Climate Change Didn’t Cause That Hurricane! Let's Talk the Facts!

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hey everyone. This is Linnea Lueken with the Heartland Institute. Hurricane season has officially started. The National Hurricane Center predicts that this year will be below normal in the Atlantic, [music] which means fewer named storms than the average, but like every year, [music] there will be tropical storms and some of them will become hurricanes, possibly major hurricanes. [music] The media has gotten into a bad habit of trying to attribute every single hurricane [music] to climate change and even tries to link individual storms to human emissions of carbon dioxide [music] through things like attribution studies, which assume that storms must have been made worse by the modest warming [music] of the past century. But a single storm, or even a single year's storms, can't be legitimately used to prove any impact of global climate change. You need a sustained trend towards [music] bigger, worse storms over time. And we just don't see that in the available data.

[00:00:54]There has been no increase in the global number or intensity [music] of tropical cyclones since dependable record keeping began, about when satellites started being used. Some people will say that the proportion of severe hurricanes, that would be category four [music] and five hurricanes, have increased. And that's true, but only because the total number of hurricanes globally has declined, but the number of stronger ones [music] has stayed pretty much the same. Longer term studies based on proxy data >> [music] >> suggest that hurricane numbers have been stable over the past couple of centuries or even possibly declined a little bit.

[00:01:33]Before modern tracking technologies [music] like radar and weather monitoring aircraft and satellites, many tropical storms went totally uncounted. If they didn't make landfall [music] or cross a ship's path, no one even knew that they existed.

[00:01:47]Accumulated cyclone [music] energy, another measure of storm intensity and duration, has shown no increase. [music] But what about rapid intensification? We keep hearing that storms are getting worse faster. [music] This is also bunk. Data show that although there have been some recent years with high counts of rapidly [music] intensifying storms, overall it just doesn't support the idea that it's a sustained trend.

[00:02:14]Just as a winter [music] storm is not proof of a coming ice age, a bad hurricane is not [music] proof of a climate emergency.

[00:02:22]All of this being said, it is important [music] if you live in an area that can be hit by hurricanes or their remnants that you take time to prepare [music] for a storm before the season gets into full swing. Whether the season is predicted to be a bad one or a mild one.

[00:02:37]Hurricanes and typhoons are powerful, [music] often deadly storms regardless of long-term trends, and each one is a danger to life and property. [music] Stock up on necessary emergency supplies and have an evacuation plan. [music] Thanks for watching. Stay safe.

[00:02:55]That's all I have for this fact check.

[00:02:56][music] For the sources used as references in this video, you can check out climateataglance.com, [music] where you can also download a free copy of the book Climate at a Glance for teachers and students. If you prefer paper, you can purchase a hard copy on Amazon. [music] We also have an app available called Climate at a Glance for Android and iPhone. Thanks for watching. [music]