We greens are constantly told that any slip of the tongue or exaggeration on climate science can destroy our credibility. If we ally ourselves with respected scientists like Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley who believe there is a strong connection between hurricanes and climate change, we open ourselves to charges of alarmism, hysteria, and demagoguery. In the favored phrasing, we provide "ammunition" to conservative ideologues.

Well, we have before us a paradigmatic case study demonstrating where those ideologues really...