“Climate change will make earth a living hell!” claims popular astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
I don’t believe him.
The media say, “All Arctic ice will soon melt away! Polar bears are dying off! Global warming causes food shortages!”
Bunk, bunk, bunk.
They are addicted to scaring us.
My new video covers four more myths about climate change:
Myth 1: It’s worsening droughts.
The Environmental Defense Fund wins donations partly by claiming, “climate change is worsening drought!” Media morons parrot the claim.
It’s just not true.
The EPA: “The last 50 years have generally been wetter than average.”
Globally, there’s been no increase in drought.
Heartland Institute Research Fellow Linnea Lueken notes, “The media … completely ignore previous years where there were record-low amounts of drought. Every individual drought that occurs in the United States, or anywhere in the world, is not evidence of catastrophic climate change. It’s weather.”
Myth 2: Climate change is worsening wildfires.
During California’s wildfires, silly people at NBC News ranted, “Climate change, creating infernos larger than ever!”
Bunk.
U.S. Forest Service data shows fires burned much more in the 1930s.
But the climate has gotten warmer! Doesn’t that dry trees out and cause wildfires?
No, laughs Lueken. “One degree of change does not dry out all of the brush … The real driver of these issues is land management.”
Poor land management. California restricts clear cutting — removing almost all trees in an area. And they don’t allow small fires to burn like they once did, naturally. So, overgrowth builds up and fuels bigger fires.
Also, today’s wildfires affect more people not because of climate change, but because there’s more suburban sprawl. More people build more houses in the path of grass fires.
Myth 3: Sea level rise will soon cause catastrophic damage.
In 2004, The Guardian wrote, “A secret report … warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas … by 2020!”
By 2020 …
Last I checked, European cities were OK.
“Sea level rise is absolutely occurring,” says Lueken, “but it’s been slow. … About a foot per century. There is no way that people wouldn’t be able to adapt to it.”
Exactly. More than 100 million people already live below high-tide sea level thanks to dikes like those Holland built years ago. And the Dutch built them without the modern equipment we have.
Adjusting to rising water makes more sense than recent environmental policy: moves to ban gas-powered vehicles, giving money to politically connected windfarm developers, etc.
That costs a fortune, but it will make no noticeable difference.
Climate change is real and may cause real problems.
But we can adapt to them, rather than getting hysterical about myths.
One last myth: Coral reefs are disappearing!
The BBC writes, “Coral islands in Australia at risk of disappearing.”
According to New York Public Radio, “Scientists Say The Great Barrier Reef is Officially Dying.”
It’s just not true.
“2024 actually saw record coverage for the Great Barrier Reef,” says Lueken. “Corals thrive in tropical conditions.”
Between 2019 and 2024, coral coverage more than doubled.
I’m embarrassed for my profession. They pump out nonsense.
“It drives me absolutely batty every time one of these claims is made,” says Lueken. “All it takes is a quick Google search to pull up publicly available data on any of these conditions.”
“If the good news is so obvious, why would they keep reporting bad news?” I ask.
“Good news doesn’t grab headlines … (and) research funding and grants.”
That’s key.
It took me years of reporting before I realized that scientists who gave me the best, most alarming and interesting quotes were often just … wrong. It isn’t that they lie on purpose; it’s just that the more you study a problem, the more you worry about it.
On top of that, a scientist who says it’s not a problem, or it’s a manageable problem, doesn’t get attention. Or those big government grants.
If you want money and attention, you need to scare people.
Photo by Oleksandr Sushko on Unsplash
Great reporting John!
I did an AI test about rising ocean levels.
Chat GPT calculated levels would rise 8.7 inches if ALL ice melted on the planet but stood behind the 162 feet NOAA claimed but couldn’t support it with math.
Grok3 did the same calculation and came up with 3.4” over all oceans. Restricted to just the Atlantic Ocean, levels would rise 11”, restricted to just the Pacific Ocean just 6.4”.
I asked it about the 162’ and Grok3 said if all ice was melted and restricted to say New England, then it could reach 162’.
Chat GPT essentially called me an idiot for not understanding that if all ice melted it wouldn’t distribute evenly across the surface of the planet.
I’m not sure which one of us is the idiot, lol
We visited the city of Ephesus in Turkey last year. 2,000 years ago, when Paul wrote Ephesians, it was a sea port. Today it is more than three miles from the water. Things change, humans have very little to do with it.
California has been in the news about drought, fires, landslides, too much rain, not enough rain, bad air, good air, too much
snow, not enough snow for water supplies – you name it. There have been predictions of doom and gloom for centuries,
and the doom and gloom doesn’t happen, but climate changes EVERY DAY. Every day is different, and it has been for
centuries. We can not change weather, we can not change climate.
Want a good example of weather affecting California? Check the high and low pressure gradients off the coast of California.
Check it daily, and you will see high pressure area means no rain and higher temperatures; low pressure areas mean more
rain and cooler temperatures. Watch it on TV, check weather channels. It has been this way for centuries. The only thing
that is new is too many people, and the state doing nothing about water storage, forest management, building in unstable
places, too much spending in the wrong places, and too much indebtedness on union retirement plans.
Here’s something to think about. If Trump is successful in swindling rare-earth mineral rights from Ukraine, then driving vehicles that are gasoline- and diesel-powered instead of electric would be less profitable to businesses that take advantage of these mineral rights to get lithium.
Perhaps you should check out Ben, the Spaceweathernews guy on youtube and X. He’s got all the right answers about what to expect and approx when.
It’s not climate change. It’s the magnetic excursion and it happens every 6000 years. We are due for the next one. Plus those year marks the end of the ascending kali yuga. Up next is the 300 yrs of cataclysms before the next yuga starts.
Also check out Yuga Shift by Bibhu Dev Misra.
There’s definately something going on, it’s just not what the media tells us it is
John,
Interview David Dilley, he’s a real climatologist…. He claims that the earth just finished a 240 year heating cycle a couple of years ago (a heat peak) and we are now entering a 240 year cooling cycle…. Within the 240 year cooling cycle are 25 year cycles, where the peak temperature will drop 25 years after 25 years and the earth will get colder…. Ask him about the “Island Heat Effect” we experience this in the Phoenix area, where the temperature is measured at Sky Harbor Airport each day….. I just wonder how the temperature is way out in the middle of the desert with no civilization around (no concrete or asphalt roads, which retain heat)…. Keep up the good work….
Awesome