Climate Alarmism’s Credibility Sinks Under Weight of Ecological Evidence

By Vijay Jayaraj

The house of cards built on computer models and manipulated emotions is collapsing under the weight of a stubborn, inconvenient reality. The “climate emergency” exists only in the frantic press releases of a movement that knows it’s time is up.

For decades, activists have anchored their case in dramatic warnings about species extinction, melting ice caps and the end of polar life, failing ecosystems and vanishing biodiversity.

The goal was always the same: spread fear, drive policy, accumulate power, and if sufficiently clever or corrupt, make money. But what is the actual evidence telling us now?

Some of the world’s largest nations have actually expanded their forest area significantly, even as alarmists predicted ecological disaster. Between 2015 and 2025, China added approximately 4 million acres of forest. In the same period, Russia gained more than 2 million acres and India gained nearly a half million. The list goes on. Turkey added almost 300,000 acres. Australia, France, South Africa, and Canada all posted significant increases.

Perhaps the starkest example of failing prediction is the so-called extinction of species. For 20 years, images of healthy polar bears on melting summer ice were used to manipulate emotions. Yet, reports from 2025 show that bear populations are stable and even booming compared to the 1950s. Bears have not declined in numbers over the past 10 to 15 years, and populations demonstrate resilience even as summer sea ice oscillates.

India’s Bengal tiger population, majestic cats that I have observed closely in my work as a wildlife researcher, is another contradiction of fearmongering. Between 2014 and 2022, the number of India’s tigers grew from 2,226 animals to 3,682. This represents a 65% increase over eight years, with an annual growth rate exceeding 6%.

Further, a 2025 landmark study of data from nearly 2 million species found that extinction rates have not accelerated. Instead, they peaked over a century ago and have been in decline since the early 1900s. The great die-off turned out to be a phantom. The study reveals that past extinctions were largely driven by invasive species on isolated islands, not by the “climate crisis” or the effects of modern civilization.

Global agricultural performance demolishes another cornerstone of environmental pessimism. Famine failed to materialize as farmers across the globe brought in record harvests. Crop yields have increased substantially, enabling farms to feed more people while using less land.

This productivity gain carries profound implications: When agriculture becomes more efficient, fewer acres are needed to sustain the global population. Crop yields in 2024 have defied every Malthusian prediction. Carbon dioxide, the gas demonized as a pollutant, has fulfilled its role as a plant food, fertilizing crops and feeding a global population that has doubled since the 1970s. The planet is not dying; it is being fed.

Why does this matter? Because it proves that the core premise of the anti-fossil fuel movement is false. Industrial society is not destroying Earth. The data show the opposite: As nations get richer and more industrialized, they gain the capacity to protect ecosystems, expand forests and sustain more people.

The silence from the climate establishment regarding these victories is deafening. Have you seen a single headline from the mainstream press celebrating the millions of acres of new forest? Have you heard a whisper about the University of Arizona study debunking the extinction crisis? No.

These stories are buried because they don’t sell fear. The fact that these positive developments are barely acknowledged outside niche scientific reporting reveals more about the movement’s priorities than about the planet’s health.

In science, when a hypothesis is contradicted by data, the hypothesis is revised or abandoned. Yet climate alarmists have doubled down on their rhetoric.

The climate industrial complex’s business model depends on public panic, but spreading recognition of the truth has heightened the anxiety of the purveyors of doom.

Voters across the world are waking up. Recent elections in Europe and the Americas have ushered in new governments that are openly hostile to the net-zero agenda. They were elected on mandates to restore energy sanity, lower prices, and reject the shackles of globalist climate treaties.

This commentary was first published by BizPac on January 10, 2026.

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.