I'm not a fan of the term 'global warming.' I prefer 'global weirding,' because it's not just about things getting warmer, it's about things getting stranger.
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"I'm not saying there are no aliens. I'm just saying the evidence is insufficient for me to conclude it."
"I'm not a fan of people who think they have all the answers. The universe is too vast and complex for anyone to have all the answers."
"The universe is a symphony, and we are the audience."
"If you're not learning, you're not living."
"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge."
American astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey host who carries the Carl Sagan public-science mantle. Closely associated with Bill Nye (fellow science communicator) and Brian Greene (theoretical physicist and string-theory popularizer). For an intellectual contrast, see Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum — Ham's career has been organized around defending biblical 6-day creationism — exactly the science-education position Tyson's mainstream-science communication is structured to refute.
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The term 'global warming' misleads people into thinking climate change only means higher temperatures. In reality, climate disruption makes weather patterns across the board more erratic and extreme — record cold snaps, unprecedented storms, unusual flooding, severe droughts. 'Global weirding' more accurately captures that the entire climate system is being destabilized, producing stranger and more unpredictable conditions everywhere, not simply a uniform temperature increase.
Tyson directs the Hayden Planetarium and has built his career on translating complex science into language the public grasps — hosting StarTalk Radio, writing popular books, and correcting scientific errors in films. He is obsessed with precision in scientific terminology because he understands that how a concept is named shapes how people think about it. This quote is pure Tyson: rejecting a technically incomplete label and replacing it with one that drives more accurate public intuition.
This framing gained traction in the 2010s when climate skeptics routinely pointed to cold winters as proof against 'global warming,' exploiting the term's narrow literal meaning. Superstorm Sandy devastated the U.S. northeast in 2012, the polar vortex collapsed repeatedly, and California entered historic drought — all while debate remained politically paralyzed. Scientists were urgently trying to reframe public understanding away from 'warming equals hot everywhere' toward recognizing systemic climate instability and extreme variability.
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