John Coleman, the jovial and energetic meteorologist who delighted San Diego television viewers for two decades and angered scientists for insisting that climate change is a hoax, died Saturday.
He was 83, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Coleman died at his home in Las Vegas, while surrounded by family, according to KUSI-TV, where he served as a forecaster from 1994 to 2014, when he retired.
His retirement capped a 60-year career during which Coleman co-founded the Weather Channel, which began as a little seen offering in the early days of cable television to a popular source of coverage of everything from blizzards and hurricanes to California’s wind-driven wildfires.
Alex Tardy, a forecaster at the National Weather Service, said Sunday, “‘This is a big loss for the weather community. He brought a lot of energy and color and enthusiasm to forecasting. My kids loved watching him on TV.”
Tardy also said Coleman never tried to push his skepticism about climate change being man made.
“We had good talks,” Tardy said. “I enjoyed it.’
Coleman was honored by the American Meteorological Society as Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year in 1983. The organization credited Coleman for “his pioneering efforts in establishing a national cable weather channel,” according to the AMS website.
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. 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.
In 1972, Coleman and his craftsmen stage crew at WLS-TV created the first Chroma key weather map ever in use.
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.
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 being forced out of 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." Coleman abruptly left KUSI while on vacation in April 2014, with no on-air farewell.
Coleman says he became an "outspoken skeptic" of global warming in 2007 after watching NBC's 'Green is Universal' week, where the studio lights were cut for portions of Sunday Night Football's pre-game and half-time shows. He has called climate change the "greatest scam in history," and has claimed that "the polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar bears are increasing in number."
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