Website retracts Tim Ball’s BS
The website Canada Free Press has issued a retraction and apology (full text below) to University of Victoria climate modeller Dr. Andrew Weaver for the content of an article written by Dr. Tim Ball.
Ball, whose own unspectacular academic tenure ended with a fizzle in 1996, has found a second career pretending to be a world-renowned climatologist (he once wrote to then-Prime Minister Paul Martin that he was “one of the first climatology PhDs in the world” – a statement that is purest fiction). In addition to signing on as a “science advisor” to energy industry front groups such as the Friends of Science or the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Ball has written and spoken extensively, seldom passing up the opportunity to libel real scientists. (Though, when the going gets tough, the dishonest get going.)
One of Ball’s favourite targets has been Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in Ball’s B.C. hometown. On occasion, Ball has even had the nerve to show his face at UVic, only to run into an audience who was capable of fact-checking his claptrap on their laptops. Most recently, he gave a lecture in which he made the outrageous claim that climate models don’t include water vapour or Milankovic cycles, only to have a student in the audience politely tell him he was wrong.
Now, clearly, Ball has staggered beyond the pale, saying a bunch of things that are so obviously, demonstrably and categorically false that Canada Free Press has done the right thing. As the CFP correction says:
“Contrary to what was stated in Dr. Ball’s article, Dr. Weaver: (1) never announced he will not participate in the next IPCCIPCC chairman should resign; (3) never called for the IPCC’s approach to science to be overhauled; and (4) did not begin withdrawing from the IPCC in January 2010.
“As a result of a nomination process that began in January, 2010, Dr. Weaver became a Lead Author for Chapter 12: “Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility” of the Working Group I contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC.” That work began in May, 2010. Dr. Ball’s article failed to mention these facts although they are publicly-available.”
The line that may be most important for Weaver, however, is this:
“CFP also wishes to dissociate itself from any suggestion that Dr. Weaver ‘knows very little about climate science.’ We entirely accept that he has a well-deserved international reputation as a climate scientist and that Dr. Ball’s attack on his credentials is unjustified.”
In fact, Weaver has a Nobel Peace Prize plaque hanging on his wall, in honour of his previous work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But Ball is still on the lecture circuit, still saying that climate science is a fiction. You have to hope, though, that before paying $50 a plate, his audience has an opportunity to ponder who, in this discussion, has a record of accuracy and integrity, and who has been caught out, time and again, lying about everything from the extent of his own credentials to the elements of other people’s Nobel quality work.
Since posting the apology last week, Canada Free Press has stripped it from their website along with Ball’s biography and virtually everything he ever wrote for the site. The full text of the retraction is as follows:
On January 10, 2011, Canada Free Press began publishing on this website an article by Dr. Tim Ball entitled “Corruption of Climate Change Has Created 30 Lost Years” which contained untrue and disparaging statements about Dr. Andrew Weaver, who is a professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
Contrary to what was stated in Dr. Ball’s article, Dr. Weaver: (1) never announced he will not participate in the next IPCCIPCC chairman should resign; (3) never called for the IPCC’s approach to science to be overhauled; and (4) did not begin withdrawing from the IPCC in January 2010.
As a result of a nomination process that began in January, 2010, Dr. Weaver became a Lead Author for Chapter 12: “Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility” of the Working Group I contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC.” That work began in May, 2010. Dr. Ball’s article failed to mention these facts although they are publicly-available.
Dr. Tim Ball also wrongly suggested that Dr. Weaver tried to interfere with his presentation at the University of Victoria by having his students deter people from attending and heckling him during the talk. CFP accepts without reservation there is no basis for such allegations.
CFP also wishes to dissociate itself from any suggestion that Dr. Weaver “knows very little about climate science.” We entirely accept that he has a well-deserved international reputation as a climate scientist and that Dr. Ball’s attack on his credentials is unjustified.
CFP sincerely apologizes to Dr. Weaver and expresses regret for the embarrassment and distress caused by the unfounded allegations in the article by Dr. Ball.
