Networks Respect 'America's Best-Known Forecaster,' Except When He Talks about Global Warming
Bill Gray is “America’s best-known forecaster,” said CBS’s Mark Strassman, and a “veteran forecaster,” according to ABC’s Ned Potter. The networks treat him like the expert he is, until they want to talk about global warming. Then he gets ignored because he thinks global warming hype is a hoax.
“Every weather forecaster of any kind is wrong sometime, but I wouldn't bet against Dr. Gray,” said CBS “weather consultant” Bryan Norcross in an April 3 report.
However, that network bets against Gray on a regular basis, as do the rest of the media.
Despite all the network stories on climate change, Gray hasn’t been asked to comment once in the last year about global warming and only one time in the last five, a Nexis search showed. But when his annual hurricane predictions come out, the networks are quick to cover them as they did April 3 this year. Gray and all of the other major hurricane predictions were wrong for 2006, as journalists had to admit after the fact.
On the CBS “Evening News,” Strassman’s report was all focused on Gray. “At today's national hurricane conference in New Orleans, 700 weather watchers talked about one man … Bill Gray, America’s best-known forecaster. And his prediction for this hurricane season, watch out,” Strassman said.
Over at ABC "World News with Charles Gibson," anchor Charlie Gibson hinted that Gray might not have acceptable positions by saying he’s “considered something of a renegade,” but even then, Gibson admitted he’s “often quite accurate.”
Something of a renegade indeed. According to the March 28, 2006, Washington Post, Gray’s view of global warming is almost heresy compared to what the networks preach. “I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people,” the paper quoted Gray.
The Post even described him as “often called the World’s Most Famous Hurricane Expert.” Daring to disagree with the mainstream media and Al Gore supporters has meant losing “most of his government funding,” and he has had to put up more than $100,000 of his own money to continue his research.
In fact, the Post reported that Gray thinks “in just three, five, maybe eight years, he says, the world will begin to cool again.”
Considering how closely the networks follow his view of the climate, and the amount of respect they give him, ordinarily reporters might listen to that position. They do think he’s correct some of the time, just not in the case of global warming.
CBS does regular global warming stories and, in February, “Early Show” anchor Harry Smith said “all of this is going to be underwater” – meaning Florida.
As recently as April 2, ABC was talking about the inevitability of global warming. “Scientists say the world’s temperature will rise about two degrees in the next 50 years no matter what we do, but if we act now it might level off after that,” said ABC’s Bill Blakemore on April 1. Blakemore has spoken out publicly about his views on global warming, accepting the claim that “civilization as we know it is over.”
