Just to show you can’t even necessarily trust many scientists, never mind the media, on anything that even impinges on global warming these days, Prometheus looks at an American Geophysical Union report that claims, essentially, hurricane scientists don’t know what they’re talking about when they make hurricane predictions. This conclusion goes completely against the evidence.

Asking why, Roger Pielke Jr, who is no skeptic when it comes to the question of anthropgenic global warming and who urges action on the issue, hypothesizes that this is a weapon in the “climate wars”:

William Gray is the originator of seasonal climate forecasts and has rudely dismissed the notion of human-caused global warming, much less a connection to hurricanes. One of the lead authors of the AGU assessment has been in a public feud with Bill Gray and is a strong advocate of a human role in recent hurricane activity. It is not unreasonable to think that the AGU assessment was being used as a vehicle to advance this battle under the guise of community “consensus.” It may be the perception among some that if Bill Gray’s or NOAA’s work on seasonal forecasts, which is based on various natural climatic factors, can be shown to be fundamentally flawed, then this would elevate the importance of alternative explanations.

If true, this is astounding, and science needs to police itself better. As Roger summarizes:

The AGU case may be isolated, but it does beg the question raised by my father and others, how can we know whether scientific assessments faithfully represent the relevant community of experts versus a subset with an agenda posing under the guise of consensus? I am aware of no systematic approaches to answering this question. It is a question that needs discussion, because as political, personal, and other issues infuse the scientific enterprise, blind trust in disinterested science and science institutions no longer seems to be enough.

The next time you hear about a “Republican war on science,” remember this.