stated very clearly several time

Pielke, Jr., R.A., and C.W. Landsea, 1999: La Niña, El Niño, and Atlantic Hurricane Damages in the United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80, 10, 2027-2033.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resourse-85-1999.14.pdf

On the Gray comment, perhaps you are right. My view is that both comments are out of bounds.

Nonetheless, I find some oversights in your analysis. Specifically, the failure to point out where Michaels goes astray in the correlation of hurricane intensity and damage. Michaels builds an argument against Emmanuel’s article based on flawed logic. Michaels claims that, “Damages caused by doubling the strength of hurricanes would be massive and increasing dramatically.” First, Michaels misrepresents Emmanuel’s findings. The doubling to which Emmanuel refers is a doubling of hurricane power dissipation. As Emmanuel explains, “The large increase in power dissipation over the past 30 yr or so may be because storms have become more intense, on the average, and/or have survived at high intensity for longer periods of time.” Neither of the explanations would necessarily result in increased damage as Michaels argues. Many TCs don’t ever do any damage because they don’t hit land. Thus, more intense TCs wouldn’t produce any more damage than less intense TCs, a house destroyed by a level four hurricane suffers the same fincial loss as a house destroyed by a level five, etc…

Second, Michaels writes, “If hurricanes had actually doubled in power, the losses in the insurance industry would be catastrophic.” While recent hurricane damage has not been “catastrophic” for the insurance industry it certainly has been serious (even though the recent financial damage has not been caused by increased intensity/global warming). The need for public insurers like Citizens Property Insurance Corporation certainly points to the insurance industry’s unwillingness to take on future liabilities.

Finally, while Michaels seemingly “calls out” Bill Gray on his “nastiness,” the rest of the analysis indicates the inclusion of Gray’s comment as rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Paralipsis is a rhetorical trick by which the speaker or writer emphasizes something by professing to ignore or denounce it.

If scientists produce biased research, that does not mean we should therefor insert more conflicts of interests into the system. It means scientists are biased enough on their own without having to give them MORE incentive to distort their findings.

The reason the media latches onto consensus is that they are trying to keep from falling victim to interested parties cherry picking pieces of data that can make well substantiated claims seem controversial, or give equal weight to the claims of a small minoirty of dissenters. Just because you can point to an instance of a bouncy ball moving upwards does not mean the downward pull of gravity is controversial.

In cases where conesnsus is overwhelming (anthropogenic warming, evolution), I think the media has to take that into account and present it to the public. The good reporters will say something along the lines of “the general view among biologists” or something. When it comes to an issue of climate change that is not established (the effect of GW on weather, as Pielke noted above), then it is more appropriate to present different sides of the debate in tit for tat.

In situations of overwhelming consensus, scientists need to help reporters see the forest through the trees, so to speak.

These go a long way to answering some of My questions in regards to scientists and there selective citing and interperetation of the literature on climate change.
This is not the preserve of one side or the other both sides seem to be pretty good at it.
This was highlighted to me recently by the debate over changes to the Satelite temperature records.
You have on the one side the “pro AGW” people almost shouting “ding dong the witch is dead” and on the other side the “sceptics” saying “well it doesn’t really matter anyway”.
This is exactly the same views but reversed for the original “hockeystick”, “sceptics” “witch is dead”, “pro AGW” “doesn’t matter anyway”.
When I looked at the issue Spencer and Christy still seemed to disagree with what the RSS team published but on a separate matter the RSS team pointed out an error in their calculations which they accepted and have subsequently ajusted their records.
Isn’t this how science is supposed to work? An error was pointed out and it was ajusted. No jumping behind the baricades to defend their postion.
The upshot is that The UAH team and the RSS team still apear to disagree on exactly how to interperate the data but their figure are now closer. If you look at both their figures and include their ranges for margin of error there is a substantial overlap.
What does this tell us about AGW? Well nothing really all it says is that the trend predicted by the models and that shown by the satelites are now more in agreement. But once again if we include the margin for error then tehre was already significant overlap.
Does this remove the debate about the ability of the models to acurately predict future trends? Not really. Because we are dealling with very small decadle trends then small movements either way neither validate or invalidate the models. They have to stand on their own scientific merit.

I agree when you say that you doubt that status and money are the prime motivators for climate scientists. Once again this is the same as the argument leveled at “sceptics” that they are all employed by the oil and coal industries.
Scientists are very strong advocates for their work. This is totally understandable they are usually very passionate about their work therefore if they have disovered “something” they expect that action should be taken on it. If you got a dozen scientists from different fields in a room they would all be able to produce cogent arguments for why their work is important and advocate strongly for action to be taken. This is not a bad thing it is important that they do it for science to advance. What gets priority and what action should be taken however can not be left to scientists to decide, there are monetary constraints, there can be conflicting interests, there can be ethical considerations, etc. So others have to make the policy decisions this does not mean that scientists should not be involved but that they can not be the only voice. I feel we have to be somewhat suspicious of scientists very publicly advocating their position especially if there are also dissenting views. It may be necessary to set up committees to examine the science the risk here is that they could become dominated by the very scientists advocating the position. It is therefore necessary that the commitee have a balanced representation which includes dissenting views. It should not only be incumbent on the committee to produce a report that shows the majority opinion but also minority reports on areas on controversy.
Science should not be decided by consensus but by making all positions known so that the policy descisions can be made in an open environment not one were disenting views are supressed. I note that your father appears to have had a problem with these very types of committees and their attempts to push a consensus view.
Incidentally I am puzzeled as to why “Industry” should be excluded from discusions. There seems to be a feeling that they should not be allowed to do any research in this field. Surely if they are willing to fund research it can not simply be dismissed because it may be biased. As you have shown with this article you do not have to be in “industrty” to produce a biased and partisan view. But if the science or methodology is “bad” then it is not hard to point this out as you have done here.

It would be a cheap shot to say that people get set in their ways and resistant to change as they get older. But it’s probably broadly true nevertheless I wonder if the younger sceptics will ever reach the relatively lofty postions of eg Lindzen and Michaels, or whether they will find their view (and/or performance) stunts their careers.

Maybe there is a parallel with the ~30 year lag for plate tectonics to be widely accepted.

Thanks for your comments. It is absolutely incorrect to say that Gray’s work has been discredited. His work forms the intellectual basis for NOAA’s current official seasonal hurricane forecast product. See it here:

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.html

For details on Gray’s work, including references to the literature see:

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/F4.html

Bill Gray may be called many things, but on seasonal forecasting, “discredited” is not among them.