Topics: weather channel, climate change denialism, john coleman, meteorology, Fox News, conservative media, Sustainability News, Media News, News
The Weather Channel just came out with its official position statement on man-made climate change: it’s happening.
The Weather Channel wasn’t exactly waffling on climate change before — it’s been known to produce some great content on that and other environmental issues, along with a wide array of what it calls “weather adjacent” clickbait. The statement, instead, was clearly timed to deal with the latest media fiasco that resulted after Fox News gave a platform to John Coleman, a climate denier who uses his severed connection to the network to spread his fringe theories.
Coleman’s interview with host Megyn Kelly lead to this PR disaster:
Just as there’s a large and significant difference between weather and climate, meteorologists are not climate scientists; as a whole, they tend to be more skeptical of climate science, and sites like the ones pictured above tend to jump on that skepticism as “proof” that the science isn’t nearly as settled as some would have you think. Coleman, despite spending years as a weather forecaster, was never formally trained as a meteorologist; what’s more, his beef isn’t with any particular studies, but with climate scientists themselves, who, he wrote back in 2010, “look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.”
Lindsay Abrams is a staff writer at Salon, reporting on all things sustainable. Follow her on Twitter @readingirl, email labrams@salon.com.
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