Global hot air

I read a good article by David Puner, of Good Magazine, about John Coleman and his take on global warming. I’d never heard of John Coleman before this article, but I like him. He is the guy that founded The Weather Channel (TWC). He was ahead of his time and he knows a thing or two about weather. He was ousted from The Weather Channel in 1983 when it didn’t turn a profit in the first year, “reportedly running $7 million in the red.” He couldn’t find additional funding sources/investors so Landmark Communications enacted a contract clause and pushed Coleman out of the organization. Right or wrong, TWC began turning a profit two years later and Landmark Communications made a staggering $3.5 billion from the sale of the cable channel in 2008.

He’s been a forecaster for over 50 years and he thinks Al Gore and the mainstream media are a bunch of fear mongers. John Coleman doesn’t buy into the science behind the phenomenon known as man-made climate change. He thinks (as I do) it is a part of normal climate change cycles that we’ve had a minor affect on at best. I’ve ranted before about how “we” think we know it all because we have a couple centuries of weather data. Based on those same scientists’ views on the age of the earth (hundreds of millions of years old, if not billions) that is a sliver of data. I didn’t know scientists base facts on less than one millionth of a percent of data. Maybe after a couple millennia of data I’ll begin to believe we have some clue as to what is happening on our planet. Even then, it would be questionable.

Coleman isn’t some lone quack either. “A petition…with the signatures of 31,000 scientists rejecting the U.N. consensus of man-made climate change” was presented just last May. “Nine thousand of the names reportedly belong to Ph.Ds.” Many people point to science and say the debate is over, but I think that arrogance and a political agenda should be taken with a grain of salt. Now, I realize that other science fields play into this discussion (such as geology) but do we really think that we fully know and understand all the factors involved? We have a hard time predicting weather for the next week even with all the technology and data currently available. I think a little patience could go a long way. Are we really as fragile as the dinosaurs?

Coleman has one thing right without question the media hasn’t bothered to vet the story completely and that’s not really a huge surprise. Coleman has been totally ignored by ABC, NBC, CBS – put down by CNN.

“You’ve got Al Gore. You’ve got the environmentalists. And then all the networks come aboard, because they love gloom and doom, the-end-is-near.... From Y2K to killer bees — God, give us something to tell people their lives are coming to an end — cancer scare, HIV, whatever we’ve got — let’s go, Man, scare the hell out of people....”

"Being a climate change dissenter isn’t sexy. Climate change has Hollywood…Al Gore and Barack Obama.... This is a star-driven society…I can’t be a star, I’m too old." I’m hoping someone charismatic and credible will pick up the baton from Coleman and run with it. If you want an interesting read, search for John Coleman on Good Magazine’s site.