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Dr. Tim Ball, a man famous for lying about his resume, and for denying that he quite willingly works for oil-funded think tanks, nevertheless continues to find an audience, slandering actual climate scientists and misrepresenting - in the most manipulative way - the state of climate science.

His most recent attack is all the more stunning for having been launched during a week when the British House of Commons released a report exonerating one of Ball’s targets, Dr. Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the East Anglia University.

In one of Ball’s regular contributions to the conspiracy-theory website Canada Free Press, he begins with this:

“Few understand the extent of corrupted science produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Data was altered, or completely ignored and research deliberately directed to prove their claim that humans were causing global warming.”

Ball’s evidence for the charge of “corrupted science”? None, really. His proof that data were altered or ignored? Zero.

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Greenpeace released a terrific report today on the 20-year campaign by polluters to mislead the public by creating the climate denial industry. 

The new report succinctly explains how fossil fuel interests used the tobacco industry’s playbook and an extensive arsenal of lobbyists and “experts” for hire in order to manufacture disinformation designed to confuse the public and stifle action to address climate change.

In the report, titled “Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science,” Greenpeace provides a brief history of the attacks waged by polluting industries against climate science, the IPCC and individual scientists.

ExxonMobil deservedly gets special attention for its role as the ringleader of the “campaign of denial.”  As Greenpeace has documented meticulously over the years with its ExxonSecrets website, ExxonMobil is known to have invested over $23 million since 1998 to bankroll an entire movement of climate confusionists, including over 35 anti-science and right wing nonprofits, to divert attention away from the critical threat of climate disruption caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels.

The report, authored by Greenpeace climate campaigner Cindy Baxter, calls out by name a number of key climate skeptics and deniers who have worked with industry front groups to confuse the public, including S. Fred Singer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, David Legates, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Tim Ball, Pat Michaels and many other figures familiar to DeSmog Blog readers.

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The journal Nature, unquestionably one of the most credible sources in science today, weighed in yesterday with an editorial on the hacked email controversy. It’s conclusion:

“In the end, what the UEA (University of East Anglia) e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.”

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A controversial theory proposes mimicking volcanoes to fight global warming. But throwing sulfur particles into the sky may do more harm than good, a new study says.

The temporary solution would pump particles of sulfur high into the atmosphere—simulating the effect of a massive volcano by blocking out some of the sun's rays. This intervention, advocates argue, would buy a little time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But as well as cooling the planet, the sulfur particles would reduce rainfall and cause serious global drought, a new study says.