| John Coleman | |
|---|---|
John Coleman, KUSI News Weathercaster |
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| Born | John Coleman October 15, 1934 Alpine, Texas |
| Occupation | Weather Forecaster |
| Spouse(s) | Linda Coleman |
John Coleman is an American TV weatherman noted, along with entrepreneur Frank Batten, for founding The Weather Channel. He presently works as an on-camera weather caster at KUSI-TV in San Diego but is no longer affiliated with The Weather Channel.[1]
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Coleman started his career at WCIA in Champaign, Illinois, doing the early evening weather cast and a local bandstand show called At The Hop while he was a student at University of Illinois. After receiving his journalism degree in 1957, he became the weather anchor for WCIA's sister station WMBD-TV in Peoria, Illinois. Coleman was also a weather anchor for KETV in Omaha, WISN-TV in Milwaukee and then WBBM-TV and WLS-TV in Chicago.[2]
At WLS, Coleman was teamed with Fahey Flynn, Joel Daly and Bill Frink to form the Eyewitness News team, creating a news brand name and establishing a highly successful new local news format derisively dubbed "happy talk" by a local television columnist. This style of local news has been widely copied. The team dominated Chicago television news ratings for more than a decade. During his time at Chicago's WLS-TV, Coleman was one of Chicago's most popular weathercasters, famous for his amusing and irreverent style. It was then that Coleman became the original weathercaster on what was then the brand-new ABC network morning program, Good Morning America. He stayed seven years with this top-rated program anchored by David Hartman and Joan Lunden.[1]
In 1981, he persuaded communications entrepreneur Frank Batten to help establish The Weather Channel, serving as TWC's CEO and President during the start-up and its first year of operation. After leaving TWC, Coleman became weather anchor at WCBS-TV in New York and then at WMAQ-TV in Chicago, before moving to Southern California to join the independent television station, KUSI-TV in San Diego, in what Coleman fondly calls, "his retirement job."[1]
In the fall of 2007, he described the current concern over global warming "a fictional, manufactured crisis, and a total scam.".[3] In 2008, Coleman gave a speech of the same tone, before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, blaming the "global warming scam" and environmentalist lobby, for rising gas and food prices. He also declared the scam "a threat to our economy and our civilization." [4]
Coleman has also made appearances on CNN, Fox News Channel and on the Showtime program, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, to share his global warming views. Coleman recently published an article entitled "The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam"[5] in which he promotes the idea that many scientists and politicians have been embroiled in fraudulent activity based on incomplete science and a political motive for a world government. Coleman says the genesis of the global warming movement was the claims of scientist Roger Revelle, an early mentor of Al Gore.
In January, 2010, Coleman produced a special report for KUSI-TV, entitled Global Warming: The Other Side, in which he forwards his view on Global Warming as a scam—and lays out what he believes to be evidence of a deliberate manipulation of world temperature data by NASA and others.[6]
Coleman has no education in the field of climate change. Coleman sees himself as an expert on weather (albeit a journalism degree in 1957 from the University of Illinois), not on climate or climate change.[2][7][8][9]
Coleman was born in 1934 in Alpine, Texas, the fifth child of a college professor and his math teacher wife, Claude and Hazel Coleman. He is married to Linda Coleman, and lives in a retirement community in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo.