Bill Gray is Professor at Colorado State University. Today at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, he stated that he was willing to bet that global temperatures would drop over the coming few years (I'll try to transcribe the exact wording later, his comments can be found about 1h10m into this realaudio file which is listed on this page).
Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann comment on this and other aspects of the hearing on Realclimate. I feel I should gently point out that they have rather missed the point in their suggestion that
So, I'm probably going to sit back and wait for a while to see how many others are prepared to join the fray...
Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann comment on this and other aspects of the hearing on Realclimate. I feel I should gently point out that they have rather missed the point in their suggestion that
This would appear to be a direct call to those "global warmers" (see also here, here and here) who are trying to get contrarians to put their money where their mouths are (with very limited success).Bill Gray's comments are a challenge to all mainstream climate scientists who agree that the dominant cause of the recent warming is anthropogenic and ongoing. I might take up Gray's offer, but I'm really more interested in what the wider consensus is - I don't need to make bets to work out my viewpoint!
So, I'm probably going to sit back and wait for a while to see how many others are prepared to join the fray...
6 comments:
The 'global warmers' tag was tongue in cheek...
This is what I've got from the audio:
Gray: I predict, now I think I know as much as anybody, I'll take on any scientist in this field to talk about this, I predict in the next 5 or 8 years or so the globe is going to begin to cool as it did in the middle 40's.
Here's another part I found interesting-
Gray: I was around as a little boy growing up in Washintong here, the war was on, I was delivering newspapers, and despite the war being on there was talk of global warming because the globe had warmed so much between 1900 and 1940.
I've not heard anyone make that claim about a belief in global warming in the 1940s.
I just also want to give him some credit for making a near term prediction - none of the other believers in "natural" climate change have been willing to suggest that the change will end anytime soon.
Gavin,
Sure, but my comment on Gray challenging all scientists was deadly serious :-)
Brian,
Saw your message to Gray. Good luck, and please keep us all informed!
Jamess
Gray: I was around as a little boy growing up in Washintong here, the war was on, I was delivering newspapers, and despite the war being on there was talk of global warming because the globe had warmed so much between 1900 and 1940.
Brian: I've not heard anyone make that claim about a belief in global warming in the 1940s.
Bill Gray's recollection is supported by Spencer Weart's "Discovery of Global Warming". See
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Public.htm
The rest of Weart's tome is well worth reading too.
Cross-posted this to Real Climate, but I've heard nothing from Dr. Gray about my bet offer so far, and have just emailed him a second time. I'm not hopeful that I'll ever hear anything, but I'll leave a comment if anything develops.
I've had nothing from Gray. Or PC, come to that.
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