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John Stossel

More climate change myths need debunking.

There’s so much the alarmists get wrong!

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Linnea Lueken of the Heartland Institute helps us reveal the data that disproves claims of: worsening drought, worsening wildfires, catastrophic sea level rise and a dying Great Barrier Reef.

You might be surprised by what’s true and what’s not.

If you missed Part 1 you can watch it here: Climate Change Myths Part 1: Polar Be…

Transcript

Climate Change Will Make Earth a Living Hell

A living hell? Give me a break! Our last video debunked some hysterical claims about our warming climate, but there are more. Here’s myth #4.

Across the world, climate change is worsening droughts. Droughts are absolutely not getting worse. Heartland research fellow Linnea Lueken studies extreme weather. The media loves to share stories when there is a major drought somewhere, some very specific location. More of the Northeast is now under extreme drought conditions. But here’s the thing: They will completely ignore previous years where there were record low amounts of drought. Every single individual drought that occurs in the United States or anywhere in the world is not evidence of catastrophic climate change. It’s weather.

Globally, there’s been no increase in drought, and in the US, the EPA acknowledges, the last 50 years have been wetter than average. Drought was way worse in the 1930s. [dust storm] It sure was. Then, part of America was called the “Dust Bowl.” The Dust Bowl belongs on the list of the top 3, 4, or 5 environmental catastrophes in world history.

But somehow, silly people at NBC news now cite climate change as the reason for California wildfires. Historic drought is the perfect fuel for these epic conditions. [fire burning] But it’s climate change creating infernos larger than ever. Definitely not larger than ever, there’s been a modest uptick since the 1980s. But the early 1980s also happen to be the lowest recorded wildfire years in US wildfire history. The alarmists like to start their comparisons during those record low years. This graph shows the increase in the area burnt by fires in the US since 1983. This chart does make it look like wildfires are increasing. But go back just a little further, and you see fires in the past burned much more.

Still: It is warmer now, and that plays a part. One degree of change does not dry out all of the brush in California. The real driver of these issues is mostly going to come down to land management. [chainsaw] [tree falling] Bad land management. California restricts clear cutting—removing most trees in an area—and they don’t let small fires burn. This is the overgrowth that’s been accumulating in these forests for the past century because people have been putting out fires instead of letting them burn, the way they naturally used to. [fire] So, fires grow bigger. And affect more people, not because of climate change, but because: There’s more suburban sprawl. Meaning there are more people out grilling and knocking their Weber over when they’re trying to make hamburgers or whatever and causing grass fires.

[waves] But what about climate change causing sea levels to rise? Yet another bleak picture of what could happen in these United States if global leaders don’t take action to stop climate change. Global leaders, whoever they are, could stop climate change? It’s so dumb it deserves a video by itself, but I’ll limit this to just myth 6: Sea level rise will soon cause catastrophic damage. This is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. The sea level rise is real. Sea level rise is absolutely occurring, but it’s been slow. It’s at about an inch a decade or a foot per century. There’s no way that people wouldn’t be able to adapt to it. Even if it rises 3 feet per century, we can still adapt. More than 100 million people already live below sea level, because their countries did things like build dykes to hold water back. Holland did it years ago, without the modern equipment we have now.

Climate change may cause real problems. But we can adapt to them, rather than get hysterical about myths. The media love to push scare stories, but they’ve been so wrong in the past. In 2004, The Guardian claimed a secret report says: “Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas by 2020.” Yes, by 5 years ago. [music] Europe’s still here. In the 80s, so-called “experts” predicted rising seas will “completely cover the Maldives.” But since then: [music] The islands have grown. They’re even building new airports.

Finally, our last myth: Coral reefs are disappearing fast. By 2100, many of the world’s major reef systems may become barren boneyards. They actually cooked. And that’s because the temperatures this time around were so extreme. The Great Barrier Reef is dying. The Great Barrier Reef is doing fine. 2024 actually saw record coverage for the Great Barrier Reef. Not vanishing? Absolutely not. To the contrary. Great Barrier Reef has seen expansion in recent years. Coral did decline for a while, and alarmist scare stories predicted this, but this is what’s actually happened. It’s not surprising at all. Corals thrive in tropical conditions.

As I research this, I’m embarrassed for my profession. They just pump nonsense out. It drives me absolutely batty every time one of these claims is made, and all it takes is a quick Google search to pull up the publicly available data on any of these conditions. If the good news is so obvious, why would they keep reporting bad news? Good news doesn’t grab headlines. It also doesn’t gain research funding and grants. They’re out of business if they don’t find a problem.

Oh, absolutely. It’s taken me many years reporting to realize that the scientists who gave me the most impactful quotes, that make for great TV, were often less accurate. It wasn’t that they lied on purpose. It’s just that, the more you study a problem, the closer you are to it, the more you worry about it. And of course, if it isn’t a problem, you don’t get attention. If you want people to pay attention, you better scare them. We don’t have decades. We hardly have years.

[swoosh] If you’re skeptical that the alarmists are wrong, you can look at the sources yourself, they’re in the description. [music]