Reply To: Cap and Trade

[HermannH]

Brian: I am still amused by your characterization of Timothy Ball as one of the “world’s first and most prominent PhDs in Climatology“.

I dare you to compare his wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_F._Ball with that of James Hanson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen

Ball’s page mainly consists of his “Views on environmental change”, a list of public appearances and a list of publications. Notice that there are a total of two entries after 1984, one of them is about “Houston, Mary (2003), Eighteenth-century naturalists of Hudson Bay” and neither of the two is published in a peer reviewed journal.

Also notice that the longest section is labeled “Views“. Yes that’s right, his opinions are his claim to fame, not any significant scientific work he has done himself.

Hanson’s page is more than 5 times as long. There are long sections detailing his scientific work, all of it related to the study of climate. I don’t know whether he has received any death threats but he has been arrested while participating in a protest. Sounds to me like a man acting out of conviction not out of greed.

Oh, BTW, his list of publications can be found here http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/jhansen.html
You may notice that by the time Ball received his PhD in Climatology Hansen had published dozens of papers on climate related topics. And all of them published in peer-reviewed journals.

When it comes to prominence in climatology, on a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate Hansen a solid 10 and Ball a 5; and that is mostly for notoriety, not original contribution to the field.