"More And More Severe Storms": When Can We Declare This Hypothesis To Be Definitively Falsified?

You know the mantra:  Human caused climate change, driven by burning fossil fuels and adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, causes an increase in the frequency and severity of major storms, like hurricanes.  When major hurricanes come along, as they regularly do, the promoters of this mantra immediately claim an ability to “attribute” the storm and/or its intensity to the ongoing human-caused warming.

For example, last October we had Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm that struck Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.  As soon as Melissa had passed, an organization calling itself World Weather Attribution promptly came out with an analysis blaming the storm and its intensity on “climate change.”  From the AP, November 6, 2025:

Melissa was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes to make landfall and brought destructive weather to Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba, causing dozens of deaths across the Caribbean. . . .  The rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution found that climate change increased Melissa’s maximum wind speeds by 7% and made the rainfall near the center of the storm 16% more intense. The scientists also wrote that the temperature and humidity in which the storm intensified were made six times more likely due to climate change compared to a pre-industrial world.

Perhaps that seemed plausible at the time.  But this year the mantra that human-induced climate change is the main cause of destructive hurricanes has run into a small problem.  Here we are on September 29, and there has not yet been a single hurricane that has formed in the North Atlantic.  Nor are there any tropical disturbances or depressions that appear likely to turn into hurricanes over the next week or two.  Here are the data from the National Hurricane Center through today.  Key statistics:  Number of hurricanes — 0 (5 fewer than the 1991-2020 normal);  number of major hurricanes — 0 (2 fewer than the 1991-2020 normal); total ACE (accumulated cyclone energy) — 10.4 (89% less than the 1991-2020 normal).