Expert: “We’re brainwashing our children” about global warming

Another post from guest blogger Rick Neale of Florida Today, from the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando:

William Gray, the well-known Colorado State University hurricane forecaster, routinely uses the annual National Hurricane Conference as a platform to bash global warming. In a statement to Florida Today, Gray argued that the scientific consensus on global warming is bogus — and “a mild form of McCarthyism has developed toward those scientists who do not agree” that mankind is in danger.

“We are also brainwashing our children on the warming topic. We have no better example than Al Gore’s alarmists and inaccurate movie which is being shown in our schools and being hawked by warming activists with little or no meteorological-climate background,” Gray wrote.

Some scientists believe global warming will actually decrease — not increase — the number of hurricanes that form over the Atlantic Ocean each year. Last Friday, in the final session of the hurricane conference, a pair of climate experts said rising sea-surface temperatures in and near the Caribbean could strengthen vertical wind shear. Robust wind shear is the bane of hurricanes, as it tends to tear apart cyclones during their formative stages.

“If (global warming) were to happen, that is an effect which should be more hostile to hurricane building,” said Thomas Knutson, research meteorologist with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

Knutson and Chris Landsea, science and operations officer with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said historic observation data and computer models debunk doomsday scenarios that foresee armadas of deadly hurricanes, slamming into the Southeast. “Any (hurricane) trend we’re seeing due to global warming — and I do agree global warming’s real, and manmade causes contribute to it — really has very limited impact, very tiny changes,” Landsea said.

Both scientists referred to the global warming studies of ocean climatologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Emanuel noted that from 1972-2004, Atlantic surface temperatures and hurricane intensity were closely linked.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you think the global warming proponents are “brainwashing” our children? For another perspective about Al Gore’s polarizing effect on the climate issue, check out Andrew Freedman’s excellent blog post from today’s washingtonpost.com.