Timothy Ball

Timothy Francis "Tim" Ball (born November 5, 1938) is a Canadian geographer. A retired professor, he taught in the department of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1971 until 1996.^[4] Ball rejects the scientific opinion on climate change, stating that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas.^[5] He has worked with the Friends of Science and the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and is a research fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.^[6][7][8]

Education and professional career

Ball received a bachelor's degree with honors from the University of Manitoba in 1970, followed by an M.A. from the University of Manitoba in 1971 and a PhD from Queen Mary University of London in England in 1983.^[4] Ball became an instructor at the University of Winnipeg in 1971, and a lecturer the following year. He then served in the latter capacity for 10 years. In 1982 he became an assistant professor there, and was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and full professor in 1988.^[4]

Research and books

Ball founded the Rupert's Land Research Centre, a historical society dedicated to promoting the history of the area formerly known as Rupert's Land, in 1984.^[9] He also served as its director from then until 1996.^[4] The society placed a particular emphasis on the use of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives.^[10] Ball has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of historical climatology, most of which pertain to reconstructing temperatures in Canada during the past several centuries.^[11] In 2003, Ball co-authored a book entitled "Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay," which was reviewed in the American Indian Quarterly by Theodore Binnema of the University of Northern British Columbia in 2005,^[12] as well as by Fred Cooke in the Auk in 2004.^[13]

In 2007, Ball, along with Willie Soon, David Legates, and Sallie Baliunas, co-authored a commentary arguing that "spring air temperatures around the Hudson Bay basin for the past 70 years (1932–2002) show no significant warming trend," and that, as a result, "the extrapolation of polar bear disappearance is highly premature."^[14] The paper, funded by ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, was a "Viewpoint" article and was not peer-reviewed.^[15][16] While the paper was cited by Sarah Palin to justify opposition to listing polar bears on the endangered-species list,^[6] its findings were contradicted by reports from the U.S. Geological Survey^[17] and other independent researchers, who concluded that man-made climate change was likely to devastate polar-bear populations by 2050.^[16] The paper was also criticized by an expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wrote that it "doesn't measure up scientifically."^[6]

Ball was one of several authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.^[18][19] Most recently, Ball wrote a book entitled The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, published by Stairway Press.

Views on climate change

Ball has said he opposes the scientific opinion on climate change and has stated that he believes global warming is occurring but he believes that human production of carbon dioxide is not the cause.^[20][21][22] Ball rejects not only greenhouse gas–induced climate change but the existence of the greenhouse effect itself.^[23]

He claimed to National Geographic that carbon dioxide causing warming was just a hypothesis, but had been treated as fact because it fit a political agenda and the views of the environmentalists.^[24] He reiterated the view that man-made global warming was fabricated by the environmental movement, particularly Environment Canada, in a presentation he gave in June 2006 to the Comox Valley Probus Club.^[25]

He has also been a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM, an alternative media radio show. On July 21, 2011, while a guest on the show, he stated: "To suggest that CO2's a pollutant when it's an extremely important gas in the atmosphere for all plant life and therefore for the oxygen that's produced, is just nonsense."^[26] He is also one of the signatories of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change.^[27] Ball has also, along with Tom Harris, argued that the National Climatic Data Center misleads the public by announcing premature results from their temperature datasets based on incomplete data, and then quietly updating the data when they gain access to all of it, usually diminishing the warming trend in doing so.^[28] He has also written about ocean acidification from a similarly skeptical point of view, arguing that "Even if CO2 increases to 560 ppm by 2050, as the IPCC predict, this would only result in a 0.2 unit reduction of pH. This is still within the error of the estimate of global average [which is 0.3 units]."^[29] Ball has also said that since he became a vocal opponent of the consensus position on global warming, he has received five death threats.^[30][31]

Climate change-related activism 1990s-2012

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian think tank, states that Ball has disputed anthropogenic global warming since the mid 1990s, instead asserting that global warming is due to natural variations.^[32] He has spoken twice at The Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change, where he was presented as a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.^[33][34][35] However, critics have observed that in fact Ball was a professor of geography there, has been retired since 1996, and that the University of Winnipeg does not have, nor has it ever had, a climatology department.^[7][36] However, Dr. Ball has disputed these claims, maintaining that the climate program at The University of Winnipeg was part of the geography department in the early 1980s.^[37] Also, he asserts that many false claims about his credentials and professional qualifications have been stated as factual by websites such as DeSmogBlog.^[38]

From 2002 to 2012, Ball gave over 600 public talks about global warming and various environmental issues, and from 2002 to 2007, he wrote 39 opinion pieces and 32 letters to the editor in 24 different Canadian newspapers.^[39] He has been called "perhaps the most prominent climate change denier in Canada."^[40]

Television

In 2007 Ball appeared on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an hour and a quarter-long British documentary that aired on Channel 4. He was misidentified in the documentary as Professor from the Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg; Ball left his faculty position in 1996, and the University of Winnipeg has never had a Department of Climatology. Also in 2007, he participated in Exposed: The Climate of Fear, a special presentation of the Glenn Beck Program, with Patrick Michaels, John Christy, and other climate sceptics.^[41][42] In 2010, he appeared on the Michael Coren Show.^[43]

Controversies and lawsuits

Ball claimed, in an article written for the Calgary Herald, that he was the first person to receive a PhD in climatology in Canada, and that he had been a professor for 28 years,^[44] claims he also made in a letter to then-prime minister of Canada, Paul Martin.^[45] Dan Johnson, a professor of environmental science at the University of Lethbridge, countered his claim on April 23, 2006, in a letter to the Herald stating that when Ball received his PhD in 1983, "Canada already had PhDs in climatology," and that Ball had only been a professor for eight years, rather than 28 as he had claimed. Johnson, however, counted only Ball's years as a full professor.^[46] In the letter, Johnson also wrote that Ball “did not show any evidence of research regarding climate and atmosphere.”^[39]

In response, Ball filed a lawsuit against Johnson. Ball's representation in the case was provided by Fraser Milner Casgrain.^[47] Johnson's statement of defense was provided by the Calgary Herald, which stated that Ball "...never had a reputation in the scientific community as a noted climatologist and authority on global warming," and that he "...is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist."^[45] In the ensuing court case, Ball acknowledged that he had only been a professor for eight years, and that his doctorate was not in climatology but rather in geography,^[39] and subsequently withdrew the lawsuit on June 8, 2007.^[45][48]

In February 2011, it was reported that climate scientist Andrew J. Weaver had sued Ball over an article Ball wrote for the Canada Free Press, an article which was later retracted. In the article, Ball described Weaver as lacking a basic understanding of climate science and stated, incorrectly, that Weaver would not be involved in the production of the IPCC's next report because he had concerns about its credibility.^[49][50] Ball contended that the lawsuit was nothing more than an attempt to silence him because of his skeptical position on global warming, despite Ball's own 2006 defamation lawsuit against Dan Johnson.^[51]

Ball found himself at the center of controversy again later that year, when he told an anonymous interviewer that Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, "should be in the State Pen, not Penn State," due to Mann's role in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy.^[52] Mann then sued Ball for libel, and stated that he was seeking punitive damages and for the article to be removed from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy's website, on which it was originally published.^[53] James Taylor, senior fellow of the Heartland Institute, defended Ball, arguing that what he had said about Mann was merely a "humorous insult."^[54] Fred Singer made a similar argument in a 2012 article, saying that what Ball had written was written as a joke and that Mann was "improvidently" suing him.^[55]

Funding sources

Some of Ball's critics have claimed that he has received funding from the fossil fuel industry,^[7][25][56] especially through the organization Friends of Science, which Ball co-founded^[36] and whose scientific advisory board he sits upon.^[3] For example, Peter Gorrie said in the Toronto Star that Friends of Science received a third of its funding from the oil industry. ^[57] Ball himself has publicly denied these claims,^[42][58] as has his wife, Marty Ball,^[3] and The Toronto Sun's Michael Coren, who wrote an opinion column stating that Ball, "unlike so many global warming advocates, is not in the pay of anybody".^[22]

References