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| Discover Magazine on Global Warming | | Date Created: Aug 06, 2005, 10:12 PM |
The latest issue of Discover magazine (September -- not online yet) which is generally rather good at scientific reporting and writing for the educated non-scientist, has a headline at the top:
"What's the Answer to Global Warming?"
In addition to the article on Sir Richard Dawkins entitled: "Darwin's Rottweiler", there is one article that consists of an interview with a scientist who is an expert on hurricane prediction and global storm patterns. This article is called " Weather Seer: 'We're Lucky'" but the blurb for it says, " William Gray, a guru of hurricane predictions, sees a nasty season ahead and pooh-poohs global warming."
And here I thought most if not all scientists agreed that Global Warming was consensus science...
Interestingly, there's another article in the same issue called, "Up A Creek" where a political operative and two scientists take a float down an Arctic river and talk about Global Warming. In this article it is assumed that Global Warming is a fact and the issue is how bad is it going to get and what should we do about it.
Here's part of what William Gray had to say.
"...Interviewer question:
You don't believe global warming is causing climate change?
William Gray:
No. If it is, it is causing such a small part that it is negligible. I'm not disputing that there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930's and '40's and then there was a slight global cooling from the middle '40's to the early 70's. And there has been warming since the middle 70's, especially in the last 10 years. But this is natural, due to ocean circulation changes and other factors. It is not human induced.
Interviewer question:
That must be a controversial position among hurricane researchers.
William Gray:
Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing. But no one asks us. If you don't know anything about how the atmosphere functions, you will of course say, "Look, greenhouse gases are going up, the globe is warming, they must be related". Well, just because there are two associations, changing with the same sign, doesn't mean that one is causing the other.
Interviewer question:
With last year's hurricane season so active, and this year's looking like it will be, won't people say it's evidence of global warming?
William Gray:
The Atlantic has had more of these storms in the last 10 years or so, but in other ocean basins, activity is slightly down. Why would that be so if this is climate change? The Atlantic is a special basin? The number of major storms in the Atlantic also went way down from the middle 1960's to the middle '90's, when greenhouse gases were going up.
Interviewer question:
Why is there scientific support for the idea [of global warming]?
William Gray:
So many people have a vested interest in the global-warming thing -- all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more. Now that the cold war is over, we have to generate a common enemy to support science, and what better common enemy for the globe than greenhouse gases?
Interviewer question:
Are your funding problems due in part to your views?
William Gray:
I can't be sure, but I think that's a lot of the reason. I have been around 50 years, so my views on this are well known. I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any NOAA money. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me."
Michael Crichton couldn't have said it better. |
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