Dr. Gray Slams Gore

[Mikey Gribble]

I saw an article this morning on Dr. Gray slamming Al Gore and his opinions on global warming. Among Gray's many comments, he said Al Gore's theory was "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmophere works".
Gray also said, "we'll look back on this and realize how foolish it was".

I totally agree with Dr. Gray. I just think this whole anthropogenic global warming craze has gotten completely over done and out of hand. Anyways, I thought it was pretty funny that Dr. Gray pretty much called Al Gore a fool. Here is the link to the article.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

 

[Brian Emfinger]

"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said

Are we still living in the dark ages? The world is too big for us to affect? ( I wonder if its actually flat as well???) Right! Who here believes that? You don't have to agree with Gore but this guy is further down the road of stupidity and ignorance than Gore is. I am pretty sure there isn't any doubt about the increase in CO2 levels. I am pretty sure we know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it will increase the temperature. I am pretty sure you can't explain away the CO2 increases as being natural.

He goes on to say:

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

Who needs grants when you have oil companies (or someone) paying you off? I will take stormtracks hurricane experts over this guy any day. Of course even a kid could take the average and add or subtract 2-4.

 

[Terry Tyler]

I am pretty sure there isn't any doubt about the increase in CO2 levels. I am pretty sure we know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it will increase the temperature. I am pretty sure you can't explain away the CO2 increases as being natural.

i agree with you, brian...

im unsure of some of the concepts of global warming...but i do agree with that, and the fact that humans are contributing to polluting the water, air and the ecosystem we are currently living in...

i saw this crazy commercial a while ago about global warming...they had these two people sitting on a rail-road track...talking about global warming, and they pretty much made into a metaphor about the train coming down the track...

there is no doubt, as even the layman knows...we ARE contributing to pollution of the waters, air and land of this planet...surely it doesnt all float out to space...so it must be staying here...

with that said...they say that a volcano emits more green-house gasses then a whole country, and they even say clouds help reflect rays and enhance greenhouse type gasses...

im not sure of what to believe, except for...whats gonna happen is gonna happen...

 

[Mikey Gribble]

You may be able to disagree with him on the global warming issue Brian, but there is no refuting the fact that Dr. Gray is an expert in meteorology and his opinion should not be dismissed without facts to argue against it IMO. I'm not saying that we don't have some good hurricane forecasters on here, because we do (I think there's even a few NHC forecasters), but I'm betting Gray can hold his own with the best of us.
The article mentioned how Dr. Gray believes that the slight increase in temperatures is a result of ocean temperature cycles, related to the salinity of the water. Does anybody know if he has done any papers on this? If not, are there any other decent papers or articles on this?

 

[Brian Emfinger]

You may be able to disagree with him on the global warming issue Brian, but there is no refuting the fact that Dr. Gray is an expert in meteorology and his opinion should not be dismissed without facts to argue against it IMO. I'm not saying that we don't have some good hurricane forecasters on here, because we do (I think there's even a few NHC forecasters), but I'm betting Gray can hold his own with the best of us.
The article mentioned how Dr. Gray believes that the slight increase in temperatures is a result of ocean temperature cycles, related to the salinity of the water. Does anybody know if he has done any papers on this? If not, are there any other decent papers or articles on this?

I am sure he puts a lot of time and effort into it (hopefully) and I'm sure he knows a lot about meteorology (hopefully) BUT it seems more guesswork than science to me. I don't know his success rate but I know that if I was betting on the Kentucky derby and was allowed to make a bet after a mile then that would probably increase my odds of winning substantially, especially since I know the range of possible winning horses is already/usually extremely limited..

And when he makes statements like the aforementioned that are obviously so out of line with reality how can I not look at his other "work" and be even more skeptical?

 

[Kevin Scharfenberg]

Dr. Gray's arguments against AGW have been thoroughly debunked in many quarters over the past several years. The best debunking I've read is here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-on-agw/#more-295

As far as I can tell, Dr. Gray has not yet published a scientific paper in response to these critics, but just keeps repeating the debunked arguments anyway.

It's funny how some will blindly except Dr. Gray's completely political opinions as fact yet write off the scientific arguments of hundreds of scientists from across the world as "not enough proof".

 

[Robert Dewey]

I'll believe Gore when he reduces his carbon footprint.

 

[Charles Kuster]

I remember Dr. Gray speaking some about this at the 2007 Storm Chaser Convention. He brought up some good points in that our computer models can hardly tell us what will happen in 3-4 days, so why should we believe them over a period of many many years? He also mentioned that this warming that we are experiencing is strictly natural.

While I do think that some of this warming can be attributed to natural cycles I think humans are contributing at least somewhat to the problem. We have been adding CO2 to the atmosphere and this is probably raising temps at least slightly.

I don't think it was appropriate to essentially call Al Gore a fool. No one knows for sure exactly what is happening or why it is happening. Plus there are many scientists who do not agree with Dr. Gray. I remember Dr. Howard Bluestein gave a talk the next day at the convention and said something like "Unlike Dr. Gray I do believe the models." He was not referring directly to the long term climate models, but this seems to imply that he sees some truth in the models.

In the case of Global Warming I think everyone should be respected for their opinions and research since we don't know enough to accurately describe the warming that our planet is experiencing.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

I actually don't have any objection to the part where Dr. Gray basically calls Al Gore a fool, stictly because there are parts of his movie that could be refuted with no more than the knowledge obtained in an intro. to meteorology course.
I do agree that different opinions should be respected, so long as they have some sort of scientific foundation. I also agree that we DON'T know what exactly is causing the climate to warm. I definitely lean towards the natural warming end of the spectrum, but I am far from having my mind made up on the matter. I am way to ignorant on the subject to have drawn conclusions. I just think it's ridiculous when anybody says matter of factly that this or that is causing the warming. The one thing I am certain of is that we aren't nearly smart enough to fully understand the complexities of the earth's climate and we are fools if we think we do.

 

[Paul Redmond]

Allow me to be on record in calling Al Gore a Fool, not to mention a drama queen attention seeking demigog. Oh we should all bow down and grovel before Al Bore after he invented the internet and solved global warming.

Get real. Computor modelling of the atmosphere is a study still very much in its infancy. As stated correctly above, even the best models today are "relatively" accurate for only the next three days. Our ability the affect the atmosphere is trivial at best, yet atmospheric events have had traumatic affects on human history.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

Well allow me to be on record for calling Dr Gray a fool as well. Gore is closer to the truth than that guy. I think the stakes are a bit too high for people to say that human aided/influenced global warming is not possible. I think that regardless of your ideas on the level of our influence on gw, it is probably not a good idea to ignore it and that seems to be what Dr Gray is advocating. Just because we are likely in a natural warming process doesn't mean we aren't altering the process. I would like to hear more from Dr. Gray on his views than just "don't believe the computer models" and because they probably are wrong that must mean I'm right. It sucks that this issue has become so engulfed into a political issue and whether you like or dislike gore/clinton/democrats/bush/republicans - which means we will all be arguing about it 50 years from now whether or not we have confirmed it or not and even if people began starving to death because of it.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

The claim that Al Gore took credit for inventing the internet has been debunked for about six years. The first notion of this claim was published in the partisan Washington Times attempting to sway the 2000 election.

Non-partisan snopes.com has the rumor covered.

link: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

A quick look at current corporate media, advertising and promotion shows that Gore's success lies in driving commercial mega-entities to invest in the idea and possibility of human endeavor having an effect on climate.

My personal opinion is that I'm woefully lacking in knowlege to have a pat answer, but if I'm going to err, I'd rather err on the side of caution, not commerce.

Nothing in life, or the world, is more replaceable than a dollar.

 

[Marc Remillard]

I can't believe there is people thinking it's a natural cycle. Gore brings some proofs in his recent documentary. You can't say this is a normal cycle when you look at the past cycles. Ok, let's say we got a very big natural cycle. Then, how do you explain the fact that this big heating coincide with the beggining of industrialization and mass pollution?

 

[Robert Dewey]

I can't believe there is people thinking it's a natural cycle. Gore brings some proofs in his recent documentary. You can't say this is a normal cycle when you look at the past cycles. Ok, let's say we got a very big natural cycle. Then, how do you explain the fact that this big heating coincide with the beggining of industrialization and mass pollution?

Why can't you believe it? How long of a period are you referring to when you say "past cycles"?

I'm not convinced either way just yet, as I've said in other GW threads. Could the cause be anthropogenic? Sure. Could it be a natural cycle? Sure. As far as I'm concerned, records don't go back far enough to get a true metric of just what a natural cycle is. When you leave billions of years of records on the table, it's hard for to digest that the current period is the only time that has seen a rise in temperatures.

Coincidences happen, that's why such a word is in the dictionary. Just because you roll the same number twice on a six-sided die doesn't mean the die is faulty, nor does it mean that there is some "cause" as to why the same number was rolled twice. It could just be a coincidence.

With that said, it is completely possible that the rise in temperature beginning with the industrial revolution is simply a coincidence... but it's also possible that we were in a period of low global temperatures and are warming up from a previous ice age.

The reason I think Gore is a fool is because he whines that people should decrease their carbon footprint, but is completely hypocritical on the subject.

 

[Alexandre Aguiar]

Allow me to be on record for calling Dr Gray an outstanding and brilliant scientist !!! Go Dr. Gray, go !!!