Bloomberg recently published an article which said Hurricane Beryl in particular, and other natural disasters which commonly hit the state, are symptoms of climate change, and that Texas’ pro-fossil fuel policies are partly responsible. Bloomberg’s article is wrong, a classic case of blaming the victim, Texas residents, for something that is 100 percent beyond their control, the weather. Beryl was not the earliest hurricane or tropical storm to ever hit Texas, some media reports to the contrary, and despite modest warming, data show no trend in worsening hurricanes or other extreme weather events in Texas or nationally. In short, contrary to Bloomberg’s unsubstantiated assertions, there is no “signal,” that climate change is causing or contributing to weather disasters in Texas.
In the article, “Hurricane Beryl Makes a Mockery of Texas Climate Deniers,” by opinion editor, Mark Gongloff, Gongloff used Hurricane Beryl as the news hook writing:
On Monday [July 8], the state [Texas] was slammed by the third incarnation of Hurricane Beryl, which had been re-re-fueled by bathtub-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico after wreaking havoc on several Caribbean islands, Jamaica, and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It made landfall south of Houston as a Category 1 hurricane, bringing high winds, a storm surge and heavy rainfall, and leaving millions without power in sweltering heat.
That much of Gongloff’s story was accurate, but then he goes completely off the rails, writing:
Pop quiz time: Which US state is the most vulnerable to climate-fueled weather disasters and soaring home-insurance costs but is also growing rapidly and has a government hostile to the very concept of climate change? The most obvious answer is Florida, with its hurricanes and floods and anti-woke, stunt-loving 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. Home-insurance costs rose more in Texas than in any other state last year and over the past five years, according to S&P Global. And though Governor Ron DeSantis has outlawed the mention of climate change in Florida, Texas’ aggressive pro-global-warming policies have real teeth and will continue to do real harm. Especially to Texas.
While it is true that Texas likely suffers more weather-related disasters than almost every other state when one counts hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and flooding, that is because of its unique location (vis-à-vis natural weather patterns), size, and increasingly demographics with more rapid development in regions prone to extreme weather hazard; the number and severity of extreme weather event has not changed.
Long-term trends show no increase in extreme weather as fossil fuel development and use has proceeded apace, despite modest warming. By contrast the state has benefitted tremendously from the development and use of fossil fuels, a significant reason why job, economic, and population growth is strong. Indeed, the top four industries by revenue in Texas are, in order, gasoline and petroleum wholesaling, oil and gas extraction, petroleum refining, and gasoline and petroleum bulk stations which, by themselves, produced more than 1.13 trillion in revenue for the state in the most recent year. This doesn’t account for the billions more in revenue produced by the chemical refining industry, which produces plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, lubricants, and other fossil fuel-based products in broad and common use across Texas, the United States, and the world as a whole. As high as the cost of natural disasters are in Texas, which Gongloff pegged at $350 billion since 1980, those cost are dwarfed by the benefits delivered by fossil fuels over the same period. Indeed, the revenue generated by gasoline and petroleum wholesaling alone in the most recent year, 486.5 billion is greater than the cost of weather-related disasters over the entire 44-year period of Gongloff’s accounting.
And of course, it is unclear that long-term climate change contributed to any of the weather-related costs Texas has suffered since 1980, because there is no evidence it has made hurricanes, tornados, flooding, or wildfires worse or more frequent.
Let’s deal with Beryl and hurricanes more generally, first. Contrary to what has been implied in some reports, Beryl was not unprecedented. On June 26, 1986, Hurricane Bonnie made landfall in south Texas, dumping more than 13 inches of rain, spawning tornados, and killing four people. For those counting, June 26 is almost 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, delivering heavy rains, winds, tornadoes, and flooding to the Texas coast and the Rio Grande valley. Six other named storms have made landfall in Texas in June since 1980 alone – and this doesn’t count any that did so before 1980. In case anyone is wondering, the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, 124 years of global warming ago, remains the deadliest natural disaster in Texas and U.S. history, claiming as many as 12,000 lives.
Concerning hurricanes more generally, real world data clearly show that there has been no increase in hurricanes or major hurricanes as the planet has modestly warmed (see the figure, below)
Data equally show no trend of increasing number of tornados in Texas as the Earth has warmed, rather it shows tornado numbers waxing and waning with no predictable or identifiable pattern year to year. Nationwide, despite better methods of detection and tracking, as discussed in Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes, the number of tornadoes, in general, and major tornadoes (F3 or higher), in particular, have declined over the over the past 45 years. Sadly, though a fact, this is not the impression one would get from the mainstream media’s coverage of tornadoes.
Concerning wildfires, the National Park Service reports that they have always been a part of Texas history, from the arid, brushy western part of the state, to the grasslands of central Texas and the hill country, to the Pineywood forests of east Texas.
In a classic example of yellow journalism, Gongloff attributed the historic Smokehouse Creek wildfire in the western and northern panhandle of Texas in February and March 2024 to climate change induced drought. Yet, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for Texas show that the state has experienced a declining trend in the number of very hot days and a slight increase in precipitation, since the 1950s. And the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change agrees that fire weather isn’t becoming more common, writing on Page 90 – Chapter 12 of the UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Report that “Fire weather” has not emerged from climate change.
With fewer hot days and increased precipitation recorded in the long-term climate records, the claim that present day conditions are conducive to Texas wildfires due to climate change simply doesn’t hold up.
More directly, according to the US drought monitor, the region beset by the Smokehouse Creek wildfire was not experiencing any degree of drought, nor was it, or the adjacent region of Oklahoma caught up in the wildfire, even “abnormally dry,” when the fire arose. Indeed, because the region had had good rains in the prior months, grasses grew well, and when they dried out, tinderbox conditions arose that just needed a spark to ignite.
And despite the alarming headlines one may read from mainstream media outlets, globally the number and amount of acreage lost to wildfires has declined dramatically during the recent period of modest climate change, according to satellite data from NASA and the European Space Agency.
It was irresponsible for Bloomberg to publish this article, rife as it was with inaccuracies and misleading claims. As former Democratic Senator and Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” There is no evidence that climate change is worsening the extreme weather events impacting Texas or the nation, so there can be no justification for blaming Texas’ continued development and use of hugely beneficial fossil fuels for the harm natural disasters have caused, and will undoubtedly continue to cause, in the state.
H. Sterling Burnett
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
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