News the drive-bys passed up

On the day when all the drive-by media in U.S. are bent forward and backward hyperventilating about a washed out politician winning an award that put him in the same company as Yasi Arafat and Jimmy Carter, the real climate/meteorology authority of the world, Dr. William Gray, gave a lecture at the University of North Carolina telling the audience that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth. We have to go all the way to Australia to read about the news of Gray's lecture. I guess the words of an authoritative scientist means nothing to the drive-by gang.

Here's from the Sydney Morning Herald:

ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

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.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"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."

His speech was given to "a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists" by telling them

. . . 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.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.

And

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

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

"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."

These opinions of a real working scientist is clearly politically incorrect. The last comment is especially a sad fact well-known among the science community today. Grants, or fundings, dictate everything and it can make or break a career. At the end of the day, however, it's neither how much grants you have, nor how popular you are, nor whether or not you are an insider or outsider. It is still the truth of the knowledge that is really what science is all about.

Update:

I have been using the term "drive-by" media in the sense that's the kind of so-called "main-stream" media reporting driven by their own agenda without much concern of the truth or accuracy of their contents. They can ignore important happenings if it does not fit in with their agenda -- such as not reporting Dr. Gray's lecture. And they can make up things to fit their agenda. Strangely they really do believe "fake but true" can be justified. Dan Rather is gone, but his former comrades kept his spirit alive and well. The original use of the term "drive-by" media can be found here.