Science & Tech Quote by John Coleman

“Hoax,” “bad science,” “high-jacking,” “greatest scam” isn’t argument so much as atmosphere: a stack of accusation-words designed to make the listener feel conned before they’ve weighed a single chart. Coleman’s line works by collapsing a complex, probabilistic field into a moral melodrama with clear villains and victims. “Hoax” implies deliberate deception, not error. “Scam” upgrades that deception into profiteering. “High-jacking public policy” frames climate action as an illegitimate takeover of democratic governance, turning regulation into something done to you, not for you.

The intent is less to refute climate science than to delegitimize the institutions behind it - researchers, agencies, international bodies - by recoding expertise as manipulation. That’s a classic rhetorical move in modern culture-war messaging: if you can make the process look corrupt, you don’t have to grapple with the evidence. The phrase “greatest scam in history” is also a marketing superlative, the language of talk radio and direct-response outrage. It invites a kind of participatory suspicion: you, the savvy citizen, are being asked to join the club of people who “see through” the con.

Context matters: coming from a businessman rather than a climate scientist, the line leans on cultural authority (practical, real-world competence) rather than methodological authority. It taps into a long-running American anxiety that elites use crises to expand control. The subtext is personal as much as political: if climate change is real, then certain industries, lifestyles, and profit models face limits; if it’s a “hoax,” those limits become tyranny.