Robert Balling

Quick Facts

Full Name	Robert Balling
Occupation	Geographer
Date Of Birth	Dec 16, 1952(1952-12-16)
Age	72
Birthplace	Uniontown
Country	United States
Birth City	Pennsylvania
Horoscope	Sagittarius

Robert Balling Biography

Robert Balling is one of the most popular and richest Geographer who was born on December 16, 1952 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, United States. Balling was raised in Uniontown, Pennsylvania and moved to Springfield in 1970 to attend Wittenberg University. After hearing positive things about Phi Gamma Delta and seeing how many of his friends had pledged, Balling decided to join it while he was there. Balling earned bachelor’s and masters degrees in geography at Wittenberg University in 1974 and 1975, respectively, before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1978. Before joining the Office of Climatology of Arizona State University, he was an assistant professor at Nebraska from 1979 to 1984. He was awarded tenure in 1987 and served as director of the Office of Climatology from 2004 to 2004.

Between December 1998 to September 2001, Balling was listed in the “Scientific Advisor” section of the Greening Earth Society. This group was funded by and controlled the Western Fuels Association (WFA), a consortium of coal-burning utility firms. According to an archived version its website, WFA created the group in 1997 “to advocate on climate change and the environmental impact CO2 has on the environment, as well as fossil fuel use,” While it was being directed by Balling in 2001, the office of climateology at ASU received $49,000 from ExxonMobil.

Balling was mentioned as a fossil fuel industry – funded scientist in Ross Gelbspan’s 1997 book The Heat is On. This led the Minnesota Star Tribune to run an editorial speaking of a “disinformation campaign” by some climatologists. Balling and his colleague Patrick Michaels took a complaint against the Star Tribune to the Minnesota News Council. By a 9–4 decision the council “voted to sustain the complaint that the Star Tribune editorial unfairly characterized the scientific reputations of Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.” At the 1998 hearing, Balling “acknowledged that he had received $408,000 in research funding from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade (of which his University takes 50% for overhead).”

On February 24, 2015, Arizona State Representative Raúl Grijalva wrote letters to seven universities where climate skeptic scientists (including Balling) worked, citing concerns about these scientists’ conflicts of interest and non- disclosure of corporate funding. In these letters, Grijalva requested records on the funding and testimony prepared before a government body.

Ross Gelbspan, a Harper’s Magazine contributor, described Balling and other global-warming skeptics in the December 1995 issue as “extraordinarily adept” at draining the [global heating] issue of any sense of crisis. Climate of Extremes was written by Richard N. Cooper in Foreign Affairs. Cooper concluded that even though the authors had cherry-picked the scientific papers, the book is an effective antidote for the constant dose of hype to, which is what the public is constantly exposed to. American Scientist, however, gave The Satanic Gases, another Balling/Michaels collaboration, a harsh review. John Firor, a reviewer, stated that the book did not “fulfill” its claim (on its dust jacket) that global warming predictions were “simply wrong” and that Michaels and Balling had not read the Kyoto Protocol. He also claimed that they used a well-known scientist without context. Judd Legum criticized Balling’s article in TCS Daily, in which he criticized An Inconvenient Truth for being scientifically incorrect. He said that the article made “misleading scientific arguments.” Geochemist Eric Steig (a contributor to RealClimate) endorsed Legum’s criticism. He stated that “All those points were accurate” and that “some of them could have been stronger. That is, Balling is more wrong than Legum suggests.”

Robert Balling Net Worth

Robert Balling is one of the richest Geographer from United States. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Robert Balling 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

Balling has published a lot of research on various factors that affect the Earth’s climate. Balling published in 1988 a study that found that construction of golf courses around Palm Springs had cooled the city for the past 15 years. This was contrary to the warming effect associated with urban areas (also called the urban heat island effect). A study by Randall S. Cerveny (an ASU colleague) found that the moon can increase Earth’s temperature by more than 0.03 degrees Fahrenheit when it is full. It was not clear why the moon could do this. Balling said that the reason the moon can reflect infrared radiation towards Earth from the Sun when he was interviewed by The New York Times. Balling and Cerveny published a 1998 letter to Nature that found that man-made pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide were having an impact on weather patterns along the East Coast. The study concluded that Saturdays had the greatest effect on this phenomenon. This was because “… the end of the week is more polluted than the beginning.

Balling received over $679,000 in fossil-fuel-industry-related funds between 1989 and 2002. He also received $7 million in research funding through the National Science Foundation (EPA) from 2007 to 2007. Balling has been under scrutiny for being listed as a tentative writer in the Heartland Institute’s NIPCC Report. However, Virgil Renzulli (ASU vice president of public affairs) pointed out that this does not imply that Balling was receiving money from Heartland. Balling said that his previous involvement in the activities of Heartland Institute was limited to attending a 2008 luncheon.

Robert C. Balling, Jr. is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, and the former director of its Office of Climatology. His research interests include climatology, global climate change, and geographic information systems. Balling has declared himself one of the scientists who oppose the consensus on global warming, arguing in a 2009 book that anthropogenic global warming “is indeed real, but relatively modest”, and maintaining that there is a publication bias in the scientific literature.

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

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Who is Robert Balling Dating?

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Facts & Trivia

Robert Ranked on the list of most popular Geographer. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in United States. Robert Balling celebrates birthday on December 16 of every year.

Top Facts about Robert Balling

1. Robert Balling is an American geographer and climatologist.
2. He is a professor at Arizona State University.
3. Balling has published over 200 scientific papers.
4. He is known for his skepticism of human-caused climate change.
5. Balling has been criticized for receiving funding from fossil fuel companies.
6. He was a member of the Heartland Institute’s Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
7. Balling argues that climate models are unreliable and exaggerate warming trends.
8. He believes that natural factors, such as solar activity, play a larger role in climate change than human activities.
9. Balling has been accused of cherry-picking data to support his views on climate change.
10. Despite controversy surrounding his views, he remains an influential figure in the debate on climate change policy.