Renowned hurricane forecaster William Gray

Nonsense, William Gray said Tuesday.

"There's been so much hype," the Colorado State University storm prognosticator said. "But I don't think there's a real problem. I think global warming has been grossly exaggerated."

Speaking at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, Gray said humans play little or no role in global warming. He said he has been "appalled" by claims that global warming is on the verge of causing great destruction, such as in Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Because the U.S. government is taking substantial steps to reduce greenhouse emissions by cutting the use of fossil fuels, it's imperiling the economy, Gray told an audience of about 200, mostly college students. The problem, he said, is that fossil fuels will be sorely needed for the next four to five decades.

Gray's assertions conflict with several government and university studies indicating that humans have played a significant role in global warming through the production of greenhouse gases. Other studies have linked the gradual warming of the air and water to more powerful hurricanes.

For instance, Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has found that the energy in the average hurricane increased by about 70 percent in the past 30 years. Gray contends such studies are based on computer simulations that are "all wrong."

Gray also lashed out at the media for creating unnecessary public "hysteria" over global warming.

Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast and online journalism at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, said there were too many media outlets for him to judge whether they acting irresponsibly on the issue. On the other hand, Tompkins said, in light of government studies indicating global warming is genuine, the issue is a legitimate one for the media.

"My gut reaction tells me the majority of the reporting shows that global warming is an emerging crisis type of story and that it's man-made more than not," he said. "If we don't excited about that, then what?"

Gray, along with research partner Phil Klotzbach, has become known for developing projections of how many storms will form during a given hurricane season, a field he pioneered and that has put him in the middle of the global warming debate.

For years, the plain-speaking Gray has dismissed warnings of melting polar ice, rising sea levels and more turbulent storm seasons as "so much foolishness." While conceding the planet is indeed warming, Gray maintains that it is the result of a natural cycle of warming and cooling caused by the circulation of the oceans.

"My projection is that in 15 to 20 years, we'll probably undergo a modest cooling," he said Tuesday.  Source

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