"It really has nothing to do
with his stand on global warming," Sandra Woods, dean of the College of
Engineering at CSU, told the Chronicle. "He's a great faculty member.
He's an institution at CSU."
In the fall of 2005,
Gray passed lead authorship of the yearly hurricane forecasts to his
former student Philip Klotzbach, but he continues to head the Tropical
Meteorology Project at CSU.
CSU will continue to
publicize Gray's yearly forecasts as long as they are co-authored by
Klotzbach, officials told the Chronicle last week, but will end their
support if Klotzbach, who recently earned his doctorate, moves to
another institution.
"It seems peculiar that this
is happening now," Donald Wright, a professor on public relations at
Boston University, told the Chronicle. "Given the national reputation
that these reports have, you would think the university would want to
continue to promote these forecasts."
One friend
said Gray's views highlight the politically charged atmosphere that
surrounds global warming research in the United States.
"Bill
Gray has come under a lot of fire for his views," former director of
the National Hurricane Center Neil Frank, currently chief meteorologist
at Houston's KHOU-TV, told the Chronicle. "If, indeed, this is
happening, it would be really sad that Colorado State is trying to rein
in Bill Gray."
The Chronicle noted that Gray's
views on global warming had become increasingly personal, with
characterizations of former colleagues and students who disagreed with
him as "medicine men" and a "Gang of Five" conspiring to promote the
idea of man-made climate change.
Gray contends it's all a hoax contrived by scientists
hungry for research funding, media professionals thirsting for Pulitzer
Prizes and foreign powers seeking to create a single world government.
In fact, he says, the warming cycle will soon end, and the Earth will begin a period of temporary cooling. Source
