John Coleman

John Coleman founded The Weather Channel in 1982. He is currently the weatherman at station KUSI-TV in San Diego, California. He spoke as a global warming skeptic at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change and the International Conference on Climate Change (2009). Both events were organized by the Heartland Institute think tank.

John Coleman may describe himself as a scientist or even a meteorologist but he is neither. His degree is in media studies

On climate change
Coleman has called global warming "the greatest scam in history," in an article written for KUSI-TV. He also accused The Weather Channel of "global warming alarmism," shortly after publicly breaking with them.

In his 2008 Heartland conference speech, Coleman argued for "exposing what he called 'the fraud of global warming.' He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose." According to a critical account of his talk, "Coleman spewed the same tired diatribe, accusing Al Gore and carbon credit sellers of perpetrating mass 'financial fraud' and of burying a 'legitimate' debate." Coleman urged other skeptics to help him launch a lawsuit in order to expose "shady practices," saying "if the lawyers will take the case -- sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand and testified, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming."

Coleman's critics counter that his allegations have little, if any, scientific basis. Coleman "claimed that average global temperatures had risen by 'maybe a tenth of a degree' over the last century; strange then that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reported in 2007 that temperatures actually increased by an average of 0.74°C over the same period."

Coleman claims that he has 30,000 backers in the form of those who signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition on global warming, but the National Academy of Sciences called that petition "misleading" and "not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science."

Coleman claims the dubious distinction of writing the first error in the book Climatism! by Steve Goreham. On the front cover it notes foreword by John Coleman Meteorologist, although, as noted above John Coleman is not a meteorologist.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global warming skeptics
 * Heartland Institute
 * International Conference on Climate Change (2009)
 * SourceWatch:Project:Creating Articles on Sponsors and Speakers at The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

External articles

 * Gary Robbins, "Free tix to 'Hate Al Gore' debate at UCI" (University of California - Irvine), Orange County Register (California), March 14, 2009.