Weather Channel Founder Challenges UCLA to Offer Balanced Climate Change Debate on Thursday

Published October 20, 2014

Hammer Museum Event Featuring Michael Mann and Brenda Ekwurzel
on Global Warming Requires an Alternative to Alarmism
with No Basis in the Latest Science

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, is urging UCLA’s Hammer Museum to provide balance to a presentation titled “Tackling Climate Change Nationally and Globally” on Thursday, October 23. The presentation, according to the museum’s website, will “examine the issue” that “despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is a danger to the planet, little progress has been made to reduce CO2 emissions.” The only presenters are controversial global warming alarmists Michael Mann and Brenda Ekwurzel.

In an open letter to UCLA and the Hammer Museum, Coleman notes many esteemed scientists and climate experts dispute the hypothesis that human activity is causing catastrophic global warming and that carbon dioxide emissions need to be curbed drastically to reduce the “danger to the planet.”

Coleman’s open letter below was sent to the Los Angeles Times as well as the television stations KCBS, KTLA, and NBC4 in Los Angeles.

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 [a] 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 will be pleased to 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 Nongovernmental [International] Panel on Climate Change.

My best regards,

John Coleman

To interview Mr. Coleman – a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute – please contact Heartland Institute Director of Communications Jim Lakely by phone or text at 312-731-9364 or via email at [email protected].

The Heartland Institute is a 30-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.