William Gray, the "eminent" meteorologist weighed in on Al Gore and global warming:
"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about,"
For those of you who dont know Dr Gray, he is a hurricane "expert" from Colorado. For a quarter of a century, he has been issuing seasonal hurricane forecasts. As Sciguy rightly notes on his blog, these premonitions are often as questionable and accurate as the Amazing Criswell's were.
I really don't hate Gray, and I more than willing to afford him the respect that he has earned for identifying, early in his career, multi-year climate variations, which helped climatologists better appreciate phenomena such as El Nino and the Southern Oscillation. But his hurricane forecasts are dogs, and for years it has really pissed me off that he is always referred to as a great genius by the popular media which never bothers, out of sheer and inexcusable laziness, to place his forecasts in an appropriate context or challenge their accuracy. Do a Google search on Gray and stare in awe at the list of superlatives that always accompany his name. I am tired of hearing his seasonal forecast at the start of the season, reported densely by the press as if it were an actual weather report, and never about the limits of these types of predictions or about how wrong he often is.
His vicious attack was focused on Al Gore, an easy target, but was in fact an attack on modern science. By joining the club of global warming deniers, he has entered the fringe of anti-science, like intelligent design apologists. Yes, Dr Gray, there are multi-year cyclical climate variations. You were right about that, great, now enjoy your tenure. These variations do not disprove the facts of global warming.
Gray's chief meteorolgist schill is Joe Bastardi, a forecaster with Accuweather. I am interested in weather forecasting, and I actually read weather blogs. I have been reading Bastardi's blog for more than 3 years. He is an engaging writer, but an adamant global warming denier. Accuweather, based in Pennsylvania, conspired with ex-Senator Rick Santorum to restrict the public's access to the National Weather Service's data and forecasts. The NWS is a taxpayer supported federal agency founded in 1870 with the explicit mission of warning citizens about the approach of dangerous weather. It has provided information free and unrestricted since its founding. Of course, according to Accuweather, why should American citizens have free access to life-saving public information collected by a federal agency when they could just as easily pay a for-profit company for it? To me, this scheme exemplifies the GOP agenda. I am surprised it didn't happen.
Anyway, just venting here, but I hope Gray's unabashed entry into the lunatic fringe of science encourages the media to place his "famous and pioneering" hurricane forecasts into a proper context.