N MEMORIAM: TIMOTHY BALL, PH.D., FIERCE DEFENDER OF SCIENCE
OCTOBER 7, 2022
By
H. Sterling Burnett
Timothy Ball, Ph.D. passed away on September 24. Iām truly sorry to have to write this. I had few personal encounters with Dr. Ball, unfortunately: a couple of phone interviews, some email exchanges, and brief hellos exchanged in passing at meetings we both attended.
Although I didnāt know him well, I followed and admired his work for years. Dr. Ball was a fighter for the use of the scientific method to explore the world and discover truth in all areas of science. In his last few decades he was perhaps best-known for doggedly using the scientific method in academia, in the popular media, and in court to expose the pseudo-science used to promote climate alarm. For his efforts, Ball received praise in the form of multiple awards, and he was sued by noted climate alarmist Michael Mann, Ph.D., of hockey stick infamy. (More on this later.)
Among the awards Dr. Ball received were the Clarence Atchison Award for Excellence in Community Service, the Clifford J. Robson Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence; and the
Lifetime Achievement in Climate Science award by The Heartland Institute at the
13th International Conference on Climate Change in 2019. In a follow-up to his receipt of the latter award, I interviewed Dr. Ball for an article published in
Environment & Climate News.
Below are a short bio of Dr. Ball; a brief remembrance by Joe Bast, former long-time president of The Heartland Institute; and excerpts of a post from the
Manhattan Contrarian blog discussing the court case for which Ball is perhaps most famous.
Brief biography, Timothy Ball, Ph.D.
Dr. Timothy Ball received a bachelor's degree with honors in geography from the University of Winnipeg in 1970, followed by an M.A. from the University of Manitoba in 1971 and a Ph.D. in geography with a focus on historical climatology from Queen Mary University of London, England in 1983. His dissertation was titled, āClimatic Change in Central Canada : A Preliminary Analysis of Weather Information from the Hudson's Bay Company Forts at York Factory and Churchill Factory, 1714-1850.ā
Dr. Ball joined the University of Winnipeg faculty in 1971, retiring as a full professor in 1996. Ball then served as chief science advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute.
Dr. Ball was a researcher and author of scientific papers on a range of environmental issues, including a coauthored paper in the scientific journal
Ecological Complexity titled "Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are warming spring air temperatures the 'ultimate' survival control factor?"
Ball was one of several authors of
Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, published in 2011. In 2014 Ball wrote the book
The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science. Ballās most recent solo effort discussing climate change is
Human Caused Global Warming, with the attention-grabbing subtitle āThe Biggest Deception in Human History.ā
As one can see from the titles of Dr. Ballās books, he was not one to hide his true thoughts or shy away from controversy or an academic or, as it turns out, a legal fight.
From Joe Bast:
Tim Ball, Ph.D., was part of the first generation of modern climatologists trained to understand and study Earthās climate āin the roundā rather than just one or a few aspects of it. He had the misfortune of watching his discipline succumb to the temptations of government funding, media attention, and specialization that have caused so much damage climate science and to other scientific disciplines.
Dr. Ball bravely and loudly called out the politicization of science, the substitution of climate models for genuine climatology, and the terrible real-world consequences of the policies advocated by climate alarmists. He taught thousands of students to see past the headlines and declarations of political entities such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and to focus instead on the real science of weather patterns.
Dr. Ball liked to say climate change āis a puzzle of thousands of pieces; climate science is [only] one piece of the puzzle.ā Computer modelers, physicists, botanists, geologists, and economists, to name just a few of the academic disciplines that claim to have insights into the causes and consequences of climate change, typically lack the training to understand the dynamics of the climate system. At best they can shed light one small pieces of the climate puzzle. Dr. Ball frequently said they should never be trusted to declare āthe science is settled,ā much less pontificate on what public policies ought to be pursued.
Despite fierce and often highly personal criticism from all corners of the climate alarmist industry, Dr. Ball never lost his composure or tailored his speech or writing. He was the IPCCās strongest and one of its most credible critics. He was generous with his insights and advice to me and to two or even three generations of other policy analysts who sought him out. He will be sorely missed.
For all his stellar work, Ball is perhaps best-known for his trenchant critique of Michael Mannās widely disputed āhockey stickā reconstruction of the Earthās recent temperature history and the hiding of the data Mann and his colleagues used to develop the widely cited graphic. Ballās critique resulted in him being sued for libel by Mann. Frances Menton of the
Manhattan Contrarian described the lawsuit well, including Ballās ultimate vindication. I excerpt his comments here:
Ball was that rarity of a climate scientist in the world of academia with the temerity and courage to say and repeat that CO2 is a beneficial gas. He would not back down, in a world that rapidly went insane and became increasingly intolerant and hostile to his position. Notably, Ball did not shy away from calling out the biggest scamsters of the climate hustle, most particularly one Michael Mann. Mann is the professor at Penn State who was the lead creator of the IPCCās iconic āhockey stickā graph that has been used to sell global warming hysteria to the world for the last 20+ years.
This post will draw substantially on a previous post I wrote back in 2019 titled
āMichael Mann Hockey Stick Update: Now Definitively Established To Be Fraud.ā That post goes into extensive detail on a lawsuit between Mann and Ball that ultimately ended in total victory for Ball. Here is an abbreviated version of the story of the Mann/Ball litigation, excerpted from that post:
[In 2011 a] prominent skeptical climate scientist in Canada named Tim Ball accused Mann of fraud in generating the Hockey Stick graph. The famous quote, from a February 2011 interview of Ball, was āMichael Mann should be in the State Pen, not Penn State.ā In March 2011, Mann sued Ball for libel, focusing on that quote, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver. Here is a copy of the Complaint. ā¦ The case then essentially disappeared into limbo for eight-plus years. But on [August 23, 2019] the British Columbia court dismissed Mannās claim with prejudice, and also awarded court costs to Ball.
Ballās accusation against Mann was solidly based on the work of Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre in attempting to reconstruct the Hockey Stick graph, and also on the so-called ClimateGate emails, released from the University of East Anglia (collaborators of Mann) in 2009. McIntyre conclusively demonstrated, based on disclosures in the ClimateGate emails, that Mann had truncated data in generating the Hockey Stick in order to achieve the presentation that he wanted. But throughout the process of McIntyre trying to reconstruct his work, Mann flatly refused to share the data and methods that he had used to generate the graph.
And then, even after suing Ball in British Columbia, Mann continued his refusal to produce his underlying data. Thatās not something that a litigant can get away with. ā¦ From the 2019 post:
Mann absolutely refused to provide the underlying information in the Ball litigation. ā¦ The court repeatedly tried to get an agreement that something would be produced that would satisfy Ball, and repeatedly gave Mann more time to comply. Could this really go on for eight years? In the U.S., that would be extraordinary, but not impossible. . . . n 2017 Mann actually agreed (under court pressure) to produce to Ball within 21 days the key technical information about construction of the Hockey Stick graph that Ball was requesting. But the information was not produced. ā¦ [F]inally seeking the dismissal of Mannās claims as the ultimate sanction. On Friday [August 23, 2019], the court granted that relief.
Thus Ball was fully vindicated in the end by the court. ā¦
In Canada, a loser in court is required to pay the fees and costs of the winner. Ball was awarded the fees and costs in an oral ruling by the court. ā¦
Mannās lawyer (McConchie) did not even oppose the application for costs, since that is the norm in Canadian litigation. But, in an event that will probably surprise no one, it turns out that in the intervening three years the execrable Mann has never paid anything to Ball. Ball was essentially wiped out financially by the costs of the litigation, to the extent that a GoFundMe has now been started by Anthony Watts to help his family pay for funeral expenses. Follow this link if you would like to contribute.
Tim Ballās death is a loss to the community of climate realists: people who still believe that data and evidence should trump a good story, an elegant but unsupported theory, and complex but flawed computer model outputs when it comes to describing the state of the climate and whether a changing climate poses a dire threat to humanity and to nature. His passing is also a loss to the public, leaving us with one less champion for the pursuit of truth through faithful adherence to the scientific method, and one less defender of the benefits society receives from the use of fossil fuels.
de.rt.com
