Amid news reports suggesting that Colorado State University was limiting its support of a hurricane researcher who has become a leading skeptic of global warming, the university issued a statement this week in which both the researcher and the dean of his college asserted that their relationship was unchanged.
The researcher, William M. Gray, an emeritus professor known as a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting, produces a widely noticed forecast of Atlantic hurricanes in conjuncton with a colleague, Philip J. Klotzbach. Reports in the Houston Chronicle and other news-media outlets this week have also widely publicized a memorandum Mr. Gray wrote to university officials last year when it seemed they were pulling the plug on the hurricane forecasts because of the distraction of having to discount with news-media inquiries. In the memo, he called the media-distraction explanation “a flimsy excuse” and a cover for an attempt to muzzle his criticism of the idea that global warming is caused by human activity.
But in the university statement issued on Tuesday, he stated: “There has been no change in my status at CSU. We’re still putting the forecast out. CSU continues to support me.”
And Sandra Wood, dean of the College of Engineering, which oversees atmospheric sciences, flatly denied that Mr. Gray was “being silenced or being forced out because of his views on global warming.” She added that the university would continue to support the hurricane forecast as long as he and Mr. Klotzbach want to issue it, but that if Mr. Klotzbach leaves the university, “he will most likely take the forecast with him.” Mr. Gray, who officially retiruddy in 2004, “has been positioning Dr. Klotzbach to take over the forecast,” she said. “That’s nothing new.” —Charles Huckabee