Without global warming cheerleader ABC News, the recent warning from Australian scientists that Antarctica’s environment was rapidly changing may have gone largely unnoticed. Predictably, human activity was cited as the cause with the researchers calling for a reduction in greenhouse gases to stop ice melts described as ‘between the size of New South Wales and WA’. Their gloomy findings came with the sting that if nothing was done, emperor penguins could be extinct within 75 years.

Really?

After all, modern penguins evolved around fourteen million years ago with emperor penguins, as a distinct species, evolving around two million years ago. Antarctica was then in the midst of a transformation from a previously forested and tundra-like continent to one of expanding ice sheets. During this period emperor penguins would have experienced dozens of glacial and interglacial cycles. Indeed, over the past one million years, Earth has experienced roughly 100,000-year ice age cycles when global temperatures were much warmer and cooler than today. There is also evidence that CO2 levels during that time rose to 400 ppm or higher, suggesting emperor penguins should be sufficiently resilient to withstand 75 years of one or two degrees of global warming with current CO2 concentrations.

If warming there is. According to 45 years of satellite data for the entire south polar region, there has been no warming, a fact which seems to have escaped the ABC and the authors of the report.

Another reality which seems to have eluded them is that ice melt is confined to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where scientists recently discovered 91 volcanoes suppressed under glaciers. As they erupt, glaciers retreat.

But then extinction has become the shock-in-trade of climate alarmists.

The Great Barrier Reef is a favourite. In various incarnations it has existed on Queensland’s continental shelf for up to eighteen million years. Yet James Cook University’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies claimed the reef had lost more than half of its corals since 1995 due to warmer seas driven by climate change. The study’s lead author predicted, ‘The northern Great Barrier Reef will never look quite the same again… we must sharply decrease greenhouse gas emissions ASAP.’ This cry of desperation was enough to deliver $1.4 billion in grants and pledges for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation ‘to secure the reef’s future’.

So when the Australian Institute of Marine Science later discovered that coral coverage on the northern and central parts of the Great Barrier Reef was the highest since monitoring began 36 years ago, it was seen as an aberration.

But what if, rather than global warming, the real threats to the natural order were to be found in unregulated mining, disrespectful tourism, chemical run-offs, poor conservation, disease and, human habitation?

For example, scientists once claimed climate change threatened polar bears with extinction. However thanks to modest funding and a ban on hunting, over sixty years, bear populations have trebled.

But then by 2026 ‘climate adaption’ alone is projected  to attract $3 trillion per annum, so best to forget good news polar bear stories.

It also means that when international emissions reduction agreements fail to impact global temperatures, rather than questioning the science, the call is for more drastic action.

It’s why a new US Department of Energy Critical Review of the Impact of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate which has found, ‘Attribution of climate change or extreme weather events to human CO2 emissions is challenged by natural climate variability, data limitations, and inherent model deficiencies’ is dismissed. It confirms long-silenced expert disagreement with the so-called consensus on the impact of CO2 on global temperatures.

Sadly, climate change today has more to do with  politics than science. Too many scientists have abandoned empirical observation and intellectual integrity in favour of their political inclinations and career ambitions.

So, rather than follow America, which has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, specifying economic damage and unfair burdens, insignificant emitters like Australia tumble for globalist bullying and empty rhetoric by persisting with fruitless gestures of self-harm. Even if Australia achieved net zero CO2 emissions, its efforts would be dwarfed by countries like China, Russia and India. China emits more CO2 in sixteen days than Australia does in a year.

According to its self-reporting, China is responsible for over 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and for 90 per cent of the growth in emissions since 2015. However, Beijing is renowned for manipulating official statistics and, as China’s data follows the official party line and not the other way around, its emissions may be understated.

Whatever the reality, Beijing has sought to weaponise climate change and now largely controls the narrative. To this end it has achieved an influential role in international climate discussions. A Chinese national co-chairs an IPCC working group which evaluates the science on global warming and pressures advanced economies to lower emissions and contribute hefty sums to a UN climate fund to compensate for the damage they are inflicting on poorer countries.

It also has an enthusiastic patron in United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Abusing his office’s authority, he declares, ‘The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.’  ‘We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,’ he instructs. No equivocation there.

Beijing exploits this hype to boost exports of unreliable renewable energy systems and EVs. It enlists PRC sympathisers, deluded politicians and rent seekers to suppress debate and perpetuate ignorance. Furthering Beijing’s international political and economic ambitions, gullible democracies like Australia, meekly comply.

Rather than save emperor penguins, the Great Barrier Reef or polar bears from extinction, climate policies  are threatening the very existence of ordinary people’s democratic, abundant lifestyles. Every day their freedoms and living standards are being eroded through the actions of globalists, intent on deceiving communities to achieve international conformity.