As far as cherrypicking, we are guilty as charged. All presentations of information are necessarily selective, thus here as well.

As far as the specific issue of the NYT article, my thinking is that if the NYT features several scientific articles then they will get wide attention., perhaps even wider than if they were featured on Prometheus;-) By contrast the other articles have not received similar attention.

On the Klotzbach paper, our decision to feature it seems appropriate as, to my knowledge, no media outlet (certainly not any major media outlet) covered it.

Thanks again!

Your article, and the subsequent comments on the NYT only referring to two articles and ignoring others (one of which you are a coauthor), was interesting but disappointing. I will not comment on the NYT’s choice or neglect of papers but I will question a similar “cherrypicking” on your blog. On May 1 you commented extensively on the Klotzbach paper, not then published by the way, noting that it questioned results from “high profile papers”. But when you described the NYT action you failed to mention that the Sriver-Huber paper gave strong support to the results of the Emanuel and the Webster et al. paper (I presume the high-profile papers to which you refer) through the use of independent data. It seems to be one thing to report on the Klotzbach paper as having very interesting results but another to ignore on the substance of the Sriver-Huber paper. Yes, the Emanuel-Mann and the Sriver-Huber papers were mentioned by name but their content was not discussed nor their potential significance. What I find disappointing is that you are prepared to highlight Klotzbach’s results but not the results of papers that provide alternatives to Klotzbach’s conclusions. Please be assured that I care little whether or not you comment on any of the papers that you mentionr. Their relative significance will come out in the peer-reviewed wash. But if Prometheus is to be considered to provide a balanced persepective, then you should have commented on the science of the two papers mentioned in the NYT. To me that was at least as great an omission by Prometheus as the neglect of the omitted papers by the NYT.

You make a valid point that resonates with much of what Roger and Kevin have been saying here for some time. As you stress, the WMO-guided statement on hurricanes and global warming remains, at least for the time being, rather open-minded on any possible linkage:

“The research issues discussed here are in a fluid state and are the subject of much current investigation. Given time the problem of causes and attribution of the events of 2004-2005 will be discussed and argued in the refereed scientific literature. Prior to this happening it is not possible to make any authoritative comment.”

It looks almost as if the statement intended to play for time and pass the buck. So here is the question:

A key representative of the human-warming-causes-stronger-hurricanes theory, Kevin Trenberth, is the IPCC’s coordinating lead author on the very subject matter, directing the focus, selection and outcome of the next IPCC assessment on hurricanes and global warming.

A key representative of the natural-variability-drives-hurricane-intensity theory, Chris Lansea, has withdrawn from the IPCC assessment process in protest, stating that he “cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html

Now, given your almost blind faith in the IPCC process and its expertise, what would you say if one group of researchers, including leading experts such as Landsea, would question the validity of a biased panel and a prejudiced assessment?

I’m not covering this debate (I live in and report on a landlocked state well above sea level), but were I to, I would talk to scientists on both sides of the issue, review the lively state of the scientific debate, suggest that some people with scientific standing believe there is an “emerging consensus” and that others do not, and offer the WMO statement as guidance to my readers. It’s quite straightforward.

When expert panel consensus reviews like the WMO statement exist and you abandon them and pick a side, you open up the debate to the sort of scientization that Sarewitz so ably documents.* It seems to me that the strength of your position in this debate, Steve, is the way it aligns with a strong consensus on the major issues associated with climate change, as articulated by the IPCC etc. As soon as you abandon that alignment on a question like this, you open up the field for your opponents to do the same on other questions, which is a recipe for gridlock.

http://www.cspo.org/ourlibrary/articles/EnvironControv.htm

“Question: The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most active on record. Is global climate change responsible for this increased activity?

“Answer: Available research indicates increased hurricane activity can be explained by natural cycles of hurricane activity driven by the Atlantic Ocean along with the atmosphere above it.”

This memo appears to have been written after the forced recantation of the NOAA statement falsely claiming that Bell and Chelliah’s work amounted to a natural cycle theory. Draw your own conclusions.

Were you to cover this story, an alternative approach might be to consider talking to all of the leading researchers in the field and seeing what they think. This is basically what the Nature reporter did, and you saw the results. Was that bad journalism?

One can choose to wait for a formal consensus statement, but that’s tantamount to saying that journalists can never report the actual state of the science to their readers (so long as the science is moving fast). Finally, you might try calling Kerry Emanuel and asking him if that statement still holds.

The appropriate approach for a journalist is to look for two things – first, at the breadth of the literature, where the debate is (as you know) quite lively. The second is the sort of expert panels – IPCC, NAS, etc. – that attempt to sythesize for policymakers and the lay public the state of the science. In this case, the WMO statement to which Roger has referred many times reflects no such consensus.