THE Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ended on November 30, was quieter than normal, with five hurricanes compared with a long-term average of 7.2.
By far the most complete and robust data we have for hurricanes is for those which have hit the US coast. The US Hurricane Research Division, which is part of the Federal agency NOAA, has data going back as far as 1851. According to the figures, hurricane data is pretty reliable since the 1880s when the coastline became settled.
No Atlantic hurricanes at all have hit the US this year. The graphs below offer the strongest evidence of all that there are no long-term trends either in the frequency of hurricanes or their intensity. (Major hurricanes are Cat 3 and stronger – these show no increase either.)
This is in marked contrast to the myth regularly peddled by the BBC and others that hurricanes are getting more powerful. It is worth pointing out in this respect that the strongest hurricane on record to hit the US was the Labor Day hurricane in 1935. The second most powerful was Camille in 1969 and the third was Andrew in 1992.
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html
As far as the Atlantic basin is concerned, we have had reliable data only since comprehensive satellite coverage began in the 1980s. It was even later than this that hurricane-hunter aircraft became robust enough to fly into the middle of the strongest hurricanes for hours on end.
The hurricane maps for this year and 1925 show just why you cannot compare today’s data with the past. Whereas most of this year’s hurricanes meandered around in mid-Atlantic, the only ones recorded a hundred years ago were all close to land. There were, of course, plenty of hurricanes in 1925 which never got close to shore. We simply did not have the ability to spot them.
Even when hurricane-hunter aircraft started to be deployed in the 1940s, they were unable to fly into the most powerful hurricanes, for obvious reasons. One study in 2012 by leading hurricane scientists reviewed the ten most recent Cat 5 Atlantic hurricanes, the strongest hurricanes of all. They concluded that using technology available in the 1940s, only two would have been classified as Cat 5. (It is worth noting that two of this year’s Cat 5s peaked in the middle of the Atlantic, Erin and Humberto; both hit those wind speeds for only a few hours. Neither would have been classed as Cat 5s more than a few years ago. Nor would they have even been spotted before the 1950s).
When we look at the reliable data we do have, it is clear that there are no increasing trends in frequency or intensity. This supports the findings from US hurricanes.
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/comparison_table.html
So, what do the actual hurricane experts in the US say?
In their annual review of Atlantic hurricanes published earlier this year, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stated:
‘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.
‘We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.’
NOAA could not be clearer.
So why, as recently as two months ago, did the BBC weathergirl Sarah Keith-Lucas tell BBC viewers that ‘the frequency of very intense hurricanes such as Melissa is increasing’?
Cost of Net Zero to Rocket, Say OBR
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves has announced that energy bills will be £150 a year lower as a direct result of her Budget.
Don’t be fooled!
Two thirds of the so-called saving will be funded by switching about £6billion of renewable subsidies from energy bills on to general taxation. The total cost of what are known as Renewables Obligation subsidies is over £8billion a year. One way or another, we will still all have to pay for these subsidies, whether through bills or taxes.
The rest of the saving comes from the scrapping of the Energy Company Obligation, which funds insulation and other energy saving measures. However, this saving has already been wiped out by the Warm Homes Discount, announced a few weeks ago. This is a £150 rebate to poorer households on benefits such as Pension Credit and Universal Credit. Everybody else, of course, has to pay more on their bills to fund this.
But what the Chancellor did not mention is that our energy bills will be nearly £7billion a year higher by the end of this Parliament, because of Ed Miliband’s crazy Net Zero. This is equivalent to £260 for every home in the country.
These figures come from the Office for Budget Responsibility. According to their projections, the cost of Environmental Levies and the Renewable Heat Incentive will rise to £19.9billion in 2030/31.
Most of this is paid out as direct subsidies to wind farms, solar farms and tree-burning power stations such as Drax. Although Renewables Obligation subsidies are set to decline, due to older wind farms shutting down, the cost of the Contracts for Difference scheme is expected to balloon, with new offshore wind farms now being offered twice the market price.
This market price is normally set by gas generation. Official projections expect gas prices to fall in the next few years, meaning that the 20-year, index-linked, guaranteed prices offered by Miliband for wind and solar power will lock us in to permanently higher prices. It all gives the lie to claims that renewables are cheaper, which the Net Zero lobby, including the Government and BBC, still peddle.
Capacity Market levies will also increase substantially – these cover the cost of providing standby capacity, for when the wind stops blowing.
https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-november-2025/
There are other Net Zero costs which get loaded on to our energy bills, but which are not separately listed by the OBR.
The cost of balancing the grid, for instance, has risen from a couple of hundred million to £3billion now; costs include storage, constraint payments (paying wind farms to switch off when there is too much wind), voltage control and rapid-response generation. According to the National Energy System Operator, NESO, these costs could increase to over £10billion by 2030, as increasing reliance on intermittent wind and solar makes the grid more and more unstable.
Carbon taxes also add billions to bills. Moreover, somebody will eventually have to pay the estimated £80billion cost of upgrading the electricity grid, which is needed only for Net Zero purposes.
Add that lot up and the cost will come to well over £30billion a year. Miliband will, of course, be long gone by the time the full impact of his mad policies is felt.
