Emergency explanations have had to be rushed to the climate catastrophizing front following the shocking news that hurricanes in the North Atlantic have largely disappeared this year.
Until recently the area was heading for a double bagel – zero hurricanes with zero major hurricanes, although a late storm has upset a score line never before seen in the historical record. As with all ‘extreme’ outlier weather events, humans must be responsible, at least that has been the mainstream reaction for around 30 years (we have the computer models to prove it). But wait, not on this occasion. Simon King from the BBC states that a natural occurring El Niño is the “biggest reason“.
Wot, no humans altering the climate? Surely a first for the BBC. In fact, lead weather presenter King is on the right track in that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a transporter of heat from the Pacific Ocean around the world, can reduce wind shear and supress storm activity. But activity is complex in the chaotic, non-linear, largely unmeasurable atmosphere. Such a simple explanation didn’t work well in 2023 when another strong El Niño occurred at a time when there was a long-term-average-busting hurricane season with seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. Then the narrative-driven media was jammed packed with possible anthropogenic causes.
Long experience of being fed climate claptrap means we must be intrigued when ‘natural’ reasons are suddenly being used to explain the inevitable weather outliers that run the danger of casting doubt on the pseudoscience backing the Net Zero fantasy. While such natural explanations are welcome, indeed almost always highly relevant, they are curiously missing from most useful idiot mainstream climate messaging.
In 2018, Oliver Milman of the Guardian gave us the standard climate slop on extreme storms when he reported: “Hurricane rainfall could increase by a third and wind speeds boosted by up to 25 knots if global warming continues.”
Almost invariably, natural causes for all weather or weather-related events are either missing or entirely lost in proselytizing action. For coral showing five years of record growth on the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral ecosystem in the world – almost no interest in the mainstream media.
Global burned areas in the annual fire season to February 2026 were down 18% on the recent 20-year average – who cares when there is a much better story about Bordeaux claret having a slightly smoky taste this year due to a number of local fires indicative of Fireball Earth. Don’t believe that such a story could appear in the biased press – I give you Esme Stallard’s 2023 BBC classic: ‘Climate change could make beer taste worse.’
A stable Greenland ice sheet this year, maybe a small increase – get in the bin. Surely this is a good news story for all except perhaps makers of scuba diving equipment selling kit for all those grandchildren who are going to be under water later in the century. A natural explanation, in case it never gets reported, is that the northern 2026 summer jet stream kept high pressure over the UK and Europe, and all the low pressure-induced rain seems to have fallen as snow during a colder Greenland season. In addition, cyclical factors seem to be at play since ice loss in Greenland has been falling for a number of years anyway.
Much of this is caused by, or is called, weather. Explaining that bad or extreme weather is as much a natural event as all other types does not fit the predetermined narrative that drives the population panic required for the hard Left Net Zero project. Just ‘look out of the window’ and complex atmospheric science can be easily understood by blaming all the crap weather on humans using hydrocarbons. Works every time when there are loads of convenient hurricanes – less well when the wind is stilled and the ocean is as calm as a mill pond.
In fact, the constant suggestion that human-caused climate change will lead to more severe tropical hurricanes is not borne out by scientific data. Leaving aside the fact that hurricanes in number and strength have shown little noticeable change for at least a century, the idea that warmer ocean waters caused by higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are stoking up the storms is highly contentious. In 2023, the tropical Atlantic featured record surface temperatures but a powerful El Niño failed to make much impression on the high number of storms. Ocean temperatures this year were a little cooler but still remained at the third highest level recorded. Did a marginal drop in temperature affect the dramatic turnaround in hurricane numbers? Maybe, maybe not, but it might be an idea to stay off blaming it on humans until more definite answers are found.
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