Media Lying About Climate And Hurricanes
It's time to state the obvious.

Michael Shellenberger Oct 4

Over the last several weeks, many mainstream news media outlets have claimed that hurricanes are becoming more expensive, more frequent, and more intense because of climate change.

As such, it’s clear that reporters are deliberately seeking to convince their readers and listeners of the false impression that hurricanes are becoming more frequent and intense. Many reporters do so in a subtle way, like ABC’s Zee, while others are more direct about it, like the FT’s Williams
The Financial Times reported that “hurricane frequency is on the rise.”

The New York Times claimed, “strong storms are becoming more common in the Atlantic Ocean.”

The Washington Post said, “climate change is rapidly fueling super hurricanes.”

ABC News declared, “Here’s how climate change intensifies hurricanes.”

Both the FT and N.Y. Times showed graphs purporting to show rising hurricane frequency using data from the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

All of those claims are false.

The increasing cost of hurricane damage can be explained entirely by more people and more property in harm’s way. Once you adjust for rising wealth, there is no trend of increasing damage.

the best-available science forecasts that the slight increase in overall hurricane intensity in the future won’t be because there are more intense hurricanes but rather because hurricanes overall will decline more than intense hurricanes (category 4 and 5). As a result, there will be a greater proportion of category 4 and 5 hurricanes than categories 1, 2, and 3.

In other words, the relative intensity of hurricanes will rise, even as the total number of hurricanes — and the total number of intense hurricanes — decline.

Is it possible journalists are just ignorant of current climate science? Perhaps some are. But mainstream news media outlets have been covering climate change and hurricanes for the last 20 years. And the information on hurricane costs, frequency, or intensity is hardly hidden away. It’s been summarized in the IPCC reports, most recently in 2021. And NOAA even boldfaces its key conclusions.

Consider four of the main ways the media mislead the public about climate change and hurricanes. They:

1. Misrepresent data showing improved observations of hurricanes (thanks in large measure to satellites and other hurricane detection technologies) as evidence of more frequent hurricanes;

2. Misrepresent hypotheses (e.g., that some hurricanes may become more intense by 2100) as facts in the present without mentioning that median projections suggest a decrease in all categories of storms;

3. Cherry-pick data to present trends in a relatively recent period since the 1980s and ignore the fact that there is much longer-term data available;

4. Confuse increasing damage with increasing incidence or intensity, even as there is a strong understanding that what and where we build explains all escalating disaster damage.

What about the article in The New York Times, by-lined by David Leonhardt, which claims that "strong storms are becoming more common in the Atlantic Ocean”? What about its graph, which shows a trend of rising category 4 and 5 storms starting in 1980?

The 1970s and 1980s are well-understood to be the low point in hurricane activity in the 20th Century. In a paper titled “Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century,” which Nature Communications published last year, scientists wrote, “the inactive period in the late 20th century may have been the most inactive period in recent centuries.” So, of course, a time series starting in 1980 will show increased activity.

It is an obviously deliberate and egregiously unprofessional choice.

I have known David for over a decade and know that he can be a careful reporter when he chooses to be. He did some of the most honest reporting for The New York Times on Covid. He won Pulitzers in 2010 and 2011. I emailed David to ask what made him decide to cherry-pick those dates; I have not heard back. Whatever the case, The New York Times should retract or correct the article.

It is notable that journalists twist themselves into pretzels to create the impression that hurricanes are increasing in frequency and intensity without ever acknowledging the data showing that they are not. A simple graph of U.S. landfalls shows that. And yet no major media outlet has ever, to my knowledge, published it.

media lying about climate change and hurricanes