In the NBC News video report titled “How climate change could make hail storms even more destructive,” viewers are warned that stronger storm updrafts caused by climate change might supercharge hailstones, making them up to 75 percent larger. This claim is false and misleading, lacking any evidentiary support. Scientific data—including that from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report—shows no observable increase in hail intensity due to climate change. In fact, IPCC AR6 Chapter 12 concludes that there are no significant trends or projections of increased hail frequency or severity due to a warming climate.

Real-world data and atmospheric physics don’t align with NBC’s hype. Hail formation requires a very specific cocktail of atmospheric conditions, including strong updrafts and a freezing layer deep enough to support hail growth. Warmer temperatures tend to reduce the vertical depth of this freezing level, making it more difficult—not easier—for large hailstones to form and survive to ground level.

The most telling and absurd quote in the entire segment is this one: “Their latest research shows that climate change will make updrafts even stronger, which could make the biggest most destructive hail up to 75 percent larger…”. That statistic, plucked from speculative modeling and not grounded in observed trends, is presented as if it is established fact. Worse, it’s paired with ominous warnings about damage to crops and rising insurance claims, all without context or acknowledgment that hailstorms have long been a fact of life in agricultural regions.

Attributing hail damage trends to climate change is scientifically dubious and intellectually dishonest. Hail damage costs have increased over time primarily due to increased development and property values in hail-prone areas—not because hailstorms are getting worse. This mirrors the same pattern seen with hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods: more assets in harm’s way, not more severe weather, results in greater damage and higher costs.

A thorough analysis debunks the claim that hailstorms are intensifying. In fact, the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows a slight decrease in reported significant hail events over recent decades. According to a 2019 peer reviewed study “The characteristics of United States hail reports: 1955-2014” says:

Hail days, in contrast to hail reports, show no national trend over the last 25 y. Regional and local influences on hail reporting are identified stemming from verification procedures and contributions from local officials. The change in the definition of severe hail size from 0.75 in (1.9 cm) to 1.00 in (2.5 cm) in 2010 has a particularly clear signature in the report statistics. The contribution of storm chasers and source of report factors beyond population to the hail dataset is also explored, and the difficulty in removing these changes discussed. The overall findings highlight the limitations and non-meteorological features present in hail observations.

Even the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in its journals has noted the difficulty of linking hail trends to climate change due to the limited reliability of long-term hail observations noting, “Estimating local‑scale hail frequency … or assessing long‑term trends in light of climate change are challenging tasks, particularly because direct, homogeneous, long‑term hail observations are mostly missing.”

Hail is notoriously hard to measure consistently over time. Its occurrence is often underreported in sparsely populated areas, and radar-based detection has only become reliable in recent decades. Thus, claims of increasing trends require more scrutiny than NBC or ICECHIP provides.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report clearly addresses hail concerns in Chapter 12,  stating: “There is low confidence in observed trends in hail and low confidence in the attribution of these trends to human influence.” It continues: “Future changes in hail are uncertain, and there is low confidence in model projections.”

Massive hailstorms have occurred throughout history, long before anyone blamed climate change. The 1888 Moradabad hailstorm in India killed 246 people. The U.S. has recorded hailstones the size of volleyballs since the 1960s; no CO₂ fingerprint required. Looking at a deeper historical perspective quickly dismantles the “climate is causing it all” narrative pushed by NBC.

The real motivation behind NBC’s video seems to be continuing funding for a particular group of scientists, those participating in ICECHIP (Investigation of Convective Hail in the Plains), a project “made possible through the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF),” not an accurate assessment of hail threats. Nowhere on the site’s mission statement does ICECHIP mention climate change as a research objective. Their stated goal is to better understand the internal dynamics of hailstorms—not to link those storms to global warming aka climate change.

So, when NBC laments potential cuts to NSF funding, and suggests that the Trump administration threatens America’s ability to forecast weather hazards, it is not hard to see what’s really going on: special interests using climate change as a fear-inducing narrative to protect their federal funding.

Further, if we’re going to talk about research integrity, let’s ask why a group like ICECHIP would publicly tie its work to climate change only after securing federal funding. Their project materials don’t reference it, their mission statement doesn’t highlight it, and their methods are entirely focused on hail microphysics and not long-term climate attribution.

This is not to say that understanding hail formation isn’t important. It is. Improved hail forecasting can reduce economic losses and improve public safety. But turning every scientific endeavor into a climate crusade only erodes public trust in science. When every research grant proposal must include a climate angle, it encourages groupthink, skewing scientific priorities away from discovery and toward narrative compliance.

The United States has always experienced hail. It is an inherent feature of mid-latitude convective storms, particularly in spring and early summer. Suggesting with little or no evidence that recent hailstorms are somehow novel or worsening because of rising CO₂ is just propaganda.

NBC’s segment fails to question any of the claims made by the ICECHIP. NBC doesn’t reference the IPCC, it doesn’t compare historical hail trends, it fails examine the extent to which urban expansion in hail prone areas result in rising insurance payouts and rates, and it doesn’t even even distinguish between modeled projections and observed data.

Indeed, NBC’s hailstorm climate segment is a masterclass in misleading science communication, conflating speculation with certainty, omitting key data and historical context, and promoting a self-serving narrative designed to secure federal funding for a particular group of researchers. In this story, NBC acts like an advocacy organization rather than an objective news outlet.

By Jim Constantopoulos

Shut down New Mexico’s last remaining coal plant (Four Corners Generating Station), environmentalists say, and replace it with renewable energy. But coal is a practical fuel, affordable and dependable. Being generically against coal is no more useful than being generically against electricity. Electricity demand is rapidly rising. Electric vehicles, new AI data centers, and a growing economy simply mean we need more power. And we need reliable power.

While new additions of electricity generation remain dominated by intermittent wind and solar power, keeping what we already have on the grid will be critically important to meeting our energy needs and doing so affordably. Across the country, electricity prices have risen faster than the pace of inflation over the past few years. If we tear down our existing sources of reliable power at the very moment electricity demand begins to soar, even higher prices will be an inevitability.

With everyone I’ve encountered who is really immersed in energy issues, the common view is that we need every available energy source, ranging from renewables and nuclear power to coal, just to keep the lights on. Frankly, we all tend to take the on-demand delivery of electricity for granted. We shouldn’t. In just the past month, power demand eclipsed available supply in Louisiana, forcing the grid operator there to institute rolling blackouts (“load shed”) for 100,000 customers on a 90-degree day.

For years, the nation’s grid reliability regulators have been warning of emerging problems. In fact, the nation’s grid reliability watchdog warned that more than half of the nation could face the threat of blackouts over the next decade if we don’t take corrective action to boost our supply of power. This summer, the PJM interconnection grid operator said Maryland is at elevated risk of supply shortages during periods of peak demand. It may be hard to grasp, but we’re staring down a power supply crisis years in the making. Now, the collision of rapidly rising power demand with the loss of the nation’s coal fleet is coming to a head.

We desperately need the coal plants we have left, and the Department of Energy (DOE) has recognized it. In fact, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently issued an emergency order to keep a coal-fired power plant in Michigan running through the summer to bolster the MISO grid, which stretches from Louisiana all the way up through Michigan and Wisconsin. That plant was being forced off the grid 15 years before the end of its life by anti-coal regulatory policy. DOE’s position is a simple one: we can’t afford to lose existing plants with so many states critically short of power. The looming threat of power shortages is altering the national perspective about coal. Instead of a problem to solve, our coal plants are a critically important reliability backstop that we need as a bridge to our energy future.

For the foreseeable future, new sources of power should come on the shoulders of these reliability bulwarks, not in place of them. Rotating blackouts, rising prices and missed economic opportunities for lack of power are wholly avoidable if we simply embrace the full suite of energy resources at our disposal. Recognizing the ongoing importance of our coal plants is just the place to begin.

Dr. Jim Constantopoulos is a Professor of Geology and the Director of the Miles Mineral Museum at Eastern New Mexico University. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

In From Rights to Wrongs I took aim at the current Labour government’s plans to ride roughshod over the human rights of anyone objecting to national infrastructure projects. I suggested that there is some inconsistency in a government led by a former human rights lawyer being so happy to trample over human rights. There is, however, another aspect to this exercise in hypocrisy.

Last month the BBC website published an article with the title “International law ‘at heart’ of Starmer’s foreign policy, says Hermer”. And while the heading referred to foreign policy, the content of the article very much suggested (as it should) that the government’s respect for international law also extends to how it deals with domestic issues:

He [Hermer] continued: “Is international law important to this government and to this prime minister? Of course it is.

“It’s important in and of itself, but it’s also important because it goes absolutely to the heart of what we’re trying to achieve, which is to make life better for people in this country.

“And so I am absolutely convinced, and I think the government is completely united on this, that actually by ensuring that we are complying with all forms of law – domestic law and international law – we serve the national interest.”

The Aarhus Convention (to which the UK is a signatory) seems to be something to which the UK government only pays lip service when it comes to the environmental impact of its rushed proposals to impose massive renewable energy programmes on communities up and down the country. That Convention, which dates back to June 1998, purports to be a convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters.

Article 6 (which deals with public participation in decisions on specific activities) confirms (via its paragraph 1(a)) that it applies to the activities proposed in Annex I. Unfortunately Annex I seems to be massively out of date, given the glaring absence of renewable energy infrastructure projects from the annex. In referring to the enrgy sector, it refers to mineral oil and gas refineries; installations for gasification and liquefaction; thermal power stations; coke ovens; and nuclear power stations (including their dismantling and decommissioning, reprocessing of nuclear fuel etc). It also cpvers production and processing of metals; mineral and chemical industries; waste management and waste-water treatment plants; various industrial plants; transport links including roads, railways, waterways and ports; groundwater extraction etc, including dams; extraction of petroleum and natural gas, including pipelines and storage connected therewith; quarries and opencast mining; agricultural processing and so on.

The absence of renewable energy projects seems to constitute a glaring omission. Is this because in 1998 large-scale renewable energy projects were barely a glint in the eye of legislators? Is it because they were always intended to have a free pass (as I fear may be the case with the Scottish Ecocide Bill)?

Fortunately, a couple of paragraphs within the Annex suggest that renewable energy developments should perhaps be caught by the Treaty nevertheless. Paragraph 17 of the Annex covers “Construction of overhead electrical power lines with a voltage of 220 kV or more and a length of more than 15 km.” And paragraph 20 covers “Any activity not covered by paragraphs 1-19 above where public participation is provided for under an environmental impact assessment procedure in accordance with national legislation.”

Having come to power only in July 2024, Sir Keir Starmer’s government can’t really be blamed for the fact that last year the Compliance Committee to the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) its “First progress review of the implementation of decision VII/8s on compliance by United Kingdom with its obligations under the Convention” in terms which were less than satisfactory. However, the final paragraph of that review required action, and it insisted on it by 1^st October 2024:

The Committee reminds the Party concerned that all measures necessary to implement decision VII/8s must be completed by, and reported upon, by no later than 1 October 2024, as that will be the final opportunity for the Party concerned to demonstrate to the Committee that it has fully met the requirements of decision VII/8s.

That date has been and gone almost ten months ago. Given the UK government’s apparent determination to comply with all forms of law, including international law, one might have expected to discover what its proposals are to correct the UK’s shortcomings with regard to compliance with the Aarhus Convention. Yet, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the best it has managed is a Call for Evidence which ran from 30^th September 2024 to 9^th December 2024:

The UK is one of 47 Parties to the Aarhus Convention, an international treaty under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The Convention sets out obligations on Parties to make provisions for the public to access environmental information, to participate in environmental decision-making and to access justice when challenging environmental decisions. One of the Convention’s core aims is to ensure access to justice in environmental matters. The Convention’s monitoring body, the Aarhus Convention’s Compliance Committee, has found the UK to be non-compliant with the Convention and has made several recommendations about matters on which the UK must take action to bring its policies into compliance with the Convention.

The government is committed to ensuring that the UK upholds its international law obligations under the Aarhus Convention. In publishing this call for evidence, the Government aims to gather views on the Compliance Committee’s recommendations regarding access to justice to determine the best way to reach compliance. The government is seeking views on whether the recommendations should be implemented in England and Wales in light of the potential implications, or whether there are suitable alternatives which could better deliver the desired effect of bringing the UK into compliance.

As is the way of these things, the Call for Evidence document runs to 42 pages. I have been unable to discover the outcome of this process. So much for the claim that “The government is committed to ensuring that the UK upholds its international law obligations under the Aarhus Convention.”

Meanwhile, the same lack of urgency appears to apply north of the border at Holyrood (where the Scottish government has responsibility for ensuring compliance). The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee held a session on 12^th November 2024 as to what should be done to ensure compliance. It concluded that “The Committee will consider the evidence it has heard at today’s session in private and agree on next steps.” Since then the issue appears to have been kicked into the long grass, with silence prevailing.

It’s all a bit of a mystery. A Scottish government that wishes to get back into the EU fold, happily ignoring a Treaty that is very dear to the European Commission. A UK government that claims to be committed to complying with all forms of law quietly ignoring a finding of breach of an international treaty, a finding that is almost a year old. One might almost think that the interests of renewable energy companies are more important than compliance with international law. The “green blob”, it appears, trumps the public’s legal rights.