Scientists, activists, and journalists, Sutter included, blared the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) warning of a planetary disaster unless fossil fuels are immediately replaced with green energy.
However, claims that hurricanes are no longer “natural” disasters do not line up with the IPCC’s latest report.
The IPCC’s report echoed what the international body found in its 2013 report, called AR5 — there’s little to no evidence global warming is making hurricanes more extreme or intense.
“Numerous studies towards and beyond AR5 have reported a decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones and/or the globally accumulated cyclonic energy,” the IPCC’s latest report found.
While other studies have found increasing trends in some basins and claimed to link them to global warming, the IPCC noted that “uch contradictions” and the lack of long-term data in many areas “implies that there is only low confidence regarding changes in global tropical cyclone numbers under global warming over the last four decades.”
The IPCC noted there’s “consequently low confidence in the larger number of studies reporting increasing trends in the global number of very intense cyclones.”
Indeed, the IPCC’s findings echo those of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that it’s “premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming – have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”