From the Daily Reporter-Herald:

Global warming is happening, but humans are not the cause, one of the nation?s top experts on hurricanes said Monday morning.

Bill Gray, who has studied tropical meteorology for more than 40 years, spoke at the Larimer County Republican Club Breakfast about global warming and whether humans are to blame. About 50 people were at the talk.

Gray, who is a professor at Colorado State University, said human-induced global warming is a fear perpetuated by the media and scientists who are trying to get federal grants.

Here Dr. Gray reiterates a view held by climatologist Pat Michaels, who testified before the North Carolina Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change

that federally funded climate change research was running … about 15 to 1 in favor of the climate getting hotter. Michaels observed that in meteorology, forecasts are made days in advance, but as each new datum arrives, it changes those forecast slightly ? to either cooler or hotter, depending. Each new datum holds an equal likelihood of influencing the forecast to warmer or cooler, Michaels observed ? so the odds of a new fact changing the forecast to warmer is therefore 50 percent. This principle should hold for climate change forecasts as well, Michaels said ? each new finding should be equally likely to alter the global-warming forecast to slightly less or slightly more warming.

That’s not the case for climate-change forecasts, Michaels found, not at 15:1, when the chance of a new fact leading to a warmer forecast is not 50 percent, but almost 94 percent. Based on his finding, Michaels argued in favor of research bias owing to the nature of federal funding. It is incumbent upon researchers to prove that their area receiving federal funds is critical, worthy of federal funds. Finding that a problem is less worrisome than previously thought is unlikely to persuade Congress to spend as much on research toward that problem ? what with all the other near-crisis areas of federal research.

Here’s the Carolina Journal account of Michaels’ testimony.