Warm weather or not, Coleman can't cool controversy

Two days after retired KUSI weatherman John Coleman told Fox News that global warming "science is not valid," the Weather Channel issued a statement on October 29 that global warming is real.

"The climate of the earth is indeed warming, with an increase of approximately 1-1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century, more than half of that occurring since the 1970s," reads the Weather Channel statement. "It is known that burning of fossil fuels injects additional carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This in turn increases the naturally occurring 'greenhouse effect,' a process in which our atmosphere keeps the earth's surface much warmer than it would otherwise be."

Coleman, who has been claiming that global warming is a fraud for a long time, told Fox, "It has become a political and environment agenda item, [but] there has been no warming for 18 years."

This is a renewal of an old fracas. Coleman was a co-founder of the Weather Channel, and it has been rumored for years that he was shoved out after a short time with the channel. (I heard it in the early 1990s when I was on KUSI and knew Coleman, but not closely.)

According to thinkprogress.org, "Coleman has admitted that his views on climate change are based on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a non-peer reviewed document crafted by scientists who are reportedly each paid $300,000 by [the conservative Heartland Institute] to argue against the scientific evidence."