The TV presenter Johnny Ball, credited with popularising maths and science among a generation of children in the 1970s to 1990s with TV programmes such as Johnny Ball Reveals All, claims environmentalists have wrecked his career since he began rubbishing the science behind climate change. Ball has been stirring controversy on the subject in school talks and college lectures since at least 2007, when an Edinburgh University scientist told the Times Educational Supplement that a lecture he had just given was "a rant in denial of climate change" and said Ball "should not be allowed to explain to children what science is about again". Since then, he has become more vocal about his belief that climate change is "bad science", making colourful observations like his one in 2009 that spiders' farts are more harmful greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. That comment, at a lecture in London, led to him being booed off the stage. Now, in a new interview with the TES, Ball - the father of TV presenter Zoe Ball - says that angry activists have been attempting to ruin his name and career by creating websites in his name featuring pornography - with one person even attempting to cancel a lecture he was giving in Northampton by impersonating him. Ball explains that he takes his climate denialist stance for the sake of the children, who he believes are being "frightened to an alarming degree" by what he sees as environmentalists' "alarmism". "Several films have been introduced into schools which imply that the earth may not be able to sustain human life in around 39 years' time, which is unscientific, alarmist nonsense," he says. "It is suggesting to them that the previous generation have ruined the planet, and unless they switch lights off we could all be going to hell in a handcart." Greens target climate change denier Johnny Ball
Man who popularised science for children says environmentalists are ruining his career
Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/75298,people,news,greens-target-climate-change-denier-johnny-ball?DCMP=NLC-daily#ixzz1EJDW3pCc
Friday, 18 February 2011
LAST UPDATED 10:06 AM, FEBRUARY 18, 2011
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