Hurricane expert backs off on global warming link

MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel said in a 2005 paper that there seemed to be a statistical link between hurricane intensity and global warming. Well, the paper was controversial indeed at the time, what with Katrina and other major hurricanes of that year.

Well, now, in something sure to be played up by global warming deniers, Emanuel is backing off that earlier claim:

Emanuel stresses that the new work does not disprove a connection between hurricanes and global warming — it just means that the relationship is complicated.

“The idea that there is no connection between hurricanes and global warming, that’s not supported,” he says.

Rather than this being fodder for global warming denialists, instead, it illustrates something they reject — the proper process of how science works.