According to Scientific American “Today in Science” for Sept. 30, “For the first time ever, we’ve made it through the end of September without a single hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.” We could ask again how they know it’s the first time “ever” since records only go back a hundred years or so and, as they must surely know, the Earth is older than that. And we could ask again whether they plan to walk back all the hysteria about how climate change would cause more and stronger hurricanes or just pretend it never happened. And we could ask again what kind of publication doesn’t post its newsletters online in the year of grace 2026, or even why they think that a month before the US midterms a puff piece “Abdul El-Sayed explains how science influences his politics” including “his vision for Medicare for All” is a science story. But instead we want to focus on “El Niño has stymied storm formation even more than forecasters expected” and ask how it is possible to keep reporting that scientists are surprised that their predictions fail without ever admitting that the science is not settled.

Here we want to quote the Manhattan Contrarian on this business of taking their record of predicting appalling Atlantic hurricanes out and burying it behind the barn:

“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.”

Yes, a small problem. Including their reliance on the bogus methodology of WWA that blames anything and everything and nothing on climate change. As indeed alarmists do more generally, insisting that if there aren’t hurricanes it’s climate change causing wind shear, and in case it’s not hey there are Pacific hurricanes (Heatmap’s “The Pacific’s active hurricane season continues as Hurricane Rachel threatens dangerous rip tides off Baja California”) or whatever. But the Contrarian issues a challenge we want to repeat while realizing they are unlikely to accept it:

“So my question is: Can we now declare that the claim (hypothesis) that increased global temperatures cause increased hurricane frequency and intensity has been definitively falsified? And if we can’t declare that today based on the hurricane drought to date, when can we declare it?”

Uh that’d be never. Instead they change the subject to the Pacific or even, say, how awful Donald Trump is. So we also want to take a shot at the El-Sayed interview, for instance his unchallenged contention that:

“We could be providing high-quality, renewable energy that does not force us to breathe from the ends of a smokestack, that is both more affordable and more accessible. But we don’t do that because of the power of a few corporations to dominate that system and to continue to sell us stuff that is less efficient and less effective.”

The SA questioner, instead of asking whether we’re really breathing from the ends of a smokestack, whether renewable energy is more affordable, efficient or even cleaner once its entire life-cycle is taken into account, or how exactly we could just make it fall from the sky given decades of expensive failure, or his obnoxious anti-Israel views, instead pivoted to his views on why MAHA types are idiots. Whereas Political American is unlikely to interview his opponent Mike Rogers and if they do they won’t throw him softballs.

That off our chests, in the El Niño piece they do have the good grace to concede that:

“We’ve never had an Atlantic hurricane season without a single hurricane through the end of September since reliable records began – until now.”

And we commend them for clarifying that bit about “reliable records” instead of merely doing the daffy “ever” thing that bedevils so much climate reporting and advocacy. But of course they get to have their hurricane and eat it too:

“That fact underscores how remarkable this season has been, with an exceptionally strong El Niño – likely to become the biggest in living memory – keeping a lid on tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic while supercharging it in the eastern Pacific (and giving Hawaii one of its busiest seasons on record).”

It certainly beats prattle (from an allegedly right-wing newspaper, the Toronto Sun) like:

“‘El Nino is being supersized before our eyes,’ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement Sept. 3, warning of the potential for floods, drought and extreme heat around the globe. ‘The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up. Sea surface temperatures are rising, temperatures keep climbing, and the world is in the danger zone of extreme weather.’”

Again, almost literally every word of that quotation is wrong, from “being supersized” as El Niño is to a remarkable degree an autonomous ocean current phenomenon rather than being the product of the dreaded climate change to warning of floods or droughts so you’re covered both ways especially as floods and droughts are absolutely commonplace and always have been, El Niño, La Niña or el nothing notwithstanding, zero hurricanes in the Atlantic is not a danger zone, we are not in “uncharted water” and the science leaves so much room for doubt it leaves virtually none for certainty.

Incidentally that piece also managed to make good news bad, saying:

“the ‘Super El Niño’ could also lead to a milder winter across Canada and the threat of ice storms.”

Mighty few Canadians actually object to milder winters, and if you wonder why come visit in February. But also ice storms are nothing new here and why can’t we just enjoy not freezing our ears off without calling it a harbinger of doom? Also, in case nobody knew, weather forecasts are remarkably unreliable even 24 hours in advance (not to mention the times the app tells us it’s currently raining but it’s not) and so that story adds of the haruspicy by “Connor Mockett, an Eastern Ontario storm chaser and weather forecaster” that:

“Mockett’s prediction for the winter months is warmer temperatures and less snow than in previous years, but he cautioned that nasty, wintry weather can still occur this season. ‘We could still see some blockbuster snowstorms, some blockbuster cold temperatures,’ he said. ‘It could be -30ºC when you go to work one morning, there could be 30 centimetres of snow on the ground for one of your drive homes in the winter. We are in Canada, these things are going to happen somewhere across the country and not just in one specific spot.’”

So the science leaves room for doubt. Because weather will happen, as it always has, and it will be unpredictable, as it always was.