By Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett

The recent NBC News article, “Climate change is increasing the risk of rapidly intensifying storms. Hurricane Erin is the latest example,” and a similar story published by CNN, are yet additional instances of media hyperbole overshadowing scientific nuance. The claim that climate change is driving the increasingly frequent rapid intensification of hurricanes is unproven and probably flat wrong.

NBC’s story opens dramatically:

Hurricane Erin strengthened back into a Category 4 behemoth over the weekend, the latest shift in what has been a remarkably fast-changing storm.

The hurricane’s behavior in recent days makes it one of the fastest-strengthening Atlantic hurricanes on record, and yet another indication that climate change is increasing the risk of rapidly intensifying storms.

This framing relies not on a robust dataset or a careful review of historical hurricane behavior, but on a shallow reading of recent high-profile storms and a generous dose of conjecture. The article immediately jumps to the assertion that a single hurricane—Erin—is somehow emblematic of a global, climate-driven trend.

The problem? We simply don’t have the quality or length of observational data required to make such sweeping conclusions.

There is no single, universal definition of “rapid intensification.” Discussions of it are of very recent vintage. When many speak of rapid “intensification” (RI) they define it as an increase in sustained wind speeds of at least 35 mph in 24 hours. This a relatively new entrant in the hurricane lexicon as seen in the figure below from Google nGram tracker:

Before satellite monitoring in the late 1970s, we had only the vaguest idea about the inner workings of tropical cyclones, especially those that stayed at sea. Prior to that, storm intensification was gauged largely by ship reports, land-based observations, and post-storm forensics. How many storms rapidly intensified in the pre-satellite era? The honest answer is: we’ll never know because the data isn’t there.

As Climate at a Glance points out, “Reliable satellite data on global hurricanes only goes back to about 1980.”

Any attempt to compare the frequency or intensity of RI events today to pre-satellite decades is, at best, based on suppositions, assumptions, and guesses about past hurricanes’ wind speeds and development. Pure speculation. Only modern storm tracking allows us to monitor, record—and report—every wiggle and wobble in storm strength that would have gone unrecorded in previous generations. Comparing today’s RI frequency to 1970, 1960, or earlier is like comparing high-resolution digital photos to blurry Polaroids or even woodcut etchings and then to claim the subject has suddenly grown new features.

NBC News references a 2023 study that claims, “tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean were around 29% more likely to undergo rapid intensification from 2001 to 2020, compared to 1971 to 1990.” This sounds seems concerning, until you realize the gaping data-quality chasm between those eras.

Hurricane tracking and wind speed and pressure monitoring before the development and deployment of hurricane aircraft was spotty at best. It was largely made up of guess work or readings from the odd ship that crossed paths with a storm, unless or until a storm made landfall, and particularly, landfall at locations with what was then the state-of-the-art weather data devices. Hurricane aircraft were a giant leap forward, but even then, the awareness of hurricanes could be spotty with many small storms, developing and dying distant from land, being unrecorded or reported. Reaching storms far from land was limited and a drain on resources, and the equipment, rudimentary compared to modern equipment. Satellites revolutionized hurricane tracking in the 1980s. As a result, any statistical analysis that straddles the pre- and post-satellite eras is skating on extremely thin ice.

“From my read of the discussion among scientists, the IPCC report, and the DOE report, my opinion is that technological advancement in recent decades-particularly as it pertains to the capabilities of the Hurricane Hunters, makes it difficult to say definitive things about trends in rapid intensification . . . [t]his is especially so because these things happen out at sea.,” writes Jessica Wienkle, Ph.D., in an analysis of rapid intensification, subtitled, “Our technologies have come a long way!”

“One cannot discredit the first half of the hurricane record for data quality issues and then proclaim definitive things about the latter half of the record because of its high data quality,” Wienkle continues.

Difficulties in comparing past with present hurricane records and trends aside, NBC fails to mention is that NOAA’s own data shows no significant upward trend in either the frequency or intensity of all major Atlantic hurricanes since reliable satellite measurements began. Also when global hurricane data is examined, there is even less evidence for a trend. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) states plainly: “There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in TC [tropical cyclone] frequency- or intensity-based metrics due to changes in observational capabilities.”

What about the record books? Even a cursory glance at NOAA’s historical hurricane database shows that the strongest, most rapidly intensifying hurricanes are not a modern phenomenon. Take Hurricane Wilma (2005), which intensified by 100 mph in 30 hours, or Hurricane Camille (1969), which made landfall as a Category 5 long before the climate panic set in. When you factor in measurement improvements and detection bias, the supposed “trend” toward more rapid intensification evaporates.

NBC News leans heavily on the notion that warmer sea surface temperatures are the “key ingredient” for rapid intensification. But hurricanes are products of many factors—wind shear, atmospheric moisture, ocean heat content, and even dust from the Sahara Desert. Some years, all the ingredients line up. Other years, despite warm water, storms simply fail to materialize or intensify.

Historical hurricane records are rife with examples of natural variability overwhelming any hypothetical climate “signal.” As recently as 2013, forecasters predicted a blockbuster season due to high sea surface temperatures, but reality delivered a below average hurricane season. If warm water were the sole driver, the hurricane trend would be a simple upward slope. Instead, the record is erratic, with decades of fewer landfalls and weak seasons mixed among the headline storms.

The NBC article finally admits, in an aside: “the process of rapid intensification remains difficult to forecast… understanding how it will happen for specific storms—and when—will require more research.” You don’t say!

NBC’s climate reporting reminds me of early Saturday Night Live character, Emily Litella: Famous for building up a huge story and working herself up into a tizzy based on a simple misunderstanding of what someone had said in an editorial or story. Once an anchor explained that Litella had misheard or misunderstood the subject she was responding to, she would famously say, “Oh, that’s very different. Never Mind!” NBC misunderstands what the conclusions one can draw about hurricanes from an all-things-considered weighing of the limited available evidence, blows up an alarming story about worsening rapid intensification and then, in a “never mind,” moment, admits the process is a mystery and “requires more research.”

In the end, what NBC News is serving up isn’t journalism—it’s a dish best described as “climate panic stew.” Take a dash of selective data, toss in a pinch of correlation without causation, and garnish with dramatic satellite imagery and you’ve got a complete ready to consume media dish. But what you won’t find in their recipe is skepticism, context, or any recognition of the limitations in hurricane observation and attribution science. That’s not science reporting; that’s tall tale spinning for political purposes.

Until NBC News is interested in reporting real science, with all its uncertainties and caveats, their climate reporting will remain as stormy as the hurricanes they claim to understand.

Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute is one of the world’s leading free-market think tanks. It is a national nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.

Originally posted at ClimateREALISM

By Gary Abernathy

This article was originally published by The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission. 

The 2009 “endangerment finding,” in which the EPA formally declared that greenhouse gases were a public health threat, led to draconian laws and policies designed to cripple the fossil fuel industry and bring down the world’s most affordable and accessible energy sources. When EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced in late July that the agency was rescinding the rule, the outcry from the climate cult was predictable.

The leading handwringer was none other than the spiritual godfather of the extremist climate movement, former Vice President Al Gore, who said, “Today’s EPA announcement ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis and sidelines the EPA’s own scientists and lawyers in favor of the interests and profits of the fossil fuel industry.”

Worshipers at the altar of climate calamity lined up to denounce the finding’s rollback both with practiced anger and a well-worn list of catastrophic predictions. But in fact, Zeldin’s announcement didn’t go far enough. While the rescission was a long overdue return to common sense and a repudiation of the exercise of raw politics in the guise of science, it did nothing to make restitution for years of societal and economic damage.

The history is well documented. While the attack on fossil fuels had started much earlier, the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling that Congress’s 1970 Clean Air Act intended to include carbon dioxide as an air pollutant, it further demanded that the EPA explain why greenhouse gases were not being regulated, especially in regard to auto emissions. In 2009, the Obama administration began producing reams of new regulations for automakers and other “polluters,” a term with an ever-widening and increasingly politicized definition. The Biden administration merrily piled on when its turn came.

The result has been disastrous, starting with a war on the fossil fuel industry that resulted in tens of thousands of lost jobs, billions in taxpayer subsidies and credits for “alternative” energy sources – energy that could not begin to match the affordability, effectiveness and reliability of traditional sources – and imperiling the very safety and security of the American people. While the left argues that jobs in “alternatives” are making up for losses in the fossil fuel industry, the bulk of jobs associated with wind and solar are temporary construction jobs.

In addition to job losses, countless other negative impacts have been associated with federal and/or state laws putting environmental concerns over the needs of human beings. The costs to businesses and industries of complying with onerous environmental regulations result in higher prices for consumers (particularly impacting poorer communities), or businesses simply choosing – or being ordered – to close. Politically motivated “fixes” like carbon taxes and phasing out preferred appliances hinder innovation and diminish manufacturing. Restricting land access based on environmental findings especially hurts rural communities and associated occupations like ranching and farming.

The Church of Climatology is finally being defunded and largely neutered, at least in the U.S. But where do those who suffered because of the cult’s former influence turn for restitution? Who will make up for the despair – the years of lost wages, the disrupted lives, the entire communities that were sacrificed in the name of “fighting climate change?” Where do the victims turn for reparations?

A government agency enforcing reasonable environmental regulations is beneficial for everyone. We want to trust that the air we breathe and the water we drink are safe and clean, along with other common-sense ecological guidelines applicable to everyday life. But the EPA long ago became a weaponized political tool. It was handed a sledgehammer to enforce draconian rules designed to implement partisan agendas. It became an overblown, intimidating and feared government behemoth known more for erecting roadblocks, imposing severe penalties and even shuttering businesses than for its original mission of monitoring basic environmental impacts.

Thanks to the Trump administration, the EPA is returning to its roots: keeping our air, land and water free of deadly pollutants. Hopefully, the days of the EPA serving as an enforcer of extremist political agendas are behind us.

But while climate sanity might be returning to the U.S., much of the world remains in the thralls of the radical climate movement, led by the United Nations, which is preparing to hold its annual climate conference this November, where it colludes with likeminded leftist leaders to enact and enforce extremist climate regulations around the world.

It is not outrageous or even unreasonable to demand an accounting of the human toll exacted by the climate cult, both in the U.S. and globally. What price tag can be put on the economic casualties? What reparations are justifiable for the ruined lives? Who should be held accountable? Investigating those questions and compiling the answers would result in a real “endangerment finding.”

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!

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

Dr. Lars Schernikau: Energy Economist, Commodity Trader, Author (recent book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy”)

Details inc Blog at www.unpopular-truth.com

As someone who has spent most my professional life in the global energy and commodities space both as an economist and as a trader, I have grown increasingly concerned about the way grid-scale battery storage is portrayed in public discourse. If you have paid any attention to the headlines, you would have heard that battery technology is “on the verge of solving” the intermittency problem of wind and solar energy. According to this narrative, all we need to do is build more battery storage, and the path to “net zero” will unfold automatically… magically.

If only it were that simple…

In my latest blog post “Pros and Cons of Utility-Scale Battery Storage” I unpack the many assumptions behind this belief. The facts I present may be unpopular, but they are grounded in physics, not politics.

Here a couple of key points that I feel might spark some interest.

35 million tons of raw materials for a couple of hours…

To build a 50 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system (approx. annual output of a Gigafactory), which has the ability to store electricity, for a city like New York, for only a few hours, you need ~ 35 million tons of raw materials (~ 700,000 t per GWh). That roughly covers the mining, upgrading, transport, and processing of ores like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, iron ore, bauxite, and others.

Think about it like this…a 1-ton utility-scale battery has a storage capacity of around 100 kWh and requires ~ 70 tons of mined, processed, and manufactured raw materials to be manufactured. This is the energy equivalent of about ~40 kg of coal or ~20 litres of oil.

Let that sink in: 70 tons of mining and industrial processing to store what coal already provides in a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand.

Explosive potential

These systems are not just material- and energy-intensive, but they also carry serious safety risks. The energy stored in a 1 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system is roughly equivalent to nearly 900 tons of TNT…that is not a metaphor. That is a chemical and thermal reality.

Thermal runaway events have already caused warehouse fires, ship explosions, and data centre shutdowns around the world. And with each battery pack tightly stacked in grid-scale installations, one malfunction can lead to catastrophic chain reactions.

Yet we keep building more?

Power a city for minutes

Let’s do the math.

A 1 GWh utility-scale battery system, requiring ~700,000 tons of mined and processed raw materials, can power:

• all of Berlin for about 30 minutes (assuming 2 GW peak power)
• or all of Germany for just under a minute (at peak power of 80 GW)

To back up Germany’s electricity demand for just 1 hour, we would need around ~80 GWh of battery storage, equating to ~ 56 million tons of raw materials…not to mention the energy-intensive industrial processes just to build them.

Now imagine a week long “Dunkelflaute”…seven days without sun or wind. That would require over 10 TWh of battery storage.

And remember… these batteries deteriorate at a rate of 3-7 % p.a. and must be replaced every ~10-13 years!

No country on Earth, not even with unlimited capital, can seriously consider batteries as a solution. They must know deep down, it is physically and economically unworkable.

Energy to build batteries?

What’s even more startling is the energy invested before these batteries ever store a single kilowatt-hour. Consider, a 1 GWh of utility-scale battery system requires approximately 450 GWh of energy just to be manufactured including the energy required for metals and materials. That’s ~450 times more energy input than its rated storage capacity…a multiplier often ignored in public discussions.

In other words, before a battery can deliver its first useful cycle of electricity, it has already consumed more energy than it will discharge in hundreds of cycles. This raises serious questions about the EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) and the sustainability of making use of these large-scale batteries.

The economics don’t work

I have written extensively about how Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is a misleading metric. It ignores natural capacity factors, storage and backup costs, and system integration expenses. A more appropriate measure is FCOE (Full Cost of Electricity) which includes all the invisible infrastructure required to make wind, solar, and batteries “work.”

When viewed this way, power systems that required utility-scale batteries have one of the lowest Energy Return on Investment (EROI) ratios in the energy world. It takes a lot of energy to build the system and you get very little usable energy in return.

This is the opposite of what powered human development for the last 150 years.

I want to leave you with the difficult questions …

• Will we be pro- or digressing if we rely on these so-called “green” storage solutions?
• Will the solution of wind, solar and batteries be better for the environment?

You be the judge…

Read my full blog post – Pros and Cons of Utility Scale Battery Storage. I am excited to hear your feedback on this “explosive” topic 😉