As you may have read before, my primary complaint about the "Global Climate Change" mafia is their attempt to silence any other opinions. I thought this FoxNews story was a great example of an effort to pressure someone to abandon unpopular views about global climate change.

A pioneering expert on hurricane forecasting says he may soon lose funding due to his skepticism about man-made global warming, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.

Dr. William Gray, who once said that pro-global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children," claims that Colorado State University will no longer promote his yearly North Atlantic hurricane forecasts due to his controversial views.

Gray complained in a memo to the head of Colorado State’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences that "this is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department's capitulation to the desires of some (in their own interest) who want to reign [sic] in my global warming and global warming-hurricane criticisms," the Chronicle reports.

School officials denied that Gray’s stand on global warming was an issue, and said that they are cutting back on media support for his forecasts due to the strain it places on the school's lone media staffer.

"It really has nothing to do with his stand on global warming," Sandra Woods, dean of the College of Engineering at CSU, told the Chronicle. "He's a great faculty member. He's an institution at CSU."

In the fall of 2005, Gray passed lead authorship of the yearly hurricane forecasts to his former student Philip Klotzbach, but he continues to head the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU.

CSU will continue to publicize Gray's yearly forecasts as long as they are co-authored by Klotzbach, officials told the Chronicle last week, but will end their support if Klotzbach, who recently earned his doctorate, moves to another institution.

"It seems peculiar that this is happening now," Donald Wright, a professor on public relations at Boston University, told the Chronicle. "Given the national reputation that these reports have, you would think the university would want to continue to promote these forecasts."

I thought this last statement was particularly interesting. Why would CSU want to drop the well-respected reports from a "great faculty member" who is an "institution"? I doubt the Professor would suggest his global climate change views were part of the problem he was having with the university if hadn't been "counseled" to moderate those views.

I find it odd that the usual torch bearers of academic freedom and free speech are strangely silent when it comes to views that they don't share.