By Vijay Jayaraj
The quietude of looking out the kitchen window on a December morning at a meadow dusted in snow is magical. A deer pauses at the edge of the wood, breath steaming in the cold air, grazing on whatever bits of green poke through the snow. It is a scene replicated on greeting cards and stamped on cookie tins.
Part of the magic behind that tableau—from the roast in the oven to the cranberries on a plate, from the pine and hardwoods standing tall outside to the browsing fauna—is a phenomenon the establishment media ignore: CO₂-driven, NASA-acknowledged greening of Earth.
Satellite data from the last four decades confirm a significant increase in vegetation over as much as half the globe. During this period, atmospheric CO₂ increased from about 350 parts per million (ppm) to more than 400 ppm, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels.
It is a gift arriving right on cue to meet a continuous increase in population and demand for food. This basic sustenance allows for all other human endeavors—developments in artificial intelligence, medicine, and more. It is difficult to write computer code on an empty stomach.
Behind this gift of plenty is a process fundamental to all life, starting with plants: Photosynthesis is a mechanism by which plants use CO₂, water, and sunlight to make sugars for food. When atmospheric CO₂ rises—whether from the emissions of human activity or any other source—plants grow faster. A side benefit is that they use water more efficiently, making them more resilient to arid conditions and extending their geographic range.
The degree to which plants respond to more CO₂ varies, but it is always positive. An increase in CO₂ to 800 parts per million (ppm) or so—more than double the current atmospheric concentration—increases yields by 10% to 100%.
In greenhouse farming, carbon dioxide levels are elevated to 1,000 ppm or so to increase the yields of tomatoes and cucumbers by 20% to 40%. Plants, such as corn, sugarcane, and millets, also benefit from higher atmospheric CO₂, whose positive effect on them is even more evident in the presence of drought.
For many, a cold Christmas morning is warmed by coffee, especially festive offerings like peppermint mocha and gingerbread latte. Well, the good news is that even coffee plants are boosted by the rise of CO₂. Studies in Latin America found that elevated carbon dioxide boosted coffee plant photosynthesis and increased yields by 12% to 14%.
People forget that the Little Ice Age—lasting from about 1300 to 1850—brought crop failures and famine to large sections of Europe and Asia. Rivers froze, and growing seasons shrank. Many communities struggled during periods of cold-induced scarcity.
The 20th century delivered the opposite: the longer growing seasons of a modestly warmer climate paired with higher levels of CO₂. This is hardly the making of a catastrophe that some would have us believe. In fact, a 2025 analysis projected changes in global average yields across all crops to be neutral or positive up to 5 degrees Celsius of warming into the future.
Only the Climate Grinches would oppose such a bounty of greening from modern warmth and CO₂ concentrations. These are the characters who have dominated headlines in popular media and policy roundtables in Brussels and Washington. They steal not only the joy of experiencing this natural abundance by spreading false fears but also the prosperity and sovereignty of nations.
Climate Grinches look at a greening planet and see disaster. When NASA announces that Earth has added vegetation equivalent to two American continents, they warn that this cannot last, that benefits are temporary, and that doom still awaits. When farmers report bumper harvests enabled by longer growing seasons and CO₂ fertilization, the Climate Grinches insist that gains are outweighed by unspecified future horrors.
So, this Christmas season, when you gather with your family, look at the spread before you with new eyes. Reject the guilt that climate orthodoxy seeks to place on our shoulders. Modern lifestyles are not destroying the planet. We are basking in a vibrant ecosystem that supports more greenery, more people, and more human potential than at any other time in history.
This commentary was first published by American Greatness on December 8, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, 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.
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Life is good, climate, environment and weather are all great. This things piss off leftists no end. 😉
As I’ve said on numerous occasions, if climate change causing a warming planet were so serious, wouldn’t this have an adverse effect on the human population by causing food shortages resulting from decreased agricultural output and food production? Instead the global population has quadrupled from 2 billion to 8 billion since 1900, while life expectancy has more than doubled from 32 years to 73. This has occurred coincidentally as industrial fossil fuel use and carbon emissions have steadily risen and the two worst wars in history were fought. Those numbers alone are strong indicators that slightly increasing temperatures have been beneficial for humanity and if they really have had some deleterious effects they’re either minor or humans have been far more resilient and adaptable to them from the outset. Yet the climate alarmists will never refer to such numbers; instead, they fall back on doomsday scenarios about what might or could happen in the near future if we don’t mend our ways and adopt simpler lifestyles powered by by nothing less than renewable energies, of course. So it’s no wonder that their hysterical antics are ignored to ever-increasing degrees.
Dear me, Edward – you’re very much in danger of being logical.
Good article!
“Reject the guilt that climate orthodoxy seeks to place on our shoulders.”
1000%! And tell the children.
“For many, a cold Christmas morning is warmed by coffee, brewed especially strong.
festive offerings like peppermint mocha and gingerbread latte.“There, that’s the ticket! (No offense to those who enjoy those varieties.)
When it gets warmer, more CO2 is gassed out from the sea. During the LIA, especially its coldest period between 1650 and 1715 CO2 levels sank to 180 ppm, seriously damaging growth of all plants – in addition to making the growing season shorter. At 150 ppm all life green dies and soon all animal life and man too.
Very nice Vijay.
The Little Ice Age either never existed or was the optimum climate— choose one.
Tell that to the people in Virginia who have been suffering for weeks because the building boiler was vandalized and they have no heat. I am sure if you asked them, they would prefer warmth over cold.
About 40% of the global population lives in the tropics where the average temperature is about 10C higher than the global average. Less than 1% live in the Artic and virtually no one (except for scientific outposts) live in Antarctica. The rest of us live in mid latitudes were the annual average temperature varies between about 10C and 20C. Very few actual locations have average annual temperatures within a degree of the so-called global average. No one moves from the tropics to cold climates for the freezing winters while many go the other way.
Tell me again how a change in whatever the hell global average temperature is will devastate the world. We’re panicking over the tiny natural fluctuations of noise in a very stable signal.
You just can’t stop the Debbie Climate Downers.
A few years ago Dr. Koutsoyiannis and colleagues used equations associated with the chemistry of temperature-driven organic respiration to demonstrate that, since the late 1950s, temperature-induced increases in plant and soil emissions (31.6 Gt-C/yr) account for a 3.4 times greater ratio of the >100 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 than the contribution from the increase in fossil fuel emissions (9.4 Gt-C/yr).
This conclusion is rooted in the observation that, since 1959, the causality direction has consistently been T→CO2, and not CO2→T (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022), when observing annual changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In other words, respiration analyses indicate the rise in CO2 has been the consequence, not the cause, of temperature.
And now, in a new study, scientists have used the time-integrated effect of past sea surface temperatures and time-series modeling to establish that temperature-driven oceanic CO2 outgassing can also explain the bulk of the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the late 1950s. In contrast, there is “no correlation (R² = 0.01) between the detrended 12-month CO2 increments and fossil-fuel emissions.”
Here is the Abstract of that “new study” (Nov 2025) with some pertinent sections highlighted.
And where have all of the human emissions of CO2 gone in the past 75 years?
Wine grapes. There is a glut. Too many grapes, too much wine. Small aging producers are unable to sell the business they built over the last 40 years. Grapes are being left unharvested.
The answer you seek, grasshopper, is in the text of the article you question.
If we add up all the fossil fuels being burned and calculate the amount of CO2 released by that burning, it is more than enough to explain all the CO2 increases that have been measured over the same time period.
Here in Milwaukee, winter weather has arrived colder than it has been since at
least since 2014. That date brought this message from Dr.; John Holdren:
You Tube: The Polar Vortex Explained in Two Minutes
We were told then:
_____________________________________________________________
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold
being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a
pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global
warming continues…
I believe the odds are that we can expect, as a result of global warming
to see more of this pattern of extreme cold in the mid-latitudes… “
_____________________________________________________________
Eleven years later it’s a toss-up whether or not the climate cult will come
up with a similar line of propaganda to keep their eyes on the prize alive.
That is a climate hysteric’s fall-back position…
Global warming makes it COLDER. 😉
I marvel that supposedly informed and intelligent people that want to compare current temperatures to the Little Ice Age; do they want to go back to those temperatures? Similarly, they ignore the fact that much of our Holocene Interglacial had temperatures above current temperatures. Where was the runaway temperature Armageddon?
I suggest we not let this malfeasance fade quietly; shame them and make them pay for their lies as the facts are revealed.
This was a great read. Especially this one sentence below.
“Reject the guilt that climate Orthodoxy seeks to place on our shoulders.”
Sub-Saharan Africa is equivalent to the Net Zero/ Climate Orthodoxy !
“Climate Grinches.”
I like it.
They substitute the Scrooge “Bah! Humbug” for the WEF “You will have nothing and you will be happy.”
“So, this Christmas season, when you gather with your family, look at the spread before you with new eyes.”
Growing up in Queensland from 1940’s to the early 60’s – a “spread’ that would have be appropriate in a snowy country. Pure torture for the lady of the house woking with a wood-burning kitchen stove. By the mid 60’s – a slice of watermelon on a beach did the trick. New eyes indeed.
Speaking of harnessing the sun… whether you’re team “climate crisis” or not, solar + battery backup just makes sense for energy independence. No politics, just practical.