James wrote:
Prior to the first satellite that looked at this stuff sometime in the 70s,
many storms went unnoticed.

Yes. When I looked at hurricane data I also found increases
at about the time ships gave up sail power, and another near
the time when ships started carrying radio.

That's a problem to be sure, but I don't think it's the major
one here. According to what I have read, models do not
show increasing hurricanes for another half-century or so.
I think everyone is counting hurricanes before they're hatched.
This business about increasing strengths, is tricky to model
and hard to measure, so the claims are hard to verify. Put
me in the doubters camp on this issue, at least for about
another two decades.