John Coleman, the founder of Weather Channel, has written an open letter, in which he claims the theory of anthropogenic climate change is no longer scientifically credible. So far The Express, a major British newspaper, and the American news service WND, have provided favorable coverage of the letter. The Express article has also been linked to by the Drudge Report, giving it wide exposure. The full text of the letter is as follows:
_______________________________________
Dear UCLA Hammer Forum officials,
There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future. Efforts to prove the theory that carbon dioxide is a significant “greenhouse” gas and pollutant causing significant warming or weather effects have failed. There has been no warming over 18 years. William Happer, Ph.D., Princeton University, Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Willie Soon, Ph.D., Harvard Smithsonian Observatory, John Christy, Ph.D., University of Alabama and 9,000 other Ph.D. scientists all agree with my opening two sentences.
Yet at your October 23 Hammer Forum on Climate Change you have scheduled as your only speakers two people who continue to present the failed science as though it is the final and complete story on global warming/climate change. This is major mistake.
I urge you to re-examine your plan. It is important to have those who attend know that there is no climate crisis. The ocean is not rising significantly. The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar Bears are increasing in number. Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms (in fact storms are diminishing). I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but the science is not valid.
I am the founder of The Weather Channel and a winner of the American Meteorological Society honor as Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year. I am not a wacko flat Earther. Nor am I a “paid shill” (as has been claimed) of the Koch Brothers. I am a serious Professional. I am strongly urging you to reconsider your plan.
I can be reached at 858-xxx-xxxx (redacted by Anthony) and will be pleased the discuss this matter with you and answer questions. I will be happy to provide links to all of the points I have made in this email. As a quick scientific reference you may wish to look at the website of the Non-governmental Panel on Climate Change. http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
My best regards,
John Coleman
A copy of this email has been supplied to The LA Times, KCBS/KTLA and NBC4 Los Angeles
(h/t to Eric Worrall for the reminder. John sent me the text of the letter two days ago)
In The Express article they add:
Climate expert William Happer, from Princeton University, supported Mr Coleman’s claims.
He added: “No chemical compound in the atmosphere has a worse reputation than CO2, thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control and energy production.
“The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.”
In 2010 a high-level inquiry by the InterAcademy Council found there was “little evidence” to support the IPCC’s claims about global warming.
It also said the panel had purposely emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.
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Aside from the lack of warming indicated by satellite data (and satellites, by the way, provide the preferred data sets for alarmists attempting to scare us about sea level change and arctic/antarctic ice loss, among many other things), there is a profound lack of any harmful impacts of climate change that can be proven to be linked to humans. Where are the increases in tornadoes, hurricanes? Where are the sinking islands? Any year to year weather-related crises cannot be blamed on climate because we need two decades of data to establish any link. Yet, the crisis-addicted scientists and politicians continue with their ridiculous proclamations about climate change!
By the way, EVERYONE can do their part to STOP the climate industry from taking away our freedoms. Drop CAGW-sympathetic media like CNN, MSBNC, The Weather Underground, The Weather Channel etc. from your computer, laptop and smart phone. Register your anger with their advertisers, who perhaps don’t realize the damage these people are doing to both science and society. And finally, for those folks in the U.S., PLEASE vote appropriately in November. This is perhaps one of the last elections where we can attempt to reverse the societal damage brought upon us by the extreme left-wing progressives. If we can win back the Senate, we stand a very good chance of defunding CAGW climate “science” once and for all. Thanks.
Hmm… interesting.
Intruiging from a UK point of view. It seems that the sceptic lobby has many competent (and of course, many less so) adherents, but the warmists have a near-monopoly of policy-makers. My job here is usually (having no technical expertise to offer) to ask questions which I hope will encourage explanations.
The sceptics need a flag-bearer. Who is this guy? What weight will his words carry? My experience of the Weather Channel on US visits is of excruciatingly repetitive and irritating hypes of ordinary weather variations. In UK, the Daily Express is a toilet-paper publication whose main claim to fame is a full front-page headline warning of extreme weather every time we are likely to have a hot day, or an Atlantic depression is approaching ( which it does about 30 times a year).
Is John Coleman a one-day tabloid headline or will it mean anything more?
Among skeptical policy makers are the PMs of Canada & Australia & a number of members of the US Congress. There’s a good chance that the Republican nominee for president in 2016 will also be a skeptic.
Yes indeed, I like Abbott very much and I think he has real potential. Maybe also Harper, about whom I know little. But neither presently has ‘come out’ and challenged the IPCC narrative directly.
Abbott did at least call BS on CACA, & a top adviser of his has specifically called IPCC a crock, or words to that effect:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/31/tony-abbotts-top-business-adviser-accuses-ipcc-of-dishonesty-and-deceit
People in the UK lead a sheltered life! John Coleman was revered by my grandfather in his later years when The Weather Channel was just a series of forecast slides and very little watchable “programming”. Still Grandpa loved it. I started watching it too, becoming one of my favorite must see programs that flickered across my TV screen every day. Given that I last saw my turn of the century a few years ago, I can attest to its John Coleman beginnings, meteoroic rise, and then subsequent corruption by watermelons.
I expect the UK’s largest independent news outlet (BBC) will be on to this like a flash ready to broadcast it far and wide.
Oh God here comes the nurse again with the tablets.
I’m curious what was Mr. Coleman’s role, if any, in the Weather Channel’s official statement on global warming:
“More than a century’s worth of detailed climate observations shows a sharp increase in both carbon dioxide and temperature. These observations, together with computer model simulations and historical climate reconstructions from ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings all provide strong evidence that the majority of the warming over the past century is a result of human activities. This is also the conclusion drawn, nearly unanimously, by climate scientists.”
http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/global/
DUH!
Nothing.
Today’s “The Weather Channel” and John Coleman’s “The Weather Channel” only have the name in common.
Then it seems misleading to show his photo alongside a large “The Weather Channel” logo, doesn’t it?
Nope.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/23/weather-channel-founder-john-coleman-there-is-no-significant-man-made-global-warming-at-this-time/#comment-1769582
Please stop trolling. You are embarrassing yourself.
Barry,
It’s only misleading to those who can’t read the words inside the dialogue bubbles in you average comic book The rest of us can see that it actually has words just below the picture that say founder of the The Weather Channel.
Best regards in finishing your latest literature.
Tim, how is he embarrassing himself? You don’t think it is relevant that the company that John Coleman founded has a different position on AGW than he does?
http://carbon-sense.com/ DR Patrick Moore watch his video
Cutting CO2 emissions prescribed by our climate “doctor” is akin to bloodletting by medical doctors centuries ago because of ignorance.
It would be like a prescribing a fast for a patient starving or cutting back on fluids for a dehydrated patient.
Increasing CO2 has been the best thing humans have ever done for plants and all the creatures living on this planet.
The latest USDA crop estimates for US corn and soybeans production from this years growing season are more record crops……….by a wide margin.
You can thank the increase in CO2 for part of that record…….and this Summer’s cooool weather and timely rains.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProd/CropProd-10-10-2014.txt
“Corn production is forecast at 14.5 billion bushels, up less than 1 percent
from the previous forecast and up 4 percent from 2013. Based on conditions as
of October 1, yields are expected to average 174.2 bushels per acre, up
2.5 bushels from the September forecast and 15.4 bushels above the 2013
average. If realized, this will be the highest yield and production on record
for the United States”
“Soybean production is forecast at a record 3.93 billion bushels, up slightly
from September and up 17 percent from last year. Based on October 1
conditions, yields are expected to average a record high 47.1 bushels per
acre, up 0.5 bushel from last month and up 3.1 bushels from last year.”
Not one of the gloom and doom projections over the last 3 decades has occurred. In fact, just the opposite has happened…………the earth is greening up, vegetative health and biosphere is booming and crop yields/world food production is soaring.
“…I can be reached at 858-xxx-xxxx (redacted by Anthony)…” And no email address either. Does he really want to reject everyone who has anything to say?
REPLY: Don’t be foolish, I’m not in the mood- Anthony
“There is no significant man-made global warming at this time”
The past 12 months—October 2013–September 2014—was the warmest 12-month period among all months since records began in 1880, at 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average.
This breaks the previous record of +0.68°C (+1.22°F) set for the periods September 1998–August 1998, August 2009–July 2010; and September 2013–August 2014.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/9
And to think there was no El Niño during this period!
Rubbish, that’s all rubbish. I’ve gotten my data from NCDC.
Even if those 12 months were as warm as pretended (which I grant you they weren’t), it wouldn’t matter. The trend is what matters, & from 2000 to 2013 that was cooling, even in HadCRU’s heavily bent, folded, spindled, mutilated, abused, molested & manhandled until its mother wouldn’t recognize it series.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/12/no-warming-left-to-deny-global-cooling-takes-over-cet-annual-mean-temperature-plunges-1c-since-2000/
And that within an even longer period of flat GASTA “data” (as “adjusted”) without any statistically significant global warming, starting, depending upon series source, c. 1997.
Moreover, the world has been in a pronounced cooling trend at least since the Minoan Warm Period, c. 3300 years ago, & arguably since the peak of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. The centennial scale ups & downs (such as the Medieval WP & LIA) since then have just been fluctuations around the declining trend line.
According to the measurements, there isn’t a cooling trend in max or it looks like average temps either. There is a big cooling trend in min temps though.
My record on attribution isn’t very good in my opinion, so I’m trying to avoid that.
But, I’ve been professionally doing database work for almost 2 decades now, so I am confident this is what the data says. And it’s all available for anyone who wants to check my work.
Mi Cro
Am fascinated by what you have done and still trying to get my head around it. Would love for Anthony to allow you to post an article so it can be explored by all.
Two questions;
The 1997/8 global T anomaly just shows up as a “normal” small blip. Why? (ie what are the implications statistically given the large jump on all databases).
What sort of graph would ensue with the adjusted data? (wondering if a similar graph evolves and hence am trying to understand what info your method brings to the fore.)
Fascinating and thanks for the insight.
TonyM,
I’ll do a better job of an explanation in the morning, but I’d suggest following the url to the reports folder and get the continents zip, and there should be a zip of daily reports and look at those.
Those and my description of the process above will be something to ponder on 🙂
tonyM commented
He did, it was based on earlier work, but the basics are the same, I’ve just tried to reduce the influence of partial years data to make sure that can’t be used as an excuse for the fact it doesn’t show any warming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/17/an-analysis-of-night-time-cooling-based-on-ncdc-station-record-data/
So, while pondering this I realized the anomaly I’ve created is different than GAT anomaly charts. They are based (I think) on anomaly against a base line temp. These are based on the temp the station measured yesterday. I started this because of how quickly it cools once the Sun sets. I was trying to see if when looking at very large numbers of station, if today was warmer than yesterday, at least to the resolution of the measuring equipment (the station). These charts show there isn’t in Max temps, but there is differences in min temp, some years up, some down.
This I don’t have an answer to. I suppose it would have a lot to due with how the adjustments are made.
Have you taken your average daily data and then plotted the cum value vs time (running sum)? This is a way of seeing if there is buried in the “anomaly” data a small signal of temp change over time. If it is truly random noise fluctuations in the data, the cum should show a fairly flat line with no significant rise or fall.
Hi MikeO,
I think that Mi Cro needs some reference work to help him understand the data. I’ve been trying to explain the low signal to noise ratio problem with differentiating two temperatures to determine a rate of change for the entire day. Since global temps are rising at about 1-2 C per century, it would seem that the dominant, unaccounted terms in the day/night cooling are orders of magnitude larger than a small change due to CO2 increases year to year.
Is there any good on-line resource for understanding how to calculate the ratio of Noise to signal in the temperature data, and the subsequent rate of change as calculated by Mi?
–CG
c grier commented
When it’s 10 or 20 below for a week in January, come August when it’s the statically 2 degrees warmer, when was the energy that warmed the surface thermalized? 60 years ago, or this Summer?
Could you give a link to the data? just going to sourceforge is not specific enough and I cannot the file referenced.
The url in my name.
MikeO commented
I don’t think I’ve done exactly this, but I have added a Sum by period, and I’ve done an average and now sum for the entire report run.
If you haven’t, it might help if you go to sourceforge and get the continents.zip, start looking at some of the report data. It has both yearly and daily averages, and the sums can be calculated by multiplying the averages by the counts.
Martin,
Are you seriously getting your panties in a twist about 1/100th of a degree? Not to mention that this means that the temperature now is pretty much the same as it was in 1998…..16 years ago. Hey, its your numbers, I’m just pointing out what your numbers say. No significant warming, just like Coleman said.
But I’d like to draw your attention to the balance of his statement, which included the words “man-made”. The earth has been warming up for the last 400 years at more or less the same rate. So, with only 1/100th of a degree in the last 16 years (again, your number not mine) we can only conclude that if there is a man-made component, then it is very, Very, VERY small.
Not to mention that earlier in the Holocene & prior interglacials have been much warmer than now, without benefit of man-made GHGs. Nothing unusual has happened since 1977, 1945, 1900, 1850 or 1750, thus the null hypothesis of normal natural climatic fluctuations cannot be rejected.
The warming cycle in the early 18th century, coming out of the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum, was both higher in amplitude & longer in duration than the warming of the late 20th century (1977-96). The warming of the early 20th century was virtually identical to that of the late.
The thing is 1998 was a super El Nino. Right now we are seeing temps above 1998 without an El Nino…
“The hottest years on record were in 2005 and 2010, which just pipped the “super El Nino” year of 1998 – a year often used by climate change sceptics to claim global temperatures haven’t increased in as long as 18 years.
The fact 2014 may challenge for the hottest year even with at most a weak El Nino is one reason climatologists warn action must be taken to curb the rise of greenhouse gas emissions that trap ever more heat from the sun.
The bureau’s Dr Watkins said heat records could be broken even without a “full-blown El Nino” because of the planet’s broadscale warming. Sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific, for instance, had increased by about 0.5 degrees since the 1950s.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/pacific-warms-towards-el-nino-levels-as-australia-heats-up-20141021-119bzl.html#ixzz3H2Eo6GCf
Martin,
Your first bite of the poison apple [is] believing that this was as hot as 1998. It wasn’t. The snows say so.
The surface data are being cooked via changes of methods, and the past is regularly made colder. Compare GHCN v1 and v3 for the same stations and the same times and you find that what ought to be the same data has a colder past in the v3 version.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/summary-report-on-v1-vs-v3-ghcn/
Reality is reaching the point where it is no longer possible to hide the fudge in the historical numbers. We’ve got crop failures in snow all over the N.H. and we have overlapping ski seasons in N and S hemispheres. As we continue cooling, this will get stronger.
We’ve got glacial ice growth in many places. We’ve got record Arctic rate of ice growth, and a return to prior area / extent of ice. We’ve got Antarctic record ice extent.
Wake up and smell the coffee, see the snow, feel the cold. If you still think it’s the ‘warmest ever’, I suggest medication adjustment…
The Express is a major British what…?
Martin October 23, 2014 at 8:57 pm
Martin, I suggest you peruse the various posts by Bob Tisdale on sea surface temps, El Nino and other ocean processes. You will come away with a considerably better understanding of the data and how to interpret it.
Martin;
“The hottest years on record were in 2005 and 2010, which just pipped the “super El Nino” year of 1998 – a year often used by climate change sceptics to claim global temperatures haven’t increased in as long as 18 years.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do the math Martin. 1998 was only 16 years ago. The lack of statistically significant warming extends to two years before the 1998 super El Nino. So, by your own assertion, 1998 is NOT what skeptics are using to calculate the 18 year period during which temps haven’t increased.
But let’s get back to perspective. You still have your panties in a twist about a very small number. If you put $1 in a jar every day for 100 days, and after that you put a penny in every day, you could rightfully say that on day 101 you had more money in the jar than ever. And you could make the same for day’s 102, 103…but would you have enough more money to change what you could buy with it in any meaningful manner? No, you could not. So let’s put the temperature record into the same perspective:
noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
Mods ~ interesting result in pasting this link in. I meant it only as a link. But it is displaying the animated gif instead, but only the first two slides. Is there a way to either enable all the slides or else reduce it to just a link?
[Made it a link. Seems to give all the slides for me (may need a click?) -ModE]
Unfortunately, it looks like the European Union isn’t listening. They are still dreaming of reducing CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030. They can only bankrupt their countries, since they haven’t met any of the targets of previous agreements.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29751064
Coleman, he of the journalism degree with a career in being a weatherman is your Patron saint?
It’s laughable – he worked in weather, not climate science yet you want to claim him as some climate science expert. He showed his colors when he lost his marbles in 2007 – he’s just another pro-biz conservative.
Rob Gunderson:
Your statement sounds like some sort of appeal to authority, which precludes a substantive thought.
Look, If we believe the 97% of climate scientists claim (and I do not), then, 97% of climate scientists could not and still can not accurately predict neither weather nor climate.
Weatherman, who work in the field of climate, have a good track record of predicting weather, and by an large have also had a better track record with regard to climate predictions.
This particular weatherman is perhaps one of the best in the field.
I trust this gives you some insight as to why Coleman is so well haled.
Not an appeal to authority – an outright ad hominem attack, the last refuge of a scoundrel who can’t muster an argument on its own merit.
Vince Causey October 24, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Not an appeal to authority – an outright ad hominem attack, the last refuge of a scoundrel who can’t muster an argument on its own merit.
++++++
I can live vicariously through a straight shooter like you Vince. I pointed to the old argument, that only the opinions of (fill in the blank) Climate Scientists matter. We agree that this is utter nonsense.
Of course he worked in weather. And he did so considerably longer than Mann and Jones worked in their spoof climatology. Mann, Jones et al. are mainstream profiteers who make their living out of warm-mongering. Coleman is an independent mind and can afford to call a spade a spade!
What Jones & Mann practice is the misnomer “climate science”, not climatology. Bogus, GIGO GCM-reliant “climate science” displaced genuine, observation-based, hypothesis-testing, falsifiable climatology in the ’80s. “Climate science (TM)” is anti-scientific.
You really need to fix the claim WND is a “news service”. Google News lists the Coleman story in:
Express, Daily Mail, Washington Times, Breitbart News. Have to wait for tommorow’s Telegraph to see what Booker says.
Is there any public reply from the addressees to Mr. Coleman
Missing from most discussions is thermalization of EMR energy. When a gas molecule absorbs a photon of EMR energy and conducts the energy to other gas molecules before it emits a photon, the absorbed EMR energy has been thermalized. If no time passed between absorbing and emitting, there would be no way to tell that it occurred and there would be no ‘greenhouse effect’.
Calculations show that the interval between absorption and emission is very short, 10 microseconds. However, the time for conduction to take place, which is the time between impacts of gas molecules, is much shorter, about 0.0001 microseconds at sea level conditions. Thus it takes about 100,000 times longer to emit an absorbed photon than to thermalize the absorbed energy. Obviously absorbed terrestrial EMR energy is thermalized. References to the calculations are included in the Science explains… section of http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
If the absorbed photons were emitted, the flux would not decline. Instead the flux at 15 microns goes to zero in 300 meters or so. The energy has to go someplace. It is conducted to other molecules. It is thermalized. At TOA, the flux near 15 microns appears to be mostly S-B radiation from clouds. The ‘line’ at 15 microns is from the sparse CO2 molecules that have been excited to radiate by reverse thermalization from (collision with) non ghg molecules.
Thermalized energy carries no identity of the molecule which absorbed the photon. In the terrestrial radiation spectrum (nearly all 5-50 microns) water vapor is about 15,000 ppmv with 465 absorption ‘lines’ per molecule while the 100 ppmv CO2 increase has only 1 absorption ‘line’ per molecule. Because the increase in absorption opportunities of a 100 ppmv increase in CO2 is only about 1 in 70,000, the effect of this increase in CO2 is insignificant. The process that eventually results in the energy being radiated from the planet is described in Science explains…
Hopefully Mr. Coleman proofread it first, and didn’t sent it with the typos.
What is even more surprising than the UK Daily Express’s publication of this article is that it is still online after three days. Articles like this normally disappear by noon on the same day after a phone call from the University of East Anglia to the digital editor of the Daily Express. Are UEA losing their touch?
“Yes, atmospheric CO2 (carbon dioxide) is increasing, but most of the increase is due to the warming of oceans, which then release some of the CO2 they contain. (Oceans contain 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere.) In other words, CO2 increases did not produce much global warming; warming produced most CO2 increases.” from http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ2.html#wp10187584
On the lighter side of science, I have been in horticulture and bonsai for years. I can tell you this, plants grow better when it rains, than if you just use a garden hose. Why? Rain brings down gases from the atmosphere that plants love. Arn’t plants a great example of life on this planet. If they get more rain than usual they grow and reproduce and transpire more CO2 and oxygen! And there is little we humans can do about changing it. Gud on you Mr Coleman, I have faith in you and your companions and human’s ability to adapt.
When we can’t for some reason, we will perish.