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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

With Findings on Storms, Centrist Recasts Warming Debate

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: January 10, 2006

For decades, Kerry Emanuel, the meteorologist and hurricane specialist from 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was known as a cautious centrist 
on questions of global warming and hurricane ferocity.

Kerry Emanuel, a meteorologist and hurricane expert from the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, said warming had occurred "much too fast to 
ascribe to any natural process we know about."

Professor Emanuel asserted often that no firm link had been established 
between warming and the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.

But in August, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, 
Professor Emanuel wrote in the journal Nature that he had discovered 
statistical evidence that hurricanes were indeed affected by global 
warming. He linked the increased intensity of storms to the heating of the 
oceans.

"His paper has had a fantastic impact on the policy debate," said Stephen 
Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford. "Emanuel's this conservative, 
apolitical guy, and he's saying, 'Global warming is real.' "

On a recent visit to New York, Professor Emanuel, who is 50, said, "It's 
been quite a ride since the Nature article." He added, "But it's a really 
bad thing for a scientist to have an immovable, intractable position."

The rest of the story is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10conv.html?8hpib