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One comes from Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor writing in the Canada Free Press, a publication whose other causes include promoting hatejock Michael Savage for president. Ball remembers the 70s media scare about global cooling and quotes Lowell Ponte, who back then called global cooling “the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years.” Ponte, it turns out, is a radio personality, not a scientist. There was no scientific consensus on global cooling; the best thinking at the time was that we didn’t know enough about climate to make any predictions at all. This business of deliberately confusing popular scares with science-based warnings would be silly if it weren’t reprehensible, since it falsely demeans the best way our species has of learning about the world and foretelling trouble ahead.
Quite aside from their lack of scientific evidence or credibility, neither Ball nor Huebert is arguing in good faith. I have yet to see any material from this side that meets basic standards of argument or evidence. Having spent some time looking, here, here, and here, I have to wonder whether it’s a good use of time and energy to point out the denialists’ lies one at a time while they are not ashamed to continue producing them in bulk.
