PSDBMr Coleman
When you issued your threat to sue Al Gore The Inactivist Journal issued a call for you to Sue Us, a call most recently echoed by Jeremy Jacquot at DeSmogBlog in “John Coleman: Still Waiting for that Lawsuit ‘.
Your most recent screed leads me to use this opportunity to add my voice to the call, and to ask other climate realists to do the same using whatever media is appropriate.
Many in the Denialosphere believe that you actually have sued Mr Gore, or at least have begun the process.
You have not done either despite your repetition of the threat. As Frankbi notes, you are as big a charlatan as Christopher Monckton in this respect.
One can only speculate that it is probably because you are well aware that the nonsense you spout may play well on Fox, but in court it would be immediately seen for the blithering stupidity that it is.
You see Mr Coleman, we want you to go to court and be exposed as a fraud. Even more, if there is any justice in the world, you will be required to pay all court costs and significant damages for bringing frivolous litigation.
Hopefully this would so completely destroy you professionally and privately that we will never hear from you again.
Once again you have polluted the climate discussion with your 
drivel, and it is time for you to put up or shut up. As you can see I am being, and will be just as blunt as you have been. However, in sharp contrast to you I am going to be factual and accurate and give credible sources.
Much is made of your being the founder of the Weather Channel as if this lent your uninformed opinions some weight. Apparently the hope is that people will mistake you for a meteorologist, which as discussed previously is not the same as a climatologist, but is at least a related profession.
It is not generally known that you trained a journalist. No doubt members of that profession are deeply grateful that this is scarcely known as you are discrediting them with your flagrant disregard for facts or accuracy, never mind your bias.
You went on to be a weathercaster (in effect, a performer) and a business person. None of which discredits anything you may say as such, but it is not the credential you pretend.
If your implied credential is bogus, your supposed ‘facts’ are worse. They have been repeatedly and competently exposed as nonsense here and here as have all of the fables you spout, so I will touch on only some particulars.
You say you want a “debate”, but what you really want is to use the Gish Gallop to win a version of “American Idiot Idol.”
It would be a chance to sell your snake oil sham direct to the public without fear of intelligent, informed comment. I have discussed why liars and frauds prefer the public debate format here and here.
The real debate goes on constantly in the scientific literature and scientific forums. Of course participating there requires facts, evidence, logic, and rationality; so small wonder you have shown little enthusiasm for getting involved.
In your Red Eye interview you actually cited the fraudulent Oregon Petition as a source of credibility. The Petition was such an obvious and laughable hoax that I suppose it is consistent with the rest of your case.
In your most recent travesty you choose to try and defame good and worthy scientists, to your shame.
Of Revelle you say of his work “It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies.”
Gee, a scientist working on something that may be of huge importance would like to keep doing the research? How very unusual. Do you suppose he worried about his appearance as a teenager too? Any other news flashes of the obvious?
Of course you try to paint it as unusual and somehow sinister, which is disingenuous and patently absurd. You go further in your statements of the obvious and note that Revelle, as Director of the Scripps Institute seemed to worry about funding all of the time.
Have you ever directed anything? Is there a head of any department, business, or enterprise of any kind who does not worry constantly about funding? Far from demonstrating that Revelle was an empire builder you reveal yourself as a slanderer.
In your interview you said say of the history of climate change 
science “It started off with some environmentalists, some one world politicians…”, while more recently “The story begins …” and so on. Basically you are trying to have it all begin with the 1957 Revelle and Seus paper.
Right, that would sure explain:
- Carbon Dioxide and Climate Scientific American July 1959
- 1958 Newsreel about global warming
- 1953 Popular Mechanics article about global warming
The facts are easily available and a 12 year old with a search engine could have gotten them right. If this were a grade six assignment it would deserve an F-.
Since you seem to be incapable of doing the simplest internet search I suggest you start with History/Discovery of Global Warming and Wikipedia before you pretend to know what you are talking about.
Your ignorance of CO2 science does not even grasp the basics already well understood in the 19th century. Please try to drag your understanding up to at least the year 1900, preferably beyond.
- What is the evidence that CO2 is causing global warming?
- The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps
- Yet more CO2
- A role for atmospheric CO2 in preindustrial climate forcing
- Calculating the greenhouse effect
You say “These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas.” Gee, could that be because it had already been shown over a century before? They didn’t prove gravity or that the earth was round either … you forgot to mention that.
The absurdity of your argument just gets worse and worse.
You suggest that environmentalism’s only issue was car exhaust and industrial pollution (bullshit), that it had pretty much triumphed by the 1970s (bullshit) due to technological innovations when only one of the ones you cite had actually been introduced by 1975.
According to you, these fictional events created a crisis of purpose for the environmental movement in the 1970s, so the now 20 year old “research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment.” Twenty years earlier being “just at the right moment.”
You then try to portray the late 1970s as a period of global warming frenzy particularly within the scientific research community. The fact of course is that it was a focus of research by only a handful of scientists (easily verifiable, which is why you provide no source).
Do you even believe this drivel yourself? or is it just for the gullible people you are scamming?
The rest of your piece is such a mix of complete fiction (more so than the earlier part, if that were possible), paranoid delusion and nonsensical speculation that it’s almost impossible to decipher what it is you are pretending happened, much less how it is supposed to correspond to reality.
Naturally you provide no sources – how could you provide sources for fantasy?
Your explicit and implicit allegations about climate scientists, the science profession in general, and specific individuals are deeply insulting. If this challenge has been insulting as well then I guess it proves the axiom that ‘what goes around, comes around.’
Your Fox News appearance was on the show “Red Eye.” When I was a teen a ‘red eye’ was a part of the anatomy found between two cheeks, but not on the face; remarkably apropos in this case.
For all I know you are a nice person, but with respect to climate change your behaviour is a disgrace, both professionally and as basic civil discourse.
So please sue! Sue Al Gore, sue James Hansen, sue the IPCC. Please learn first hand how judges feel about having their intelligence insulted and their court’s time wasted.
We don’t need the frivolous circus of a climate debate, but would love the spectacle of you being held accountable for your lies and slanders.
So come on Coleman you fraud, put up or shut up!
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 111 … still no evidence.
IMAGE CREDITS
John Coleman by kusinews from Wikipedia
“There Is no Darkness But Ignorance” (London, England) by takomabibelot
intelligence ignorance by extension 504
Was Is Peace / Freedom Is Slavery / Ignorance Is Strength by Joel Franusic
Greenfyre's 
I appreciate the bluntness with which you respond to coleman. I think it’s long overdue.
In the tv interview he says there’s “30000 of us” and “9000 PhD’s” who contest global warming. He failed to tell the ‘smart’ people watching fox’s newscast, that the vast majority of those PhD’s are not climate scientists. In fact many are MD’s, which not sure why you’d go talk to your neurologist about the ins and outs of climate science.
Take a look here http://www.petitionproject.org/ . Only 114 of the 30000 are in atmospheric sciences, though it doesn’t explain what there degree is.
Great, he made a successful tv station, doesn’t mean he knows anything about climate change. Oh, and he was ‘forced’ to leave the twc shortly after he founded it. I think they made a smart move.
And, for all my searching, I can’t seem to find if he has anything more than a bachelors degree in meteorology. Which in no way enables you to be an authority on climate change.
Have you had a post where you described what you mean by realist? Realism has been used in the past to describe different things.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism
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You’ve done better than I have – I’ve only been able to find a degree in 1957 from the University of Illinois – in Journalism. 🙂
Are things different in the USA? Here in the UK, meteorologists
tend to be back room boffins. Weather presenters here are not working scientists. They have to understand what they’re talking about, but they don’t have to be experts in the field. They are employed (by the media) for their communication skills, not their scientific expertise.
And no weather presenter in the UK would ever get way with talking about “thorms” and “thowers”.
But Yes, if John Coleman happens to read this then I heartily agree that he should go ahead and sue. We could do with some more humour in the news.
I disagree – I think Monckton is both more intelligent and more deranged than Coleman, which is no mean feat. But then I’m biased, as a Brit I have far more exposure to Monckton than Coleman.
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Maybe Coleman isn’t deranged. At least, if he is, maybe his views on climate change are not caused by the derangement.
What if he is just an example (o.k. an extreme example) of the general lack of public knowledge i.e., on climate science, the cause of climate change, and intervention efforts. Coleman seems to represent alot of the usual obliviousness and denial.
I am inclined to think former president Bush liked to watch TWC and had the weatherperson he deserved.
Fortunately, Americans now have the president they deserve, and he is speaking more openly to the public about the truth of climate change and the stakes involved.
Keep up the education. 🙂
S2, I’m a Canadian (to answer a question you asked *waaaaaay* back), and we basically have a strong exposure to American media. I also have a bit of a personal experience with weathermen, as my dad worked as a meteorologist after he got his degree (in physics, which is a remarkably transferrable degree). There are the “backroom boffins”, as you note, but the presenters are usually trained as well (they’re usually chosen for their charisma and public speaking skill, as I understand it). The issue comes from public exposure: Many folk only know the weather from their own personal experience and the man on the TV who knows so much more about the theory behind it and has the fancy satellite maps. The same type of folk probably can’t tell the difference between weather and climate. Add in the ideological observations (i.e. see here, starting at 21:50, for a good example) and you’ve got a powder keg ready to kick in when the founder of the weather channel does the legal equivalent of prick-waving.
After the Coleman inteview was aired by Fox, and then appeared on YouTube, a lot of denialist believed this: “Al Gore sued by over 30.000 Scientists for fraud”
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ
Never underestimate the pure stupidity of the denialists.
Yes. Even if he is typical of deniers, lots of people are hardly laughing off his opinion. (No one seems to be noticing that he also thinks he has superpowers beyond those of mortals.)
The American Meteorological Society’s policy position is consistent with the IPCC, yet so many broadcast weathercasters are busy spewing ridiculous, uninformed opinions on climate change. Like many media types, they seem to not only have their eye solely on the ratings, but they need to be seen as one of the big guys. They are the t.v. station’s ‘scientists’.
Of course, it’s America. Freedom of speech, media personalities, and all that.
But isn’t there something that Coleman and other broadcast weathercasters posing as scientists can be charged with?
Coleman does seem to have a clinical problem for his healthcare professional to address, but that doesn’t explain alot of similar behaviour from his ‘colleagues’.
At the very least, the AMS needs to do something about its certification process. Coleman and others are certifiable, all right: certifiably criminal.
S2,
Yes meteorologists are the same here as you have in the UK. They can become a meteorologists with little more than a meteorology degree or a journalist degree. I wouldn’t take the advice on climate change of a person who has just a bachelors, which really doesn’t lend you to any great amount of research experience.
The link to the 1959 SciAm article goes to page 3 and not page 1.
Here is the link to page 1:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=carbon-dioxide-and-climate
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As they teach in journalism & the law 101, in the media, the truth is an absolute defense. Al Gore will never be sued because everything he says is supported by scientific fact.
So no lawyer would ever take Coleman’s case, and this has been all about bluster and bullshit since the day he first made the headlines.
Coleman won’t sue.
Right now he has a following and he’s preening himself in that adulation.
Al Gore’s lawyers would wipe the floor with John Coleman and I suspect he’s clever enough to realize that fact.
Of course we can always hope that like so many other fools shown through history, he begins to feel himself invincible and he takes that one step too many…..
Great work as usual. So glad I found this site.
I believe you meant global cooling in this paragraph:
“You then try to portray the late 1970s as a period of global warming frenzy particularly within the scientific research community. The fact of course is that it was a focus of research by only a handful of scientists (easily verifiable, which is why you provide no source).”
Thanks for the great work…keep it up.
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Ah…I thought you were referring to the “70’s Ice Age Myth.”
I read an essay awhile back about the nature of ideas in science, the way it takes a long time for new ideas to gain credence and acceptance amongst other scientists, both in their own field and then in the broader scientific spectrum. It used examples of scientists whose work is now considered mainstream, but who had to persevere for decades before their ideas were fully accepted in the scientific mainstream. Some died before it ever happened. A couple won Nobel prizes.
Sadly, I read it in a rush and can’t remember the title or author (or even publication). It was unintentionally speaking to the delusion of Global Warming as a fad that you sometimes hear, or the idea that the majority of climate scientists would simply accept AGW based on little evidence and no skepticism.
That’s why I always chuckle a little when I hear the classic Galileo argument from deniers (while I cry just a bit on the inside). They don’t seem to realize that using the story of Galileo, the AGW crowd would be the best fit in the analogy. Their ideas were wacky and insane at one point, and only through decades of research, observation, peer review and scientific skepticism in the face of opposition from powerful interests did they become accepted. Just because a scientist rages against the machine with new ideas does not make him Galileo. It is only those who are eventually vindicated by future generations that can lay claim to that title.
What a testament to free speech that we allow such treasonous drivel.
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[…] 20, 2009 | # | The Boy Who Denied Wolf: A Parable for the Age of Global Warming. [cached] (Via Greenfyre.) […]
Kudos on your excellent deconstruction of Coleman. One point however, CO2 is probably not the biggest cause of this warming trend. Other greenhouse gasses appear to be even more troubling than CO2: methane and nitrous oxides.
Our diet and animal agriculture turn out to be bigger warmers than all the planes, trains, car, trucks and ships combined. Reference: UN FAO report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”
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Al Gore single-handedly got Nafta passed, and exported all of our jobs outside of the US, and destroyed American’s ability to produce anything. This set in motion a series of events which unraveled our country and made it impossible to ‘produce’ our way out of the current depression. Now the same man that caused that is telling us that we must buy Carbon credits from his company “Blood and Gore” as a sort of penalty for our wicked ways for all these years. A penalty which will be used to finance a 1 world government, which oh wow, we NEED now because the USA is in the midst of a depression and collapse (caused by none other than Al Gore & Co.)
No my friend, this was planned from a long time ago, and the fruits of Al Gore paint a picture of what is really going on, more than all of our mere words.
Wake up and stop being manipulated. You have the power of free thought. Really examine the evidence and you’ll see for yourself what is truly going on behind the scenes to manipulate us.
You will now break free of your free of your mind control programming and are fully awake individual. You are happy now!
I do not believe this debate either way, and almost all of you including the author have no credentials on the subject. Which is the exact same argument you are using against Mr. Coleman. Everyone should go out and do their own research and study CO2 and its possible effects before giving your diagnosis and personal oppinion. I do know that almost everything we believe we obtain from outside sources. No one should take another human beings, who is capable of error and miscalculations not to mention deciet,words into account with out proving it first. Just because someone sounds like they know what they are talking about and seem to be very intelligible, does not mean they are right. the best liars or spreaders of deciet tend to be some of the most intelligent people. I do know i do not want to be taxed to breathe, drive, shop etc., and not to mention the job losses for companies or can not afford to buy credits or manage them wisely. I do agree we should move away from non-renewable resources, and we all should care about our planet. I think it is absurd that the same proponents of global warming (especially governments) say that carbon is a hazard to the atmosphere yet they do not lable war as a huge contributing factor that not only puts carbon into the atmosphere but hurts the planet with radiation and the use of chemicals and gasses along with biological weapons, probably do more damage to earths balance then any factory burning gas could.