Robert Balling is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, and the former director of its Office of Climatology.
15 Facts About Robert Balling
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Robert Balling was born and raised in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and moved to Springfield, Ohio, in 1970 to attend Wittenberg University.
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Robert Balling gained bachelor's and master's degrees in geography in 1974 and 1975, before gaining his PhD in geography from the University of Oklahoma in 1979.
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Robert Balling was assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, before joining the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University.
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Robert Balling gained tenure there in 1987, and served as the director of the Office of Climatology until 2004.
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Robert Balling has published much research pertaining to various factors that influence the Earth's climate.
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In 1988, Robert Balling published a study which found that the construction of golf courses around Palm Springs, CA may have cooled the city over the preceding 15 years, in contrast to the warming effect usually associated with urban areas.
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When interviewed by the New York Times, Robert Balling suggested the main reason might be that infrared radiation from the Sun is reflected towards Earth by the full moon.
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Between December 1998 and September 2001 Robert Balling was listed as a "Scientific Adviser" to the Greening Earth Society, a group that was funded and controlled by the Western Fuels Association, an association of coal-burning utility companies.
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From 1989 to 2002, Robert Balling received more than $679,000 from fossil-fuel-industry organizations; as of 2007, he had received more than $7 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation and the EPA.
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Robert Balling has come under scrutiny because he was listed as a tentative author of the Heartland Institute's NIPCC report; however, ASU's vice president of public affairs, Virgil Renzulli, pointed out that this did not imply that Balling had been receiving money from Heartland.
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Robert Balling himself added that his prior involvement with the Heartland Institute's activities amounted only to appearing at a luncheon they held in 2008.
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Robert Balling believes that humans are increasing the level of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere, and that the Earth should warm as a result.
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Robert Balling has made similar statements about current sea level rise; namely, that it has been occurring for 8,000 years and it is therefore "quite a stretch" to blame it on global warming.
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Reviewer John Firor argued that the book "does not fulfill" its claim that global warming predictions are "simply wrong", that Michaels and Robert Balling criticized the Kyoto Protocol without having read it, and that they quoted a well-known scientist out of context.