CLIMATE ALARMISTS REJECT SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON HURRICANES AND GLOBAL WARMING

Science Policy, 6 December 2006
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That Didn't Take Long -- Misrepresenting Hurricane Science

Roger Pielke Jr., 

Now that the WMO has issued a consensus statement on the state of climate science, scientists should be careful in how they characterize the overall state of the science. I have complete respect for scientists who have strong views on what the data, models, and theory shows, and fully expect them to make their case to their colleagues and others. However, scientists also should be careful not to represent their own views as in fact representing a consensus of the community when they do not, especially when making arguments for political action. 

Here is an example of a scientist involved in the hurricane debate, Michael Mann of Penn State, making a demonstrably incorrect statement about the state of understanding of hurricanes and climate change six days after the WMO issued its consensus statement on tropical cyclones and climate change:

"It is the increasingly widespread belief by researchers that increasing sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are leading to increases in various measures of Hurricane activity over time, both globally, and for the tropical North Atlantic region whose storms influence the Gulf coast and East Coast of the U.S.."

Here is what the WMO says:

"The possibility that greenhouse gas induced global warming may have already caused a substantial increase in some tropical cyclone indices has been raised (e.g. Mann and Emanuel, 2006), but no consensus has been reached on this issue."

And on the existence of trends in storm intensity the WMO says:

"This is still hotly debated area for which we can provide no definitive conclusion."

This is a situation that Dr. Mann should understand well, as he has argued strongly for adherence to scientific consensus on his weblog, RealClimate. Dr. Mann's characterization about what researchers increasingly believe about hurricanes and climate change is not backed up by what the researchers themselves are saying. Why does this matter? Because Dr. Mann is using his characterization of the community's views on hurricanes and climate change as a basis for arguing for particular policy actions. As Dr. Mann writes:

"We are likely to see only increased warming and increased Hurricane activity, if we continue to increase atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations through fossil fuel burning."

To be clear -- I take no issue with Dr. Mann making an argument that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will reduce hurricane intensity. That is what he believes, and as a scientist conducting research in this area he is someone we should listen to. But when he characterizes the community's views as "widespread" and "increasingly" supporting his perspective, he has engaged in a mischaracterization. Mischaracterizations of science, by themselves, are perhaps of only scholarly interest. But when the mischaracterizations are used as tools of political advocacy they are no longer simply mischaracterizations of science, but instead, they are bad policy arguments. 

For scientists wanting to use the notion of consensus as a tool of political advocacy, they risk being perceived as inconsistent when their actions change when they are the ones on the outside looking in.