Shades of Gray

Dr. William Gray, one of the most well respected and well known meteorologists in the world, slammed Al Gore and his man-made global warming hysterics. He rightfully noted that the only reason that more scientists weren't speaking out about this is because they see the dollar signs flowing to those who espouse the theory.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

At his first appearance since the award was announced in Oslo, Mr Gore said: "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."

Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the United Nations climate panel for their work in helping to galvanise international action against global warming.

But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.

Salt levels in the oceans? That's a different theory than greenhouse gases. It's also different than the theory that solar output plays a role.

Of course, the fact is that scientists truly don't know or understand all the mechanisms that go into global climate, let alone whether there is truly going to be global warming 25, 50, or 100 years into the future and that man's role in it is making things worse. Computer models are only as good as the data that is inputted into them and many of those models do such a poor job of showing what happened in the past that it is difficult to see why they're relied upon to predict the future.