Timothy Francis Ball (November 5, 1938 – September 24, 2022) was a British-born Canadian public speaker and writer who was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1971 until his retirement in 1996. Ball then became very active in promoting rejection of the scientific consensus on global warming, giving public talks and writing opinion pieces and letters to the editor for Canadian newspapers. He has been a member of energy industry funded lobbying groups. Education and professional career Ball received a bachelor's degree with honors in geography from the University of Winnipeg in 1970, followed by an M.A. from the University of Manitoba in 1971 and a PhD in geography with a specific focus on historical climatology from Queen Mary University of London in England in 1983. Ball became an instructor at the University of Winnipeg in 1971, and a lecturer the following year. He then served in the latter capacity for 10 years. In 1982 he became an assistant professor there, and was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and full professor in 1988. He retired from teaching in 1996. Research and books Historical climatology and natural history Ball founded the Rupert's Land Research Centre, a historical society dedicated to promoting the history of the area formerly known as Rupert's Land, in 1984. He also served as its director from then until 1996. The society placed a particular emphasis on the use of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives. Ball has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of historical climatology, most of which pertain to reconstructing temperatures in Canada during the past several centuries. In 2003, Ball co-authored a book entitled "Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay," which was reviewed in the American Indian Quarterly by Theodore Binnema of the University of Northern British Columbia in 2005, as well as by Fred Cooke in the Auk in 2004. Climate and polar bears study In 2007 Ball was one of seven co-authors of a paper arguing that "spring air temperatures around the Hudson Bay basin for the past 70 years (1932–2002) show no significant warming trend," and that, as a result, "the extrapolation of polar bear disappearance is highly premature." The paper was a "Viewpoint" article and was not peer-reviewed. While the paper was cited by Sarah Palin to justify opposition to listing polar bears on the endangered-species list, its findings were contradicted