Climate Experts Were Wrong About Atlantic Hurricane Season

Stop the presses: the experts were wrong again.

Heading into the 2024 summer season, the NOAA, universities, forecasters and the media went ballistic warning of a record-setting hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. Predictions of doom were unavoidable, with the inevitable conclusion: this is all because of climate change.

It's now early September and, well, none of it's materialized. And as Axios described it, the lack of activity makes it "unlikely that the seasonal forecasts will verify." Well who could have ever predicted that experts in climate and forecasting would be wrong about something? 

As one software engineer at a weather forecasting center put it, it's a "lock for a bust of historic proportions."

That doesn't sound right! The experts are never wrong – there must be hurricanes happening that we're just not seeing…right?

PITTSBURGH, PA - AUGUST 19: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Unite and Win Rally in support of Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano at the Wyndham Hotel on August 19, 2022 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During his visit to the state, DeSantis urged Republican voters to stand behind Doug Mastriano. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Climate Change ‘Experts’ Nail It Again

It's become a recurring pattern: experts make predictions of doom based on climate change assumptions, the media dutifully repeats those predictions, they prove woefully inaccurate, and then there's no accountability or acknowledgment of the mistakes. Rinse, repeat.

It's great that the Atlantic hurricane season has been historically quiet. But it's hysterical that it's been historically quiet after the experts roundly predicted that it would be historically busy.

As if we needed more examples after COVID, "the science" does not actually exist. There are individual scientists that have different opinions. Some of those scientists have opinions that are based on promoting their political ideology and/or securing more funding for their research. It's hard to secure funding for research when the answer is "most of this is normal and expected." It's a lot easier to secure funding when you tell the government that there's a problem that can only be fixed with money.

These perverse incentives have created an entire subset of people who believe that politicians like Ron DeSantis control the weather when storms hit, then sit silent as the predictions of doom turn out to be busts of historic proportions. Don't expect much in the way of an apology though, there's never any consequence for being wrong in the right direction.