Tim Ball has lived through two climate changes and is into his third.
The former University of Winnipeg professor, who frequently speaks out against human causes of climate change, acknowledges the climate is changing.
He told delegates to the Farm Leadership Council in Regina recently that he has never said it isn’t, even though many refer to him as a skeptic and a denier.
“I’m anything but a denier,” he said.
But he believes that those who blame human activity for climate change are wrong. Data tells him that climate change has always taken place and always will.
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During his own lifetime, cooling took place from 1940 to 1980, followed by a warming period until 1998. Since then, it has been cooling again.
Evidence shows that the earth warmed up dramatically about 10,500 years ago and was even warmer than it is today.
Ball showed the delegates old photographs and art that depict previous changes.
At one time, people farmed on now ice-covered Greenland, he said.
Another painting shows people skating in 1683 on at least one metre of ice on the Thames River in London.
And he reminded the crowd of the cooling that took place after the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.
These situations are not man-made, he said.
Ball said a warmer world is better than a colder world. He said recent reports concerning the loss of Arctic ice and habitat for polar bears are designed to play on people’s fears and lack of knowledge.
Data shows that 16 million sq.kilometres of ice forms every winter and 10 million sq. kilometres melts every summer within 150 days.
“There has been more ice this winter since we’ve been keeping record,” he said.
Ball also said the polar bear population has actually tripled in the last 30 years to about 25,000.
He said he met with Inuit leaders who, at a recent conference, were not allowed to say they’ve never seen so many polar bears.
Ball also said over the years the language surrounding climate change has changed.
For example, methane from cattle was once a huge concern. Atmospheric levels of methane have gone down for the last 15 years, he said.
He noted that 83 million cattle in North America were blamed for that but no one talked about the 65 million bison that once roamed.
As well, there are 250 million cattle in India that no one blamed because that would be politically incorrect, he said.
Today, people worry about carbon dioxide, without taking into consideration all the other components of the earth’s atmosphere, he said.
