Early on, during the Oct. 1 vice-presidential candidate debate between Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, with flood waters still high in parts of the southeast from Hurricane Helene, CBS News anchor (and debate moderator) Norah O’Donnell said, "Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall."
A week later, Florida populations who were still reeling from Helene felt the full brunt of another meteorological intruder, and disaster, with Hurricane Milton.
The storm spread a swath of wreckage and death northward to the blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.
It also brought staggering damage to the formerly idyllic community of Asheville.
As reported in The New York Times, "the two hurricanes tell a tale of how storms, made more powerful by climate change, can devastate regions with distinct topography and varying levels of experience with hurricanes."
No one should dispute that hurricanes and other severe weather can be enormously devastating. However, the tag line connecting them with "climate change," suggesting this to be a recent phenomenon (presumably following a time before humans caused climate to change) defies undisputed records.
Let's recognize that global temperatures were as warm or warmer 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period, 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, and even a smidgen in the comparatively recent 1930s.
That was followed by three decades of cooling which began in the mid-1940s despite World War II weapons industries having released massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and had leading scientific and news organizations predicting the onset of the next Ice Age by the late 1970s.
However, various scientists may wish to debate how much — if any — human activities influence climate changes beginning millions of years before the Industrial Revolution introduced smokestacks and SUVs.
Official records of extreme weather events, tropical storms and hurricanes included, tell a different story regarding changes in frequency and intensity.
On the global level, as tabulated by University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke Jr, "The data show that from 2000 to 2021, the number of global weather and climate disasters declined by about 10%, which is very good news and completely contrary to conventional wisdom."
Pielke notes that "The period since 2000 is viewed as the most reliable for data reliability, but it is safe to say that even since 2000, coverage has improved. So, the 10% decline is possibly an underestimate."
Specifically, regarding U.S. land-falling hurricanes, records dating back to 1850 indicate they have also been declining, whereas few dispute that temperatures have warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius since that time when a "Little Ice Age" mercifully ended.
That was soon after George Washington’s troops suffered a brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon’s endured a frigid retreat from Moscow in 1812.
With no intent to make light of the foreboding trauma hurricanes bring to those in their paths — after all, 80 mph July winds of Hurricane Beryl removed part of the roof above my University of Houston office — let's nevertheless recognize that from a larger historical perspective, North Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane patterns fail to reveal any worsening trend over more than a century.
Category 3-4 Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey and Category 4 Hurricane Irma back in 2017 ended an almost 12-year drought of U.S. landfalling Category 3-5 hurricanes since Wilma in 2005, whereas 14 even stronger Category 4-5 monsters occurred between 1926 and 1969.
Many intense Atlantic storms formed between 1870 and 1899.
In the 1887 season alone, 19 such monsters formed, but then became infrequent again between 1900 and 1925.
The number of destructive hurricanes ramped up between 1926 and 1960, including many major New England events, inclusive of the 1938 hurricane which struck Rhode Island.
As for more recent hurricanes, the 2005 and 1961 seasons shared records for their seven major U.S. landfalls since 1946, whereas 1983 set the record for the least number, with only one.
Twenty-one Atlantic tropical storms formed in 1933 alone, a record only most recently exceeded in 2005, which saw 28 storms.
In terms of known human tragedy, the deadliest event was the Great Hurricane of the Antilles (1780) which struck Barbados. It caused 22,000 fatalities.
The deadliest to hit the continental U.S. was the Galveston Hurricane of Aug. 29, 1900, which may have killed up to 12,000 people.
The Okeechobee Hurricane, also known as the San Filipe Segundo (Category 4-5) hurricane, struck Florida in 1928 and resulted in 2,500 fatalities.
In any case, fewer or more, stronger or not there’s no factual basis for attributing patterns on climate change — much less on any human influence.
We can’t change the weather, it's truly in our best interests to anticipate those bad-case circumstances and prepare our communities and households to mitigate against the outcomes.
Whether or not one such event gets hyped on the media as the "biggest ever," "strongest ever," "deadliest ever," or "costliest ever," it of course may qualify as the worst ever for you.
Consider this grim reality well in advance of every storm season, when there is still time to plan and take prudent preemptive actions.
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to forget to do this on nice sunny days.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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