Hoax theory pushes limits of believability

Posted on Thu, Jul. 17, 2008
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BY FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com
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A hoax. A scam. ''Grossly exaggerated.'' A conspiracy cooked up by dishonest researchers. ''Public hysteria'' stirred up by a lying media.

And then there's Al Gore.

Bill Gray, the famous old-school hurricane forecaster, has recast himself as the Don Quixote of weather guys on a lonely crusade against big media, Al Gore and climate scientists with their half-baked notions about global warming.

SCIENTISTS DISMISSED

The quarrelsome polemic he delivered at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science bristled with unkind portrayals of global warming believers. He dismissed an overwhelming consensus among the world's climate scientists as the product of mendacious researchers who know what they have to say to get a grant.

You want to believe. After all, Bill Gray's the kind of non-conformist we love here in the big media. Here's this tall, grandfatherly rebel taking pokes at the establishment. A 78-year-old fighter who uses tough language and personal insults. He's a journalist's dream.

Gray said the climate change ruckus reminded him of the tactics employed by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. And he told the UM crowd that modern day McCarthyites in lab coats had blacklisted him. He said that ''after Al Gore became vice president,'' he couldn't get a grant. You want to believe. Although, Al Gore hasn't been vice president for more than seven years and the current administration has been famously hostile to global warming alarmists.

And for someone the scientific community and the media has tried to silence, Gray has garnered a hell of a lot of attention. He has testified before Congress and given variations of his talk: ''We Are Not in a Climate Crisis,'' across the country. With lots of press coverage. A Nexis search using the search terms ''William Gray and global warming'' turns up more than 1,000 articles. Gray, the outcast, has heroic status with the conservative press and think tanks.

And there he was Tuesday at UM, at an open forum organized by NOAA, railing once again about the conspiracy against truth.

DAUNTING LIST

You want to believe. Except the list of the world's climate scientists who've joined this supposed conspiracy has become quite daunting. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in May offered the strongest statement yet: claiming a 90 percent certainty that . . . well . . . that Bill Gray is just wrong about global warming.

Gray blames this stuff on computer modeling (where the grant money goes), which fails to account for all the complexities in the atmosphere. Gray, old school, a pioneer in hurricane science, has always relied on empirical evidence for his long-range forecasts. You'd like to believe. It's a modern version of John Henry versus the steam drill -- old scientist triumphs over the soulless computers. Though it would help if his empirical hurricane forecasts hadn't been so far off the last two years.

It would also help if Gray had published his theories in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

And you'd like to believe Gray mostly because if he's right, sea levels won't rise and our kids won't cook.

You want to believe this cantankerous old man -- no matter what all those other scientists say. We could go on burning fossil fuels until hell freezes over.