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Professor William Gray of Colorado State University is one of America’s leading weather researchers. His work in the field of hurricanes is widely touted.

Gray’s annual prediction of the number of named storms likely to hit the United States has become a staple of the media’s annual buildup to the June 1 start of hurricane season.

He has been studying the Earth’s climate for some 50 years and has testified before Congress as recently as last week.

Surely someone of such eminence has thoughts to share on global warming, the phenomenon everyone’s talking about since the release of the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Media, what sayeth William Gray about this idea that human activities are precipitating a worldwide climate catastrophe?

Chirp, chirp.

While Gray can’t sneeze on the subject of hurricanes without someone making it into front page news — the CSU media relations bureau is set up to handle requests for Gray, by far the most in demand interview on campus, according to spokeswoman Emily Wilmsen — his views on global warming aren’t nearly as sought after or well publicized.

Maybe that’s because Gray’s opinions run counter to the prevailing popular notion that greenhouse gases from humans burning fuel is driving up the Earth’s temperature and leading to things such as stronger and more frequent hurricanes.

Very counter.

“I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people,” Gray told the Washington Post in May in one of the relative handful of well-hidden accounts of his position.

Last week the Associated Press ran a story beginning, “The nation’s top climate scientists are giving ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy.”

The news agency spoke with 19 scientists who had seen the movie or read the book to arrive at its conclusion. Even though one of the film’s contentions is that man-made global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes, Gray wasn’t one of them.

Neither was Phil Klotzbach, Gray’s research associate at Colorado State. Klotzbach said there is little doubt that the Earth’s temperature is rising, What is in doubt is whether human activity is a major factor or whether the warming is part of a natural cycle that plays out over eons.

“If you’d poll 100 scientists you’d get 100 opinions. Dr. Gray might say (humans are responsible for) 2 percent. Others would say 95 percent,” Klotzbach said.

When the media is looking for information on hurricanes, work done by Gray and Klotzbach at CSU is quickly accepted as authoritative. So what do their CSU studies show about global warming and hurricanes? Klotzbach just published a paper titled “Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity over the Past 20 Years.”

While the research found an increase in tropical storms in the North Atlantic region, it found a comparable decrease in the Northeast Pacific.

Bottom line: “This study indicates that, based on data over the last 20 years, no increasing trend is evident in global accumulated cyclone energy or category 4-5 hurricanes.”

“I’d say a lot of (Gore’s) stuff is overblown as far as hurricanes,” Klotzbach said.

How inconvenient.

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Brent Batten’s e-mail address is: bebatten@naplesnews.com.