Based on my most recent interaction, the folks at RealClimate seem less interested than ever on an open exchange of views on scientific topics. But I guess that is what might be expected when one points out that the they are spreading misinformation.


A commenter on a thread on ocean temperatures asked an innocuous question about the new paper by Vecchi and Soden which was discussed here by Chris Landsea . The always cordial Michael Mann replied:

I have no knowledge of (or frankly, interest in) what Chris Landsea may be saying about the paper . . . In short, the Emanuel (2005) study continues to stand on its merit, and I don’t see where this paper puts even a dent in it.

I don’t much read RealClimate anymore, but when a commenter on the Landsea thread pointed to this exchange in the comments here, I surfed over to find this blatantly false assertion by Michael Mann in response to a follow up comment:

Emanuel (2005) shows that the warming SSTs are behind the increased TC intensity in the Atlantic. No impartial reading of that paper could come to any other conclusion.

Being a science site and all, I assumed that the RealClimate folks would be happy to engage in a discussion of, you know, science. Boy was I was mistaken. Here is my submitted response:

Mike-

You are simply incorrect when you assert: “Emanuel (2005) shows that the warming SSTs are behind the increased TC intensity in the Atlantic. No impartial reading of that paper could come to any other conclusion.”

Here is what Emanuel actually says:

“Tropical cyclones do not respond directly to SST, however, and the appropriate measure of their thermodynamic environment is the potential intensity, which depends not only on surface temperature but on the whole temperature profile of the troposphere. . . The above discussion suggests that only part of the observed increase in tropical cyclone power dissipation is directly due to increased SSTs; the rest can only be explained by changes in other factors known to influence hurricane intensity, such as vertical wind shear.”

Misrepresenting Emanuel is bad enough, but for a site that often underscores the importance of consensus, your favoring of one single study (on a thread about not favoring one single study) when consensus perspectives exist (WMO, IPCC) does a disservice to your readers.

Here is what RealClimate allowed:

Mike-

You are simply incorrect when you assert: “Emanuel (2005) shows that the warming SSTs are behind the increased TC intensity in the Atlantic. No impartial reading of that paper could come to any other conclusion.”

What are they so worried about that they have to protect their audience from the comments of a political scientist?

Here is Michael Mann’s (always cordial) response:

Response: Roger, we’re not about cherry-picking sentences and out of context quotations here at RC, so you should take that somewhere else. Anybody who has studied the scientific issues involved well knows that SSTs in this context are a proxy for a more complex set of interconnected atmospheric environmental variables which tend to covary with it. We hardly need you to quote Emanuel for us. Figure 1 in Emanuel (2005) comparing SST and TC Power Dissipation in the tropical Atlantic speaks for itself, you might want to take another look. If we do an article on Hurricanes in the near future, you’re free to engage in the discussion. But that’s not the topic of this post, so we’re going to close it out with this. -mike

Heaven forbid a discussion of actual substance over there. If we did we might have to discuss Kossin et al. and how SSTs don’t covary with intensity in all basins, and the fact that Emanuel signed on to the WMO consensus, and well, a whole bunch of stuff that is fair game to discuss in scientific circles, but not apparently at RealClimate. In my view the issue of hurricanes and climate remains uncertain and contested and is well worth discussing.