Wrong, Bloomberg, the Texas “deniers” are right, Climate change had nothing to do with Hurricane Beryl – did Watts have anything to do with it?

Via H. Sterling Burnett

From ClimateREALISM

Bloomberg recently published an article claiming that Hurricane Beryl in particular and other natural disasters that frequently hit the state were symptoms of climate change and that Texas’s pro-fossil fuel policies were partly to blame. Bloomberg’s article is false, a classic case of blaming the victims, Texans, for something that is 100% out of their control, namely the weather. Beryl was not the first hurricane or tropical storm to hit Texas, some media outlets have reported to the contrary, and despite modest warming, the data shows no trend toward hurricanes or other severe weather events becoming worse in Texas or nationally. In short, contrary to Bloomberg’s unproven assertions, there is no “signal” that climate change is causing or contributing to weather disasters in Texas.

In the writing, “Hurricane Beryl mocks climate change deniers in Texas”, according to opinion editor Mark Gongloff, Gongloff used Hurricane Beryl as the headline news when he wrote:

In Monday [July 8]government [Texas] was hit for the third time by Hurricane Beryl, which was fueled by the bathtub-warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico after devastating several Caribbean islands, Jamaica and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It made landfall south of Houston as a Category 1 storm, bringing high winds, high waves and heavy rain, leaving millions without power in the sweltering heat.

Gongloff’s story is mostly accurate, but then he goes completely off the rails when he writes:

Time for a quick quiz: Which U.S. state is most vulnerable to climate-driven weather disasters and skyrocketing homeowner insurance costs, but is also growing rapidly and has a government hostile to the concept of climate change? The most obvious answer is Florida, with its hurricanes and floods and its stunt-loving, anti-woke governor. The correct answer, however, is Texas.

No other state has suffered more climate-related damage over the past several decades than the Lone Star State—not even Florida, California, or Louisiana. According to S&P Global, homeowner insurance costs rose more in Texas than in any other state last year and over the past five years. And even though Governor Ron DeSantis has banned mention of climate change in Florida, Texas’ aggressive global warming policies still have real power and will continue to cause real harm. Especially for Texas.

While it is true that Texas is likely to experience more weather-related disasters than almost any other state when considering hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and floods, that is because of the state’s unique location (relative to natural weather patterns), its size, and its growing population, which is growing at a faster rate in areas prone to severe weather; yet the number and severity of severe weather events remain constant.

Long-term trends do not show an increase in extreme weather because fossil fuel development and use has been rapid, despite modest warming. On the contrary, the state has benefited greatly from fossil fuel development and use, a major reason for its strong employment, economic, and population growth. Indeed, top four industries by revenue in Texas The state’s petroleum and petroleum wholesale, oil and gas extraction, refining, and gas and crude oil stations, in order, generated more than $1.13 trillion in revenue for the state in the most recent year. That figure does not include the billions more generated by the chemical refining industry, which produces plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, lubricants, and other products from fossil fuels that are widely used and ubiquitous across Texas, the United States, and around the world. While the cost of natural disasters in Texas has been as high as Gongloff estimates at $350 billion since 1980, those costs pale in comparison to the benefits that fossil fuels have provided over the same period. Indeed, the $486.5 billion in wholesale petroleum and petroleum sales alone in the most recent year was more than the cost of weather-related disasters over the entire 44-year period Gongloff calculates.

And of course, it’s unclear whether long-term climate change has contributed to any of the weather-related costs Texas has suffered since 1980, since there’s no evidence that it’s made hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or wildfires worse or more frequent.

First, let’s talk about Beryl and storms in general. Contrary to what some reports have implied, Beryl is not unprecedented. On June 26, 1986, Hurricane Bonnie made landfall in southern Texas, dumping more than 13 inches of rain, spawning tornadoes, and killing four people. For those counting, June 26 is nearly two weeks earlier than July 8. Also on June 30, 2010, Hurricane Alex made landfall just south of the Texas coast in Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, Mexico, bringing heavy rain, wind, tornadoes, and flooding to the Texas coast and Rio Grande Valley. Six other named storms have hit Texas in June since 1980 alone—and that doesn’t count any that made landfall before 1980. In case anyone was wondering, the big one Galveston Hurricane The 1900 Great Depression, 124 years before global warming, remains the deadliest natural disaster in Texas and US history, killing 12,000 people.

Regarding storms in general, real world data clearly shows that there is no increase in hurricanes or typhoons as the planet warms slightly (see figure below)

The data also shows no increasing trend of tornadoes in Texas As the Earth warms, it instead shows an increase and decrease in tornado numbers with no predictable or identifiable year-to-year pattern. Nationwide, despite better detection and tracking methods, as discussed in Climate Overview: TornadoesThe number of tornadoes in general, and large tornadoes (F3 and above) in particular, has decreased over the past 45 years. Sadly, while true, this is not the impression one gets from mainstream media coverage of tornadoes.

Regarding wildfires, the National Park Service reports that they always a part of Texas historyfrom the arid, scrubland west of the state, to the Central Texas grasslands and hill country, to the Pineywood forests of East Texas.

In a classic example of tabloid journalism, Gongloff attributed the historic Smokehouse Creek wildfire in western and northern Texas in February and March 2024 to drought caused by climate change. However, data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Texas shows that the state has experienced a decreasing trend in the number of very hot days and a slight increase in rainfall since the 1950s. And the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agrees that fire weather is not becoming more common, writing on Page 90 – Chapter 12 of the United Nations IPCC Sixth Assessment Report that “fire weather” is not occurring due to climate change.

With fewer hot days and increased rainfall recorded in the long-term climate record, the claim that current conditions are favorable for wildfires in Texas due to climate change is simply not true.

More directly, according to US Drought MonitorThe area affected by the Smokehouse Creek fire is not experiencing drought to any degree, nor is the surrounding area. Oklahoma area caught up in the wildfire, even “unusually dry,” when the fire broke out. Indeed, because the area had had good rain in the previous months, the grass grew well, and when it withered, the tinderbox situation appeared, just a spark was needed to ignite.

And despite the alarming headlines one might read from the mainstream media, globally, the amount and area of ​​land lost to wildfires has decreased significantly during the recent period of modest climate change, according to satellite data from NASA and the European Space Agency.

Bloomberg was irresponsible in publishing this article, even though it is full of inaccurate and misleading information. As former Democratic Senator and Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” There is no evidence that climate change is exacerbating the extreme weather events that impact Texas or the nation, so there is no reason to blame Texas’s continued development and use of extremely profitable fossil fuels for the harm that natural disasters have caused and will surely continue to cause in the state.

H. Sterling Burnett

Dr. H. Sterling Burnett is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy and the Managing Editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing the Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett edits Environment & Climate News, is editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and hosts the Environment & Climate News Podcast.