A record-breaking disaster hit Florida on October 10, devastating property and claiming lives. This disaster was Hurricane Michael.

The category 4 storm was the strongest hurricane to strike the United States mainland in more than 25 years, and the fourth-most powerful hurricane to strike the U.S. in recorded history.

It barreled hundreds of miles up the East Coast, claiming 13 lives so far: four in Florida, one in Georgia, three in North Carolina and five in Virginia.

What causes such monstrous storms?

Award-winning reporter John Sutter wrote in a cnn article, “Hurricane Michael isn’t a truly ‘natural disaster.’” He’s right! It would be wrong to say that nature was the only force that caused this catastrophe.

But, he asks, “Where, if not with nature, should we place the blame?

“There are essentially two big answers to the blame question.”

The second answer given in the article is that there are now more people living in areas threatened by hurricanes and they are not well-enough prepared.

Nevertheless, it is not this second answer to the “blame question” that needs attention. It is the first.

“You have to consider climate change,” Sutter wrote.

According to this theory, industrial carbon dioxide emissions have warmed the air and ocean water, ultimately creating stronger storms. Is this theory accurate, though? Is the widespread, popular belief of climate change and global warming factually sound?

According to accomplished author and journalist Melanie Phillips, the community promoting climate change has a history of manipulating the data to make it fit its hypothesis. Why would it do such a thing? Because the evidence does not back up its claims!

In her book The World Turned Upside Down, Phillips thoroughly disproves and discredits the idea of man-made global warming. In case after case, she exposes instances of faulty science and overt manipulation of data. Nowhere does the actual evidence and scientific data back up the theory of climate change. Phillips writes:

Far from being grounded in rigorous scientific studies, the theory of man-made global warming has been sustained on the back of research that has been shown to be sloppy and badly flawed. …

The biggest scandal, however, concerned what is known as the “hockey-stick” graph created by the climatologist Michael Mann. His research appearing to show that the Earth’s climate was very stable from 1000 to 1900 c.e., then suddenly began to rise dramatically—thus creating the hockey-stick shape—was central to the ipcc’s [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 2001 Third Assessment Report. It was this graph which led to the claim that the 1990s ranked as the warmest decade of the millennium and 1998 as the warmest year. And this appeared to pin global warming firmly on industrialization, thus enabling activists to blame the Western world for the imminent frying of the planet.

The hockey-stick graph served to solve a difficulty in blaming industrialization for global warming, and that was the Medieval Warm Period, from about 1000 to 1300 c.e. This preindustrial warm interval had been succeeded by a cold period called the Little Ice Age, which lasted until the latter part of the 19th century. So 20th-century warming would appear to be simply a recovery from those cold years. In other words, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

So why is industrialization nevertheless widely seen as the cause of global warming? In 1995, David Deming made a startling revelation. As a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, he had gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. “They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes,” Deming wrote. “So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing e-mail that said ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.’”

The hockey stick did just that.

It is quite disconcerting to learn that reports such as the ipcc’s—reports that have influenced whole nations to devote billions of dollars toward fighting global warming—are demonstrably biased.

One supposed result of global warming is that melting ice caps are causing sea levels to rise. However, the truth is that there is no alarming change in sea levels—in fact, the report presented by the ipcc claiming that sea levels are rising did not stay true to the data collected. In her book, Phillips quotes a prominent reviewer for the ipcc, oceanographer Nils-Axel Morner:

“Then, in 2003, the same data set [regarding sea levels], which in their [ipcc’s] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn’t look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn’t recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a ‘correction factor,’ which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside.

“I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow—I said you have introduced factors from outside; it’s not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don’t say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend! That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They ‘know’ they answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling. Not from observations. The observations don’t find it! …

“I have been the expert reviewer for the ipcc, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission because they promised to answer the right thing.”

Our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters? explains that the Bible reveals the truth about weather occurrences, natural disasters and God’s hand in it all. This booklet states:

The Bible reveals that God has set spiritual and physical laws in motion, and that He is presently allowing humans to develop their own ways of living—contrary to His laws—and to reap the natural consequences that result from those ways, including weather upsets. To be sure, some of the suffering we experience today is our simply reaping the results of our own mistakes, mismanagement and sin. …

The Bible also shows that God, in His great purpose, permits Satan the devil—the current (and temporary) unseen ruler of this world—to interfere with weather patterns and to have a role in producing catastrophic weather, for man’s ultimate learning (see, for example, Job 1).

But there is an even more important dimension revealed in Scripture that we must recognize: Even during this 6,000 years of mankind, in general, being cut off from its Creator, God is still actively involved in events in order to ensure that they unfold according to His ultimate purposes!

The God of the Bible claims that He controls the weather and natural phenomena! He says He causes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. He sends the snow and ice as well as drought and heat.

The author of Psalm 148 understood God’s power over the elements. He wrote in verse 8 about “[f]ire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word.”

Considering how dependent we are on favorable natural conditions, this is certainly a way that the Power who can create such conditions can demonstrate His benevolence and favor to us. In fact, Scripture is full of promises from God to bless people with good climatic conditions. Open the book and read them for yourself! In Leviticus 26:4-5, for example, He promises a mild climate, seasonal rain and bumper crops. In Deuteronomy 28:11-12 He makes similar promises. …

Look at those promises again! Rain in due season, favorable weather for abundant crops and so on. Looking at our simultaneously parched and flooded lands, seeing our battered farms and wasted crops, shouldn’t we be asking, Where is this God?

God has as much control over natural phenomena today as He did then. In His omnipotence He can stop the elemental forces that so often wreak havoc in our modern world; after all, Jesus Christ stilled a storm with just a few words (Mark 4:39).

But notice again the context of those promises. They come with a condition: “IF ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and DO them” (Leviticus 26:3).

This begins to reveal the crucial dimension in this issue that so many people want to ignore.

God promises blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Looking honestly at the world—at all the destructive weather phenomena we are plagued with—it is easy to see that we are not receiving God’s blessings, but rather His curses.

As this booklet states, mankind is cut off from God today, and Satan is the temporary god of this world. God is allowing mankind to be punished for its sins to show us that living Satan’s way of life brings heartache and suffering. But God’s way brings joy, happiness and prosperity.

Read our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters? to see the true cause of devastating weather events. Once men have learned their lessons, such disasters will be eradicated completely. That is the hope that is clearly revealed in the Bible.