I think the science is going along pretty much like it would normally. I've seen this with medical science as well.

What happens is the media gets in the mix, and takes each intermediate research result and blows it up out of proportion ("There's a cure!" "No, more work to be done!") when it's clear that additional research needs to be done all along, and we're just not there yet. It's common along that process to have results that point to conclusions first in one direction, than another. But it really confuses the public.

What has happened here is that Gray has gotten more and more public and personal and hostile along the way, pulling everyone else along into the spotlight. Then, the 2005 hurricane season obliged with powerful landfalling storms, giving the media lots of headlines on the topic, and culminating with the Time magazine selection of Emanuel as one of it's Time 100. The rhetoric has really gotten out of hand, and if you go back and look at the past year, each time things were ramped up a bit, it can be traced back to personal insults Grey said in a media article or at a conference.