Posted on 04/28/2008 5:33:05 PM PDT by Snickering Hound
By pioneering the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting and teaching 70 graduate students who now populate the National Hurricane Center and other research outposts, William Gray turned a city far from the stormy seas into a hurricane research mecca.
But now the institution in Fort Collins, Colo., where he has worked for nearly half a century, has told Gray it may end its support of his seasonal forecasting.
As he enters his 25th year of predicting hurricane season activity, Colorado State University officials say handling media inquiries related to Gray's forecasting requires too much time and detracts from efforts to promote other professors' work.
But Gray, a highly visible and sometimes acerbic skeptic of climate change, says that's a "flimsy excuse" for the real motivation — a desire to push him aside because of his global warming criticism.
Among other comments, Gray has said global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children."
Now an emeritus professor, Gray declined to comment on the university's possible termination of promotional support.
But a memo he wrote last year, after CSU officials informed him that media relations would no longer promote his forecasts after 2008, reveals his views:
"This is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department's capitulation to the desires of some (in their own interest) who want to reign (sic) in my global warming and global warming-hurricane criticisms," Gray wrote to Dick Johnson, head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and others.
The university may have moderated its stance since last year. Officials said late last week that they intend to support the release of Gray's forecasts as long as they continue to be co-authored by Phil Klotzbach, a former student of Gray's who earned his doctorate last summer, and as long as Klotzbach remains at CSU.
When Klotzbach leaves, he will either produce the seasonal forecasts at his new position, or end them altogether.
Not only does this internal dispute reveal a bit of acrimony at the end of Gray's long career at CSU; it highlights the politically charged atmosphere that surrounds global warming in the United States.
"Bill Gray has come under a lot of fire for his views," said Channel 11 meteorologist Neil Frank, a former director of the National Hurricane Center and a friend of Gray's. "If, indeed, this is happening, it would be really sad that Colorado State is trying to rein in Bill Gray."
CSU officials insist that is not the case.
The dean of the College of Engineering, which oversees atmospheric sciences, said she spoke with Gray about terminating media support for his forecasts solely because of the strain it placed on the college's sole media staffer.
"It really has nothing to do with his stand on global warming," said the dean, Sandra Woods. "He's a great faculty member. He's an institution at CSU."
According to Woods, Gray's forecasts require about 10 percent of the time a media support staff member, Emily Wilmsen, has available for the College of Engineering and its 104 faculty members.
A professor of public relations at Boston University, Donald Wright, questioned why the university would want to pull back its support for Gray now, after he has published his forecasts for a quarter-century.
"It's seems peculiar that this is happening now," Wright said. "Given the national reputation that these reports have, you would think the university would want to continue to promote these forecasts."
Gray, he said, seems to deliver a lot of publicity bang for the buck. The seasonal forecasts are printed in newspapers around the country and splashed across the World Wide Web.
There also seems to be little question that prominent climate scientists have complained to CSU about Gray's vocal skepticism. The head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Dick Johnson, said he has received many comments during recent years about Gray — some supportive, and some not.
The complaints have come as Gray became increasingly involved in the global warming debate. His comments toward adversaries often are biting and adversarial.
In 2005, when Georgia Tech scientist Peter Webster co-authored a paper suggesting global warming had caused a spike in major hurricanes, Gray labeled him and others "medicine men" who were misleading the public.
Webster, in an e-mail from Bangladesh, where is working on a flood prediction project, acknowledged that he complained to Johnson at CSU.
"My only conversation with Dick Johnson, which followed a rather nasty series of jabs from Gray, suggested that Bill should be persuaded to lay off the personal and stay scientific," Webster wrote.
Gray also has been highly critical of a former student, Greg Holland, who is among the most visible U.S. scientists arguing about the dangers posed by global warming.
Gray's comments about Holland include referring to him as a member of a "Gang of Five" that is interested in using scare tactics to increase research funding.
The comment was a reference to the Gang of Four, which terrorized China in the 1960s and '70s while purging the Communist Party of moderates and intellectuals.
"I have registered concern in several quarters, including CSU, on the manner in which he has moved away from scientific debate and into personal attacks on the integrity and motives of myself and my colleagues," Holland said.
Although he ceded lead authorship of the forecasts to Klotzbach in 2006, Gray has remained the headliner in storm prognostication. He annually is among the most popular draws at the National Hurricane Conference.
In recent years, as he has increasingly made sharp public comments about global warming, Gray quickly became one of the most prominent skeptics because of his long background in atmospheric sciences.
His views on the climate — he says Earth is warming naturally and soon will begin cooling — have been applauded by some scientists, particularly meteorologists such as Frank. But they are out of step with mainstream climate science.
The most recent report by an international group of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, concluded that there was 90 percent certainty that human activity had caused recent warming of the planet.
Yet at U.S. universities, threats to the rights of scientists who hold minority viewpoints are generally frowned upon.
A prominent legal scholar, Stanley Fish of Florida International University, said university public relations offices should not pick and choose where resources go, based upon the content of a professor's work.
"If it can in any way be established that (Gray's) global warming views were the basis of this action, then it is an improper action," Fish said.
In his memo, Gray clearly indicates that he believes his academic freedom is imperiled:
"For the good of all of us in the Department, the College and at CSU, please believe me when I say this is not a direction any of you want to go," he wrote. "Our department and college are strong enough to be able to tolerate a dissenting voice on the global warming question."
Woods, Gray's dean, insisted that dissent on global warming is welcomed at CSU.
"He's not the only faculty member in the world who questions global warming," Woods said. "When Bill talks about some of the data, he can make some very good points."
From William Gray's (Global-Warming denier) forecast for the season:
"We are now calling for a very active hurricane season. Landfall probabilities for the 2007 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages."
Hmmm...looks like you're right...we can't trust William Gray's predictions.
And, of course, since casinos can't forcast tomorrow's roll of the dice, there's no possible way they can predict the overall probabilities. </sarc>
Yes, it is.
Dr. Gray should, however, spend more focus on responding to critiques of his work, and less on the ad hominem questioning of critics' motives. Once he's effectively demonstrated that his critics are wrong, then he is free to question what motivated them, but without the former, the latter rings a little hollow and evasive.
It's not ignored! There have been many critiques of the hypothesis, shooting it down. I personally believe that it deserves another look, but I have yet to see a very well constructed argument published against the existing work claiming minor effects.
My belief is that the sunspot/insolation-variation effect is greater than estimated by the IPCC, but that there is also a lower-magnitude, long-term warming trend from anthropogenic causes (as well as longer- or shorter-term effects such as Milankovich cycles, volcanic events, etc.). But it's also my belief that we can't know that for sure.
That radiative forcing from CO2 is such an important term, yet I'm not convinced we know it yet.
Yes. Ask them to pressure Dr. Gray to give the long-awaited responses to the criticisms of his previous claims. Even if he's right, he hasn't demonstrated it, and the name-calling is hollow without it.
True, and ironically Gray has more in common with the global warmers than this article admits, using SST as one of his main inputs. The problem is that hurricane formation and strengthening is a highly chaotic and unpredicatable process, not very sensitive to inputs like SST. Weather forecasting has the same problem, the fact that the world has warmed a bit has zero influence on the forecast, the current negative NAO is all that really matters until it unpredictably dissolves into a new pattern.
Speaking of which, isn't this the same school that employed (still employees?) Ward Churchill?
So let me get this straight, They don't want to handle the media questions about professor Grey (which since the media ignores skeptics, it's probably minimal) but when the same applied to Ward Churchill they stood up and claimed they were standing up for his 1st Amendment rights.
Suurre
The conclusion one must draw from such examples isn’t that every institution has its bad apples but rather that, at least in the liberal arts in America, moral turpitude and political hucksterism pervades higher education.
Radical criminals with questionable academic credentials flourish in a milieu that bristles with hostility toward real scholars who don’t toe the party line—witness the case of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.
Individuals with prison records or FBI rap sheets don’t get into major educational institutions because they fudge their resumes.
They get in because they share the political dogmas of those who hire them—and they flourish for the same reason.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9944
Ward is still getting taxpayer money / salary and benefits, but no classes.
Earth Day is Lenin’s birthday.
Coincidence or Communism?
OF course, it's possible that the warming has led to the NAO pattern. Note that the view that the NAO gradient influences weather is looking at only one direction...it's possible that the insolation or greenhouse retention differences have led to the NAO distribution, for example. I think that we have to always be prepared for these systems to be in quasiequilibrium, with forcings possible in either direction.
Quite true, and that's one of the toughest problems in modeling climate. The relationship of weather to large scale pattern changes is highly nonlinear and chaotic. So as the climate changes, the patterns will change as well. For example more water vapor might cause a dampening of the jet stream (and consequent rainfall changes and overall warming).
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