William M. Gray Ph.D.
From Logical
Science
William M. Gray is known as a pioneer in the science of forcasting hurricanes. He is currently professor emeritus (meaning he's basically retired but still retains his title) at Colorado State University. Although he is an accomplished meteorologist, he has zero peer review papers on climatology. He is famous for making comments like "I predict, now I think I know as much as anybody, I'll take on any scientist in this field to talk about this, I predict in the next 5 or 8 years or so the globe is going to begin to cool as it did in the middle 40's."1 And similar statements by him have been recorded by the Denver Post. James Annon writes the following about Dr. Gray in his blog: article titled "Bill Gray won't bet on cooling":
| "I emailed him some time asking if he will back up this statement with a bet. William Connolley and Brian Schmidt at least have done the same. None of us (to my knowledge) has had the courtesy of a reply. Given his statement above, I do not believe it is too much to expect that he should at least quantify his prediction in terms of his confidence (what odds he would place on his prediction being provved correct). To not do so seems to be clearly misleading the Senate Committee hearing." |
Dr Gray is also known for using a 1975 Newsweek about global cooling to discredit the climatologists. It has been well documented by both Realclimate.org and Dr Connolley that the scientific community never predicted an ice age. While there was talk about ice ages in mainstream magazines and even newspapers, there were no predictions of imminent global cooling in peer review journals or the National Academy of Sciences press releases. In fact the very same year Newsweek ran their global cooling expose the National Academy of Sciences relseased a report on climate change which stated:
| Unfortunately, we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines it's course. Without this fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate-neither in short-term variations nor in any in its larger long-term changes. |
This report was not mentioned by Newsweek in either their 1975 article or their 2006 article that reviewed the accuracy of the 1975 article. Dr. Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M wrote an article on his blog titled "Aged skeptics" in which he makes the following comment in reference to Dr. Gray: "If their knowledge is 10-years old, then their statements might be quite incorrect.". Here is another quote from his article:
| "
He gave his standard
stump speech in which he claims that the water vapor feedback is
negative. I followed up on this with him and it became quite clear to
me that he
is unfamiliar with all of the peer-reviewed literature on this subject
that has been published in the last five years. This makes sense.
Reading the literature is a difficult and full-time job, and emeritus
faculty simply don't need to do that." ...... "But the story goes on. After arguing with him for a few minutes, it became clear that Bill Gray has no scientific theory of his own *why* the water vapor feedback is negative, and no data to support his non-theory. He has no manuscript describing his non-theory and no plans to attempt to publish it. After I pointed out all of the evidence supporting a positive feedback, he looked confused and finally said, "OK, maybe the feedback isn't negative, maybe it's neutral. I'll give you that." I quickly concluded that he has no idea what he's talking about. I wish everyone that considers him credible could have witnessed this exchange." |
Here is a video from the Senate Environmental and Public Works Commitee SD406:
| Boxer vs Gray |
In the above video Senator Boxer says they were unable to find any peer reviewed journals by Dr. Gray on climate change. (climate change is very different than meteorology) After a lengthy debate he says "some have appeared, there was on in a foreign journal". Senator Boxer cuts him off and says "well I'm not getting an answer so lets move on". If you know of any peer reviewed journals by Dr. Gray on climatology please e-mail it to us because any papers he might have doesn’t seem to appear in standard journal search engines. Dr. Gray also implies that scientists are making up the research in an effort to get grant money. William Connolley calls a similar comment "absurd" in his blog "The idea that there are vast wealth and perks to be made from climate science is wrong, and would raise a laugh (albeit a rather bitter one) from anyone "inside"". Similar conversation can be seen on Realclimate.org.
Dr. Gray testified that James Hansen's statements on climate change are "ridiculous" but then admits "I don't know what he knows about the atmosphere". Ralph Cicerone is the president of the nation’s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences and he has defended Hansen's credibility. Cicerone says "I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better." During his testimony, Dr. Gray also stated that he "represents a lot of meteorologists that think like I do". This can be considered a misleading statement as the vast majority of scientists believe global warming is happening according to this scientific consensus. The American Meteorological Society (AMO) also disagrees with Dr. Gray on climate change. The AMO has endorsed the Joint Academies' Statement which is signed by eleven countries and opens with the words “Climate Change is real”. It’s conclusion begins with “We urge all nations, in the line with the UNFCCC principles, to take prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts and ensure that the issue is included in all relevant national and international strategies.” Much more about the consensus on climate change can be found here.
A meeting paper that Gray provided in advance of the 2006 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology provides an interesting insight to Gray's current scientific mind. In this paper Gray routinely references water evaporation as the cause of global warming. The problem is that this theory violates the first law of thermodynamics which is better known as conservation of energy. This is a pretty basic law of physics that is commonly taught in highschool and the freshman year of college. The authors at realclimate spent a decent amount of time analyzing the numerous flaws in this paper with their article "Gray and Muddy Thinking about Global Warming". After Gray released this meeting paper the Atlanta tropical meteorology conference withdrew his invitation to attend.1 So what do fellow climate change skeptics think of him? Well according to the Washington Post: "[Richard] Lindzen says of Gray: "His knowledge of theory is frustratingly poor, but he knows more about hurricanes than anyone in the world. I regard him in his own peculiar way as a national resource.""1
In September 2006 Gray gave a talk at the Larimer County Republican Club. The media reported that Gray claimed "human-induced global warming is a fear perpetuated by the media and scientists who are trying to get federal grants." The problem with this argument is that scientists don't want anymore grant money. They want you to fix the problem by developing alternative energy. This argument is debunked in full here. Dr. Andrew Dessler comments on the prometheus blog: "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."
Dr. Gray hassn't been gentle with his language either. Despite the fact that there is an overwhelming consensus supporting the existence of CO2 driven climate change, Dr. Gray has compared Al Gore to Hitler. According to the Washington Post, Dr. Gore once screamed "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."
In reference to Dr. Gray's skill as a hurricane forcaster, Dr. Judith Curry writes:
| Every year, Gray’s forecasts are “wrong” (this does not mean that people don’t want to hear more of them). In my testimony and in an AGU workshop, a diagram and analysis from Greg Holland plotted the forecasts against the actual data, and did a simple statistical analysis. Bottom line is that Gray’s forecasts are worse than just forecast the average for the last 5 or 10 years.1 .........The second thing that surprised me was in the Gray/Klotzbach presentation they counted their 2005 forecast as a “skilful” forecast (they forecast 15 [tropical storms] in June, compared with 27 observed) since the observations and forecasts were above the 50 year mean of 9.6. This immediately called to mind an article in the popular media that i read at the end of 2005 that discussed the worst forecasts for 2005, and gray’s hurricane forecast was #1.1 |
More information:
Real Climate: raypierre comments on Bill Grays understanding of climatology.
Washington Post: The Tempest, By Joel Achenbach Sunday, May 28, 2006; W08
Senate Congressional Testimoney of Dr. Judith Curry
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