Dr. William Gray - Please, STFU

[BushOut06]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070407/D8OBK1DG0.html

Looks like we have another global warming denier nutjob! So, Dr. Gray, how did your hurricane predictions go last year? I think I'll prefer to to trust someone with solid science behind them, instead of some nutjob forecaster who makes hurricane predictions by basically pulling random numbers out of a hat.

[iamjoy]

1. Strange Thing About Meteorologists

Many of them do not believe that humans are causing global warming. I would consider most of them intelligent, educated people.

(note: Do NOT confuse television personalities with meteorologists).

I think it is true that hurricanes follow patterns and cycles of being less and more active. Maybe that is why meteorologists and hurricane forecasters have not made the link between human activity and more frequent and severe hurricanes. I wonder, though, what if BOTH are true? OK, what we're seeing now is "normal." In 5 - 10 years our oceans should cool and hurricane activity should subside. But what if it doesn't because human activity has altered the cycle?

[Akoto]

2. I believe Gray overestimated his hurricane predictions last year.

It turned out to be an El Nino year, and unless I'm mistaken, no hurricanes struck the United States. I live in Florida and can tell you that none came here.

I'm not defending his global warming views, just addressing that question. We're supposed to have a La Nina this year, which supposedly means an active hurricane season. :(

[papau]

5. Gray just revised his predictions to a more active than usual - but AIG Ins. Co still

loves him (his web site notes the "AIG - Lexington Insurance Company" support).

He issued a 2006 forecast on October and then 6 Dec 2005, and updated in April 2006, again 31 May 2006, again 3 Aug 2006, and again 1 Sept 2006.

He then scores himself. For example, if there were a year with five more tropical storms than average and we had predicted two more storms than average, he gives himself a skill score of 2 over 5 or 40 percent.

His predictions do not seem to differ much from the government - except for the above release cycle and the self-scoring angle.

My take away is that he is legitimate - a major self promoter but reasonably accurate in his huricane season predictions, and a person who on faith deems all stats as "noise" unrelated to Global warming by humans because he sees long term variations in earth temp over the "ages" we think we know something about.

In others words, he does not know squat about math in the area of statistics.

[WinkyDink]

3. "Meteorologists say sure humans cause climate change"```HEADLINE:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-03-21T171110Z_01_L2125910_RTRUKOC_0_US-CLIMATE-METEOROLOGISTS.xml

Maybe the nay-sayers---who all seem to be U.S. TELEVISION weather-casters---are part of the ignorant "some people" who seem lately always to be "saying" something Right-Wing.

As a Penn Stater, I hope the GW-deniers aren't fellow graduates (One in every four meteorologists in the United States is a Penn State graduate.).

[Jacobin]

4. His prediction record is laughable

Oh, and he 'revises' his predictions each year half way through the season....like revising your bet on a horse race halfway through the race

[TZ]

6. he's an extremely specialized scientist

and is so focused on his area, that its easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, although it is POSSIBLE his claims about no connection with global warming and hurricanes, which is more of what he is saying than denying it exists at all is true, but me I think there is a connection. Its proof that specialization is not necessarily a good thing. This is actually a point of debate in scientific circles. I have found that specialized doctors are VERY good at their specialties but not so hot in the rest of the field of health. A GP has overall better general medical knowledge, IMHO.

[BushOut06]

7. There is no disputing the fact that global warming causes stronger hurricanes

Whether it causes more of them, I don't know - but it's pretty solid fact that warmer waters equals stronger hurricanes.