Climate Alarmists Still Claiming Hurricanes Are Getting Stronger
My September 29 post asked whether we could deem as “definitively falsified” the hypothesis that human-caused global warming was leading to “more and more severe” hurricanes
The basis for the question was that despite the endlessly repeated prediction of “more and more severe” hurricanes, not a single hurricane had formed in the North Atlantic basin as of early October.
This represented a record-low rate of hurricane formation in this region since the satellite era began in 1966. (Since that post, five more days have passed, and there is still no hurricane in the North Atlantic. With each passing day, the likelihood of a hurricane forming this year decreases.)
In response to that post, I received a comment from a reader that I thought deserved a serious response. The comment came as an email, rather than as a comment on the blog. The commenter gave his name, but since he did not post the comment on the blog, I am keeping his name confidential as a courtesy.
Here is the text of the comment:
If you expect those on the other side of the global warming debate to be honest, then it behooves you to do the same.
Why did you show only the North Atlantic hurricane basin’s Accumulated Cyclonic Energy (ACE), when there are two other major basins in the Northern Hemisphere (the northeast and northwest Pacific), and both show well-above-average ACE at this point in the hurricane season? The overall Northern Hemisphere’s ACE is also well above its typical average at this point of the season, which contradicts your claims in the article.
That doesn’t mean that overall hurricane ACE is increasing with global temperatures: it is not, as the global ACE measures at the same Colorado State University website show.
But to cherry-pick one hurricane basin’s figures to emphasize your hypothesis, when the other two basins show the opposite, is what I expect from dishonest climate doomers, not from someone who claims to be open to facts and in pursuit of the truth.
Although this is a serious comment, I stand by my post, and here’s why.
I think that it is the responsibility of the proponents of a scientific hypothesis to state their hypothesis in a form that can be falsified; as a corollary to this, the proponents must also specify the quantitative data which, should they emerge, would be sufficient for them to concede that the hypothesis has been falsified.
As I have frequently pointed out, the gaping hole in the entire climate “science” cult is the failure and refusal to state any hypothesis in a falsifiable form, or to state the quantitative criteria for falsification.
The climate “science” community’s general failure to specify their hypotheses in a falsifiable form applies specifically to the group that claims human-caused warming leads to “more and more severe storms.” (Indeed, members of this group assert they can “attribute” specific storms to human-caused warming.)
What specific criteria would falsify such a hypothesis? They will never say. However, their “attribution” claims overwhelmingly center on North Atlantic hurricanes. Why is this? Because North Atlantic hurricanes frequently make landfall in populated areas, which causes significant damage.
Pacific hurricanes, with few exceptions, almost always go out to sea and dissipate without causing any major damage or loss of life.
In other words, Pacific hurricanes aren’t good for scaring people.
Proponents of the “more and more severe hurricanes” scare will never agree to use an ACE index as the criterion to falsify their hypothesis. That’s because, in any falsifiable form where they might express the hypothesis, ACE records would have falsified it long ago.
During the warming period of the last several decades, ACE data have failed to show any consistent upward trend. Many charts showing this are available. Here is one from the website global-tropical-cyclones.com, a project by Ryan Maue and Roger Pielke, Jr.
The above chart includes cyclones from both the Atlantic and Pacific basins since 1980.
We can see they peaked in the 1990s, and have since dropped back to the level of the 1980s.
If the ACE data reflected in this chart are the criteria on which the “more and more severe storms” theory can be falsified, then I can’t see how that hypothesis survives.
Instead of using an objective measure like ACE, proponents of the “more and more severe hurricanes” theory want to use recent severe and damaging North Atlantic storms (like Hurricane Beryl in 2024 or Hurricane Melissa in 2025) to convince people their theory is valid.
That’s because those hurricanes are widely publicized and frightening.
But if they are the data that proponents choose to rely on, then it is entirely fair to cite a record-low North Atlantic hurricane season as definitive evidence against them.
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