Tim Ball's letter to Paul Martin starts:
I was one of the first climatology PhDs in the world.
He got his PhD in 1983.
Ball signs his letter with:
Dr. Tim Ball, Environmental Consultant
Victoria, British Columbia
28 Years Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg
Eli Rabbett has been checking the numbers on Ball's "28 years". They don't add up.
More like this
The Globe and Mail reports
CALGARY -- The skeptic at the centre of the heated debate about climate change that has been taking place in Canadian newspapers is moving the dispute to the courts, where Tim Ball is seeking $325,000 in damages for a letter to the editor that he says amounted to a "…
Richard Littlemore has posted Ball's Statement of Claim. Here is the heart of it with my commments:
8 The letter to the editor contains the follow statements which contain inaccuracies and are defamatory of Ball:
"...newspapers ought to report factual summaries of authors' credentials. You note…
Tim Ball is suing Dan Johnson for defamation because of a letter to the editor published in the Calgary Herald (edited to add links):
Whatever one may feel about Tim Ball's denial of climate change science, newspapers ought to report factual summaries of authors' credentials. You note that he "…
At DeSmogBlog, Richard Littlemore reports:
The self-styled Canadian climate change expert, Dr. Tim Ball, has abandoned his libel suit against University of Lethbridge Professor of Environmental Science Dan Johnson. Ball dropped the suit without conditions, but also without acknowledging that…
Tim,
Really, this low?
His being the first climatology PHD's in the world I have no quibble with - but from that assuming that a mere PhD student was also a Professor at Winnipeg University??????
For 28 years????
re Tim Balls' CV, as detailed by Eli Rabbett above, I agree with Tim Lambert - on the evidence Tim Ball has omitted salient facts.
When he lies about everything else, why should we believe what is in his various bios?
Ian Forrester
"28 Years Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg.
Eli Rabbett has been checking the numbers on Ball's "28 years". They don't add up"
Well, he didn't say one year at a time. Sometimes a year is worth a couple of years, or more. Any real scientist wouldn't be hampered by conventional notions of linear time.
He may be counting years as emeritus, you know, as in gone emeritus.
A friend's father recieved his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1957 and was instructing Climatology here in Oregon (PSU) in the early 70's. Retired in 1983, so that would have him an acedemic generation older than Ball.
This is like the joke about the partner from the big law firm who drops dead around age 50 and finds himself facing St. Peter, and wants to complain about not getting a long enough life, and St. P. says "that's odd, according to your billable hour report you have to be at least a hundred and twenty years old ..."
There is a three month limit on filing defamation suits against newspapers in Alberta. Tim Ball may have filed too late.
What is more the writ date for his Ph.D. indicate that he spent very little time in London.
Aart Labrijn got his PhD in 1945 for a compilation of monthly temperatures and rainfall in The Netherlands.
"Het klimaat van Nederland gedurende de laatste twee en een halve eeuw" The climate of the Netherlands during the last two and a half centuries.
Tim Ball's dissertation was on a similar study in Canada.
seems like a simple test would be to see Ball's score as far as number of references to his "pioneering" research as a climatologist. If it's all a bunch of hot air, then he has no reputation, ergo none to lose or sue over.
Carl: using Web of Science (ISI's social science and science citation indexes), and assuming Tim Ball and TF Ball are the same person, I see 4 papers and one book review, from 1983 to 1994. I see he has a total of 20 citations (excluding the book review). I'm interested in his review of a book titled 'The agricultural implications of global climate change'. Anyone have a back issue of CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, 42 (2): 212-214 JUL 1994? (it's available through Blackwell's site) If you look it up, you'll find that his current views are remarkably preserved in this (water vapour isn't considered, we beleived in global cooling before, the IPCC is a loaded group, can't trust climate models, climate scientists deliberately exaggerate the science and any threat, trust me, I've been studying this for 20 years). At least his views are consistent, it's a pity he hasn't checked to see how they match the current data. Has there been any climate science since 1994? This seems to be his only contribution to the debate on global climate change, and it's a standard denialist critique; long on rhetoric, short on science, with no research of his own.
So: he's published, he's been swimming against the tide on this issue since at least 1994, he's not changed his arguments since then, and he seems to have little influence in the profession.