Business-Managed Democracy

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Robert Balling (pictured) has a PhD in geography and is Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. He is a contributing editor for the denial journal, World Climate Report, originally funded by Western Fuels Association and now published by Patrick Michael's firm New Hope Environmental Services.

Balling's books include:

• The Heated Debate: Greenhouse predictions versus climate reality, published by think-tank Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992
• The Satanic Gases: Clearing the air about global warming, coauthored with Patrick Michaels, 2000, sponsored by the Cato Instititute, in which they argue that global warming will have benign economic and ecological effects.
• Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know, coauthored with Patrick Michaels, published by the Cato Institute, 2009 which claims that those who argue that global warming will not lead to catastrophe are intimidated and blacklisted.

Balling admits that human emitted carbon dioxide can have a warming effect but claims that this is not a problem. In 2004 Balling told Business Week that he believed that in the future people would be able to engineer whatever climate they wanted. In 2006 in an article 'Give a Hoot, Don't (Call It) "Pollute"', he argued that carbon dioxide was not a polllutant:

There is no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and holding everything else constant, elevated CO2 will act to warm the Earth. But as we see in the CO2 story, the levels of this gas have fluctuated enormously over the history of the Earth, and the ecosystems of the planet have evolved to cope with these variations. To suddenly label CO2 as a "pollutant" is a disservice to a gas that has played an enormous role in the development and sustainability of all life on this wonderful Earth.

Associations

Balling has been an advisor for a number of corporate-funded think tanks and front groups such as the Greening Earth Society and the Information Council on the Environment (see table below and diagram). He is also a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute, a think tank "committed to expanding free enterprise and liberty", based in Arizona.

Affiliation With ExxonMobil-Funded Organizations	Title/Role
Cato Institute	Book Author
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow	Scientific Advisory Board Member
Competitive Enterprise Institute	Report Author
George C. Marshall Institute	Roundtable Speaker
Heartland Institute	Global Warming Expert
Heritage Foundation	Policy Expert
Hoover Institution	Robert Wesson Endowment Fund Fellow (1993-4)
Tech Central Station	Science Round Table Member

Corporate Funding

Balling has been heavily funded by fossil fuel interests. In the 1990s he was reported in The Arizona Republic as saying that he had “received more like $700,000 over the past five years” from coal and oil interests in Great Britain, Germany and the US in the previous six years.

Links

• 'Robert C. Balling', SourceWatch
• 'FACTSHEET: Robert C. Balling Jr.', ExxonSecrets

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See also: Scientific Deniers | Patrick Michaels | Baliunas and Soon | Ian Plimer

References

 

© 2010 Sharon Beder
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/warming/Balling.html