Sunday, December 9, 2018

Tim Ball Exemplifies Stupidity

Tim Ball, the fraud who claims to have been a climatology professor (he never was), wrote an article recently with a laughably appropriate title: Extreme Wildfires Caused By Extreme Stupidity, not Global Warming. Tim Ball is the shining example of stupidity in the anti-science, flat-earther society. This is a guy who the courts decided can't be sued for libel.  The court's reasoning was that Ball is so lacking in credibility no reasonable person would believe him. Really! You can't make this stuff up.  And yet, Ball insists on putting his stupidity on public display.

Ball, amazingly, states,
Rising temperatures and increasing COboth act to increase soil moisture and so reduce the potential of fires. When temperatures rise, evaporation increases, causing more precipitation which increases soil moisture and so lessens fire risk.  
I have to wonder if he ever reads the nonsense he writes. This guy just said increased evaporation increases soil moisture. Like I said, you can't make this stuff up. He's right about the stupidity part - and it sits squarely on his shoulders.

Let's put the record straight. When evaporation occurs liquid moisture escapes as a vapor and rises into the atmosphere. Once there, it is subject to the currents and other dynamics of the atmosphere. Moisture rarely falls back to the same area it evaporated from - it gets blown downwind. Even if it does fall back, the best it can do is to break even. That's right. In the extremely improbable scenario proposed by Ball where moisture evaporates and then falls back as rain, there is no net gain in moisture!

In other words, Ball's claims are physically impossible!

According to Ball, the next time you hang the laundry on a clothesline to dry, it will actually get wetter!

Once again, the deniers show just how much the hate - and fail to understand - simple science.

Oh, by the way, Tom Harris, the paid shill of the fossil fuel industry who has also lost all credibility, was a coauthor on this piece. Turns out, Harris can't find anyone with more credibility than Ball to work with. What a low point.


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