BALL'S THEOREM

Mustelid finds Tim Ball incredible

RICHARD CONNOLLEY WRITES:

"There's been a long-running lawsuit of Andrew Weaver against Tim Ball, who said naughty things about him. For background, or the-right-guys-won, see the Smoggies or Sou or doubtless others. And you can read the judgement itself. If you'd like to be told that TB won, then WUWT is your source; or in somewhat more detail, but be careful how much of that you read because even they can't help but quote some incriminating material. Judith Curry has a reasonably balanced set of quotes which cannot but look bad for TB, but of course she can't help veering off to her hobby-horse, Mann. The main substance of the judge's conclusion is that

the Article is poorly written and does not advance credible arguments in favour of Dr. Ball’s theory about the corruption of climate science. Simply put, a reasonably thoughtful and informed person who reads the Article is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views, including his views of Dr. Weaver as a supporter of conventional climate science. In Vellacott v. Saskatoon Star Phoenix Group Inc. et al, 2012 SKQB 359 [Vellacott], the court found that certain published comments were not defamatory because they were so ludicrous and outrageous as to be unbelievable and therefore incapable of lowering the reputation of the plaintiff in the minds of right-thinking persons (at para. 70). While the impugned words here are not as hyperbolic as the words in Vellacott, they similarly lack a sufficient air of credibility to make them believable and therefore potentially defamatory.

There is more, which I'll get to, but that's the main point; and of course, it is the version that makes Ball the loser: his article cannot be defamatory, because it isn't credible to any but the credulous."
For a more disinterested legal commentary, WUWT offers:
Tim Ball’s Victory in the First Climate Lawsuit Judgment – The Backstory
By, wait for it      Dr. Tim Ball

This is not a polar bear

In one of his better efforts, Ball proposed changes in 16th & 17th century landscape painting as  a proxy for  cosmic rays.
The noted Hudson Bay blanket authority and Canadian goose historian theorized that increased cloud cover in paintings constituted a better cosmic ray flux proxy than the inconvenient CERN cloud chamber results. He opined in WUWT that the  shift in baroque painting, from  blue skies  to  cloudy gray, signified that rising cosmic rays must have caused the Little Ice Age.