Sunday, May 28, 2006

Skeptics

There's a long article in today's Washington Post Magazine on skeptics, by Joel Achenbach. William Gray is the main focus, though some other skeptics are quoted as well. It's more of a profile and not science journalism, and Achenbach gives the skeptics wide range to offer their (often angry) views. For the most part it's stenography. He does finally clean it up a little towards the end, countering some of their main arguments with consensus views.

Wikipedia says William Gray is scaling back his hurricane work to focus more on global warming.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

[blockquote]
Wikipedia says William Gray is scaling back his hurricane work to focus more on global warming.
[/blockquote]

In fact, you can get it straight from the horse's mouth:

[blockquote]
Notice of Author Changes
By William Gray
The order of the authorship of these forecasts has been reversed from Gray and Klotzbach to Klotzbach and Gray. After 22 years (since 1984) of making these forecasts, it is appropriate that I step back and have Phil Klotzbach assume the primary responsibility for our project's seasonal, monthly and landfall probability forecasts. Phil has been a member of my research project for the last five years and has been second author on these forecasts for the last four years. I have greatly profited and enjoyed our close personal and working relationships.
Phil is now devoting more time to the improvement of these forecasts than I am. I am now giving more of my efforts to the global warming issue and in synthesizing my projects' many years of hurricane and typhoon studies.
Phil Klotzbach is an outstanding young scientist with a superb academic record. I have been amazed at how far he has come in his knowledge of hurricane prediction since joining my project five years ago. I foresee an outstanding future for him in the hurricane field. I expect he will make many new forecast innovations and skill improvements in the coming years. I plan to continue to be closely involved in the issuing of these forecasts for the next few years.
[/blockquote]

From the most recent Klotzbach and Gray (formerly Gray and Klotzbach) Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity forecast.
(p.s. , I hope blogger.com starts supporting blockquote soon ... )