Posted on 10/01/2026 4:51:06 AM PDT by MtnClimber
You know the mantra: Human caused climate change, driven by burning fossil fuels and adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, causes an increase in the frequency and severity of major storms, like hurricanes. When major hurricanes come along, as they regularly do, the promoters of this mantra immediately claim an ability to “attribute” the storm and/or its intensity to the ongoing human-caused warming.
For example, last October we had Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm that struck Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. As soon as Melissa had passed, an organization calling itself World Weather Attribution promptly came out with an analysis blaming the storm and its intensity on “climate change.” From the AP, November 6, 2025:
Melissa was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes to make landfall and brought destructive weather to Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba, causing dozens of deaths across the Caribbean. . . . The rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution found that climate change increased Melissa’s maximum wind speeds by 7% and made the rainfall near the center of the storm 16% more intense. The scientists also wrote that the temperature and humidity in which the storm intensified were made six times more likely due to climate change compared to a pre-industrial world.
Perhaps that seemed plausible at the time. But this year the mantra that human-induced climate change is the main cause of destructive hurricanes has run into a small problem. Here we are on September 29, and there has not yet been a single hurricane that has formed in the North Atlantic. Nor are there any tropical disturbances or depressions that appear likely to turn into hurricanes over the next week or two. Here are the data from the National Hurricane Center through today. Key statistics: Number of hurricanes — 0 (5 fewer than the 1991-2020 normal); number of major hurricanes — 0 (2 fewer than the 1991-2020 normal); total ACE (accumulated cyclone energy) — 10.4 (89% less than the 1991-2020 normal).
The University of Colorado has a tropical meteorology project that tracks hurricane data and compares it to 30-year norms. Here is their chart up to today for this ACE thing, compared to the 1991-2020 30-year average:
As the chart shows, typically about 75% of the cyclonic energy for the season has occurred by the end of September. And yet here we are on September 29 with ACE so far this year at barely over 10% of normal. This year’s ACE to date is by far the lowest in the satellite era that began in 1966. (Prior to 1966 there are a very few years with lower known ACE, but without the satellites there could have been other undetected storms.)
And it’s not like this unexpected hurricane drought can be blamed on a sudden drop in temperatures. Depending on your data source, summer 2026 was either the warmest summer on record, or at least close to it. For example, from Berkeley Earth, September 24:
August 2026 was the warmest August on record, with a global average of 1.71 ± 0.11 °C (3.07 ± 0.20 °F) above the 1850–1900 average, ahead of August 2023. It was also the 2nd warmest month of any kind in our record.
From NASA, September 17:
[The U.S. experienced] the warmest June through August in the contiguous United States in a 132-year record, according to NOAA. The three-month period in 2026 was 0.4ºF warmer than the previous records, set in 1936 and 2021.
I have previously criticized the quality of the temperature records kept by NOAA, NASA, and Berkeley Earth. However, their records are prominent among the ones used to generate alarm about climate change and about supposedly increasing hurricane frequency and intensity. And even the UAH satellite temperature record shows that August 2026 was relatively a very warm month, although not the warmest on record.
So my question is: Can we now declare that the claim (hypothesis) that increased global temperatures cause increased hurricane frequency and intensity has been definitively falsified? And if we can’t declare that today based on the hurricane drought to date, when can we declare it?
As I have written many times on this site, the essence of any hypothesis claiming to be “science” is that it must be subject to falsification. Any scientist who is not a charlatan will state his hypothesis in a form that is subject to falsification, and will clearly state the criteria of data which, if it emerged, would be sufficient to falsify the hypothesis.
You can immediately tell that members of the climate “science” cult are not real scientists by the way that they bob and weave and shuck and jive a hundred different ways to avoid stating their claims in a way that is falsifiable. But they have gotten themselves out on a limb with the endlessly repeated mantra that global warming is causing increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Here are just a few examples.
From the Environmental Defense Fund (undated, but apparently from 2025):
As our climate warms, we’re experiencing stronger winds, higher storm surges and record rainfalls during hurricane season — which is also why these storms are becoming more destructive and costly. . . . As ocean temperatures rise, evaporation increases, adding more moisture to the air. Hurricanes that travel over these warmer waters can draw in more heat and water vapor, fueling the storms. That means heavier rainfall, stronger winds and more flooding when the storms hit land.
From Earth Justice, July 28, 2025:
Human activity is causing rapid changes to our global climate that are contributing to extreme weather conditions. . . . Hurricanes are growing more powerful as global temperatures rise because these storm systems draw their energy from warm ocean water.
And even the government got into the act. From NASA Climate Change, October 23, 2024 (before the Trump administration came back into power — but the page is still up):
The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. . . . Hurricanes Will Become Stronger and More Intense. Scientists project that hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates will increase as the climate continues to warm.
(Bold in original.)
All these clowns, and everyone else who has made these predictions, needs to be called to account. Has the prediction that warmer temperatures would lead to more frequent and more severe hurricanes been falsified? If not why not? If it hasn’t been falsified by the data from this year’s hurricane season to date, when will it be falsified? Is a full hurricane season without a single hurricane sufficient? Why not?
The fact is that the claim (hypothesis) that warmer temperatures lead to more frequent and more severe hurricanes has already been falsified, whether they will admit it or not. By failing to admit it, they just confirm that they are charlatans rather than scientists.
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Manhattan Contrarian ping
These clowns never seem to mention the effect of the El Nino cycle on Atlantic hurricanes.
Since we’ve been keeping records, the last time we had an Atlantic Hurricane Season with *no* recorded hurricanes was 1914. Since we’ve been keeping records, the only other season with no recorded hurricanes was 1907. That’s two out of a few hundred years of records.
The likelihood that, before the advent of trans-Atlantic flight, there actually was a little unrecorded hurricane activity in both 1907 and 1914 is actually quite high.
The likelihood we get through this season with no recorded hurricanes is actually quite high. It is now October and there is *ZERO* observed storm activity in the Atlantic. We’re well into wind-down time for the Atlantic Hurricane season.
If that happens - a year without a hurricane in the Atlantic - it may well be the first time this has happened in hundreds if not thousands of years. Relying on the less than perfect record of over a century ago we know it would be at least the first time in well over 100 years.
And why does that make them clowns? You are right. But did “clowns” who said more storms all the time get their predictions right? No. Sure - this year is particularly anomalous - and that is *in part* because of the string El- Nino - but the decades long data are clear - ZERO evidence of increase in any kind of storm activity.
This very obviously unusual year just gives this “clown” a soapbox a little higher than usual to spout from. But it doesn’t make him wrong. The data are on his side, not the, “more storms all the time,” side. It’s that second group that are the clowns.
And they have screwed your economy, using money they stole from you for “green” to fund it all.
So - who’s the clown?
Yes, I was calling the climate change scaremongers clowns. They refuse to use satellite temperature measurements to get global averages because they can’t put in “corrections” to give the answer they want.
Actually, in one of S. Fred Singer’s books from a long time ago, he said that the more things warmed the fewer storms should happen, as it’s the clash between hot & cold systems that create problems. I don’t remember all the dynamics, but that was the gist of it.
By failing to admit it, they just confirm that they are charlatans rather than scientists.
That’s right. The reasons are actually pretty straight forward. And work on many levels.
1. Weather is because of differences in temperature and humidity. A warming globe warms the poles faster than the equator - smaller differences in temperature and humidity.
2. Hurricanes need hot, humid air AND Coriolis forces to organize. In a cooler world, the water that is warm enough to spawn hurricanes (and there has to be a front - hot humid air on one side and cold are on the other) is too far south - so the Coriolis forces are took weak to drive cell organization. In a warmer world that line where warm/humid meets cool is too far north, and the Coriolis forces tear the cells apart. Through the 20th century we lived in a world that was optimized for Atlantic hurricane production. Whichever way tou tip it we’re going to see less hurricanes.
the pacific is pretty active this year.
el nino may just fill up lake meade and lake powell.
I always recall Michael Moore lecturing about how there was going to be at least one or two hurricanes the size of Katrina every year following 2005.
Only 4.32 years left.
Sadly, it probably won’t do that much - but we’re going to see lots of flooding in California, for sure. Hopefully there is some recovery of the Colorado, for sure.
What is that a graph of? The global average temperature is somewhere in the upper 50s. So what is this measurement that has a value right around the freezing point?
The whole hypothesis, that climate can cause a change in weather, is a logical fallacy. Climate after all, does not exist in nature. Weather does. Weather is an independent variable, which can be measured, and the central tendency (average, mean, median,) of that measure is a dependent variable, or outcome variable, climate. An independent variable, weather, is the cause; a dependent variable, climate, is the effect. The climate change cult has it exactly backwards, and has been selling a mirage for years.
Four fairly regular glacial-interglacial cycles occurred during the past 450,000 years. The shorter interglacial cycles (10,000 to 30,000 years) were about as warm as present and alternated with much longer (70,000 to 90,000 years) glacial cycles substantially colder than present. Notice the longer time with jagged cooling events dropping into the colder glacials followed by the faster abrupt temperature swings to the warmer interglacials. This graph combines several ice-core records from Antarctica and is modified from several sources including Evidence for Warmer Interglacials in East Antarctic Ice Cores, 2009, L.C. Sime and others. Note the shorter time scale of 450,000 years compared to the previous figure, as well as the colder temperatures, which are latitude-specific (e.g., Antartica, Alaska, Greenland) temperature changes inferred from the Antarctic ice cores (and not global averages).
Source:
It doesn’t matter. Particular talking points make their way into the hymn book of the climate change religion, and they never come back out. Whether they’re true or not doesn’t make the slightest difference. That’s why every article that has anything to with weather or climate throws in an attribution to climate change with no evidence whatsoever. Per today’s point, give it a year or two and “more hurricanes “ or “fewer, but stronger” will pop back up into articles
Most of the “Global Warming” fanatics don’t realize that we are in an Ice Age right now, just in an Interglacial Period. The graph showing 450 years of Antarctic temperature variation is all during the current Ice Age.
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