Really, Really, Really Bad Reporting

by Roger Pielke, Jr.

Time magazine has named MIT’s Kerry Emanuel one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Congrats to him, I certainly think he is brilliant and the honor is well deserved. However, I can’t imagine that Kerry is too happy with the unfortunate  HYPERLINK "http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187251,00.html" blurb Time put together to describe him.

It's easy to argue about the hypothetical causes and effects of global warming. It's a lot harder for any serious disagreement to continue when extreme weather is demolishing a major American city. The U.S. experienced just such a moment of clarity last year when Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, awakening all of us to the true cost of climate change. It was Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped us make the connection.

Perhaps before writing that bit of nonsense Time might have visited Kerry’s homepage and considered this  HYPERLINK "http://wind.mit.edu/%7Eemanuel/anthro2.htm" statement he has posted:

Q: I gather from this last discussion that it would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming? 

A: Yes, it would be absurd. [http://wind.mit.edu/%7Eemanuel/anthro2.htm}