By Vijay Jayaraj

Kooky tales about Antarctica abound – including the presence of UFOs, a lost civilization and a passage to Earth’s interior. All are generally dismissed as absurd. Yet, some widely accepted claims about climate change and ice sheets at the planet’s southernmost end are equally far-fetched.

The world is told daily that rising CO₂ levels are melting polar ice, shrinking crop yields, and pushing humanity toward extinction. “Institute radical decarbonization or we’re all dead!” is the cry of our enlightened overlords, as if swapping incandescent bulbs for LEDs and banning gas cars would spare us from their predicted apocalypse. They demand immediate economic hara-kiri to avoid weather predictions based on pseudoscience and outright deception.

Real-world data – from Brazil’s record harvests to the rebound of Antarctica’s ice – expose the climate crusade for the baseless hysteria that it is.

Brazil’s agricultural triumph

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics projects cereals, legumes, and oilseeds to reach more than 325 million metric tons of production this year, an 11% increase over 2024.

Production of soybeans, another cornerstone crop of global food security, is expected to hit 161 million metric tons in Brazil, a 6% jump from the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Brazil’s National Supply Corporation forecasts total grain production to be more than 322 million metric tons, up over 8% from the prior harvest, as rice leads with an increase of nearly 10% in planted area.

What does this mean for you? These numbers are evidence of a thriving agricultural sector that feeds millions worldwide. Brazil’s success challenges dire warnings from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of rising CO₂ and temperatures disrupting agriculture.

Warmer climates and higher CO₂ levels are enhancing plant growth, as warmth extends growing seasons and CO₂ acts as a natural fertilizer, facts that are evident across the globe.

Antarctica’s ice rebound

Far south of Brazil, in the freezing landscape of Antarctica, another climate myth is derailed. A poster child of climate disaster forecasts, Antarctica is adding to its inventory of ice for the first time in decades. Recent data reveal that Antarctica’s ice sheet is growing. Between 2021 and 2023, Antarctic ice gained mass at a rate of approximately 108 metric gigatons per year, driven by anomalous precipitation accumulation.

This marks the first sustained ice growth in decades and should be headline news. The melting of polar ice has long been used to justify urgent policy interventions – from net-zero mandates to oil and gas restrictions to agricultural taxes. We were told rising CO₂ meant inevitable ice loss and catastrophic sea-level rise. But when the ice grows instead of shrinks, the climate establishment barely flinches.

Why are the people most entrusted with global climate policy ignoring or dismissing data like this? And more importantly, why are policymakers doubling down on economically destructive climate agendas when the physical world is contradicting their models?

Some independent researchers, farmers and energy analysts have raised red flags about flawed assumptions underlying the climate narrative. But they are often silenced or labeled “deniers” – a term designed to shut down inquiry rather than invite discussion.

Record crops and growing ice sheets are empirical evidence that challenges climate orthodoxy. Ignoring this information is not only unscientific but also immoral.

The IPCC, the supposed gold standard for climate science, has built entire policy frameworks around the assumption of irreversible polar ice loss and inevitable climate collapse from the use of fossil fuels. These frameworks have been adopted wholesale by politicians like Canada’s Mark Carney, England’s Keir Starmer, Australia’s Anthony Albanese, California’s Gavin Newsom and others.

So, what happens when nature refuses to follow their political scripts? Nothing. The policy train keeps moving, fueled by inertia, institutional pride and personal hubris. The crisis is not in our atmosphere. It is in institutions corrupted by groupthink, rent-seeking and lust for power.

Until some measure of integrity is restored to scientific and political leadership, the real catastrophe is the collapse of trust in those designated to protect liberty, engender economic growth and allow for the continued advancement of human civilization.

This commentary was first published at BizPac Review on May 9, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

Guest Essay by Kip Hansen – 13 May 2025 – 1500 words

One of the ubiquitous Climate Crisis narratives is that the slight warming of some climate regions is driving the spread of mosquito borne diseases.    This can easily be shown to be incorrect yet the peer-reviewed literature repeats (endlessly) that mosquito-borne diseases will spread, or have been spread, by climate change. 

Malaria, the most famous of vector-borne diseases, for which the female Anopheles mosquito is the vector while humans are the reservoir, has been reappearing in the United States and Europe.  Climate Change or Global Warming has been blamed [and here and, from the WHO, here].  But history shows that both the United States and Europe were hotbeds of malaria in the past two centuries, even during the Little Ice Age,  when temperatures were lower.

[Curious Note:  The Climate Crisis wiki gatekeepers post false information about the LIA in the caption of the Hockey Stick graph.  The caption says “Global average temperatures show that the Little Ice Age was not a distinct planet-wide period but a regional phenomenon…”  But the reference given for that, from Ed Hawkins (long-standing climate crisis scientist and propagandist), states clearly “The often quoted Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are real phenomena, but small compared to the recent changes.”]

Here we can see, from Hong et al., that malaria was very widely spread in the United States in the 1850s.

The incidence of malaria in Europe was equally widespread, even up into World War I:  “In 1917, 70,000 cases of malaria were reported in the British forces alone.  After the war, malaria spreader-emerged among the civil population in malaria free areas like northern Germany, eastern England and Italy due to the return of soldiers to their homeland and to refugee movements.”  [ source:  NIH here ]. 

“Malaria was eradicated from Europe in the 1970s  through a combination of insecticide spraying, drug therapy and environmental engineering. Since then, it has been mostly imported into the continent by international travelers and immigrants from endemic regions.” [source]

In fact, “Although largely a tropical disease today, only a century ago the pathogen’s [malaria] range covered half the world’s land surface, including parts of the northern USA, southern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia,” said lead author Megan Michel, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center…”.  [quote source, paper here] And a “century ago” is the cool time period against which we measure today’s so-called  “global warming”. 

There is an obvious knowledge disconnect here:  In the cooler past, malaria was found nearly everywhere except in the frozen steppes and high altitudes.  Now it is mostly confined to the tropics and sub-tropics.

Why is this? 

The mosquitoes that spread malaria from one malarial human to a well human are ubiquitous in nearly every area of the world.  Mosquito populations are suppressed in modern, wealthy countries through widespread spraying of insecticides and other vector control methods such as swamp draining and transmission of malaria prevented by the quarantine of people ill with malaria in hospitals where mosquitoes cannot bite them.  When vector control, mosquito spraying,  is not done, or curtailed as many cities in the United States have learned, mosquito populations boom and these diseases can reappear as humans traveling in other countries return carrying the disease.  [source]

Now, let see what the situation is with another mosquito-borne disease:

Dog  Heartworm

Your ever-present climate propaganda news outlet, Inside Climate News, says:  “Climate Change Is Helping Heartworm Spread to Pets in the Mountain West”.  Using the normative “narrative journalism” style, ICN goes on to say:

“Twenty years ago, when veterinarian Colleen Duncan arrived in Fort Collins, Colorado, there were no signs of heartworm in the region’s dogs and cats.

“We didn’t test for it,” said Duncan, a professor of veterinary medicine at Colorado State University. “We didn’t put our animals on prevention. We now will do it.”

“Colorado’s not alone in this shift. Across the West, veterinarians are seeing an increase in the mosquito-borne disease that can cause symptoms like coughing and decreased appetite in dogs and cats, and even lead to death in advanced cases.” 

“Infected pets can bring the disease with them when they move to new regions, where a lack of preventative treatment can contribute to an uptick in heartworm infections.”

So far, so good, I guess.  We will take Colleen Duncan at her word. 

But ICN’s journalist Tina Deines then shifts to:

“Vector-borne disease is the easiest, the least-disputed discussion of climate-associated diseases,” said Duncan, who studies the connection between climate change and animal health. 

“Climate change moves vectors into areas, geographic locations that they weren’t before,” she explained. “It allows them to survive longer periods of time. Typically, they show up earlier in the spring and they last later into the fall. Or even really winter.”

“We keep dogs on heartworm preventative year-round now,” she said.”

Now we find that Colleen Duncan is not just a vet, she is an academic vet “who studies the connection between climate change and animal health” about which “She is passionate”.

It is informative to note that the population of Fort Collins,  Colorado has doubled since 1990, from 89 thousand then to over 170 thousand today.

What’s the real deal here then?

Most of us, even though many of us are dog owners [but not passionate climate change vets], are not familiar with the basics of Dog Heartworm Disease.  The following quotes are from the American Heartworm Society:

“Heartworm disease is a serious and potentially fatal disease in pets in the United States and many other parts of the world. It is caused by foot-long worms (heartworms) that live in the heart, lungs and associated blood vessels of affected pets, causing severe lung disease, heart failure and damage to other organs in the body.”

“The dog is a natural host for heartworms, which means that heartworms that live inside the dog,  mature into adults, mate and produce offspring.”

“When a mosquito bites and takes a blood meal from an infected animal, it picks up these baby worms, which develop and mature into “infective stage” larvae over a period of 10 to 14 days. Then, when the infected mosquito bites another dog, cat, or susceptible wild animal, the infective larvae are deposited onto the surface of the animal’s skin and enter the new host through the mosquito’s bite wound.”

For Dog Heartworm, the mosquito is the vector and dogs are the host or reservoir.  If there were no dogs with existing heartworm infections, there would be no heartworm for the mosquitoes to spread to other dogs. 

This is similar to human malaria, which requires malarial humans for mosquitoes to bite in order to spread the disease.  When all the malarial humans are quarantined in mosquito-free hospitals, the chain is broken.   If no local dogs (rarely some cats, some ferrets, maybe) had heartworm infections, there would be no heartworm microfilaria for the mosquitoes to ingest, incubate, and pass on to other dogs.

Which specific mosquitoes spread Dog Heartworm?

Many species of mosquitoes are suspected of being vectors for dog heartworm, including Aedes, Anopheles, and Mansonia and Culex.These mosquito species are endemic to most/many areas of the United States (species dependent).   

All three of the species below are main vectors for serious human and animal diseases.

 

Mosquitoes are moved from area to area and into new areas by humans – not climate change, not global warming.  [ source:  The Push: Human Migration and Mosquito-Borne Disease ].  Mosquitoes hitchhike in luggage, air and sea freight, in and on over-the-road long distance trucks,  and on the decks of ships and boats. 

Urban mosquitoes, like  Aedes aegypti and Aedes Albopictus prefer urban environments, in which they find it easy to thrive:  “Aedes aegypti favors artificial containers found in residential areas like flowerpots, buckets, tarps, bird baths, and potholes as breeding sites. Aedes Albopictus can breed in a variety of natural and artificial containers such as tree holes, rock pools, tires, stormwater drains, and concrete slabs.”  [ source ]. 

Urbanization itself creates the preferred environment of vector mosquitoes that spread disease: “The main explanatory variables used to associate urbanisation with epidemiological/entomological outcomes were the following: human population density, urban growth, artificial geographical space, urban construction, and urban density.”  [source]

Which mosquitoes are urban and semi-urban species?

Aedes, Culex and Anopheles are usually considered prime urban and semi-urban species – which means that thrive in human built environments: the denser the humans, the better for the mosquitoes.   These are the same species that are prime suspects in Dog Heartworm transmission.

Bottom Lines:

0.  Malaria, dengue, dog heartworm and many other vector borne diseases all require three things for transmission:  a) a host with the disease causing organism – germ, virus, or parasite;  b) the presence of the vector such as specific species of mosquitoes or ticks; c) vectors require access to both disease carriers and new disease victims.  Absence of any of these stops the chain of infection.  

1.  Humans are responsible for the range expansion of mosquito species, providing urban and semi-urban environments with their warm, water-rich spaces and through physically transporting mosquitoes from area to area, country to country.

2.  Humans are responsible for the re-emergence of mosquito-as-vector diseases in developed countries, through human travelers carrying the disease returning from the developing world and the shipments goods from malaria areas. 

3.  Dog Heartworm has been spread by humans moving their heartworm infected animals to areas previously heartworm free and through introducing or re-introducing mosquito species that act as vectors and/or increasing populations of those mosquito vectors by the common features of urbanization. 

4.  The increase of dog heartworm found in Fort Collins, Colorado has been caused by import of dogs with heartworm (moving there with the human families), human movements (people and goods) transporting more mosquito species to the area and a doubling of human population with its increased urbanization, creating more of ideal urban and semi-urban environment for the mosquito vectors of heartworm.   

4.  Climate Change or Global Warming has no (or vanishingly minimal contribution) to the range changes of mosquito species and/or the spread of mosquito-vectored human and animal diseases.

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

Dog Heartworm is a backdoor into the misinformation spread about mosquito and other insect vectored diseases.  Warming, mostly at night,  has barely any effect on the ranges of mosquitoes and ticks.  Past ranges,  when compared to present ranges,  prove this.

Weather can and does have effects on mosquito populations such as when areas that are usually dry are subject to flooding.  Eggs that have been lying dormant hatch and in days go through larval stages and become (ravenous) mosquitoes.   When this happens in malaria, zika and dengue areas, the mosquitoes bite the local human disease carriers and spread the diseases.  And, yes, Weather is not Climate. 

Despite the apparent ease of debunking this climate crisis talking point,  there are literally hundreds of papers claiming to “prove” the false point or “predict” that “if not now, then in the future”.

Thanks for reading.

# # # # #

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… productivity … has deluded far too many of the economics profession’s conventional thinkers.”

Ross Garnaut: Prophet with a sunny vision of our glorious future

Ross Gittins
Economics Editor 
May 12, 2025 — 12.15am

Economist Paul Krugman’s endlessly repeated maxim that “productivity isn’t everything but, in the long run, it’s almost everything” has deluded far too many of the economics profession’s conventional thinkers.

It’s a throwaway line that should be thrown away.

…

Fortunately, among the profession’s abundance of unproductive thinkers is a lone prophetic, and so productive, thinker, Professor Ross Garnaut, who sees not only how we can minimise the economic cost of the transition to clean energy, but also what we can do for an encore. What we can do to fill the vacuum left by the looming collapse of our fossil fuel export business (which, by chance, happens to be our highest-productivity industry).

…

It was Garnaut who first had the vision of transforming Australia into a “Superpower” in a world of ubiquitous renewable energy. And it was he who uncovered the facts that made this goal plausible.

…

This would “generate export income for Australians vastly in excess of that provided by the gas and coal industries that will decline as the world moves to net zero emissions over the next few decades”.

Garnaut concludes: “The new industries are large enough to drive restoration of growth in Australian productivity and living standards after the dozen years of stagnation that began in 2013.”

…

Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/ross-garnaut-prophet-with-a-sunny-vision-of-our-glorious-future-20250511-p5ly7n.html

Funny how renewables, the allegedly cheapest form of energy, always seems to require accepting a lower standard of living during the transition.

The reality is expensive green products produced by renewables aren’t going to “generate export income for Australians vastly in excess of that provided by the gas and coal industries“, nor will they “drive restoration of growth in Australian productivity and living standards“.

The reason is, unlike Australia, the rest of the world accepts nuclear power as a zero carbon energy source.

Even renewable obsessed nations like Germany are happy to receive nuclear power from France when their fake German renewable energy system stops producing.

Given this acceptance of nuclear, goods which are more expensive than what can be produced by French zero carbon nuclear power, which in France sells wholesale for between €0.07 – €0.11 / kWH, simply won’t be competitive – especially when you add the cost of shipping goods all the way from Australia to the sale price. 

Hydrogen fuel, if it ever becomes a serious option, will never be economical to export from Australia. It will always be cheaper to manufacture hydrogen using nuclear powered hydrolysis in-situ in the Northern Hemisphere, than producing hydrogen using Australian solar energy then transporting the hydrogen to Europe.

Even farfetched plans to run an undersea electricity cable from Australian solar plants to Singapore are dubious. Why would Singaporeans bother to buy intermittent Australian solar energy supplied via a 2300 mile undersea cable, when they can purchase endless 24 hour reliable zero carbon nuclear power from next door in Indonesia?

Singapore is a truly 24 hour city, they use a lot of energy at night, because many people run Aircon 24 hours, and it is too hot in daytime to do a lot of important economic activities.

Given the evidence renewables are a flat bust in terms of export and domestic manufacturing potential for Australia, in my opinion claims that renewables could form the basis of a future made in Australia manufacturing renaissance are nothing more than a cruel political fantasy.