The Weather Channel, which is shopping itself around for $5 billion, has pretty much pegged its future on global warming alarmism. All those shows dedicated to spin-y tornadoes, nasty hurricanes, and angry flooding? They're no accident!

Just like they do on the evening news during sweeps, scare tactics scare up viewers. Too bad, then, that the channel's founder, John Coleman, who famously described global warming as "a fictional, manufactured crisis, and a total scam," is rabidly against the direction his baby has taken.

Coleman founded the network in 1992, back when you couldn't get your forecast at the bottom of your Internet browser or via text message on your cell phone.

Now he's airing his rants at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, where yesterday he charged the channel's eventual new owner with "recaptur[ing] the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information."

Which sort of goes against the current trend of the meteorology industry, which is tired of its best and brightest coloring their hair and whitening their teeth just to deliver the sad news to the anchor desk that, yes, it's going to rain all weekend, and would rather have them play an integral part in explaining and forecasting the effects of global warming. Funny, then, that Coleman still has an on-air weatherman job!