Did Climate Change Create Hurricanes Harvey and Irma?

Nicolas Loris reports that data from a 2012 article in the Journal of Climate, authored by climatologists Roger Pielke, Jr. and Jessica Weinkle show no indications of new trends in global tropical cyclone landfalls over the past 46 years.

Indeed, to emphasize the point, Pielke this week tweeted out a chart from the article showing tropical cyclone landfall activity:

By request: time series of global landfalling tropical cyclones since 1970, based on work with @RyanMaue & J. Weinkle in Journal of Climate pic.twitter.com/tYKfCdDKvU

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) September 6, 2017

And (via Loris) statistician and Danish author Bjorn Lomborg also tweeted a graph showing
major hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. trending downward for well over a century.

Harvey and Irma are terrible, but we need perspective:
Major landfalling US hurricanes trending downwards over past 140 years pic.twitter.com/AEqaRQAx4t

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) September 7, 2017

  -RW