Famed Hurricane Forecaster William Gray Rips AMS, NASA's Hansen; Calls Media 'Sycophantic Followers'

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Prominent hurricane forecaster Dr. William M. Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, appeared at The Heartland Institute's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in New York on March 11 to elaborate on his theory that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures related to the salinity (the amount of salt) in ocean water was responsible for some global warming that has taken place.

Gray also distributed a document containing a scathing critique of Dr. James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who is widely known for his outspokenness on the issue of manmade global warming. Gray's document criticized the American Meteorological Society (AMS), an organization that issues a "seal of approval" to broadcast meteorologists, for awarding Hansen the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal.

"I am appalled at the selection of James Hansen as this year's recipient of the AMS's highest award - the Rossby Research Medal," Gray wrote. "James Hansen has not been trained as a meteorologist. His formal education has been in astronomy. His long records of faulty global climate predictions and alarmist public pronouncements have become increasingly hollow and at odds with reality. Hansen has exploited the general public's lack of knowledge of how the globe's climate system functions for his own benefit. His global warming predictions, going back to 1988 are not being verified."

According to Gray's statement, Hansen's famous 1988 prediction of global warming had turned out "to be very much less than he had projected," but Hansen is still out campaigning about the issue as a global crisis.

"Hansen and his legion of environmental-political supporters (with no meteorological-climate background) have done monumental damage to an open and honest discussion of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) question," Gray wrote. "He and his fellow collaborators (and their media sycophantic followers) are responsible for the brainwashing of a large segment of the American public about a grossly exaggerated human-induced warming threat that does not exist."

Although many have called for Hansen's dismissal, including his former supervisor John Theon, a retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Gray explained why he thought Hansen has survived at NASA with his political stances concerning global warming.  

"It is surprising that Hansen has been able to get away with his unrealistic modeling efforts for so long," Gray wrote. "One explanation is that he has received strong support from Senator/Vice President Al Gore who for over three decades has attempted to make political capital out of increasing CO₂ measurements. Another reason is the many environmental and political groups (including the mainstream media) who are eager to use Hansen's modeling results as justification to push their own special interests that are able to fly under the global warming banner." 

Gray also wrote that the AMS had been commandeered by a number of global warming activists, hence the decision to bestow Hansen with the organization's highest honor.

"We AMS members have allowed a small group of AMS administrators, climate modelers, and CO₂ warming sympathizers to maneuver the internal workings of our society to support AGW policies irrespective of what our rank-and-file members might think," Gray wrote. "This small organized group of AGW sympathizers has indeed hijacked our society."