Is MIT warmist Kerry Emanuel hiding his conflict of interest again?
Last year, JunkScience.com forced Emanuel to disclose his insurance industry ties in Nature publications. Apparently he didn’t think similar disclosures were warranted in his global warming-hurricane study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Below is the letter JunkScience.com sent to the PNAS editor Dan Salsbury on Monday, July 8.
Mr. Salsbury,
I am writing to request that you investigate whether Kerry Emanuel made a complete conflict of interest disclosure in his study published today, “Downscaling CMIP5 climate models shows increased tropical cyclone activity over the 21st century.”
In today’s study, Dr. Emanuel made the following disclosure:
But last year in a study published in Nature Climate Change (Feb. 14, 2012), he made the following disclosure:
“The authors declare no competing financial interests. However, in the interests of transparency we confirm that one of us, Kerry Emanuel, is on the boards of two property and casualty companies: Homesite and Bunker Hill, and also on the board of the AlphaCat Fund, an investment fund dealing with re-insurance transactions. In all three cases, Dr Emanuel receives fixed fees but owns no stocks or shares. Dr Emanuel does not stand to make any personal financial gain through these directorships as a consequence of the reported findings.”
Given that the insurance industry has significant financial interest in climate change and climate change policy, did Dr. Emanuel make a similar disclosure to PNAS?
If so, did you decide not to publish it?
Thank you in advance for a quick response.
Sincerely,
Steve Milloy
Publisher, JunkScience.com
Salsbury responded by e-mail yesterday:
Mr. Milloy,
Thank you for your note and we will look into the matter you have raised with Dr. Emanuel’s recent PNAS publication.
Sincerely,
Daniel Salsbury
Stay tuned.
Some people have been perceiving similar ties north of the 49th. I couldn’t help but think of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) while reading this post. Canadians already plagued by Insurance Poverty have talking about developments like these:
“Service Providers, NGO’s, academia and others” (bottom pg 23):
http://www.naic.org/documents/committees_e_climate_related_docs_1203_presentation_national_meeting.pdf
Ceres Report “From Risk to Opportunity: 2008 – Insurer Responses to Climate Change” (ICLR on pg 7 under Insurance Organizations):
http://insurance.lbl.gov/opportunities/risk-to-opportunity-2008.pdf
The Principles for Sustainable Insurance – UNEP Finance Initiative
http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/PSI_document-en.pdf
The UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance
http://www.naic.org/ documents/ committees_e_climate_related_docs_1203_presentation_national_meeting. pdf