NOAA Research Meteorologist Doctor Chris Landsea, a weather scientist with more than just a great name, is withdrawing his participation in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) according to an open letter to the public published on the University of Colorado at Boulder web site. Dr. Landsea is leaving because he believes the part of the IPCC in which he participates has become politicized. He is reacting to a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity."

Traditional media outlets went berserk reporting the headline proclaiming the disastrous 2004 hurricane season was due to global warming. Many bloggers, including Political Dogs, and a few conservative radio talk show hosts laughed at the notion while noting that there was nothing actually remarkable about the season. Dr. Landsea states in his letter, "I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin."

Dr. Landsea expressed concern "when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy." But his concerns were intensified by the reaction of the IPCC when he pointed out the obvious error in scientific understanding before the comments were released in the press conference. He said, "Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC has used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field."

Dr. Landsea is an extremely accomplished climatologist who is a member of many important organizations and has written key works on tropical cyclone prediction. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University where his advisor was Dr. William Gray, the pre-eminent hurricane scientist in the United States whose annual predictions are known to most people. His work and opinions are frequently cited by the largest news organizations in this country.

We wonder why his departure and critiques of the leading proponent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming have not been extensively reported. In fact, the only place we saw this reported was JunkScience.com indicating perhaps political agendas on global warming are not limited to the IPCC!