The tireless climate science fraud Dr. Tim Ball has run snarling from a challenge to place a small wager in support of his claims that the global average temperature will fall, rather than rise, in the next 20 years. Faced with a request that he put his money where his mouth is, Ball called the exercise “cheap, tawdry and useless,” and said, “I don’t bet on anything, it has nothing to do with science.”

Of course, his climate change pronouncements have nothing to do with science, either, but that doesn’t slow him down.

Ball’s unwillingness to bet on his own science – or reputation – is also getting more attention on the web these days. While the mainstream media have ignored this story, bloggers are beginning to notice that he also cut and ran rather than follow through on his own libel suit.

As reported here previously, Ball originally fired off a libel letter to defend himself against the (truthful) complaint that his academic credentials were heavily and consistently overstated. When the complainant, our hero Dr. Dan Johnson, stood his ground (a draining and expensive choice), Ball folded, regardless that the libelous content of the statements of defence from Johnson and from the Calgary Herald were much more caustic and dismissive than the original “affront.” (My personal favourite is the Herald’s whithering conclusion that “the plaintiff [Dr. Ball] is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist.”)

Interestingly, the mainstream media – so keen to afford Ball the voice of dissent – has gone silent on his legal comeuppance. Nobody, it appears, likes to admit when they’ve put money on the hindquarters of the wrong horse.