WE ALL know hurricanes are getting worse, don’t we? After all, the MSM keeps telling us so.
After Hurricane Melissa a few months ago, for instance, the BBC’s weathergirl, Sarah Keith-Lucas, was adamant that ‘the frequency of very intense hurricanes such as Melissa is increasing’. Similar claims abound across the networks and newspapers every time a hurricane comes along. And that’s before we even mention the fake climate attribution studies that make headlines.
The only problem is that the data does not agree!
Full data has now been published for hurricanes globally in 2025 and it again confirms that long term trends remain flat, contradicting the fake news published by the media. (Please note that scientifically, hurricanes are strictly referred to as ‘tropical cyclones’. However, colloquially they are referred to as hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean – regardless of the name, they are exactly the same weather phenomenon. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to them all as hurricanes.)
The two charts below are published by the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. The first shows the number of hurricanes by year and the second shows major hurricanes – the most powerful ones categorised as Cat 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir Simpson scale. Data begins in 1980, which is generally regarded as marking the beginning of comprehensive, worldwide satellite coverage.
Total hurricanes numbered 52, against the 30-year average of 47. Major hurricanes totalled 24 against the average of 25.
There is no evidence of long-term increasing trends in either dataset.
Hurricane scientists also monitor Accumulated Cyclone Energy, or ACE. This measures a combination of wind speeds and duration. So, a Cat 5 storm will likely have a high ACE, but so would a weak one that had been meandering the Atlantic for a week or two.
Again, as with the first two graphs, there is no increasing trend in ACE.
Inevitably many more hurricanes are observed and counted nowadays than in earlier decades, simply because we have satellites to monitor them. Before 1980, many hurricanes stayed in mid-ocean and were consequently never spotted.
There is, however, a robust database for hurricanes that have hit the US, going back to the late 19th century. This data confirms that the absence of any worsening trend in hurricanes, whether frequency or intensity, goes as far back as the 1800s.
According to the US Federal climate agency NOAA: ‘There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in US landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for changing observing capabilities over time), there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.’
But the media are not interested in facts and hard data, or what the actual hurricane scientists say. They prefer propaganda.
‘Record’ offshore wind auction that will add £1.9billion to electricity bills
ANOTHER very large dose of propaganda was delivered this week and more lies form Mr Miliband. He and his Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) announced a ‘record-breaking auction for offshore wind’, claiming ‘to take back control of Britain’s energy’, in what must go down as one of the most blatantly dishonest, arguably fraudulent government press releases in recent years.
It claims that a ‘record 8.4 GW of offshore wind in Europe’s biggest ever offshore wind auction’ has been secured. You read the full content of the press release along with my analysis, illustrative graphs and workings here.
In brief, it contains three big lies.
The first is that the DESNZ’s claim that offshore wind is 40 per cent cheaper than gas implies a cost of gas power of about £150/MWh. That is a fake claim, even if you allow for carbon costs. The simple reality is that the real cost of new gas power would be £68/MWh, a quarter less than these new contracts for offshore wind. Of this, fuel costs account for £45/MWh.
The second lie concerns the use of ‘2024 prices’, on which the ‘90.91/MWh’ price is based. It has probably occurred to you that we are now in 2026. Since 2024, the consumer price index has risen by 4.5 per cent. As contract for difference strike prices are index-linked, that ‘£90.91’ has already risen to about £95/MWh.
The wholesale price in Q4 2025 was £74.44/MWh, according to the Low Carbon Contracts Company. Offshore wind will therefore be subsidised to the tune of £20/MWh at these prices. Indeed, DESNZ admits as much, because the AR7 published results confirm that subsidies could top £1.9billion a year by the time all the schemes are operational. These subsidies will have to be paid for 20 years, and are index-linked.
Then comes the third big lie. DESNZ are comparing new offshore wind with new Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT). The true comparison should be with existing CCGT, as we already have under-utilised CCGTs. It is generation from these that new wind power will replace.
As we have already paid for all of the fixed costs anyway, the only cost of producing additional electricity at CCGTs is the fuel cost, which as we have seen is around £45/MWh. That means the cost of sourcing power from these new wind farms will be about £50/MWh dearer than the gas power they are replacing.
We are tight on CCGT capacity and will need to construct new plants if older ones close as expected. But – crucially – we will have to do that anyway whether we build new wind farms or not.
What Miliband wants is to spend tens of billions building offshore wind farms in addition to paying for that new gas capacity. It will not ‘lower bills for good’, as the DESNZ blurb states: it will raise bills yet further.
Blackouts by 2030
MEANWHILE Mr Miliband and DESNZ remain oblivious to serious risks that face both the electricity and gas grids in the UK. On Tuesday independent energy consultant Kathryn Porter released a devastating report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, warning that:
- The electrification of heating, transport and industry could add between 7 and 10GW of electricity demand by 2030, data centres an additional 6GW, and government targets around 15GW of new demand.
- Yet by 2030, 12-17GW of reliable gas and nuclear power generation could be shut down while replacing these takes years to get approval and subsequently build.
- Wind and solar power sources remain intermittent. Power levels are highest on cold, still nights where these power sources aren’t generating
- There is a 65-85 per cent probability of regional electricity rationing or blackouts by 2030 and a baseline risk of 5-10 per cent of one of these cascading into a full grid failure.
- Investing in life extensions for current gas generation is the safest strategy to avoid blackouts.
- The grid can be secured only with greater investment into constant power sources such as a significant extension of new gas-fired power generation capacity.
- Declining output of oil and gas in the North Sea means some pipelines may become unviable. We could see cliff-edge reductions in gas coming onto the British grid, meaning we don’t have enough gas to meet demand on cold winter days.
Porter says that Britain’s electrification targets are politically ambitious but economically and operationally unsustainable, that without urgent action to secure affordable electricity, accelerate grid upgrades, and invest in new despatchable generation (especially gas), most electrification targets will be missed, and security-of-supply risks will rise well before 2030.
You can read ‘Electrification – can the grid cope?’ here.
