Climate scientists are in disagreement as to what the effect of global warming on hurricanes. This may come as a shock to people who want easy answers.

This “new” finding allows him a more graceful exit from his completely untenable position than coming out and admitting he was dead wrong and Landsea and Co. were completely right.

Gutless.

It’s my experience that even scientists who have political views hold them as (sometimes substantially) less important than getting their research right. They would rather be correct about their findings than “right” in their idealogy.

It helps when one of the central tenets of the scientific method is that all hypotheses will inevitably change, even theories that seemed pretty solid like gravity or evolution have been refined substantially as new evidence has come to light. Researchers who believe in what they do will accept alterations to their ideas, but only if the data is good enough to convince them. It sounds like someone pulled this guy aside and said “dude… look at these numbers” and he HAD to say “wow. Yeah, Ok, I guess I’d better re-think this”.

I didn’t know that he had stopped talking with Gray coz Gray seemed like one of the better “lets make sure the numbers are right” people in the hurricane debate. It wouldn’t be the first time that two scientists just couldn’t see eye to eye on their numbers… and accused each other of political bias (which they have of course like anyone else) to try and further their argument in a less honest way.

Are you saying that Emanuel never wanted his work to be used by global-warming extremists (on either side), and all he wanted was exposure for his work? If so, that’s a novel defense.

In any event, in 2005, Emanuel had no doubts about and clearly believed that global warming increases hurricane length and intensity. In 2006, he vowed he would not debate again with hurricane expert Bill Gray because Emanuel found Gray’s global warming skepticism “sad.” That doesn’t sound very open-minded.

Hmm, to me this re-enforces the idea that Dr. Emanuel is a scientist who is willing to change his theory when new evidence comes to light.

His connection to global warming in the original article was more about his desire to publish in Science (presitgious journal) and the need to put one’s work in the context of some body of theory (otherwise you don’t get published anywhere).

A true idealogue probably wouldn’t change thier minds-without a lot of persuasion- fortunately Dr. Emanuel is not one of that ilk. There are plenty of idealogues out there though who will use his desire to re-examine his theory(old news by the way), which is the action of a real scientist, to bolster their own idealogical beliefs that they are right….as always… that all global change science is a hoax.

Anyone recall how many hurricanes of any significance hit the US last season?

Yeah, neither can I. Wasn’t many, that for sure.

So we have demonstratedly false predictions made by “people who understood global warming”. Thus, they have to change their tune.

At some point, we really do have to start holding them to their predictions…