American businesses are reporting fewer challenges due to weather and climate events. Rather than celebrate the good news, on June 30, the Wall Street Journal presented a conspiracy theory that businesses are hiding the truth — against their own financial interests.

The Wall Street Journal analyzed more than 200,000 securities filings in the first half of 2024. It found filings containing terms related to droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme heat declined 31% in the first five months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. Mentions of the term “climate change” also declined by 32%.

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“Temperatures are higher than ever, but companies don’t want to talk about it,” read the headline of the article.

The article’s subtitle stated, “Businesses are divulging fewer details about the hazards of extreme weather, from droughts to flooding,” implying a coordinated and nefarious campaign to hide the effects of climate change.

“Such disclosures have been commonplace in previous years,” the Wall Street Journal protested. How can disclosed weather-related harms be down, “despite environmental disasters in the U.S. in the past year, including the Los Angeles wildfires, the hurricanes in Florida and the storms and flooding in North Carolina”?

The article cited a Harvard faculty member speculating that companies are “drawing back from weather-related statements for political reasons.”

When a company has a poor-performing year, the company’s CEO better have a good reason for it if he or she wishes to remain CEO. Climate change is a convenient scapegoat. Could it really be that CEOs are hiding real and negative effects of weather and climate change, at the expense of their own career security, for the purpose of making a political statement?

Or is it more likely that climate change really isn’t devastating businesses with the frequency and severity of a Hollywood movie?

Fortunately, we have weather and climate data available to determine the truth.

As shown in the Heartland Institute’s digital book Climate at a Glance, the global amount of land burned by wildfires has been declining for more than a century. Since 1998, the total amount of land burned by wildfires has declined by 24%. In America, wildfires also burned substantially more land a century ago than is the case now.

The fact that arsonists lit a series of wildfires in Los Angeles County during the past year does not change the fact that wildfires are burning fewer acres now than they did long ago.

Similarly, hurricanes have become less frequent in recent decades compared to the first half of the 20th century. This is especially the case in Florida, which recently enjoyed its longest period in recorded history without a major hurricane strike or a hurricane strike of any significant strength.

The fact that hurricanes haven’t completely stopped hitting Florida does not mean humans caused Hurricane Milton.

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As shown in Climate at a Glance, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show no increase in droughts, floods, or extreme heat in recent decades. In fact, droughts and heat waves are substantially less frequent and severe, while flood activity shows no trend.

So, the objective data show no increase — and actually an overall decline — in the frequency of hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme heat. This, rather than a grand climate change conspiracy, is the reason why businesses are reporting fewer challenges and losses due to weather and climate events. But don’t worry, Wall Street Journal, I’ll send you a copy of Climate at a Glance so you can get it right in the future.

James Taylor is president of the Heartland Institute.