A feature story in yesterday's Boston Globe depicts an increasingly strained friendship between Richard Lindzen and Kerry Emanuel--the former well known as one of the leading U.S. climate change skeptics, the latter best known for his pre-Katrina prediction that fierce hurricanes would become more frequent. When Emanual first joined Lindzen at MIT, Lindzen (left) was a registered Democrat and Emanuel a Reagan voter. Emanuel in the meantime has come around to the view that there's a growing risk of catastrophic climate change: "None of the evidence is perfect, but it all points in one direction," Emanuel (depicted in the postage-stamp photo on the contents page) told the Globe. Lindzen took a jab at Emanuel at last year's Heartland Institute conference, saying he and fellow alarmists take the position they do because it "just makes their lives easier," presumably in terms of research funding and peer pressure. Emanuel has accused Lindzen of endorsing dishonest science.
The two men reportedly still have a collegial relationship but are not vacationing together with their families in France these days or inviting each other to dinner.