Dr. William Gray again proclaims Global Warming to be a hoax
"Global warming? It's a hoax, scientist says
It's all part of Earth's natural cycle, contends atmosphere expert
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, June 4, 2006
By JOEL ACHENBACH The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - It should be glorious to be William Gray, professor emeritus. He's the guy who predicts the number of hurricanes for the coming tropical storm season. He works on a country road leading into the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in the atmospheric science department of Colorado State University. He's mentored dozens of scientists.
He's a towering figure in his profession and in person. He's loud. His laugh is gale force. He can be very charming.
He's also angry. He's outraged.
He recently had a shouting match with one of his former students. It went on for 45 minutes.
He was supposed to debate another scientist at a weather conference, but the organizer found him to be too obstreperous and disinvited him.
Much of his government funding has dried up. He has had to use his money, more than $100,000, to keep his research going. He feels intellectually abandoned. If none of his colleagues comes to his funeral, he said, that'll be evidence that he had the courage to say what they were afraid to admit.
Which is this: Global warming is a hoax.
"I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people," he said.
He has testified about this to the U.S. Senate. He has written magazine articles, given speeches, done everything he could to get the message out.
"I've been in meteorology over 50 years. I've worked damn hard, and I've been around," he said. "My feeling is some of us older guys who've been around have not been asked about this. It's sort of a baby boomer, yuppie thing."
Dr. Gray believes in observations and direct measurements. Numerical models can't be trusted. Equation pushers with fancy computers aren't the equals of scientists who fly into hurricanes.
"Few people know what I know. I've been in the tropics, I've flown in airplanes into storms. I've done studies of convection, cloud clusters and how the moist process works," he said. "I don't think anybody in the world understands how the atmosphere functions better than me."
In just three, five, maybe eight years, he said, the world will begin to cool again.
He is almost desperate to be heard. His time is short. He is 76 years old. He is howling in a maelstrom.
Since the dawn of the industrial era, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 280 to about 380 parts per million. In the past century, the average surface temperature of Earth has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit. Much of that warming has been in the last three decades. Regional effects can be more dramatic: The Arctic is melting at an alarming rate. Arctic sea ice is 40 percent thinner than it was in the 1970s. Glaciers in Greenland are speeding up as they slide toward the sea. A recent report shows Antarctica losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year.
The 1990s were the warmest decade on record. The year 1998 set the all-time mark. This decade is on its way to setting a new standard.
All of this is part of the emerging, solidifying scientific consensus on global warming - a consensus that raises the urgent political and economic issue of climate change.
But when you step into the realm of the skeptics, you find yourself on a parallel Earth.
There is no consensus on global warming, they say. There is only abundant uncertainty.
Since the late 1980s, when oil, gas, coal, auto and chemical companies formed the Global Climate Coalition, industries have poured millions of dollars into a campaign to discredit the emerging global warming consensus. The coalition disbanded a few years ago, but the skeptic community remains.
Many skeptics work in think tanks, such as the George C. Marshall Institute or the National Center for Policy Analysis. They have the ear of leaders in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
The skeptics helped scuttle any possibility that the United States would ratify the Kyoto treaty that would have committed the nation to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. (Conservatives object to the treaty for, among other things, not requiring reductions by developing nations such as China and India.)
Dr. Gray said the recent rash of strong hurricanes is just part of a cycle. This is part of the broader skeptical message: Climate change is normal and natural. The divisive nature of global warming isn't helped by the fact that the most powerful global-warming skeptic is President Bush, and the loudest warnings come from Al Gore.
Dr. Gray, for one, has no governor on his rhetoric. At one point during our meeting in Colorado he blurts out, "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."
When I opine that he is incendiary, he answers: "Yes, I am incendiary. But the other side is just as incendiary. The etiquette of science has long ago been thrown out the window."
Dr. Gray has the honor of delivering the closing remarks at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Fla. "I think there's a lot of foolishness going on," Dr. Gray said as he stood before a bank of 10 TV cameras and a couple of dozen journalists.
Hurricanes aren't getting worse - we're just in an uptick of a regular cycle, he said. But the alarmists won't let anyone believe that.
"The world is boiling! It's getting worse and worse!" Dr. Gray shouts. "Hell is approaching."
The core of Dr. Gray's argument is that the warming of the past decades is a natural cycle, driven by a global ocean circulation that manifests itself in the North Atlantic as the Gulf Stream. Warm water and cool water essentially rise and fall in a rhythm lasting decades.
"I don't think this warming period of the last 30 years can keep on going," he said. "It may warm another three, five, eight years, and then it will start to cool."
Dr. Gray's crusade against global warming "hysteria" began in the early 1990s, when he saw enormous sums of federal research money going toward computer modeling rather than his kind of science, the old-fashioned stuff based on direct observation.
He seems to be running out of steam just a little bit. He's given so many interviews, he might have lost a little velocity on his fastball. But everyone claps at the end.
In 20 years, he likes to say, the world will have cooled, and everyone will know he was right all along."
And to be fair & balanced, some climatologists' views:
'Gray & Muddy Thinking about Global Warming'
It's all part of Earth's natural cycle, contends atmosphere expert
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, June 4, 2006
By JOEL ACHENBACH The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - It should be glorious to be William Gray, professor emeritus. He's the guy who predicts the number of hurricanes for the coming tropical storm season. He works on a country road leading into the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in the atmospheric science department of Colorado State University. He's mentored dozens of scientists.
He's a towering figure in his profession and in person. He's loud. His laugh is gale force. He can be very charming.
He's also angry. He's outraged.
He recently had a shouting match with one of his former students. It went on for 45 minutes.
He was supposed to debate another scientist at a weather conference, but the organizer found him to be too obstreperous and disinvited him.
Much of his government funding has dried up. He has had to use his money, more than $100,000, to keep his research going. He feels intellectually abandoned. If none of his colleagues comes to his funeral, he said, that'll be evidence that he had the courage to say what they were afraid to admit.
Which is this: Global warming is a hoax.
"I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people," he said.
He has testified about this to the U.S. Senate. He has written magazine articles, given speeches, done everything he could to get the message out.
"I've been in meteorology over 50 years. I've worked damn hard, and I've been around," he said. "My feeling is some of us older guys who've been around have not been asked about this. It's sort of a baby boomer, yuppie thing."
Dr. Gray believes in observations and direct measurements. Numerical models can't be trusted. Equation pushers with fancy computers aren't the equals of scientists who fly into hurricanes.
"Few people know what I know. I've been in the tropics, I've flown in airplanes into storms. I've done studies of convection, cloud clusters and how the moist process works," he said. "I don't think anybody in the world understands how the atmosphere functions better than me."
In just three, five, maybe eight years, he said, the world will begin to cool again.
He is almost desperate to be heard. His time is short. He is 76 years old. He is howling in a maelstrom.
Since the dawn of the industrial era, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 280 to about 380 parts per million. In the past century, the average surface temperature of Earth has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit. Much of that warming has been in the last three decades. Regional effects can be more dramatic: The Arctic is melting at an alarming rate. Arctic sea ice is 40 percent thinner than it was in the 1970s. Glaciers in Greenland are speeding up as they slide toward the sea. A recent report shows Antarctica losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year.
The 1990s were the warmest decade on record. The year 1998 set the all-time mark. This decade is on its way to setting a new standard.
All of this is part of the emerging, solidifying scientific consensus on global warming - a consensus that raises the urgent political and economic issue of climate change.
But when you step into the realm of the skeptics, you find yourself on a parallel Earth.
There is no consensus on global warming, they say. There is only abundant uncertainty.
Since the late 1980s, when oil, gas, coal, auto and chemical companies formed the Global Climate Coalition, industries have poured millions of dollars into a campaign to discredit the emerging global warming consensus. The coalition disbanded a few years ago, but the skeptic community remains.
Many skeptics work in think tanks, such as the George C. Marshall Institute or the National Center for Policy Analysis. They have the ear of leaders in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
The skeptics helped scuttle any possibility that the United States would ratify the Kyoto treaty that would have committed the nation to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. (Conservatives object to the treaty for, among other things, not requiring reductions by developing nations such as China and India.)
Dr. Gray said the recent rash of strong hurricanes is just part of a cycle. This is part of the broader skeptical message: Climate change is normal and natural. The divisive nature of global warming isn't helped by the fact that the most powerful global-warming skeptic is President Bush, and the loudest warnings come from Al Gore.
Dr. Gray, for one, has no governor on his rhetoric. At one point during our meeting in Colorado he blurts out, "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."
When I opine that he is incendiary, he answers: "Yes, I am incendiary. But the other side is just as incendiary. The etiquette of science has long ago been thrown out the window."
Dr. Gray has the honor of delivering the closing remarks at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Fla. "I think there's a lot of foolishness going on," Dr. Gray said as he stood before a bank of 10 TV cameras and a couple of dozen journalists.
Hurricanes aren't getting worse - we're just in an uptick of a regular cycle, he said. But the alarmists won't let anyone believe that.
"The world is boiling! It's getting worse and worse!" Dr. Gray shouts. "Hell is approaching."
The core of Dr. Gray's argument is that the warming of the past decades is a natural cycle, driven by a global ocean circulation that manifests itself in the North Atlantic as the Gulf Stream. Warm water and cool water essentially rise and fall in a rhythm lasting decades.
"I don't think this warming period of the last 30 years can keep on going," he said. "It may warm another three, five, eight years, and then it will start to cool."
Dr. Gray's crusade against global warming "hysteria" began in the early 1990s, when he saw enormous sums of federal research money going toward computer modeling rather than his kind of science, the old-fashioned stuff based on direct observation.
He seems to be running out of steam just a little bit. He's given so many interviews, he might have lost a little velocity on his fastball. But everyone claps at the end.
In 20 years, he likes to say, the world will have cooled, and everyone will know he was right all along."
And to be fair & balanced, some climatologists' views:
'Gray & Muddy Thinking about Global Warming'