SOON & BALIUNAS BS

POSSIBLY BELATED SEE CLIMATE RES JRNL

see FORK 3 DUBYA ~ KYOTO

lots of new soon here

2 22 tag s&BS

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mma 1 24 not rww

Former Fox host Tucker Carlson is platforming disgraced climate denier Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer known for accepting over $1 million from fossil fuel companies for writing publications he referred to as “deliverables.”

Carlson invited Soon, a former researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, on his exclusive program on X (formerly Twitter) for an interview on January 9. The two amplified long-debunked hypotheses about what is causing climate change, and clips from the interview have already been viewed over 1 million times on TikTok, likely by a young audience that might not be familiar with Soon’s controversies, which came to light back in 2015.

The spread of these videos highlights TikTok’s ongoing climate misinformation problem, even as it has begun implementing a new policy banning content that “undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it.”

Though experts dismissed Soon’s false claims, clips of his interview with Carlson have gained traction on TikTok, a social media platform popular with young users

• Clips of Carlson’s interview with Soon have been viewed over 1 million times on TikTok. Media Matters identified six videos that have collectively accrued more than 1.1 million views. According to a January 2023 report from Morning Consult, over 60% of Gen Z adults use TikTok at least once daily. TikTok, [1/10/24, 1/10/24, 1/10/24;1/10/24; 1/10/24, 1/10/24;Morning Consult, 1/2023]

• Climate scientists continue to highlight and debunk Soon’s disinformation.“Soon's science is based on faulty assumptions & his conclusions are invalid & that's likely why FF [fossil fuel] companies pay him," wrote Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Twitter/X, [9/10/23, 1/10/24,1/10/24]

The interview is part of a larger trend of major right-wing media outlets relying more on long-debunked climate deniers

• :{:{Discredited climate deniers like Judith Curry, Patrick Moore, Anthony Watts, and Gregory Wrightstone, who have been vocal for decades, received renewed attention in 2023 from right-wing media figures. After years of relative obscurity, these figures found a reliable home on shows like Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, and also appeared on Fox News programs such as Jesse Watters Primetime and The Ingraham Angle. On social media, they’ve increased engagement on X. Media Matters,:(style="background-color:#e0e000ff"):}: [11/28/12, 2/17/14, 12/22/23; DeSmog, 5/15/22; StateImpact Pennsylvania, 3/27/19]}:

Willie Soon has been exposed for unethically promoting flawed science

• In 2015, a joint investigation by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center found that Soon had accepted over $1.2 million in funding from fossil fuel companies for his research. Soon’s work was funded “almost entirely” by the fossil fuels industry, including Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Charles G. Koch Foundation. The Guardian, [2/21/15]

• Soon described his papers as “deliverables” to his corporate funders. Emails revealed that one of the country’s largest utility holding companies, Southern Company, paid Soon to publish research examining the sun’s role in driving climate change. At the time, Southern relied heavily on coal. Scientists have long recognized that solar activity cannot be responsible for the rapid warming that the planet has experienced in recent decades. The New York Times, [2/21/15; Inside Climate News, 2/21/15; NASA, accessed 1/11/24]

• The investigation also found that Soon failed to disclose his relationship with Southern Company in some of his research papers, violating ethical guidelines upheld by scientific journals. Despite accepting more than $400,000 from the company, Soon insisted he had no conflicts of interest, raising the alarm for academics and scientists. His papers, which have been published in top scientific journals, push a “range of climate-denial perspectives.” Inside Climate News, [2/21/15]

Soon has for years been a go-to source for media and lawmakers keen on protecting fossil fuel interests

• Soon and his work have been used by the GOP in their efforts to block climate action.Climate denier and former Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe has cited Soon in press releases and on the Senate floor. In 2013, Soon testified in support of an effort to repeal Kansas’ renewable energy standard in front of state legislators, claiming that climate change isn’t a problem. DeSmog, accessed [1/11/24; Energy and Policy Institute, 8/28/15; U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, 5/14/08, 7/29/03]

• Soon has worked with right-wing think tanks that influence climate policy. Soon has spoken at conferences hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the Texas Public Policy Institute, and the Heartland Institute. In 2014, he was awarded the “Courage in Defense of Science Award” by the climate denier organization now called CO2 Coalition. DeSmog, accessed [1/11/24, 1/12/24; Heartland Institute, accessed 1/12/24]

• Since Soon’s interview with Carlson, several well-known conspiracy theorists praised his ideas.Jimmy Corsetti, a YouTuber who has pushed the idea that a polar shift is responsible for climate change impact, and The Vigilant Fox, a figure known for spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, and many more, praised him on social media. Twitter/X, [1/9/24, 1/9/24; Media Matters, 5/24/23; Forbes, 11/26/22]

//

Right-Wing Media Rush To Defend Industry-Funded Climate Denier Willie Soon | Media Matters for America

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https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/climate-deniers/koch-industries/dr-willie-soon-a-career-fueled-by-big-oil-and-coal/

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who are the 3%?

Among all articles included in our sample, 30 per cent were from journals that previously published abstracts that implicitly or explicitly rejected AGW.:{Footnote:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:-1px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;clip:rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;width:1px;position:absolute;white-space:nowrap"):}:^8 Of these articles, 69 per cent were published by contrarian experts. While evaluating these journals is beyond the scope of this article, Table 5 shows not only the number of articles published in these journals by contrarians (overall and by experts) in our sample, but also the range of journals that published these authors. [table 5]

Another 9 per cent of articles in our overall sample (of which experts authored 45 per cent) were from known “contrarian” journals (Benestad :{Reference Benestad}:2013; Benestad et al. :{Reference Benestad}:2016; Kinne :{Reference Kinne}:2003; Wagner :{Reference Wagner}:2011). Energy & Environment, for example, has long been known as a publication friendly to climate science contrarians. In fact, it provided 131 of the “more than 900+ papers that supported climate change scepticism,” including one (included in our dataset) by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (Hope :{Reference Hope}:2018, para. 3; see also Soon and Baliunas :{Reference Soon and Baliunas}:2003). 

A shorter version of their paper, published in Climate Research just months prior, had already faced significant criticism—including from the journal's then-editor in chief, who ultimately resigned in protest over the controversy (Ward :{Reference Ward}:2015, para. 6).:{Footnote}:^9 Despite these criticisms, the authors expanded on the article and published it in Energy & Environment, spearheaded by then-Editor in Chief Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (yet another prominent contrarian in our sample). SAGE Publishing took over the journal in 2018 and has since “overhauled its peer review practices bringing it into line with SAGE standards” (Hope :{Reference Hope}:2018, para. 2). Not surprisingly, however, all articles in our sample from Energy & Environment were published prior to the end of Boehmer-Christiansen's editorship....

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badish code]

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/koch-exxon-climate-denial-scientist-confronted-by-greenpeace-students/

apr 2013

rarely do we meet those who have made careers selling us lies. Consider the oddball doctors who took tobacco money to deny a link between cigarette smoking and cancer, or the handful of scientists who take oil and coal money to discredit global warming science, or the people who have done both.

Willie Soon in a heated moment. Madison, WI (click to watch)

Last week, students in Wisconsin and Michigan stepped up to such an opportunity when CFACT Campus, the student arm of a well-known cabal of fossil fuel apologists, hosted climate change denier :{Willie Soon:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"):}: at several campus events around the country.

Dr. Willie Soon is a Smithsonian Institution astrophysicist paid by Charles Koch, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and coal utility Southern Company to write papers dismissing climate change, publish op-eds saying coal pollution won’t affect our health, refute the seriousness of ocean acidification, and apparently anything else he can be paid to deny. Dr. Soon has misrepresented himself by repeatedly claiming affiliation with Harvard University and using his credentials as an astrophysicist to make people believe he’s a climate expert, and he shows no sign of stopping. Indeed, he told students in Madison,”::(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"/maxresdefault.jpg)}:.”

In both Madison, Wisconsin and East Lansing, Michigan, Dr. Soon was caught with his pants down. As the Michigan State Newsdocumented in its article and accompanying audio interview, Soon claims that all the scientists around the world who study and recognize the seriousness of climate change are motivated by money, yet somehow his funding from coal and oil companies for his extremely marginalized viewpoints doesn’t matter.

Here is the dialog with Willie Soon at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with direct links to key clips below: 1)Willie Soon insinuates ExxonMobil will no longer fund him (emphasis added): ...“I have been receiving money from whoever that wants to give me money. I write my scientific proposal. I have received money from ExxonMobil, but ExxonMobil will no longer give me any money for a long time. American Petroleum Institute, anything you wish for, from Southern Company, from all these companies. I write proposal and let them judge whether they will fund me or not, always for a very small amount. If they choose to fund me, I’m happy to receive it.https://youtu.be/6WgTq57XQno?t=1m52s ...Dr. Soon stands behind his attempts to discredit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with help from ExxonMobil lobbyists:

“I was trying to bring down IPCC–is that what you imply?! […] Let it be known that I do not like IPCC, because IPCC does not stand for science, it is corrupting science.” https://youtu.be/6WgTq57XQno?t=3m32s  " s...After a question referencing emails with ExxonMobil lobbyists to undermine climate research at the United Nations before it even hit publication, Dr. Soon quickly loses his cool over his record of global warming denial, peppering the student with mild insults before owning up to his actions.

3) Dr. Soon thanks anyone who uses petroleum products or electricity from coal for supporting his work:

“I really want to thank her, because she’s receiving the electricity used for her house, she’s driving cars, she’s doing all of these things because you are funding me. It’s not an oil or coal company. They are a company that provides a service to humanity–to people who want to use electricity.” https://youtu.be/6WgTq57XQno?t=5m14s...Anyone looking at Southern Company‘s record of pollution and political interference would be skeptical about its commitment to serve humanity. Soon continues with an aggressive rant claiming that the student isn’t qualified to question his fossil fuel payments until she stops driving, using electricity, and wearing nylon.

4) Willie Soon states “:“  }:despite listing himself as an “expert in mercury and public health” for a discreditedWall Street Journal op-ed dismissing health concerns over mercury pollution from coal plants. Soon invented similar credentials for another opinion piece in the Washington Times, before he swapped back to being a 22-year veteran of “researching the relationship of solar radiation and the Earth’s climate,” research Dr. Soon did on the dime of oil and coal companies.

Basically, Willie Soon is an expert in whatever problems vested industries will pay him to deny.Michigan State students note how Willie Soon now refutes research indicating adverse impacts from ocean acidification, a global crisis that is married to climate change (both problems stem from humans burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere).

That’s effed up. This man makes a career lying to the public, not to mention our lawmakers, about some of the most serious issues of our time. Climate change is already contributing to the deaths of 400,000 people each year and costing global GDP about $1.2 trillion, according to a report commissioned by multiple nations. 98% of actual climate scientists (a distinction Dr. Willie Soon does not earn)agree that global warming is real and primarily drive by humans burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Not only has Dr. Soon lied to us and our lawmakers about the seriousness of global warming–he even lied directly to Congress in 2003 about his sources of funding at a time when he was promoting his study funded by the American Petroleum Institute, the $200 million/year oil and gas lobbying group. The Guardian wrote  GUK last year:

“In 2003 Soon said at a US senate hearing that he had “not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto Protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

This is why it’s crucial to demand accountability of people like Willie Soon.  He is a public relations tool of oil and coal companies, and as a scientist attempting to publish in fields well outside of his expertise, that oil and coal money is crucial to recognize.

Here are some of the best examples of Soon’s pseudo-science paid for by Big Oil and King Coal:

• 2003: An American Petroleum Institute-funded study claiming that the earth’s global temperature hasn’t risen. Three editors of the publishing journal resigned in protest over low scientific standards demonstrated by publishing Soon’s work.
• 2005: A paper mis-attributing arctic temperature changes to solar variability, a thoroughly debunked notion that was funded by the American Petroleum Institute (API).
• 2007: A non-peer-reviewed paper refuting concerns over global warming’s impact on polar bears, funded by API and the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
• 2009: A paper building upon Soon’s 2005 research attempting to claim thesun is mostly responsible for temperature changes. This work was funded by API, ExxonMobil and Southern Company.
• 2013: Soon’s ongoing “research” funding is now hidden through Donors Trust, a network used by the Kochs and other secretive interests who don’t want their financial influence to be traced. Donors Trust is the sole source of almost half of recent budgets for CFACT, which paid for Soon’s campus tour.

Dr. Soon’s work is like a joke, but not the type you’d laugh at. While he cracks these fossil-funded zingers, reputable scientists warn that humanity is running out of time to stop climate change from self-reinforcing to the point that it spirals out of human control. As quoted by the Michigan State News, young conservatives on campus had trouble taking Dr. Willie Soon’s presentation seriously:

Im not a science major, but I think (Soons presentation) has got valid points, but also other scientists who disagree with him have valid points, Sobecki said. Im not crazy enough to think that six billion people dont have an effect on climate in the world we live in.

Science majors attending the MSU event didn’t agree that Soon’s points were particularly valid. See this account from a MSU Greenpeace student activist on PolluterWatch for more details.

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https://www.desmog.com/2010/03/17/crescendo-climategate-cacophony/ pointer fail

https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/crescendo%20climategate%20cacophony%20v1%200.pdf185 pp 2/22

2010

John Mashey: Crescendo Climategate Cacophony

...de Freitas, Chris (New Zealand)

www.sges.auckland.ac.nz/the_school/our_people/defreitas_chris/index.shtm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_de_Freitas

www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Chris_de_Freitas

www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=3

web.archive.org/web/20030526163750/www.cspg.org/deFreitas_climate.pdf [DEF2002]

deepclimate.org/2009/12/02/in-the-beginning-friends-of-science-talisman-energy-and-the-de-freitas-broth

ers Support from Talisman energy, possible involvement by others. Much below is due to DC.

Activities: Leipzig, HeartExp#1

Organizations: FoS, ICSC, NZCSC, ICECAP, Lavoisier, Climate Research (journal).

The Bulletin of the Canadian Petroleum Geology published a de Freitas anti-science paper [DEF2002] via

an interesting process.

The Editor, his Canadian geologist brother Tim had recused himself, but had paper

reviewed by Soon and Boehmer-Christiansen, contemporaneously with De Freitas reviewing a

badly-flawed paper by Soon and Baliunas [SOO2003] for the journal Climate Research.De Freitas was

then an editor of that journal, whose publication of that paper eventually led to resignation of

Editor-in-Chief Hans von Storch and about half other editors. All this was the impetus for some

complaints found in Climategate emails. (read DC‘s account). At various times, Balling, Davis, De

Freitas and Legates have been editors for Climate Research, but none currently.

As for the original [DEF2002], it was described by Tim de Freitas, p27:

www.cspg.org/volunteer/files/reports/2002-CSPG-Report-of-Activities.pdf (emboldening mine).

...

People familiar with climate anti-science PR campaigns Those familiar with the general topic and primarily interested in recent discoveries about the Wegman Report (WR) can examine Figures 2.1 and 3.1 for context, then skip to §5, read it and Appendices A.10 and A.11, and selected parts of other Appendices. They should read posts of Canadian blogger Deep Climate (DC) to whom much is owed for unearthing key facts. However, the WR was just one tactic in a two-decades-long campaign, and the rest of the document collects much detail to let people follow any subset of threads they wish to explore. Some readers might be familiar with the organizations, tactics, and individuals of A.2, A.3, A.4 and A.7, but might consult A.6 for detailed maps of relationships among these...

2001 [GUT2009], pp.251-259 covers the back-history of the M&M connection, and its context within Fraser Institute efforts, ―its biggest coup.‖ DC covered this in more detail in [DEE2010d].

...

2010.01 Reality strikes back, thanks to “Deep Climate” Canadian blogger ―Deep Climate‖ (DC) published clear evidence that Bradley‘s classic book [BRA199] was not only plagiarized in the WR, but was sometimes changed in ways to cast doubt on credibility of tree-ring research. This subject was very important to the whole issue, but the WP lacked that expertise, by at least one of the member‘s own words. See [DEE2009, DEE2009a, DEE2010, DEE2010a] or just check [DEE2009a, DEE2010a] for side-by-side comparisons. Exactly which combination of people copied and changed Bradley‘s text is unclear, but there are 6 obvious people to ask first. DC then unearthed a few more key facts. See A.10 for detailed notes on the purposeful, deceptive plagiarism, inclusion of ‖grey literature‖ references, and generally shoddy scholarship. DC later found evidence of additional substantial plagiarism in the social network material.

...

2007.09.07 Said gave a talk at GMU [SAI2007], analyzed in some detail in A.11. DC had already found the plagiarism and the P.Spencer connection, enough to cast serious doubts on any claim of ―independence‖, but then found this talk. It mentioned additional people, gave more insight into the WP worldview and confirmed a strong P.Spencer role. His hints helped me find it as well...

―Deep Climate‘s diligent sleuthing and posts on Canadian climate anti-science were critical. He found crucial facts and gave some good hints on where to look further. This document would not have happened without his work. I‘ve been accumulating information over the last few years, trying to understand the patterns and connections in data I already had. DC‘s work suddenly helped make much better sense of existing information, and helped me look in the right places for more....

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no lnx many

Wegman on Deep Climate (and “climategate”)

Posted on January 6, 2011 | 123 Comments

John Mashey has released an updated version of Strange Investigations at George Mason University [SIGMU PDF at DeSmogBlog], which tells the story of GMU’s slow-as-molasses misconduct  inquiry of Edward Wegman through various email exchanges between paleoclimatologist Raymond Bradley and GMU. Mashey now includes correspondence involving one Donald Rapp, retired engineer/physicist turned climate contrarian author. Rapp has been complaining far and wide about the indignity of plagiarism complaints lodged at the University of Southern California and at his publisher Praxis/Springer, even going so far as to exhort USA Today reporter Dan Vergano to spread one email exchange “all over the internet”.

All this will no doubt prove fascinating reading and provide fodder for weeks to come, as it has in the past. (Highlight from early 2009: “But the donkeys on deepclimate.org are the Taliban of climate change – and just as dangerous”). But for now I want to focus on two emails from Wegman himself, both forwarded by Rapp. Wegman has some choice comments about the “totally unsavory” blog of yours truly, claiming it to be – wait for it – “developed in retaliation” for enquiries into the “obvious misconduct made clear” by climategate.  But the problem is not just some obscure Canadian blogger; according to Wegman, even Bradley’s complaint to GMU itself is nothing more than “a smear campaign that attempts to deflect scrutiny from the real misconduct revealed by the climategate emails”.

When the story of the Wegman misconduct inquiry first broke in USA Today, Wegman plaintively protested “We are not the bad guys”, leaving one to wonder just who the “bad guys” might be, at least in Wegman’s fevered imagination.  Now, we have the answer in Wegman’s latest outrageous and unsubstantiated accusations against climate scientists.

Wegman’s eventual entanglement with Rapp resulted from a plagiarism complaint that was apparently lodged with University of Southern California, just as Rapp’s part-time adjunct position at the Space Engineering Science Center (SERC) was up for renewal.  In the email exchange forwarded by Rapp to USA Today’s Dan Vergano we see how SERC director and noted climate contrarian Joseph Kunc went to bat for Rapp, urging outright dismissal of the complaint, and enlisting Edward Wegman’s support. Kunc had been  involved in the anti-science petition kerfuffle at the American Physical Society, ably exposed by John Mashey. (Astonishingly the standoff continues, as SERC continues to list Rapp as “participating faculty”, while showing Rapp’s private email along with a phone number in a different area code from USC’s location).

Here is Wegman’s reply to Kunc (all the emails and Mashey’s commentary are covered in SIGMU, p. 11-15):

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 09:23:19 -0400

Subject: Re: Question from Prof. Kunc

From: [WEGMAN EMAIL (NOT AT GMU)]

To: [KUNC EMAIL]

Dear Dr. Kunc,

The web blog deepclimate.org is, in my opinion, a totally unsavory operation. They have developed conspiracy theories and have consistently made charges of plagiarism not only against Dr. Rapp, but against me and my colleagues in our report to Congress.They have never spoken with me and have jumped to wild conclusions that have nothing to do with reality. Interestingly enough, they have posted copyrighted material from my website on theirs without acknowledgement.What is even worse is that they hide behind anonymity. It is my opinion that Dr. Rapp has not plagiarized anything and I hold him harmless. This web blog seems to have been developed in retaliation for the enquiries associated with the climategate email releases and the obvious misconduct made clear by those email releases.

Sincerely,

Ed Wegman

As noted before, we have here the supreme irony of Wegman’s dismissal of ever-mounting evidence of misconduct as “wild conclusions”, while blithely charging “obvious” (yet utterly vague) misconduct on the part of climate scientists. And, as I mentioned just a couple of days ago, I’ve been blogging regularly on climate science disinformation since early 2009, and started the blog back in 2008.

The copyright comment was somewhat mystifying to me, until Google led me to this statement from the home page of George Mason University’s statistics website:

This page and all pages on this server (www.galaxy.gmu.edu) are copyright (c) 1996-2010 Edward J. Wegman and the Center for Computational Data Science, George Mason University.

Oh, I see: “Le centre, c’est moi”. So Wegman may have in mind Yasmin Said’s 2007 presentation that told the inconvenient truth about Barton staffer Peter Spencer’s hands on involvement in the Wegman et al report – a presentation that mysteriously disappeared from GMU’s website the same week that the GMU inquiry committee finally met for the first time.

As for Wegman holding Rapp harmless, neither one of this hapless pair seems to realize that copying something without attribution does not confer the right to let someone else copy it too. Quite the opposite, in fact. Not only that, but the case against Rapp includes far more than just the material appropriated from Bradley via Wegman. My cursory examination showed a large swathe taken from the Oak Ridge Laboratory web site and even careful removal of several Bradley citations from a Willie Soon block quote. (Perhaps Rapp could contact Soon to get his blessing as well). Even Rapp has allowed that this supposed inadvertant copying without attribution may have happened “10 times, or 20”. Then again, I only looked at part of Chapter 1.

At any rate, here is the second email a week later, this time in response to Rapp himself. Wegman allows that the “zealots” have also targeted him with a plagiarism complaint, just like Rapp.

From: Edward Wegman

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:36:10 -0400

To: Donald Rapp

Subject: Re: Charges of Plagiarism by the Climategate Folks

Dear Dr. Rapp,

Thank you for your recent email. It is at least some comfort to know that the zealots aren’t targeting me alone. My Dean and Vice President for Research have asked my not to comment until the charges leveled against me have been resolved. However, the official definition of plagiarism involves copying the ideas or words of someone else and presenting them as your own. Of course, in the so-called Wegman report, we make it clear that we were not trying to represent ourselves as the inventors of paleoclimate reconstruction via tree rings as Bradley implies.

Indeed, we explicitly say that these materials were included so as to give the Congressional audience a balanced picture of the area.The deepclimate website is full of crackpot conspiracy theories. I avoid reading it in order to keep a semblance of normalcy. I believe the GMU inquiry will vindicate me and my co-authors. (Rice University has already concluded that the charges against David Scott have no merit.) In any case, I have been in touch with counsel and subsequent to the GMU resolution, perhaps we can meet and decide further actions. I do agree that this is a shabby attempt at a smear campaign that attempts to deflect scrutiny from the real misconduct revealed by the climategate emails.

All the best,

Ed Wegman

Once again, Wegman appears to misunderstand the concept of plagiarism. Interestingly, though, at this point Wegman didn’t acknowledge the obvious copying of social network analysis material in the Wegman report and the follow up Said et al. He rectified that later by expanding the list of fields he was not claiming to have invented:

… we have never intended that our Congressional testimony was intended to take intellectual credit for any aspect of paleoclimate reconstruction science or for any original research aspect of social network analysis.

Wegman also took comfort from the quick exoneration of co-author Scott, while neglecting to mention that it came only after Wegman himself assumed responsibility for the sections forming the basis for Bradley’s complaint.

I do wonder, though,  whether Wegman still wants to meet with “loose lips” Rapp and “decide further actions”, despite all they have in common. After all, even before this latest batch of revelations, Rapp had already aired various private statements from Wegman at ClimateAudit and WattsUpWithThat. With ever so discreet friends like that, who needs enemies?

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https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/climate-deniers/koch-industries/dr-willie-soon-a-career-fueled-by-big-oil-and-coal/

Of all the climate deniers, one scientist has been particularly closely involved in the campaign against the climate science consensus for the majority of his career: Dr. Willie Soon.

UPDATE Feb. 2015: Newly released documents reveal Willie Soon’s contracts with Southern Company, the Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil, and DonorsTrust.

See the New York Times expose from February 2015

UPDATE Feb. 2013: New FOIA results show new funding to Willie Soon from secret DonorsTrust network, Koch brothers and Southern Company. 

Click here to see the fossil fuel financiers of Willie Soon’s career.

PolluterWatch.org has more on Dr. Willie Soon.

Introduction:

This investigation shows that Dr. Soon has received substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry for most of his scientific career and heavy corporate funding in the last decade.

After graduating in science (Bachelor and Masters), Dr. Soon received his Ph.D in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1991.

His thesis focussed on “Collisional-radiative properties of high-temperature, partially ionized nitrogen, oxygen, helium and hydrogen plasmas at conditions relevant to the Earth’s atmosphere.” He has never had any formal training as a climatologist and stated, in a reply to Sen. Jeffords in 2003 after a Congressional testimony, that one of his main teachers in climate science was denier David Legates.

After graduating, Dr. Soon began work at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. The chair of Mt Wilson’s Board of Trustees was climate denier Robert Jastrow, who set up the George C Marshall Institute, the think tank that was arguably the first to engage in active climate denial, as documented by science historian Naomi Oreskes in the book “Merchants of Doubt”.

Dr. Soon is now employed as astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory (SAO). He is most famous for his work with fellow astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, writing the first paper that attempted to challenge the ‘hockey stick’ graph of temperature records published by Dr Michael Mann.

Key findings:

• $1.3 Million in corporate funding: The FOIA response from the Smithsonian reveals that more than half (over $1.3 million) of Willie Soon’s total funding since 2001 has come from the oil and electric utility industry (coal). Since 2002, every new grant he has received has been from either oil & coal interests or Donors Trust.:{

}:

• UPDATE FEB. 2013: Willie Soon now gets funding funneled through Donors Trust, the secretive “Dark Money ATM” used by the Kochs and other wealthy elites to obscure their contributions to controversial sources–see the Guardian and Mother Jones. Since 2002, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund have sent $146 million to 102 groups that deny climate science and obstruct policy solutions to global warming.

• Polar bear junk science funding revealed: While Dr. Soon revealed in a 2007 non-peer reviewed Ecological Complexity article on polar bears and Arctic ice that his research was funded by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, neither the corporate funders or Dr. Soon have ever acknowledged the extent, dollar figures or timing of those grants.

• More Koch Funding: The FOIA response from Smithsonian uncovered an additional grant in 2010 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation of $65,000. UPDATE FEB. 2013: New FOIA results show an additional $55,000 from the Kochs for Willie Soon’s work from 2010-2012.

• Southern Company dirty coal funding: The Smithsonian documents also revealed two previously unknown grants totaling $230,000 from the Southern Company, one of the largest coal burning electric utilities in the United States and in world. FEB. 2013 UPDATE: New FOIA results show an additional $120,000 from Southern Company for Willie Soon’s work from 2011-2012.

• Additional corporate funders: Other papers written by Dr. Soon and reviewed by Greenpeace researchers show that the American Petroleum Institute has been funding Dr. Soon since the mid-1990s, a period when he also acknowledged funding from Mobil, Texaco and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) a research and lobby shop funded by the electric utilities.

• Attack on IPCC report: Correspondence uncovered in our investigation reveals Dr. Soon coordinating a plan in 2003 to undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Assessment Report (AR4) Working Group 1 report–years before the report was released in 2007.

Willie Soon’s Backers:  Big Coal and Big Oil

Since 2001, Willie Soon has received direct funding for his research of $1.033 million from Big Coal and Big Oil interests. In contrast, he received $842,079 from conventional government or university funders in the same period. The last grant he received from a funder with no ties to dirty energy interests was in 2002 (a grant that carried through to 2006). Since then, he has been entirely funded by the fossil fuel industry.

The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation gave two grants to Dr. Soon totaling $175,000. The 2005-6 grant for $110,000 from the “Koch Foundation” is titled  “Koch/Mobile [sic] Charitable foundation.” This two year grant came from the Charles G. Koch Foundation according to Media Matters Transperancy.

The 2010 grant for $65,000 is titled “Understanding solar variability and climate change.” Dr. Soon’s acknowledgement in the 2007 polar bear paper published in the Journal of Ecological Complexity says he received funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

American Petroleum Institute(API) gave Dr. Soon multiple grants from 2001 to 2007 totalling nearly $274,000 for research apparently of interest to the oil industry, such as the “Sun’s impact on climate over the last 1000 years.” Additional grants of unknown amounts were given to Dr. Soon from 1994-1997.

ExxonMobil Foundation has heavily funded Dr. Soon in at least four grants between 2005 and 2010 totaling $335,000. The titles for these grants range from “project support” to “Exxon-Arctic climate change.” It is not known whether ExxonMobil is still funding Dr. Soon, but Exxon did note in its 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report,

“…we will discontinue contributions to several public policy groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure energy required for economic growth in a responsible manner.”

Southern Company is new to the list of known funders of Willie Soon. Our FOIA request to Smithsonian revealed that Southern Company, the giant coal burning utility, gave Dr. Soon two grants: $110,000 in 2005-06 for “Understanding Arctic Climate Change” and $120,000 in 2008-09 for “Solar variability and climate change signals from temperature,” areas of research that Southern Company appears to have a keen interest in. This funding and relationship with Southern and EPRI might explain Dr. Soon’s “expertise” in mercury (see below), as the EPA finalizes overdue rules on mercury emissions from coal-fired power stations. Oil burning does not result in mercury emissions, but coal burning does.

Willie Soon regularly teamed with the SAO’s other astrophysicist, Sallie Baliunas, to defend fossil fuels and attack climate science. Some grants were split between them. This denier duo has received $1.153 million from dirty energy interests since 2001.

Dr. Willie Soon

A Career Fueled by Big Oil and Coal

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Of all the climate deniers, one scientist has been particularly closely involved in the campaign against the climate science consensus for the majority of his career: Dr. Willie Soon.

UPDATE Feb. 2015: Newly released documents reveal Willie Soon’s contracts with Southern Company, the Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil, and DonorsTrust.

See the New York Times expose from February 2015

UPDATE Feb. 2013: New FOIA results show new funding to Willie Soon from secret DonorsTrustnetwork, Koch brothers and Southern Company. 

Click here to see the fossil fuel financiers of Willie Soon’s career.

PolluterWatch.org has more on Dr. Willie Soon.

Introduction:

This investigation shows that Dr. Soon has received substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry for most of his scientific career and heavy corporate funding in the last decade.

After graduating in science (Bachelor and Masters), Dr. Soonreceived his Ph.D in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1991.

His thesis focussed on “Collisional-radiative properties of high-temperature, partially ionized nitrogen, oxygen, helium and hydrogen plasmas at conditions relevant to the Earth’s atmosphere.” He has never had any formal training as a climatologist and stated, in a reply to Sen. Jeffords in 2003 after a Congressional testimony, that one of his main teachers in climate science was denier David Legates.

After graduating, Dr. Soon began work at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. The chair of Mt Wilson’s Board of Trustees was climate denier Robert Jastrow, who set up the George C Marshall Institute, the think tank that was arguably the first to engage in active climate denial, as documented by science historian Naomi Oreskes in the book “Merchants of Doubt”.

Dr. Soon is now employed as astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory (SAO). He is most famous for his work with fellow astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, writing the first paper that attempted to challenge the ‘hockey stick’ graph of temperature records published by Dr Michael Mann.

Key findings:

• $1.3 Million in corporate funding: The FOIA response from the Smithsonian reveals that more than half (over $1.3 million) of Willie Soon’s total funding since 2001 has come from the oil and electric utility industry (coal). Since 2002, every new grant he has received has been from either oil & coal interests or Donors Trust.:{

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• UPDATE FEB. 2013: Willie Soon now gets funding funneled through Donors Trust, the secretive “Dark Money ATM” used by the Kochs and other wealthy elites to obscure their contributions to controversial sources–see the Guardian and Mother Jones. Since 2002, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fundhave sent $146 million to 102 groups that deny climate science and obstruct policy solutions to global warming.

• Polar bear junk science funding revealed: While Dr. Soon revealed in a 2007 non-peer reviewed Ecological Complexity article on polar bears and Arctic ice that his research was funded by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, neither the corporate funders or Dr. Soon have ever acknowledged the extent, dollar figures or timing of those grants.

• More Koch Funding: The FOIA response from Smithsonian uncovered an additional grant in 2010 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation of $65,000. UPDATE FEB. 2013: New FOIA results show an additional $55,000 from the Kochs for Willie Soon’s work from 2010-2012.

• Southern Company dirty coal funding: The Smithsonian documents also revealed two previously unknown grants totaling $230,000 from the Southern Company, one of the largest coal burning electric utilities in the United States and in world. FEB. 2013 UPDATE: New FOIA results show an additional $120,000 from Southern Company for Willie Soon’s workfrom 2011-2012.

• Additional corporate funders: Other papers written by Dr. Soon and reviewed by Greenpeace researchers show that the American Petroleum Institute has been funding Dr. Soon since the mid-1990s, a period when he also acknowledged funding from Mobil, Texacoand the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) a research and lobby shop funded by the electric utilities.

• Attack on IPCC report: Correspondence uncovered in our investigation reveals Dr. Soon coordinating a plan in 2003 to undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Assessment Report (AR4) Working Group 1 report–years before the report was released in 2007.

Willie Soon’s Backers:  Big Coal and Big Oil

Since 2001, Willie Soon has received direct funding for his research of $1.033 million from Big Coal and Big Oil interests. In contrast, he received $842,079 from conventional government or university funders in the same period. The last grant he received from a funder with no ties to dirty energy interests was in 2002 (a grant that carried through to 2006). Since then, he has been entirely funded by the fossil fuel industry.

The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation gave two grants to Dr. Soon totaling $175,000. The 2005-6 grant for $110,000 from the “Koch Foundation” is titled  “Koch/Mobile [sic] Charitable foundation.” This two year grant came from the Charles G. Koch Foundation according to Media Matters Transperancy.

The 2010 grant for $65,000 is titled “Understanding solar variability and climate change.” Dr. Soon’s acknowledgement in the 2007 polar bear paper published in the Journal of Ecological Complexity says he received funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

American Petroleum Institute (API) gave Dr. Soon multiple grants from 2001 to 2007 totalling nearly $274,000 for research apparently of interest to the oil industry, such as the “Sun’s impact on climate over the last 1000 years.” Additional grants of unknown amounts were given to Dr. Soon from 1994-1997.

ExxonMobil Foundation has heavily funded Dr. Soon in at least four grants between 2005 and 2010 totaling $335,000. The titles for these grants range from “project support” to “Exxon-Arctic climate change.” It is not known whether ExxonMobil is still funding Dr. Soon, but Exxon did note in its 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report,

“…we will discontinue contributions to several public policy groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure energy required for economic growth in a responsible manner.”

Southern Company is new to the list of known funders of Willie Soon. Our FOIA request to Smithsonian revealed that Southern Company, the giant coal burning utility, gave Dr. Soon two grants: $110,000 in 2005-06 for “Understanding Arctic Climate Change” and $120,000 in 2008-09 for “Solar variability and climate change signals from temperature,” areas of research that Southern Company appears to have a keen interest in. This funding and relationship with Southern and EPRI might explain Dr. Soon’s “expertise” in mercury (see below), as the EPA finalizes overdue rules on mercury emissions from coal-fired power stations. Oil burning does not result in mercury emissions, but coal burning does.

Willie Soon regularly teamed with the SAO’s other astrophysicist, Sallie Baliunas, to defend fossil fuels and attack climate science. Some grants were split between them. This denier duo has received $1.153 million from dirty energy interests since 2001.

Dr. Willie Soon’s known corporate funding 1994-2012:

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The 1990’s:

Dr. Soon’s alliance with Big Oil began in the 1990s when oil companies began to see the threat of the growing climate science consensus and desperately sought counter information such as Dr. Soon and Dr. Baliunas’ work on solar variability and its potential influence on the climate.

It would be very convenient for the oil industry if carbon dioxide were not to blame for climate change. The American Petroleum Institute (API) funded four of Dr. Soon’s papers from 1994-1997. The Mobil Foundation (merged with Exxon Foundation in 1998) funded at least three of his papers in the same period, all along with the API. The Texaco Foundation also funded a paper by Dr. Soon. We do not know the size of these grants.

Another major funder in the 1990s was the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a research organization for the electricity industry. In 2009, 45 percent of US electricity was generated from coal. Coal and oil have the most at stake from strong scientific proof of global warming and carbon dioxide emissions impact on the planet. There is a long alliance between the interests of coal and oil attacking climate science and fighting climate policy dating back to the late 1980s as detailed in the Greenpeace report, :{Dealing in Doubt:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

Get funding from big coal, become expert in Mercury?

In May 2011, an op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), co-authored by Willie Soon and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow’s Paul Driessen.  Entitled “The Myth of Killer Mercury,” the piece attacked the EPA’s proposed rules for limiting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Dr. Soon’s WSJ byline stated: “Mr. Soon, a natural scientist at Harvard, is an expert on mercury and public health issues.”

Greenpeace asked both Harvard University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) to verify this newfound area of expertise expressed by Dr Soon. Dr Charles Alcock, the Director of the CfA, stated in an email that Dr. Soon was employed an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), which is apparently housed within the CfA, along with the the Harvard College Observatory. Dr. Alcock said in a letter “I cannot comment on Dr Soon’s expertise regarding mercury and public health issues.”

Nonetheless, Willie Soon has no affiliation with Harvard University except sharing a building with Harvard students and staff on Harvard’s campus.

As the Wall St. Journal op-ed was re-posted across the web on right wing blogs and think tank websites, Dr. Soon’s byline mysteriously started to morph, turning into: “Willie Soon is a natural scientist who has studied mercury and public health issues for eight years.” Yet there is no record of any such public health studying or publishing in peer reviewed journals in his most recent bio and CV, written six years ago.

Dr. Soon also appeared as a quasi-expert on mercury in 2005 in another Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Eat More Fish,” republished by the Heartland Institute.

Willie Soon plotted to take down the IPCC AR4 before it was even written.

In 2003, as the IPCC was gearing up for the upcoming Fourth Assessment (AR4) due in 2007, Willie Soon began plotting with colleagues about how to undermine the work. As part of the FOIA documents received by Greenpeace, there was a link to Dr. Soon’s documents. That link led to a directory of Dr. Soon’s files at Harvard. Dr. Soon has also referenced these online files in previous articles published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In a letter in these files (dated after 10 October) Dr. Soon wrote:

“Clearly they [the AR4 chapters] may be too much for any one of us to tackle them all … But, as A-team, we may for once give it our best shot to try to anticipate and counter some of the chapters, especially WG1—judging from our true expertise in the basic climate sciences …

Even if we can tackle ONE single chapter down the road but forcefully and effectively … we will really accomplish A LOT!

In all cases, I hope we can start discussing among ourselves to see what we can do to weaken the fourth assessment report or to re-direct  attention back to science …”

Who was this “A Team”? The letter was addressed to “Bob, Randy, Walter, Sallie and Dave”.

From other correspondence, it seems possible that “Bob” is Australian sceptic Bob Carter, as Dr. Soon worked with Carter. “Sallie” is clearly Dr. Sallie Baliunas, “Dave” is likely David Legates.

There is no prominent “A-team” type scientist or climate sceptic called Randy – except ExxonMobil’s lobbyist Randy Randol, who was heavily involved with the Exxon-funded deniers. Randol wrote the famous memo to the Bush administration recommending that the then head of the IPCC, Bob Watson, be replaced. (Watson was indeed replaced – by the current chair Rajendra Pachauri. But Pachauri has continued the rigorous scientific work carried out by Watson and has since become the target of deniers.)

Randol was involved in a number of other Exxon plans to undermine climate science, including a plan cooked up in 1998 with other Exxon-funded think tanks to attack the Kyoto Protocol (see his name, bottom of page 4).

Equally, there is no “Walter” in the climate denial field – except Walt Buchholtz, ExxonMobil’s Government Relations & Issues Advisor, the man responsible for doling out Exxon’s funding grants to deniers and front groups. Buchholtz was listed as a “Government relations advisor” to the Heartland Institute in 2005 (as listed in the Heartland Institute’s 2005 990 IRS form).

Regardless of who these “A Team” members truly were, Willie Soon clearly coordinated a plan to undermine the science chapter of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment – before he even knew what science it contained. This is a clear example of the climate denier strategy of undermining climate science, and stands in sharp contrast with accepted scientific methodology.

The Hockey Stick

In 2003, Dr. Soon and his colleague at the SAO, Sallie Baliunas, published a now thoroughly debunked study in Climate Research’ “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years,” in the first of a number of denier challenges to Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ study. This study was republished [pdf] by the (then ExxonMobil funded) George Marshall Institute in 2003

While Dr. Soon and Dr. Baliunas acknowledged the American Petroleum Institute’s funding of the work in the paper, the dollar figure was not known. We now know from the newly acquired FOIA Smithsonian documents that the API gave them a total of $118,443 for this work, over 2002 and 2003, in grants entitled: “Sun’s impact on climate over the last 1000 years” and “1000 years of solar variability.”

The Soon-Baliunas article claimed that the twentieth century was not the warmest century in the past 1,000 years and that the climate has not changed significantly during this time. This sham science kicked off a heavy focus by deniers on the “hockey stick” study first done by Michael Mann, later proven sound by numerous other studies, but viciously attacked by deniers regardless.

Mann himself, in an interview, said of the Soon-Baliunas 2003 paper:

“It really was one of the poorest pieces of scholarship that any of us in the climate research community had ever seen… it was clear that there was an effort by some on the editorial board to compromise the PR (peer review) process and allow through this deeply, deeply flawed paper in the professional literature where it was immediately held up by those in Washington opposed to taking action against climate change… as somehow being the dagger in the heart of the case for global warming, when in fact it was just an extremely bad study that never should have published…”

After the Soon-Baliunas article was published, three of the editors of Climate Research resigned in protest, including incoming editor-in-chief Hans von Storch.  Von Storch declared the article seriously flawed because “the conclusions [were] not supported by the evidence presented in the paper.” In addition to the resignations, thirteen of the scientists cited in the paper published rebuttals stating that Dr. Soon and Dr. Baliunas had misinterpreted their work.

2003 testimony to Environment and Public Works Committee

In 2003, after publishing his ‘hockey stick’ paper, Dr. Soon was invited to give evidence on global warming to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). During the hearing, Dr. Soon was asked by Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT):

“Have you been hired by or employed by or received grants from organizations that have taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto Protocol, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or legislation before the United States Congress that would affect greenhouse gas emissions? If so, please identify those organizations.”

Willie Soon responded:  “I have not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any such organizations described in this question.“

It is difficult to accept that Dr. Soon didn’t know that the American Petroleum Institute, one of his funders at the time, had been at the centre of lobbying against action on climate change for over a decade. Nor is it plausible that there were no discussions about Dr. Soon’s research.

Fake science and polar bears

The majority of Dr. Soon’s grants from the fossil fuel industry focus on work relating to the sun and Arctic climate change.

Willie Soon’s recently published articles relating to climate change focus on solar variability and the Arctic (in 2005 and 2009), attempting to prove that it is the sun’s variability that is responsible for Arctic warming in recent years.

In March 2007, Willie Soon co-authored a ‘viewpoint’, published in the journal Ecological Complexity(Vol. 4, Issue 3, pp. 73-84) that announced that polar bears were not under threat from global warming and that Arctic sea ice decline was less severe than stated in recent peer-reviewed literature. Ecological Complexity publishes peer-reviewed research, but “Viewpoints” aren’t subject to such scholarly review.  Dr. Soon was one of the authors of the ‘viewpoint’, joined by well-known deniers Sallie Baliunas, David Legates and Tim Ball.

The paper was rejected some four years earlier by a peer-reviewed journal. But because the peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed reports look almost identical, it would be almost impossible for a casual reader to tell the difference. Also contained in Willie Soon’s Harvard files online was a rejection letter from the Editor of “Ecography” magazine, Linus Svensson, dated June 5, 2003, containing peer review comments supporting the magazine’s rejection of the submission.

The whole affair has been documented in a previous case study in the 2010 Greenpeace report on the Koch Brothers.

Willie Soon acknowledges that the article was partly sponsored “(for Willie Soon’s work) by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation. “

The new FOIA documents from the SAO show the funding in this period, presumably for this study, was as follows:

• API:   $50,000, “understanding Arctic climate change”

• Koch:  $110,000, “Koch/Mobile (sic) charitable foundation”

• ExxonMobil: $55,000, “Arctic climate change”

The new funder to all of this work, not acknowledged in the 2007 Ecological Complexity paper, was the coal utility Southern Company, which appears also to have contributed to this study: $110,000 in 2006 for “understanding Arctic climate change.”

Were the fossil fuel companies working together to fund Dr. Soon?

As Dr. Soon’s work developed, he began focussing on the influence of the sun on the earth’s climate. Given that the papers he wrote questioning the science of climate change – from the ‘hockey stick’ to the polar bears were all funded by the oil industry, the question must be raised: :{did the companies work together to fund Dr. Soon’s work?

}:

The long collaboration of Big Oil and Big Coal to slow the uptake of climate science is well documented. The close collaboration of the laggards Southern Company, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute is also known.

In 1998, Robert Gehri from Southern Company, Joseph Walker from American Petroleum Institute and Randy Randol from ExxonMobil met with think tanks and oil companies to come up with the “Global Science Communications Plan.” This document declared that “victory” would be achieved when average citizens “recognize uncertainties in climate science.”

This ‘secret plan’ was revealed on the front page of the New York Times, but many assume the collaboration continued unabated.

Was their joint funding of Dr. Soon’s work to challenge the science on Arctic warming a continuation of that plan?

Dr. Soon and the Free to Choose Network

The Free to Choose Network was founded by the late neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman, who was closely associated with Big Tobacco. Friedman was also a fellow at the Hoover Institution that has received grants from ExxonMobil, Koch Foundations and other right wing foundations such as the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

In 2008, the Free to Choose network paid the denier duo of Doctors Soon and Baliunas $19,383. The grant was entitled “the sun’s influence on climate change”. That year, Free to Choose produced an “educational” video contending that the sun has more to do with climate change than human interference.

“Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Dr. David Legates of the University of Delaware provide an easy-to-follow review of current climate science, which suggests that the sun’s irregular patterns and other natural forces are the major sources of climate change.”

Dr. Soon’s Work with Oil/Coal Funded Think Tanks

The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute lists Willie Soon as a writer/contributor on its website. This is confirmed by Dr. Soon’s own CV that lists him as writing for Heartland’s “Environment and Climate News” from November 1997 to December 2000.

Heartland has received $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998, in addition to $325,000 from the Scaife foundations and $75,000 from the Koch foundations according to Media Matters Transparency project and Greenpeace research.

The Koch foundations stopped funding Heartland Institute in 2000 and ExxonMobil Foundation dropped Heartland in 2007.

Willie Soon was a speaker and panelist at the Heartland Institute International Conference on Climate Change in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The sponsors of this conference are heavily funded by ExxonMobil, Scaife, and Koch.

The George C. Marshall Institute

Dr. Soon was a senior scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute, writing papers for it along with Sallie Baliunas, from 1997 to 2004. Sallie Baliunas sat on the board of the George C. Marshall Institute. The Marshall Institute (and its associated foundations) have received $840,000 in funding from ExxonMobil since 1998. Since 1985, the institute has also received $3,370,000 from the Scaife Foundations and $310,000 from the Koch Foundations since 1985. Exxon dropped funding to the Marshall Institute in 2008. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, run by the Kochs, still funds the Marshall Institute, according to the most recent information available, a 2009 grant of $70,000.

The World Climate Report

In Dr. Soon’s Curriculum Vitae in 2005 he lists himself as a “contributing editor” to the World Climate Report, a blog run by prominent climate change skeptic Patrick Michaels, published by his company, New Hope Environmental Services. New Hope has been described as a PR company and, while secretive about its funding sources, it received support from the “non-profit fuel supply co-operative” Western Fuels Association which supports coal mining in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and the railroads that transport that coal to the powerplants built to burn it. Between 1997 and 2000, Dr. Soon wrote 21 articles for the website, mostly co-written with Sallie Baliunas.

Western Fuels itself funded and controlled another similar group called the “Greening Earth Society” which ran a newsletter called “World Climate Alert.” According to his CV, Dr. Soon wrote at least three articles for World Climate Alert.

The Fraser Institute

Willie Soon has written for the Fraser Institute and is listed on its website as an author. His CV describes his involvement as being a member of the Fraser institute’s “CANSTAT” advisory board from 2002 to at least 2005, although in 2001 he wrote a “Guide to Global Warming” for the Fraser Institute.

The Fraser Institute has received $120,000 from ExxonMobil in two $60,000 grants for “climate change” in 2003 and 2004. According to Media Transparency, more than 75 percent of the $403,301 received by the Fraser Institute since 1985 has come from the oil-rich Scaife Foundations ($275,000) and the Koch Foundations ($198,221).

Tech Central Station

Willie Soon was an author for Tech Central Station (TCS), a web-based journalism site established by Washington DC lobbyists, DCI Group, for unknown clients.   Over the four years that he wrote for Tech Central, Dr. Soon wrote on a wide range of issues entirely unrelated to astrophysics – his area of expertise – such as the impact of wind farms on agriculture, regulations on mercury and attacks on various US states for their efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions. According to his 2005 CV, Dr. Soon wrote 43 articles for TCS between 2001 and 2004.

ExxonMobil gave TCS $95,000 in 2003. Up until 2006, TCS’s information was published by the public relations firm DCI Group, a registered lobbying firm for ExxonMobil. In 2010 TCS was closed down. TCSdaily.com now jumps to “ideas in action tv” where much of the archive is preserved. Ideasinactiontv.com is now funded by Investors Business Daily. Copyright is co-owned by the George W Bush Institute.

Frontiers of Freedom, The Center for Science and Public Policy and the Science and Public Policy Institute

Willie Soon lists himself as being on the advisory board of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an affiliate of Frontiers of Freedom, from April 2003.  Although Dr. Soon was not listed on the centre’s website, in the Wall Street Journal article “Eat More Fish,” which he co-authored with Robert Ferguson of the Frontiers of Freedom Center for Science and Public Policy, he is listed as the center’s “Chief Science Researcher.”

ExxonMobil gave Frontiers of Freedom a total of $1.272 million in funding since 1998 according toGreenpeace research. In 2003, ExxonMobil gave Frontiers of Freedom a grant of $232,000 to launch a new branch of the organization called the Center for Science and Public Policy. The mission of this new branch deals exclusively with the issue of climate change. The Scaife Family Foundations have donated $135,000 to Frontiers of Freedom, and the Koch Family Foundations have donated$575,000.

The Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI) lists Dr. Soon as Chief Science Adviser until at least 2007. The SPPI describes itself as a non-profit research and education organization which is committed to the advancement of sound, sensible energy and environmental public policies based on rational science and economics. In its mission statement the SPPI asserts that it is “free from affiliation to any corporation or political party.”

The president of the Science & Public Policy Institute, Robert Ferguson, is also the executive director of the Center for Science and Public Policy. The link between the two organizations runs even deeper, apparently operating out of the same office. Both the SPPI and the Center for Science and Public Policy are listed at the same address: 209 Pennsylvania Ave. SE Washington, DC 20003.

International connections

Doctors Soon and Baliunas have turned up as founding members of denier groups as far away as Argentina where they are listed as members of the Argentinian Foundation for a Scientific Ecology. Soon’s 2005 CV shows he had papers published in both Russian and Spanish and he appeared at climate denier conferences across Europe.

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