Dr. Tim Ball
Climatologist Tim Ball has just completed a new book called Slaying The Sky Dragon: Death of The Greenhouse Gas Theory. Dr. Tim Ball has spent a great deal of time educating us about climate and the rise to power of the current climate change paradigm. A frequent guest on its rainmaking time, he joined us (along with 1421 and 1434 author Gavin Menzies) to discuss the problems of peer review, as well as on our first climate show with Dr. Joe Daleo and Robert Felix, which has aired in over 80 countries around the world. In this interview, we explore the greenhouse gas theory. Tune in as Dr. Tim Ball discusses the fundamental flaw in the official climate change paradigm.
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Dear Kim
Bravo
It is always worth the time listening to Dr Ball. What a brilliant man. Can´t you have him on every week?
Robert
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/08/cop16-attendees-fall-for-the-old-dihydrogen-monoxide-petition-as-well-as-signing-up-to-cripple-the-u-s-economy/#more-29077
people to sign up to ban “dihydrogen monoxide” (DHMO), which is an “evil” chemical found in our lakes, rivers, oceans, and even our food!
watch the video from the Cancun climate conference, you’d think some of these folks would have enough science background (from their work in complex climate issues) to realize what they are signing, but sadly, no.
People are easy to foul. That is why most politicians are dangerous. Don´t believe a word they say.
That’s a hilarious link, Robert. Stories like that are important, because they show the lack of scientific knowledge on the part of many AGW proponents; their hearts are in the right place, but they really don’t understand how things work.
Dear Kim Thank you again for your insightful interviews, this one and last weeks. As always enlightening and unhysterical, so that one can deal with the issues, without the fear mongering.
You are coming ever closer to the real truths underlying the whole process. When are you going to interview Alfred Lambermont Weber? He is the next step on the ladder to the truth..
Dear Maud,
Thank you for your kind words.
Hello Kim
I was particularly interested to hear again Dr Ball’s explanation of the methane in the Arctic issue. This year, (2011) one of the exam boards here in the UK is basing one of its ‘pre-release material’ questions on the issue of methane emission from the permafrost. Another example of the academic world ignoring questions about the reliability of data in the climate controversy.
Hi Ian,
I’m not clear exactly what your question is and you should write Tim at his new website at http://www.drtimball.com.
I hope this helps. Thank you for listening and commenting.
Merchants of Doubt and the Slaying of Truth
By attacking the scientific community for perpetrating the global warming “hoax,” the authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon are doing what psychologists call “projection.” For a clue why, one only has to examine the academic and professional credentials the authors claim.
Timothy Ball, for example, has repeatedly been caught padding his resume with false and misleading claims — such as being the first Canadian to have earned a PhD in climatology and having been a professor at the University of Winnipeg for 32 years. His PhD was in geography and he was only a professor for 8 years. Even more troubling is John O’Sullivan’s claims of being a “highly successful litigator” in NY and federal courts and being “a member of the American Bar Association” — which if true would mean he is licensed to practice law in the United States. According to the ABA’s membership office, Mr. O’Sullivan is NOT a member. He recently joined as an associate member, which anybody who wants to support the association can do. He certainly is not licensed to practice law in NY (or possibly anywhere else). In addition, he claims to have published “more than 150 major articles” around the world including the National Review and Forbes magazine when he has not.
The authors do not publish their global warming-denial theories and attacks in peer-review publications. Instead they self-publish, as they did in this book. They then try to persuade the scientifically-naive public the reason they self-publish is that there’s a world-wide conspiracy of scientists who are trying to keep the truth from them. In doing so, they have earned a place in history’s rogue’s gallery of pseudoscientists and kooks who have argued that their failure to convince the science community is proof that their crackpottery must be true. Why else would there be a conspiracy to keep their ideas from being published?
The credibility of researchers and authorities in the scientific community — as well as reporters who write about science — depends on their unflinching commitment to telling the truth. Whenever they abandon that commitment, it’s time to toss their work into the dustbin of history, alongside the blather of phrenologists, flat earthers, and eugenicists.
For a better understanding how a small cabal of fringe scientists and their mud-throwing accomplices can gain so much news attention and create so much confusion among the public, I highly recommend an astonishingly important new book written by Naomi Oreskes, professor of history and science studies at UC-San Diego, and science writer Erik M. Conway.
The book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, is a virtual genealogy of denialism.
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308008722&sr=8-1
Oreskes and Conway trace the origins of today’s powerfully-effective disinformation machines back to three leading, government scientists, Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, and S. Fred Singer, who as scientific advisers to the U.S. government pushed for ever-increasing stockpiles of nuclear weapons. When the nuclear arms race ended with the signing of the nuclear arms treaty, these “Cold War Warriors” found themselves, to put it succinctly, underemployed. So they turned their talents and powerful connections in Washington, Wall St., and the major news media to set up a highly effective disinformation machine to serve corporations by attacking scientists and their research in order to block any regulatory action that would lower the profits of their corporate allies. The quality, safety, or social worth of the products being sold was irrelevant. What counted to them was the uncompromising defense of liberty and free enterprise.
One of their first customers was the tobacco industry. Indeed, one of the tobacco industry documents that came to light after years of lawsuits is a memo that clearly identified the chief goal of scientists defending their tobacco industry clients: “Doubt is our product.”
These were the Fathers of False Doubt who helped to establish right-wing “think tanks” through which corporations could launder money to support a small number of scientists, who churned out “data” and editorials promoting the interests of their corporate customers. First it was in defense of the tobacco industry and the Strategic Defense (“Star Wars”) Initiative. Then they worked to block restrictions on acid rain pollution, ozone-destroying chlorfluorcarbons emissions, environmentally deadly DDT, and passive smoking — which was sickening and killing tens of thousands of men, women, children, and babies every year.
They also employed journalists, often under the table, to help sow the seeds of public doubt on matters of settled science. These hired guns greatly helped to cast aspersions on the science and on the scientists who produced it and to fool the public into believing there is no scientific consensus.
In his review of Merchants of Doubt, Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University, says:
“There can be no science without doubt: brute dogma leaves no room for inquiry. But over the last half century, a tiny minority of scientists have wielded doubt as a political weapon to halt what they did not want said: that tobacco kills or that the climate is warming because of what we humans are doing. `Doubt is our product’ read a tobacco memo–and indeed, millions of dollars have gone into creating the impression of scientific controversy where there has not been one. This book about the politics of doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explores the long, connected, and intentional obfuscation of science by manufactured controversy. It is clear, scientifically responsible, and historically compelling–it is an essential and passionate book about our times.”
Today, thanks to the Internet, the merchant of doubt disinformation machine is now able to recruit armies of barely literate no-nothings from libertarian and other anti-government groups to set up “blogs,” self-publish “books,” and pose as legal and scientific experts. They are flooding the Internet making it difficult for the public to search for and read information that passed inspection by the scientific community. Slaying the Dragon, is a perfect example of such work produced for the sole purpose of confusing the public with scientific-sounding mumble-jumbo like this babble from co-author Claes Johnson:
“A cold body can heat up by eating/absorbing high-frequency high temperature coherent waves in a catabolic process of destruction of coherent waves into incoherent heat energy. A warm body cannot heat up by eating/absorbing low-frequency low-temperature waves, because catabolism involves destruction of structure. Anabolism builds structure, but a blackbody is only capable of destructive catabolism (the metabolism of a living cell consists of destructive catabolism and constructive anabolism).”
Stripping away the babble, Johnson is basically arguing that you can’t heat something up to a high temperature by bombarding it with low-frequency/low energy radiation. Anyone who has made the mistake of microwaving a food container with metal foil attached has learned what nonsense this is. Microwave ovens heat food with electromagnetic waves in the range used by radar. These wavelengths are more energetic than radio waves but far, far less energetic than visible light waves – or even invisible infrared light. Yet, if you accidentally microwave a bit of metal foil in your oven, in a matter of a few seconds you’ll see the foil glow white hot – giving off light rays hundreds of times more energetic than the microwave rays heating it.
Not surprisingly, readers who are able to get past two chapters of Johnson’s math-strewn mush will find no relief in the rest of Slaying the Sky Dragon.
I notice that you do not attack Dr. Ball’s perspectives – which you mischaracterize here – instead focusing on demonizing him and his credentials (which you also mischaracterize).
Dr. Ball does not deny climate change. He denies anthropogenic global warming theory. One of many reasons includes the IPCC’s stated definition of climate change, the one they address in their alarmist approach:
“The definition of climate change the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods’. The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, and climate variability attributable to natural causes.”
Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_appendix.pdf
(yes, this is directly from an IPCC document)
As far as Dr. Ball’s credentials, he clearly states that his doctoral thesis was on historical climatology. A lot of other sources, such at the sources I’d imagine you bank on religiously, often misstate things on his behalf. Presumably because it helps them demonize him. The fact that he posts his C.V. directly on his site shows he’s not hiding his credentials.
“The authors do not publish their global warming-denial theories and attacks in peer-review publications.”
Climategate revealed an incestuous abuse of the peer-review process by the alarmist camp, so deifying it is just plain naive.
Your attempt to group “politicized-climate-change-story skeptics” (which is a more accurate term for those you’re denouncing) with those who dishonestly denied the detrimental health impacts of tobacco is clearly an attempt to smear Dr. Ball. You have nowhere addressed his points about alarmists’ questionable methods (e.g. data manipulation and dependence on unscientific computer modeling), consistently failed predictions, and failure to include UNDENIABLE inputs into the climate system (like the sun and water vapor) – to name a few – as described extensively in his writings, which are freely available at http://drtimball.com.
The science is not settled when people like Mitch Taylor are barred from the Copenhagen Climate Conference because their research contradicts the political and financial agendas that underscore the anti-human, unscientific alarmist movement. Your assertion that the only reason empirical science fights against [the perversion of the scientific method for political gain in] “official climate science” in order to confuse the public is intellectually dishonest.
Since you used the word “pseudoscientists”, I might as well mention that *actual science* adheres to the scientific method, seeks the null hypothesis (have the IPCC or Al Gore ever honestly done this on an empirical basis?), and bases its hypotheses on empirical observations – not computer modeling in which the modelers must assume they understand how the global climate system works. In the words of IPCC author and CRU associate Kevin Trenberth:
“It’s very clear we do not have a climate observing system… This may be a shock to many people who assume that we do know adequately what’s going on with the climate, but we don’t.”
Who are the real pseudoscientists here – those who admittedly don’t know how climate works but make assumptions based on a limited and unsound data set rooted in computer modeling, or those who don’t bother with assumptions and focus on the empirical data?
You win all of my internets. Excellent rebuttal.
This is a good guy. Good Science should be honing knowledge continuously.
This guy is still great!