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William M. "Bill" Gray (b. 1931), Ph.D., is a pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes. In 1952 he received a BS degree in Geography from George Washington University, and in 1959 a MS in Meteorology from the University of Chicago, where he went on to earn a PhD in Geophysical Sciences in 1964.

Gray pioneered the concept of "seasonal" hurricane forecasting — predicting months in advance the severity of the coming hurricane season. Gray's prognostications, issued since 1983, are used by insurance companies to calculate premiums.

Gray is Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. Gray is noted for his forecasts of Atlantic hurricane season activity.

Professor Gray served as a weather forecaster for the United States Air Force, and as a research assistant in the University of Chicago Department of Meteorology. He joined Colorado State University in 1961. He has been advisor of over 70 Ph. D. and M. Sc. students. His team has been issuing seasonal hurricane forecasts since 1984.

After the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, Professor Gray announced that he was stepping back from the primary authorship of CSU's tropical cyclone probability forecasts, passing the role to Philip J. Klotzbach. Gray indicated that he would be devoting more time to the issue of global warming. He is a controversial figure in the global warming debate, as he does not subscribe to anthropogenic causes for global warming.

Stance on global warming

Gray is skeptical of current theories of anthropogenic global warming.

He has written:

Despite the global warming of the sea surface of about 0.3 C that has taken place over the last 3 decades, the global numbers of hurricanes and their intensity have not shown increases in recent years for the Atlantic.

On October 12, 2007, the same day that former American Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations climate panel were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for work related to global warming, Gray gave a speech at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte criticizing their work. Addressing a crowd of 300 including meteorology students and professional meteorologists, he stated that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth and complained that "We're brainwashing our children".

Gray said that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges have taken place. That same cycle means a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

Gray, whose own annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicized, also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error. He cites statistics showing that there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperature, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants." The retired Dr. Gray said that his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

Andrew Dessler wrote about Gray:

Bill Gray is excoriated in public, rightfully in my opinion, because he's essentially accused the entire scientific community of fraud ... and for no other reason that I can figure out other than he didn't get the funding he feels he deserves. As a scientist, he knows that the type of conspiracy theories he's suggesting simply cannot actually occur. This has led to a real loss of respect within the community for him.

In a "Viewpoint" published by BBC News, Gray said that human-induced global warming is a fear perpetuated by the media and scientists who are trying to get federal grants. On April 27, 2007 he spoke to the Republican Study Committee of Colorado concerning global warming.

Gray does not say there has not been any warming, but states "I don't question that, and humans might have caused a very slight amount of this warming. Very slight. But this warming trend is not going to keep on going. My belief is that three, four years from now, the globe will start to cool again, as it did from the middle '40s to the middle '70s."

But, according to an earlier interview reported by Joel Aschenbach, Gray had similarly said that the current warming in 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. Although then, when pressed on his theory of how thermohaline circulation has caused recent warming of the planet and would soon cause cooling, he conceded that he hasn't yet published the idea in any peer-reviewed journal. He is working on it, he says. In the same interview, Gray is reported as saying that "global warming hysteria" is motivated, in part, by the desire among scientists, government leaders and environmentalists to find a political cause that would enable them to "organize, propagandize, force conformity and exercise political influence. Big world government could best lead (and control) us to a better world!"

In 2005, Gray appeared in front of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to testify on his area of expertise, hurricane prediction. During this testimony, Gray asked:

"How can we trust climate forecasts 50 and 100 years into the future (that can’t be verified in our lifetime) when they are not able to make shorter seasonal or yearly forecasts that could be verified?"

In a December 2006 interview with David Harsanyi of the Denver Post, Gray said "They've been brainwashing us for 20 years, starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was." In this interview, Gray cites the global cooling article in Newsweek from 1975 as evidence that such a scare has happened in the past.

Criticisms of Gray's statements on Global Warming

Gray's statements on Global Warming have been the subject of criticism. He has also been criticized for his personal attacks on the scientists with whom he diagrees "Bill, for some very good reasons, has been the go-to man on hurricanes for the last 35 years," says Peter Webster, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor who is both a target of William Gray and a co-author on other scientific papers, "All of a sudden there are a lot of people saying things Bill doesn't agree with. And they're getting a lot of press -- more press than I like, actually. I like the ivory tower. But he's become more and more radical."

See also

• Global warming
• List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

References

1. Gray, William M. (2005-11-18). "Summary of 2005 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity and Verification of Author's Seasonal and Monthly Forecasts". Colorado State University Dept. of Atmospheric Science Hurricane Forecasts. Retrieved 2007-04-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
2. Lytte, Steve (October 14, 2007), "Gore gets a cold shoulder", Sydney Morning Herald{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
3. "Gore gets a cold shoulder". Sydney Morning Herald.
4. "Gore gets a cold shoulder". Sydney Morning Herald.
5. ^ Harsanyi, David (2006-06-05). "Chill out over global warming". Denver Post. Retrieved 2007-04-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. Achenbach, Joel (2006-05-28). "The Tempest". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-04-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. Gray, William M. (2005-09-28). "Statement of Dr. William Gray". United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Retrieved 2007-04-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. ^ Prendergast, Alan (2006-06-29). "The Skeptic". Denver Westwood News. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• Faculty profile at Colorado State University
• The Tropical Meteorology Project
• Real Climate, Gray and Muddy Thinking about Global Warming
• LA Times write-up on Dr. Gray
• Washington Post article, "The Tempest," by Joel Achenbach from May 28, 2006
• Alan Prendergast Denver Westword News article, "The Skeptic," from June 29, 2006
• Logical Science's analysis and video clips of Dr. Gray
• Discover.com interview of Dr. Gray
• Interview with Dr. Gray about hurricane forecasting

• 1931 births
• Living people
• American meteorologists
• American academics
• Global warming skeptics