Dr. William Gray, the scientist known as America's most reliable hurricane forecaster, on Friday called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" for making the Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.

Bill Haber / Associated Press

Dr. Gray takes issue with the suggestion that global warming is changing the world's climate and increasing the number of stronger hurricanes.

"For someone of his statue (stature), he's a gross alarmist," Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference, where he delivered the closing speech.

"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Gray, 77, said.

A spokeswoman said Gore was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Nashville Friday; he did not immediately respond to Gray's charges.

With his clutch of papers, simple presentations and off-the-cuff remarks, Gray is a fixture at the annual gathering of hurricane specialists and emergency planners, held this year in New Orleans.

Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm. For the past 24 years, Gray's hurricane forecasts have become the main barometer; recently, his mentee, Philip Klotzbach, has begun doing the bulk of the forecasting work.

Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years.

He claims the current wave of global warming scholars relies too much on models.

"Us older guys that were around in the pre-satellite, pre-computer age, we had to deal with the real weather. Most of these people don't forecast," he said. "They don't live in a real world. They're living in an imaginary world."

These days, Gray is taking particular pleasure attacking Gore, whose documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar that is helping fuel a bonfire of media attention on global warming.

After Gore became vice president, Gray, who says he voted for the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992, said he saw his government funding get the ax.

"Gore knew what the answer was before we even started (looking into climate change), so he arranged funding to only go to those to tell only one side of the story," Gray said.

He voted against Gore in 2000.

Today, skeptics are left out of government funding and even endure a kind of "mild McCarthyism," Gray said.

"If you don't go along with it (global warming), you pay a bit of a price. There's a bit of mild McCarthyism about this whole thing," he said. Critics allege that skeptics are "all tools of the fossil fuel industry," Gray said. "I've never gotten any money from the fossil fuel industry."

Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor who had feuded with Gray over global warming, said Gray has wrongly "dug (his) heels in" even though there is ample evidence that the world is getting hotter.

In recent years, Gray, who says he is a registered Democrat, said he has seen himself adopted by right-wingers, such as Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and the members of the George Marshall Institute.

"How can this warming be politics?" Gray said. "How in the hell did it become so political?"

Gray feels he's right, and that his reputation will be vindicated in the end. "I've asked a few people: 'If I am right I want you to come and throw a few dandelions onto my grave."'

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)