 February 10, 2011 (C135) 
In Brief: 
Dr. Tim Ball has an extensive science background in climatology, especially experience in water resources and areas of sustainable development, pollution prevention, environmental regulations and the impact of government policy on business and economics. He is a regular contributing writer for various publications and a researcher/author of numerous papers on climate, long range weather patterns, impacts of climate change on sustainable agriculture, ecosystems, historical climatology, air quality, untapped energy resources, silting and flooding problems. After a long academic career at the University of Winnipeg, he moved to Victoria in 1996. He has a B.A. from the University of Winnipeg, an M.A. from the University of Manitoba and a PH.D. (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England. He was interviewed after his speech to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg on Wednesday, February 9, 2011.
Dr. Tim Ball, Historical Climatologist
Frontier Centre: Is carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant?
Tim Ball: Absolutely not. It’s an extremely important gas for life on earth and to argue it’s toxic is just ridiculous.
FC: On a geological timescale is the earth experiencing a high or low level of atmospheric CO2?
TB: It’s at the lowest level in 600 million years. In fact, you could argue it’s dangerously low.
FC: Is the earth presently warming or cooling?
TB: The earth has been cooling since at least the year 2000. It’s a very slight cooling trend but the rate of cooling is increasing.
FC: If CO2 levels are rising while global temperatures are falling, how can the whole theory of human caused warming continue to have any credibility?
TB: It can’t and that’s what caused them to switch from global warming being the challenge to climate change being the challenge because the CO2 levels continue to rise and the temperatures are going down.
FC: Let’s get your reaction to some recent global warming related studies, all of which have received the usual, comparatively high level of media coverage.
a) Polar Bears having fewer cubs because of less sea ice?
TB: It is simply not true. There was one group of polar bears around Churchill that was in trouble but the majority of populations are in good shape. Part of what happens is that the population expanded and therefore nature reacts by having fewer young and so all of the changes are perfectly explainable within natural variability.
b) The thinning of the northern ice cap?
TB: It’s not thinning. That’s one of the biggest scams going. The original measurement of the thickness of the ice was done by an American submarine going under in the 1960s when winters were colder and then 30 years later they put three more submarines under the ice doing different thickness measures, using different instrumentation, in a different month and then claimed that comparing that with the earlier ones meant there was thinning. All of the current research including very good research by Germany shows that the ice is not thinning at all.
c) Coral bleaching?
TB: Coral bleaching is due to a bacteria and changing water temperatures. It has nothing to do with ultra-violet radiation. It became an issue because of the so-called thinning of the ozone and more ultra-violet was damaging the coral. It’s just another natural variability.
d) Hurricanes?
TB: Hurricanes have not increased, in fact they have decreased. The only increase that has occurred recently is because they expanded the area over which they monitor hurricanes. Previously they went about half-way across the Atlantic off of the Florida coast. Now they go right to the African cost and start counting them much earlier. So they are even counting very small hurricanes that weren’t previously included in the count.
e) Rising sea levels swamping small South Pacific islands?
TB: This is absolute nonsense. The Maldives saw an opportunity to get money out of the UN and out of the rest of the world. Nils Axel Morner, who is the world expert on sea levels and particularly in the Maldives and surrounding islands, has shown that sea levels have decreased and not increased.
FC: Even though we still have the usual stream of doom and gloom articles about climate change and global warming, the public is not buying it anymore. Why?
TB: I think that there have been so many things that have simply contradicted common sense and, of course, Mother Nature is not playing the game. This argument that CO2 increase would cause warming just simply hasn’t turned out. You only have to have a couple very cold winters like we’ve had and people start to raise questions. Some of the statements made like when Gore said “The science is settled” even people who don’t know anything about science know that science is never settled. They realize that is wrong. Another thing is the number of people making money off of carbon credits and it was all these same people who were pushing the global warming issue. People get very cynical about that.
FC: Various government and academic agencies have whitewashed the Climategate scandal so far. Do you think anyone will be prosecuted for fraud?
TB: There is a move amongst the Attorney Generals in the States to start prosecuting. For example, Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the State Pen, not Penn State. In England as well there are inquiries triggered by three things. One thing was what information was in those leaks. Second one was the cover-up by the so-called panels charged to investigate. Third was the complete failure of the UK weather office and their weather forecasting because they had been working with these people where the e-mails were leaked from. They were linked together. So those three things have kept the politicians looking at it. You’re going to see a lot more investigations.
FC: Why is the media still reluctant to expose the fraudulent science and politics that underlie the Global Warming Industry?
TB: I prefer to say the mainstream media. Some of the new media and smaller newspapers have been raising questions about it. It’s the mainstream media, particularly The New York Times and The Guardian in England and they are extremely left-wing, one of the things that has started to shift that is that their names were appearing in those leaked e-mails. For example, Andrew Revkin got named in those e-mails so their involvement and capitulation of their journalistic integrity was exposed. But it’s just simply because of their political slant that they haven’t covered this at all.
FC: What is your view of the federal government’s climate change policy which is based on the idea that human caused carbon dioxide is causing warming?
TB: The difficulty for the politicians is that they are at the mercy of the bureaucrats at Environment Canada. Environment Canada has been the main controllers of the climate change debate. Starting with Gordon McBean as Assistant Deputy Minister, and the diversion of all of their funds into that. The difficulty for the politicians is if they go to Environment Canada and challenge them and they go “We’re the experts. How dare you question us?” There are very few politicians that have the skill or the ability to stand up to these people. What they’ve been doing is what is going to happen in the U.S. with the EPA, they’re just pulling the funding. Before he left the government McBean set up a $61 million fund, which he became chairman of, to distribute the research funds. The Harper government has cut all that and of course they’re screaming and saying “here the world’s dying and you’re cutting the funding”. It’s the safest way for the politician that’s suspicious of it all to deal with it.
FC: The global warming policy train has derailed around the world. Can you summarize the situation in each of the following:
a) Britain?
TB: Britain was the first to really start to see the corruption that was going on. It began, ironically, with 100% failure of the weather office to make forecasts both summer and winter. For example, they were saying it was going to be a hot, dry summer and it was the coldest, wettest summer on record. It’s going to be a mild winter and it was the coldest winter on record. That sort of thing even though people know the weather forecasting’s wrong they were so wrong that it really started getting things going. When those e-mails were leaked it was into a society that was already very suspicious.
FC: What’s the political fallout?
TB: Political fallout is that they’re calling for a shut down of the UK Meteorological office and heads are rolling.
b) Spain?
TB: Spain has suffered the most because they were one of the ones that adopted Cap and Trade and introduced a green energy policy. They discovered that for every green job they created they lost 2.2 regular jobs. A great deal of the collapse of the Spanish economy is because of all the money they put in to the so-called green economy.
c) Germany?
TB: Germany has been sitting on the fence but has now realized that green is not the way to go. Merkel’s enough of a Conservative to have not bought into that. They’ve seen what’s happened to Spain, Ireland and Italy.
d) Japan?
TB: Japan is still into their 20th year of their recession. The Japanese were the first to ratify Kyoto but they didn’t implement. It was a hypocritical, if you want, move but the Japanese economy has been in such bad shape that they just can’t afford to mess around with that stuff.
e) India?
TB: India has been a very pivotal country because they came right out and opposed Kyoto. Their scientists are very good. They know the science. Their leaders have made very, very firm statements about how corrupt the science is. So India is a very interesting country.
f) China?
TB: China is decrying CO2 but building coal plants as fast as they can build them. China doesn’t give a hoot.
g) U.S.A.?
TB: The U.S., ironically, under Bush reduced CO2 voluntarily and had a greater reduction in CO2 output than any other country even though they didn’t sign Kyoto. The Americans realized that any green economy is going to cost jobs and cost their industry and they’ve already suffered a bit from that. They voted 95-0 against Kyoto and they’ll do the same with the Cap and Trade.
FC: So the political battle for human caused global warming policy has been lost in the U.S.A.?
TB: Yes, I would say it has been lost.
FC: So what are the prospects for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pulling off its plan to regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant?
TB: That was deliberately orchestrated. They got the State of Massachusetts to sue them for failing the EPA for failing to control CO2 as a harmful gas. They deliberately lost that case and when the court ruled that they had to control CO2 it went to the Supreme Court which ruled 5-4 in favour. What’s happening is that the Founding Fathers put in mechanisms to control this kind of nonsense and one of the ways of stopping runaway bureaucracies was by cutting their funding. That is already happening in the U.S. The Congress will vote against the funding for the EPA and just pull the rug out from underneath them.
FC: Do you know how long that will take?
TB: It will only take one year because if you don’t have any funds there’s nothing you can do about it.
FC: So the EPA could be committing suicide, essentially?
TB: Yes. They started it in January because they put into play the fact that 13,000 people producing carbon had to register with them and identify how much they were producing and then starting this year they’re supposed to go in and shut down industries and limit the amount that they produce. The next budget will see a significant reduction in how much Congress willing to make available to them.
FC: What is your advice to the many politicians out there who are frightened to say “the emperor wears no clothes” when it comes to confronting the global warming lobbies, interest groups and media axe-grinders. Is it just a matter of time?
TB: It is just a matter of time. It’s also a matter of backbone. It’s a matter of realizing that it was a child who said that the emperor had no clothes. The adults were afraid to stand up and say it. More and more innocent citizens are saying “This is hurting us. This is crazy”. Those are the children in this story. What it needs now is a politician to stop the bullying. It isn’t just bullying of climate change. It’s bullying of the whole environmental movement. We’re all environmentalists. What gives these people the right to say that only they care? What we need are some politicians with a bit of backbone to stand up and say that because you can guarantee they will have the public’s support for the most part.
FC: Do you see it happening?
TB: Yes I do. But politicians, contrary to what people think, do listen to the way the wind is blowing. They’ll blow with the wind once the public stands up and says no.
FC: What can the average person do to stop the deception and waste of money?
TB: The best thing you can do is to educate yourself about the scares and the daily, constant fear playing in the newspapers and question it. But also get after your Member of Parliament and let them know that if they’re willing to stand up and stop this bullying they will have the support of the public. That’s what really needs to be done.
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