by Anthony Watts at ClimateRealism
An article in Axios, written by Andrew Freedman, claims increased hurricane winds due to rising temperatures driven by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations may result in more hurricane damage losses along the US East Coast, Florida Coasts, and the Gulf Coast. The article is misleading. The article cites climate model projections to support its claims, rather than data, because data does not show that the number or intensity of hurricanes have increased during the recent period of modest global warming. The study is also misleading because it fails to consider more germane factors responsible for rising hurricane costs.
The Axios article, titled “More than 13 million people to see new hurricane wind risks,” is based on a research from the First Street Foundation, a group formed to define the risk to people and property from climate change in the United States. The study, uses a “… property-specific and climate-adjusted hurricane wind model that calculates the likelihood of a property being exposed to and damaged from a hurricane’s winds.”
The study, by retired MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, neither provides nor creates new findings, but rather uses historical data combined with computer models to make guesses on how coastal and other properties would be more “at risk” in the future. The non-profit group even created a slick interactive website to hawk the model results as if they were evidence based to an unsuspecting public, seen in the screen capture below from riskfactor.com:…
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