The Washington Examiner is promoting a press release from a man predicting “global cooling” who even a climate “skeptic” has called a “scam artist.”

The Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard writes that the “war between former Vice President Al Gore and his critics over global warming is about to hit the boiling point” with a “new claim” from John Casey that “global cooling” is coming. Who is John Casey? The Examiner says that Media Matters called Casey a scam artist "[b]ecause his predictions go against the mainstream." In fact, in 2010 Media Matters quoted blogger Tom Nelson -- who calls climate change a "hoax" -- warning that he thinks Casey is “a scam artist” trying to trick the “skeptic community” into bankrolling him.

Casey created the “Space and Science Research Corporation” (SSRC), which boasts that “it has a dedicated list of 'Supporting Researchers' who have committed their name and assistance to the mission of the SSRC.” Four of these seven researchers are also listed as experts on Casey's other website, the “International Earthquake and Volcano Prediction Center,” perhaps because they make no claim of expertise in climate change, instead stating that they study earthquakes and volcanoes.

Casey also has no background in climate science, possessing only an undergraduate degree in physics and math and a master's in management. Since we pointed that out in 2010, Casey has pumped up his biography, adding that he is “one of America's most successful climate change researchers and climate prediction experts,” even though he does not appear to have ever published a single peer-reviewed paper on the subject.

Instead he wrote a self-published book on climate change "put together" with the help of an astrologer-cum-thoroughbred horse-racing advocate who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Ernest Hemingway. He claims his book, Cold Sun, is “internationally acclaimed,” citing one of his own volcano-specialist “Supporting Researchers” and an anonymous Amazon.com review. In it, Casey predicts that there will be “catastrophic shortages in the world's food supplies” from “global cooling,” and that the first indicators of this will “be felt at any time and certainly by December 2012” (2012 was actually one of the 10 warmest years on record globally and the warmest year on record in the U.S.). Despite his claims of international prominence, neither Skeptical Science nor DeSmogBlog -- which maintain extensive records on the industry of faux-experts sowing doubt on climate change -- have ever written a single word about him.

The actual press release from SSRC should have also set off alarm bells for the Examiner. It announces that SSRC will host a news conference “during which the end of global sea level rise will be formally declared,” adding that this will be as “historic” as its 2008 news conference that no one has ever heard of:

The Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) announces today that a news conference has been scheduled for August 21, 2013, during which the end of global sea level rise will be formally declared and a specific timetable for sea level decline will be released.

[...]

Similar to the news conference of July 1, 2008, when the SSRC issued a declaration of the end of global warming, this next historic news event will be one of the final measures according to SSRC President John Casey that helps put to rest the theory of manmade climate change.

In unrelated news, a recent study found that consuming conservative media erodes public trust in scientists.