Seen in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.[...]
“We’re brainwashing our children,” said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. “They’re going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It’s ridiculous.”
But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.
However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the quote oversimplifies what some folks have suggestedβthat while longer term global warming (whether natural or human driven) is likely occurring, the recent hyped weather oddities could be the result of shorter-term cycles.
If that were to hold true, then when the shorter-term cycles flip over to more normal modes, would popular media and junk science begin to consider the concerns of longer term climate changes to be bunk due simply to lack of understanding of how the different cycles and trends interact with one another?