NOAA: No Major Hurricane Hit U.S. in 11 Years

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A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the Department of Commerce agency focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere — issued a statement on October 24 observing that a major hurricane has not struck the United States in 11 years.

Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC), told CNSNews.com:

I can confirm that as of October 24, 2016, it will be a complete 11 years since a major hurricane has struck the United States, as defined by the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale of being a Category 3 or higher. The current streak of no major hurricane landfalls onto the U.S. mainland remains intact. The last one to do so was Hurricane Wilma on October 24, 2005.

Other hurricanes that landed in the United States during that time frame, Sandy in 2012 and Matthew this year, were of a lower wind intensity when they made landfall in the United States. Matthew had weakened to a Category 1 storm by the time it made landfall near McClellanville, South Carolina on October 8, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph.

The last year during which multiple major hurricanes made landfall in the United States was 2005, when four such storms — Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma — struck our coastlines. It was the only year on record when four major hurricanes struck the United States.

The October 24 report on CNSNews.com noted that many climate scientists have predicted that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming due to an increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere would produce an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes.

“We expect to see more high-intensity events, category 4 and 5 events, that are around 13% of total hurricanes but do a disproportionate amount of damage,” CNSNews quoted Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at MIT.

“We expect another 3 feet in sea level rise by the end of the century, so we should expect steadily increase[ing] damage,” Emanuel was quoted in an October 5, 2016 article in the British newspaper The Guardian.

However, CNSNews noted the contradiction between such dire predictions and reality during the past eleven years. The report observed that “the unprecedented 11-year drought of major hurricanes striking the U.S. has occurred during the same time when CO2 levels were steadily rising, as measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which maintains “the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere,” according to NOAA.

“You and many other climate scientists have predicted an increase in hurricane activity due to anthropogenic global warming. But with carbon dioxide levels at a record high, why are we now seeing the longest major hurricane drought on record here in the U.S.?” CNSNews asked Emanuel.

Emanuel’s reply to the news agency sought to dismiss the obvious conclusion that most people would deduce from these events:

One must be aware that the North Atlantic has only 11 percent of the world’s hurricanes, and that we do not expect the global warming signal to be seen in global statistics for several decades. By the time one drills down to major U.S. landfalls, a tiny percentage of total activity, it may be decades to detect a signal. As you know, Matthew was a very near miss. That would have ended the drought, but not solved the problem of trying to detect a climate signal in a very tiny subset of global hurricane activity.

Fortunately, CNSNews balanced Emmanuel’s statement with a contrasting viewpoint from Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano. Morano observed that those who predicted that there would be more major hurricane activity due to climate change now want to change the definition of a major hurricane because their predictions have fallen short of reality. “With a new metric, warmists can declare every storm ‘unprecedented’ and a new ‘record,’” Morano said. Morano is the narrator of the documentary Climate Hustle, a film that skillfully debunks the claims of the anthropogenic global warming cult. The New American published a review of Climate Hustle on December 29, 2015, after its Paris premier that coincided with the UN’s COP21 “climate-change” summit held that month.

The latest report from NOAA that major hurricane activity has subsided for 11 years — despite high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere — provides welcome relief from the assorted predictions made by the “global warming” doomsayers of catastrophic events that supposedly will be caused by human activity. Furthermore, this report is but one encouraging bit of news among volumes of documentation indicating that not only are climatic catastrophes such as increased hurricane activity, rising seas, and melting polar ice caps not the result of global warming, but that global warming may not even be happening at all.

Among the many articles that The New American has published refuting the “global warming” hysteria (see list of related articles below for several more), see “Earth Is Cooling, Sea Levels Not Rising, Scientists Say.” In that article, we cited statements made by a group of experts in various scientific fields at a three-day conference sponsored by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute in 2010 challenging the theory of alleged global warming caused by man-made emissions.

Among the speakers at the conference was Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University. According to Professor Easterbrook, author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, the Earth is now in the beginning period of a trend of global cooling.

“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 degree Fahrenheit per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook. The cooling trend, Easterbrook says, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell for the next several decades.

Easterbrook’s statements merely confirm what has been observed by scientists for centuries. There has always been climate change, with ice ages occurring during some historic periods, and warming trends occurring during others. These changes have not been the result of human activity, but are rather part of the Earth’s natural cycles.

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