To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Homestead] Global warming article
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 07:34:59 -0600
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."