New Theory, Sort Of

John Coleman is a "weatherman" on our local, unaffiliated television station, KUSI. "Unaffiliated" means that none of the networks wants anything to do with them and, given the credibility, or lack thereof, of the networks, that says quite a bit about the station and about John Coleman.

John has been a global warming denialist for many years; claims that it is some sort of international plot for nefarious but undefined purposes, and even purports to be offended by it. He has traveled across the nation in a sort of “counter Al Gore” mode, and has done several television specials offering various and sundry contradictory proofs why carbon dioxide is not increasing in our atmosphere and why the increase is not caused by human activity. He seems a little confused at times.

Well, no, I should say that he is a little confusing at times. He is always highly didactic and authoritative in his manner and presents as being entirely certain of himself, even when he is spouting obvious bullshit.

Anyway, he now has presented a new theory for climate change, which is made even more interesting by the fact that he claims it doesn’t exist. The presentation of his theory is accompanied by elaborate artwork showing the position of our planet orbiting around the Sun, zooming out to show our Sun orbiting in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, and then zooming out to show, conceptually of course, the entire universe.

John Coleman does not think small when he presents his theories.

It seems that as our galaxy drifts through the universe (Omigod, our galaxy is adrift!) it periodically encounters “clouds of debris from exploding stars” known as super-novas. It drifts through such a cloud and out the other side and then, in due course, encounters another cloud of super-nova debris. It is the drifting in and out of super-nova debris which causes climate change.

He does not say what that debris consists of, nor what the mechanism is that causes it to change our climate, but then, I guess he doesn’t have to. All he needs to do is to offer it as being a reason which is not greenhouse gasses, thereby giving us permission to continue burning fossil fuels.