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A False Frenzy on Global Warming
Guest Column | By Paul M. Weyrich | July 9, 2008
When I was the political reporter and weekend anchor at WISN TV, the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee, John Coleman was our weatherman. He was s strong conservative and was known for his sense of humor. One time it had rained for 30 days straight. Coleman said if it rained on the 31st day he would produce the weather forecast standing on his head. It rained. He did it. Another time the camera opened on a wide shot of a blindfolded John Coleman throwing darts at a dartboard labeled “Hot,” “Cold,” “Snow,” “Rain,” “Sunny,” “Cloudy,” “Fog,” “Drizzle” and so on. He had had a string of days when his forecasts had been erroneous. John said “Well, this probably is as good as my forecasts these days.” Coleman went on to be the weatherman on “Good Morning America” for seven years. He began the weather channel with his life savings. He subsequently has forecast the weather in New York and Chicago. Today he says his retirement job is weatherman for KUSI in San Diego.
In a remarkable speech before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, Coleman was very serious about global warming as the consummate fraud. He began by saying that we should give credit where credit is due. There is, he said, an intrinsic connection between Al Gore’s campaign for global warming and $4 per gallon gasoline. “It comes down to….the claim that carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks of our power plants is destroying the climate of planet earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam” He then recited Gore’s dire warnings. “The future of our civilization lies in the balance. That’s the battle cry of the high priest of global warming, Al Gore and his agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming.” He said Gore, with a preacher’s zeal, sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
“Here,” said Coleman, “is my rebuttal. There is no significant man-made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future.” Coleman went on to say that the climate of earth is changing. It always has changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.”
Coleman explained that through history the earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “interglacial periods.” He said for the past 10,000 years the earth has been in an interglacial period. That might be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the earth warms up. The glaciers melt and life flourishes. “Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age…Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented out of control warming.”
As with Senator James M. (Jim) Inhofe (R-OK), Coleman makes the case that indeed we may be in a period of global cooling. He said the data is so overwhelming that even the UN had to acknowledge it. So now the best thing proponents of global warming can do is to suggest that global warming is taking a ten-year break on account of the absence of sun spots. “If this weren’t so serious it would be laughable” Coleman quipped. He went on to discuss the science behind global warming. He has dug through thousands of pages of material and examined complicated math and looked at complex theories. “The bottom line is this. The entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue, Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.” At that point he tells Gore and the UN’s intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, “Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated and may I add your scare tactics are deplorable. The earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.” From there Coleman presents the scientific data to prove his case.
It is a remarkable speech. It is posted at www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html Thank God Coleman is in a position to tell the truth. He says younger weathermen are afraid to speak out lest they lose their jobs. Young scientists are similarly afraid of losing research grants.
He blames the media for wanting a crisis and thus reporting pro-global warming stories. But when 31,000 scientists refuted global warming a month ago the media hardly mentioned it. He said that compares to 2,000 pro-global warming scientists on the UN climate change panel who claim that the issue is settled. Coleman said when he and others made a presentation at a New York conference of climate change skeptics the audience was limited to 600 people. Every seat was taken. After his remarks were posted on the Internet, he received hundreds of e-mails and calls supporting his position. “No, I am not alone. And the debate is not over.” Colman concluded by saying, “If Al Gore and his warming scare dictate the future policy of our governments the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession. Drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into the abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy. “My mission,” Coleman ended, ”in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this global warming silliness and let us all get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.” Godspeed John Coleman.
Paul Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
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6 Comments | Post a Comment
The problem with all the global warming hype is that it takes much of our attention away from the main problem, global overpopulation and its direct effect in the polution of the air and sea, the deforestation of much of the earth, the the extinction of and decline in species and wildlife as their habitat is invaded by human activity, overfishing, crime, anarchy in many crowded third-world countries, and even terrorism, though the list goes on and on. We can at least be thankful that at least the global warming frenzy does attack air pollution. Of course, overpopulation is anathma to the world’s religions in their desires to out number each other, and has no value to politicians as real population control can take decades, and what politician cares what happens twenty years down the road!
ctr - that is exactly it.
We have many pressing problems that can truly cause havoc in the next ten years, yet we are focusing on some ethereal idea that might happen in 50 - 100 years.
While we are talking that nonsense, fresh water is becoming scarce and is being bought by global corporations.
Food producing land is being used to produce ethanol which can’t possibly help our problems, but it can starve us.
Trees that provide us with clean air are being cut at a monstrous rate.
Crime and anarchy aren’t just in third world countries. It here. While we are heading into third world status, we aren’t there yet.
We do have millions - up to 30 or more foreign nationals here, illegally. They are breaking our laws on a minute by minute basis. These are laws that citizens are punished for - with fines that hurt their families. Concessions are made for things like stealing, shoplifting, drunk driving, fighting, public indecency, stealing utilities, etc., - calling it ‘cultural differences’
If everyone in this country were to begin breaking all the laws that those here illegally are allowed to break, we would have complete chaos.
It seems that few really think beyond today, beyond our dependency on oil, which can not be solved by more drilling, since that is only more of the same.
Only way we can solve this crisis is to invest in what we have always been good at: new technologies and application of science in changing everyday lives for better. Our energy policy should be directed toward resources that are renewable and will not vanish that soon as oil and coil.
We should be investing more in efficiency of solar, wind, geothermal, and even nuclear. What happened with our research in the domain of fusion?
We need a “new deal” or “put a man on the Moon” energy policy. The one that would provide jobs here and not send them oversees, and the one that will cut once for all our dependency on Middle East oil.
But, it won’t happen any time soon. Not as long as we can and are willing to pay high energy costs and mega-corporations can get their profits. There is really no good incentive for them to cut on those and find better and cheaper sources of energy.
While I am not against drilling, no one has yet explained how that will really help this country.
I’m thinking it will be a global corporation, they all are, that will drill. What reason would they have to sell us oil cheaper than they do other countries? What would be their reason to pump more oil and bring the price down, rather than make such great profits with what they are pumping now?
What reason would a global corporation have for giving these new jobs to Americans, rather than bringing in their own people, or hiring illegals?
We (our government) will not invest in alternative energy until every drop of oil and every particle of coal has been wrung from the earth and every penny of profit been made by the energy corporations.
Imagine a country or a world with the technology for every home to be able to be independent from energy companies. That is a nightmare for the energy companies they are not going to let happen.
If our government does invest in alternative enrgy, it will be for large energy companies to once again have control of it.
Again, if in this country, we can go from that oak box on the wall and we pick up the receiver and ask for ‘Central’, to the phone my son now carries. It is smaller than a cigarette package. It is a phone, can talk to any country in the world, just about, is a computer, is a calculator, is a camera, is a radio, a clock, and much more. You can program in a dozen or more addresses in a city and it will guide you the best route to reach all those destinations.
That has been done in my lifetime.
Now remember the huge, bulky cell phones of just, what 20/25 years ago, and what we have now.
Had this country been as interested in providing alternative energy and specifically individual systems, we would be there by now. Not with bulky batteries to keep us going, but something much smaller.
I remember the old battery radios. The battery was larger than a car battery - now the phone my son has runs on a batter smaller than a dime.
My prayer and my hope is that some large, powerful, wealthy, individual will decide to buck the governments and the energy corporations of the world and begin serious work on systems for individual homes.
The government is not going to do that - in fact I’m thinking they would do everything they can to put up roadblocks.
But, hey, they can keep people from actually thinking beyond the surface if they simply couch it in terms of ‘the Dems’ or ‘the Rep’. That’s the best way to shut down the mind of otherwise intelligent people.
Sorry, but Mr, Coleman is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have seen him speak and he is simply rehashing the same talking points that the “skeptics” have been using for years. It is the Seitz/Singer formula to make it appear there is a deep divide on the science. There isn’t.
July 10 at 9:01 am | #1 | Link
Regarding “global warming”, The Weather Channel, and Coleman, the cable channel should have had enough sense to dismiss Dr. Heidi Cullen over her remarks in early 2007 calling for the revocation of American Meterological Society (AMS - headquartered in Boston) to any meterologist who denied global warming. The Weather Channel did not and I am watching the channel less and less as a result.
Now that The Weather Channel has been purchased by NBC/ Universal (owned by General Electric, the largest lobbying firm in Washington, DC and one of the leding proponents of “global warming"), it would not surprise me that they find some way to have Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann to be on there to blame Bush for “global warming” despite the fact that it has been cooling since 1998!
The Earth’s climate and temperature adjusts more or less like a convoluted sine wave and has been doing it before recorded scientific measurements, even prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Weyrich is right. This is a hoax. Whether the rest of America does remains to be seen.