Conflict of interest hurricane style

Colorado State Professor William Gray is back out with his ever continuing hurricane guesswork.

DENVER -- Hurricane researcher William Gray lowered his 2007 forecast slightly Friday, citing cooler water in the Pacific and more atmospheric dust from Africa in predicting 15 named storms and eight hurricanes off the East and Gulf coasts of the U.S.

Gray's forecast also calls for four of the hurricanes to be intense.

Gray has been forecasting hurricanes for more than two decades, and his predictions are watched closely by emergency responders and others in coastal areas.

On May 31, at the outset of hurricane season, Gray had called for 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, five of them intense.

Despite the reduction, Gray said, the indicators tracked by his team at Colorado State University call for 60 percent more storm activity than the long-term average.

The June 1-Nov. 30 Atlantic hurricane season averages 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes per year. "Nobody knows for sure, but if the future is like the past, there are these precursor signals out there in the atmosphere on a global scale" that indicate an active season, he said.

Gray's evolving predictions are a joke and I've said so previously. Long-term weather forecasting can't be done with accuracy past 72-96 hours. So why does Gray keep saying this stuff.

Sun -Sentinel columnist and blogger Michael Mayo may have clued us in. In a comment at his blog Mayo on the side, Michael writes.

Second, Jackson is really onto something. Not only does the insurance industry use these forecasts to set rates and assess risk, they also subsidize these forecasts. Just check out the bottom of Gray's webpage, he credits Lexington-AIG Insurance for its financial support.

Go to Gray's webpage and check it out yourself. So why does the MSM publish the work of a scientist who is being funded by the insurance industry that uses his very predictions to help set insurance rates? Why is a scientist taking funding like this? Would Lexington-AIG's funding perhaps sway Gray when it comes time to make his forecasts?

A scandal in the making or is TFM just fishing?

Linked to- Cao, Leaning Straight Up, Right Voices, Webloggin, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl,