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.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
