“Climate change will make earth a living hell!” claims popular astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

I don’t believe him.

My new video covers four myths about climate change:

Myth 1: It’s worsening droughts.

The Environmental Defense Fund wins donations partly by claiming, “climate change is worsening drought!”

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.

Myth 2: Climate change is worsening wildfires.

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 Heartland Institute Research Fellow Linnea 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!

“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.

“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.”

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.