.

In the end, the Earth.com story was long on alarming speculation pushing the catastrophic climate change narrative, and short on detailed analysis. The author showed no evidence of reading the report that he cites carefully and in full, or that if he did, that he understood its nuance and caveats related to its results – at least if he did, he didn’t discuss it in his story. There is also no evidence in the story that the writer checked any real-world data before asserting climate change is harming and will threaten cocoa production. That’s sloppy journalism any way you cut it.

Wrong, Earth.com, Climate Change is Actually Enhancing Life on Earth

An undated Earth.com article claims “The foundation of life is at risk from climate change.” This is false. Real-world data shows that the Earth is actually increasing its biomass in response to the mild warming over the last century combined with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The article itself is nothing more than a mishmash of statements, none of which, separately or in combination, support the claim that climate change is threating life on Earth, as the title implies.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

An undated Earth.com article claims “The foundation of life is at risk from climate change.” This is false. Real-world data shows that the Earth is actually increasing its biomass in response to the mild warming over the last century combined with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The article itself is nothing more than a mishmash of statements, none of which, separately or in combination, support the claim that climate change is threating life on Earth, as the title implies. There is only a vague statement in the first paragraph which reads:

Photosynthesis forms the foundation of life on Earth, yet climate change increasingly threatens this essential process. With advanced tools, scientists can now study how shifts in temperature, humidity, and light impact photosynthesis and, by extension, the future of ecosystems.

It is true that “[p]hotosynthesis forms the foundation of life on Earth.” Photosynthesis is considered the foundation of life on Earth because it provides the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat, essentially acting as the base of the global food chain by converting sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into chemical energy that sustains almost all living organisms on the planet.

But what isn’t true is the claim that climate change is threatening the process of photosynthesis. In fact, data from multiple sources show that photosynthesis is actually being enhanced by the slight increase in temperature as well as the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Climate at a Glance – Global Greening, discusses the fact that NASA satellite imagery analysis from 2016 shows significant plant growth globally over the past 35 years as seen in Figure 1 below. The reference article also says:

Research from NASA as well as multiple other studies conclude that the increased plant growth is a response to rising carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere creating better growing conditions.

NASA’s results confirm earlier research which found that the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 between 1982 and 2010 resulted in a 5-to-10 percent increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments.

Plant life is not just expanding in temperate regions. A 2018 study found the Sahara Desert had shrunk in area by 8 percent over the previous three decades, due a CO2 fertilization induced expansion of plant coverage.

Follow-up studies in 2018 and 2020, showed that on a global scale, greening can be attributed to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Figure 1. This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015 detected by satellite. Credits: Boston University/R. Myneni. Image source: NASA

This is logical, because actual greenhouses use warmth and artificially increased carbon dioxide to provide a better growth environment for the plants. These facts are not in dispute, therefore it stands to reason that a slightly warmer Earth and with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, all things being equal, provides a better environment for plant growth. Not only that, but a very recent peer reviewed paper published in Nature from Cornell University and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that Plants Absorb 31% More CO2 Than Previously Thought.

These findings refute the claims made in Earth.com’s article and headline photosynthesis and life on Earth are being “threatened.”

This isn’t truly surprising because the article itself provides no factual evidence to support its alarming claims. Earth.com’s article appears to be just another example of sloppy journalism in which a writer stitched together a few unrelated factoids about photosynthesis to make the article look “sciency,” only to leap to unsupported and false assertions that climate change is hampering photosynthesis and threatening life on Earth, when, in fact, there isn’t even a smidgen of evidence to support the claim. Earth.com did its readers a great disservice by pushing this false claim, which appears to be little more than a scare tactic.