Weather Channel founder calls global warming a scam

Last update: November 12, 2007 - 3:58 PM

The founder of the Weather Channel cable network is getting some heat over his contention that global warming is "the greatest scam in history."

John Coleman, now meteorologist of KUSI-TV in San Diego, issued that declaration in a lengthy blog posting on www.icecap.us.

Among Coleman's points:

• The campaign to assign a degree of human responsibility for global warming was hatched by "dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives" in the "late 1990s to create an illusion of rapid global warming."

• From there, "friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going." Then, "environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild 'scientific' scenario."

Coleman then went on to try and separate belief from science: "Global warming, i.e. climate change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you 'believe in.' It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of lifelong expertise."

Coleman's views have been circulated widely among like-minded blogs and websites but has received scant attention otherwise.

Among those challenging him is Daniel Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress. Weiss told the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin:

"We are seeing the impacts of global warming now that were not supposed to occur until years from now."

Weiss cited as examples the melting of Greenland's ice sheets and a higher level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than most scientists had previously predicted.

"Whether or not the sea-level rise prediction is 3 feet or 7 feet, we know that the phenomenon is real because it's happening today," Weiss told the Bulletin.

The Weather Channel, following numerous media inquiries after Coleman's blog posting went live, declined to directly respond to its founder's views, but said, "The Weather Channel is an advocate for environmental efforts and has adopted a broader initiative, called Forecast Earth, which focuses on educating the public about climate change and empowering people to make a difference."

As for how Coleman explains his conclusion, he wrote that he "read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril."

He added that there are "hundreds of other meteorologists ... who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy ... is not valid."

Along with founding the Weather Channel in the early 1980s, Coleman has been a TV weatherman in central Illinois, Chicago, Omaha, Nebraska, Milwaukee and New York. For seven years he was the weatherman on ABC-TV's "Good Morning, America."

To read Coleman's blog, visit www.startribune.com/a3631.

--PAUL WALSH

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