Weather Channel Founder: Get Politics Out of Climate Debate

Climate change should be an issue based in science, not political maneuvering, according to John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel.

In USA Today, Coleman disagreed with the U.S. signing on to a climate agreement in Paris, and said, "science has taken a back seat at the United Nations."

Coleman cited a report that a U.N. official said the U.N. would "redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy."

"Money, politics, and ideology have replaced science," Coleman said in the USA Today article.

Coleman said that the "hard cold truth is that the basic theory has failed." He pointed out that over one thousand scientists have disputed global-warming claims, according to a ClimateDepot.com report.

Coleman credits the movie "Climate Hustle" as providing an important viewpoint on the climate change issue. In the USA Today article, Coleman called the movie the "ultimate answer" to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary about climate change that was released in 2006.

Coleman questioned the United Nations' motives in the climate change debate. He said the Paris agreement is "all about empowering the U.N. and has nothing to do with the climate."

The Weather Channel has distanced itself from Coleman's remarks. The Washington Post reported a statement Weather Channel CEO David Kenny made in 2014 to CNN: "We're grateful that he got us started, but he hasn't been with us in 31 years. So he's not really speaking for the Weather Channel in any way."

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