Tim Ball

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Timothy Francis "Tim" Ball[1] is the first Canadian climatologist ever and a super-qualified expert on global warming a credential-fudging denialist crank.

Contents

[edit] Credential fudging and climate denial

Ball has been represented in the media as a climatologist (Canada's first, don'tcha know?) who has held a professorship for upward of twenty-eight years. However, he carefully omits this in his curriculum vitae.[2] In fact, he was a professor of geography with a focus in historical climate who retired in 1996. When the Calgary Herald published a letter [3] that called into question the credentials listed for Ball in an article in which Ball attacked Tim Flannery [4], Ball sued for libel, while admitting that he had not been a professor for twenty-eight years.[5] (Don't think too hard about that one or it might make your head hurt.) Before the suit was dropped in 2006 and 2007 (against 3 defendants), Tim Lambert of Deltoid dared Ball to sue him, too.[6] Lambert also expressed doubt over the relevance of Ball's research:

However, hardly any of those 51 publications are in scientific journals but include things like gardening magazines. I looked in Web of Science and could only find four papers by Ball, all on historical climatology, none on climate and atmosphere. I don't see how Ball can possibly win his case, but I guess that's not the point.[7]

Eli Rabett has created the "Tim Ball Award for Resume Stretching" in his honor.[8]

Even within the deniosphere, Ball hasn't come up with anything new or impressive. All he does is constantly repeat points refuted a thousand times about solar cycles and how carbon dioxide is plant food. For example, take a look at his ingenious "refutation" of rising sea levels where he just puts some ice cubes in a glass and lets them melt.

[edit] Creationism

Ball also seems to be a Christian and creationist of some sort. In an op-ed in Canada Free Press, he wrote:

Even though it is still just a theory and not a law 148 years after it was first proposed, Darwinian evolution is the only view allowed in schools. Why? Such censorship suggests fear of other ideas, a measure of indefensibility.[9]

On his website, he attacks Richard Dawkins and claims science, evolution, and environmentalism are religions. He also believes that the Bible's predictions have been just as verified as those made by science:

Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the biblical views on nature, human roles and responsibilities are as logical as any other including modern environmentalism.[10]

[edit] Tim Ball's reading list

Ball recommends some great reading for all the warmists:

There are three Web sites I have some respect for. One is the one I helped set up by a group of very frustrated professional scientists who are retired. That’s called Friendsofscience.org. It has deliberately tried to focus on the science only. The second site that I think provides the science side of it very, very well is CO2Science.org, and that’s run by Sherwood Idso, who is the world expert on the relationship between plant growth and CO2. The third, which is a little more irreverent and maybe still slightly on the technical side for the general public, is JunkScience.com.[11]

He also seems to have some admiration for the works of Immanuel Velikovsky.[12]

[edit] More lawsuits

In 2011, Ball found himself at the receiving end of a couple of libel suits. In February, University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver filed a lawsuit against Ball for his op-eds that accused Weaver of incompetence and corruption. In March, Penn State climatologist Michael Mann filed a lawsuit against Ball and his think tank for publishing statements on their websites that claimed Mann was complicit in a "cover-up" of Climategate and that he had committed scientific fraud.[13]

Since the suits were launched Canada Free Press has retracted one of the interviews with Ball on the website.[14] Furthermore, they seem to have scrubbed a good deal of Ball's articles and Ball-related material.[15]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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