Kevin Walsh member picture

Kevin Walsh

Professor of Meteorology, University of Melbourne

Expertise: Tropical Cyclones, Rainfall

Here’s what we know about how climate change impacts hurricanes – and what we don’t

The uncertainty surrounding how hurricane frequency could change as the climate warms has been brought up in claims seeking to undermine climate change’s impact on hurricanes. These claims are examples of straw man arguments: noting that climate change may not lead to a higher number of hurricanes in the future does not mean that climate change has had – or will have – no impact on hurricanes at all.

PragerU video on climate change repeats a range of misleading claims by Steven Koonin

“The author of this video, Dr. Steven Koonin, says he is following the scientific reports published by the UN and US government, but by subtly changing wording and choosing not to mention important context this video is very likely to mislead readers.
This style of selective wording and lack of context, an approach called “cherry picking”, applies to every one of Dr. Koonin’s scientific comments.”