Canada Free Press Website Retracts Falsehoods About Climate Modeler Dr. Andrew Weaver

"CFP [Canada Free Press]...wishes to dissociate itself from any suggestion that Dr. Weaver 'knows very little about climate science.' We entirely accept that he has a well-deserved international reputation as a climate scientist and that Dr. Ball’s attack on his credentials is unjustified."---"Apology to Dr. Andrew Weaver," Canada Free Press (1-20-11)

On January 13, 2011, a certain "John O'Sullivan" published a ridiculous article in the Canada Free Press about how an alleged ex-CIA case officer named Kent Clizbe was offering a multi-million-dollar bounty to scholars if they would denounce the famous climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann for fraud. So far, "former CIA case officer" Kent Clizbe has not recruited a single scientist. Perhaps this is because Kent Clizbe's risible emails to the scientists sound about as authentic as the spam people sometimes get from Nigeria, or perhaps Dr. Michael Mann's colleagues care more about ethics and truth than about money.

Probably, John O'Sullivan's dishonest and propagandistic article was intended to defame Dr. Michael Mann and to make patriotic Americans who trust the expertise of the CIA believe that global warming and climate change are a scientific hoax. In fact, it is a matter of public record that the CIA gives security clearances to many climate scientists so that our country will be prepared to deal with national security threats caused by global warming and climate change.

For more information about the CIA and climate change, see my recent posts about the CIA program MEDEA and the CIA's "Center on Climate Change and National Security." The Director of the CIA's Center on Climate Change has been identified in media reports as Larry Kobayashi.

Why did John O'Sullivan promote the obscure Kent Clizbe while failing to note the CIA's public statements on the national security implications of climate change? Why does John O'Sullivan present Kooky Kent Clizbe as a credible source instead of telling people what is right on the CIA's website and published in the major media?

Now it turns out that Tim Ball, an editor for The Canada Free Press, has been forced to apologize to Dr. Andrew Weaver, another climate scientist whom the CFP website has previously defamed.

DeSmogBlog.com (1-21-11) has published an article titled "CanadaFreePress Apologizes to Dr. Andrew Weaver":

The website Canada Free Press has issued a retraction and apology to University of Victoria climate modeller Dr. Andrew Weaver for the content of an article written by Dr. Tim Ball.

Ball, whose own unspectacular academic tenure ended with a fizzle in 1996, has found a second career pretending to be a world-renowned climatologist (he once wrote to then-Prime Minister Paul Martin that he was "one of the first climatology PhDs in the world" - a statement that is purest fiction). In addition to signing on as a "science advisor" to energy industry front groups such as the Friends of Science or the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Ball has written and spoken extensively, seldom passing up the opportunity to libel real scientists. (Though, when the going gets tough, the dishonest get going.)

One of Ball's favourite targets has been Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in Ball's B.C. hometown. On occasion, Ball has even had the nerve to show his face at UVic, only to run into an audience who was capable of fact-checking his claptrap on their laptops. Most recently, he gave a lecture in which he made the outrageous claim that climate models don't include water vapour or Milankovic cycles, only to have a student in the audience politely tell him he was wrong.

Now, clearly, Ball has staggered beyond the pale, saying a bunch of things that are so obviously, demonstrably and categorically false that Canada Free Press has done the right thing. As the CFP correction says:

"Contrary to what was stated in Dr. Ball’s article, Dr. Weaver: (1) never announced he will not participate in the next IPCC; (2) never said that the IPCC chairman should resign; (3) never called for the IPCC’s approach to science to be overhauled; and (4) did not begin withdrawing from the IPCC in January 2010.

"As a result of a nomination process that began in January, 2010, Dr. Weaver became a Lead Author for Chapter 12: “Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility” of the Working Group I contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC.” That work began in May, 2010. Dr. Ball’s article failed to mention these facts although they are publicly-available."

The line that may be most important for Weaver, however, is this:

"CFP also wishes to dissociate itself from any suggestion that Dr. Weaver 'knows very little about climate science.' We entirely accept that he has a well-deserved international reputation as a climate scientist and that Dr. Ball’s attack on his credentials is unjustified." [See the full article.]