Robert Balling

Robert C. Balling, Jr. is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, and the former director of its Office of Climatology. His research interests include climatology, global climate change, and geographic information systems. Balling has declared himself one of the scientists who oppose the consensus on global warming, arguing in a 2009 book that anthropogenic global warming "is indeed real, but relatively modest", and maintaining that there is a publication bias in the scientific literature.

Career

Balling gained bachelors and masters degrees in geography in 1974 (Wittenberg University, BA) and 1975 (Bowling Green State University, MA), before gaining his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oklahoma in 1979. He was assistant professor at the University of Nebraska (1979 - 1984), before joining the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University. He gained tenure there in 1987, and served as the director of the Office of Climatology until 2004.

Funding controversy

Balling was mentioned as a fossil fuel industry - funded scientist in Ross Gelbspan's 1997 book The Heat is On. This led the Minnesota Star Tribune to run an editorial speaking of a "disinformation campaign" by some climatologists. Balling and his colleague Patrick Michaels took a complaint against the Star Tribune to the Minnesota News Council. By a 9-4 decision the council "voted to sustain the complaint that the Star Tribune editorial unfairly characterized the scientific reputations of Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling." At the 1998 hearing, Balling "acknowledged that he had received $408,000 in research funding from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade (of which his University takes 50% for overhead)."

Between December 1998 and September 2001 Balling was listed as a "Scientific Adviser" to the Greening Earth Society, a group that was funded and controlled by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies. WFA founded the group in 1997, according to an archived version of its website, "as a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use."

Books

• Robert C. Balling, The Heated Debate: greenhouse predictions versus climate reality, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, April 1992, ISBN 0-936488-47-6
• Robert C. Balling, and Martin A. J. Williams, Interactions of Desertification & Climate, Oxford University Press, October 1995, ISBN 0-340-63217-8
• Patrick Michaels and Robert C. Balling, The Satanic Gases: clearing the air about global warming, Cato Institute, 2000 ASIN: 1882577914
• Patrick Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Climate of extremes: global warming science they don't want you to know, Cato Institute, 2009

See also

• List of scientists opposing global warming consensus

References

• Balling, R.C. and Sen Roy, S. (2005), Analysis of spatial patterns underlying the linkage between solar irradiance and near-surface air temperatures, Geophysical Research Letters 32 (11): art. no. L11702 June 8, 2005
• EMANUEL K. A. ; IDSO S. B. ; BALLING R. C. ; CERVENY R. S. Comment on : Carbon dioxide and hurricanes : implications of Northern hemispheric warming for Atlantic-Caribbean storms. Author's reply, Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 1991, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 83-86 ISSN 0177-7971

External links

• Balling's homepage.
• Testimony Prepared for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science March 6, 1996
• Robert C. Balling articles at TCS Daily