The “Friends of Science” climate campaigner Dr. Tim Ball embarrasses himself today in the National Post with an article praising the prospect of global warming. Ball has been on a privately funded, cross-country tour arguing that climate change is either not occurring or occurring regardless of the activities of humankind. Now, apparently because he used to live in a town with a chilly winter (Winnipeg), he acknowledges that warming is happening and suggests its a good thing.
Ball talks about warmer summers, without mentioning longer droughts. He talks about longer growing season without mentioning the increasing frequency of devastating floods. (It’s one of the unpleasant perversities of climate change that you increase the risks of getting both floods AND droughts, often in the same year.) Dr. Ball talks about “reduced fuel bills for travel” without mentioning that dangerous weather events might be making the old Caribbean holiday destinations too dangerous to visit.
It is clear, once again, that Ball doesn’t really care what he has to say. He doesn’t care whether it’s true (see his quotes on CO2 corelations with temperature in this post). He doesn’t care if it’s sensible. He doesn’t appear to care that climate change poses serious threats to billions of people, as long as his friends in Winnipeg can sow more plant varieties in their gardens.
All he appears to care about is undermining any social or political support for action on climate change. It makes us wonder, once again: Who’s paying your bills, doc?
