John Coleman (KUSI-TV)
The retired TV weatherman and founder of the Weather Channel, known for his skepticism of the view that mankind is a significant cause of climate change, is issuing an ultimatum to Al Gore and others who insist "deniers" are the worst of humanity: "So put me to death."
In an interview with MyNewsLA.com, John Coleman expressed how he feels about his critics.
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“I’m just a dumb old skeptic — a denier as they call me — who ought to be jailed or put to death,” he said. “I understand how they feel. But you know something? I know I’m right. So I don’t care.”
Coleman said his intent is to expose what he calls “Algorian” scientists who manipulate data and take billions in government research grants for personal gain.
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He emphasized that global warming is a scientific issue, not a political one.
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But since it had become a political issue, he needed the support of his manager, Michael D. McKinnon, at KUSI-TV, where he worked for 20 years until 2014.
He said McKinnon "strongly supported my skeptical position on global warming,"
"If it hadn’t been for that, I probably would have retired much sooner. [KUSI] gave me a great platform from which to work," he said.
Coleman said Gore’s Oscar-winning 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," "probably stimulated me more than anything."
"I’m happy to see that his new movie seems to be less than spectacular success," he said of Gore's 2017 documentary, "An Inconvenient Sequel."
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Coleman credits Joseph D’Aleo, his meteorological director at The Weather Channel and forecast assistant at “Good Morning America,” with helping him understand the climate-change controversy.
Coleman said people wrongly assume that that if he’s a climate skeptic or opposed to cap-and-trade that he’s against solar or wind power or environmentalism, “or I want to fill the oceans with plastic or something.”
Coleman insisted: “I am an environmentalist through and through. So don’t give me any of that. My son has solar on his house. And pays $16 a month for power in Palm Springs, and I’m excited about the future of graphene.”
He said a day will come when homes are coated with graphene paint and homeowners and car owners “disconnect the power line.”
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“The age of fossil fuels and the electric grid will come to an end,” Coleman said. “Not in my lifetime, but possibly in yours. Time will tell and it’s all wonderful. Our life is good today not because a bunch of politicians have made laws and regulations and try to tell us how to live. Our lives are good today because of science.”
'Without merit'
Last week, Coleman commented on a federal government-commissioned report spotlighted by the New York Times, which falsely claimed it was a report that was leaked because of fear that President Trump would try to suppress it.
But the report, the National Climate Assessment, had been available to the public for as many as seven months.
A project of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report claims "evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans."
It also states "many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change."
Coleman said of the report: "In all its detailed reports linking weather events to climate change and the linking of 'record-high temperatures' with climate change, this report lacks the one key element that is essential to satisfy the scientific basis of the basic claim: linking increases in CO2 with significant climate change. In fact, this report provides absolutely no new science to support this key point."
Therefore, Coleman said, "on a scientific basis it is entirely without merit."
Several experts at the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that frequently addresses climate issues, blasted the Times for printing "fake news" and "fake science."
"The New York Times' front-page story on the national climate assessment represents fake news in collaboration with the deep state," said Fred Palmer, energy policy senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.
He said the first paragraph of the story "gives the game away, claiming there has been a massive warming in the United States since 1980."
"In fact, there has been little if any warming based on satellite readings, corroborated 100 percent by weather balloon readings," he said. "The satellite data readily available on Dr. Roy Spencer’s webpage show 0.28 degrees Celsius warming since 1979. That rate of warming would equal less than 0.75 degrees Celsius over 100 years."
Marc Morano, publisher of the Climate Depot website, said the Times was "hyping a rehash of frightening climate change claims by Obama administration holdover activist government scientists."
"The new report is once again pre-determined science. The Trump administration should reject this new climate report and consider a national commission on climate change with scientists not affiliated with environmental activist groups."
D'Aleo, executive director of IceCap.us and environmental policy adviser at the Heartland Institute, said the "great scientists I have been privileged to know over my long career including Namias, Willett, Landsberg and Gray and the great men who championed the scientific method like Feynman, Popper, and Einstein would be appalled by this report and the overall decline in the sciences and the alarming peer-review failures that allow bad and dangerous science like we find in this report to propagate and be used to support harmful policies."
"I believe the only part of this work that is 'extreme likely' is that future scientists and historians will look on it as a low point in the history of climate," he said.
