John Coleman (meteorologist)

Coleman started his career in 1953 at WCIA in Champaign, Illinois, doing the early evening weather forecast and a local bandstand show called At The Hop while he was a student at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In 1972, Coleman and his stage crew craftsmen at WLS-TV created the first chroma key weather map ever in use. He stayed seven years with the program, which was anchored by David Hartman and Joan Lunden. in what Coleman fondly calls "his retirement job.". Coleman obtained professional membership status in the American Meteorological Society and was named AMS Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year in 1983. Coleman said that after ten years of attending AMS National Meetings and studying the papers published in the organization's journal, the AMS was driven by political, not scientific, agendas and withdrew. == Views on global warming ==

Coleman spoke out as a "rejectionis[t]" of global warming in 2007 after watching NBC's "Green is Universal" week, when as a sign of environmental awareness, the studio lights were cut for portions of ''Sunday Night Football's'' pre-game and half-time shows. In a 2015 open letter to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he claimed that a causal relationship between rising levels of atmospheric and rising temperatures had not been shown to exist. He called global warming the "greatest scam in history" and made numerous false or misleading claims about climate science. Coleman held a bachelor's degree in journalism and stated in interviews that he has not conducted any scientific research in the area of climate change. Coleman's views contributed to his decision to drop out of the American Meteorological Society. == Personal life ==

Coleman was born in 1934 in Alpine, Texas, the youngest of five children born to Hazel Coleman, a mathematics teacher, and Claude Coleman, a college professor. Coleman was married twice. He and his first wife had three children before divorcing. In May 2016, John and Linda Coleman moved to Sun City ==Awards==

• 1983 – Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year, American Meteorological Society. ==References==