Benjamin Zycher writes for RealClearEnergy about the impact of Hurricanes Helene and Milton on the climate debate.
That “climate change” — undefined and usually unquantified — is making weather patterns more adverse is a given among the chattering classes, but it always is useful to examine the actual underlying data. A prominent example appeared in a recent column in The Hill, in which reporter Rachel Frazin argues that “Climate change is making hurricanes like Hurricane Helene more intense, scientific research shows.” Frazin notes as well that:
*“The proportion of hurricanes that fall into these more intense categories 4 and 5 are expected to increase as the planet heats up, according to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…”
*“Peak hurricane wind speeds are also expected to rise.”
The data on hurricane frequencies and intensities do not support those assertions. …
… The problem is that “expectations” are predictions, usually based upon climate models that have overstated the actual temperature record by a factor of about 2.3.
Experts and scientists, whatever their credentials, might “expect” many things, but a failure of the predictions actually to materialize usually imposes no professional penalty in the strange world of climate politics. After all, an adverse prediction about the future can always be pushed back to later years.
With respect to Frazin’s assertion that IPCC “expects” an increasing proportion of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes: Let us review what IPCC actually says in the latest 6th Assessment Report … about cyclones:
“[T]here is still no consensus on the relative magnitude of human and natural influences on past changes in Atlantic hurricane activity, and particularly on which factor has dominated the observed increase (Ting et al., 2015) and it remains uncertain whether past changes in Atlantic [tropical cyclone] activity are outside the range of natural variability.”
Translation: We cannot tell even if there has been an increase in Atlantic hurricane activity simply as a matter of statistical significance.
