SOON, Willie

2 22 tag s&BS

promoted to bigs 7/13, evil pending cf mercury

no merri

end html long-term

see SOON 2

S&B tag

s and b BS node

see fork 3

2003 bogus paper, see Climate Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy

6 eds resigned, incl main

The Soon and Baliunas controversy involved the publication in 2003 of a review study written by aerospace engineer Willie Soon and astronomer Sallie Baliunas in the journal *Climate Research*,^[1] which was quickly taken up by the G.W. Bush administration as a basis for amending the first Environmental Protection Agency Report on the Environment.

The paper was strongly criticized by numerous scientists for its methodology and for its misuse of data from previously published studies, prompting concerns about the peer review process of the paper. The controversy resulted in the resignation of half of the editors of the journal and in the admission by its publisher Otto Kinne that the paper should not have been published as it was.

Willie Soon on Unleashed with Marc Morano - 18 May 2024 tnt talk radio

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

THIRD 3RD FORK S&B PUNK GERMAN JRNL FOR API

RS june 07

To direct the White House's spin on global warming, Connaughton appointed Philip Cooney as his top deputy. Cooney had the right

experience for the job: He worked as "climate team leader" for the

American Petroleum Institute. In 1998, the API took part in an

industry coalition that created the "Global Climate Science

Communications Action Plan." The plan, recently entered into evidence by the House Oversight Committee,

maps out an elaborate disinformation campaign to prevent "precipitous action on climate

change." The strategy was to sow doubt about global warming,

disseminating industry-funded research to challenge "the science

underpinning the global climate change theory."

Now, with Cooney in the White House, the industry had its own anti-

climate man running the disinformation campaign.As the "action plan"

directed, Cooney set out to censor the EPA's science on global

warming and inject the industry's denialist positions into government

documents."They decided they didn't need to win the debate on

climate," says Piltz, the former official who exposed Cooney's

tactics. "They just had to leave an atmosphere of uncertainty about

it and dissipate the will for political action."

But for all his credentials as a master of spin, Cooney got off to a

rough start. In May 2002, the administration released its Climate

Action Report, a dispatch to the U.N. that documents progress on

climate-treaty obligations. The report was developed by the EPA, but

internal documents reveal thatCooney edited it to reflect positions

advocated by the API and Ford. On the opening page of the chapter on climate impacts,

Cooney inserted a litany of language in bold

intended to cast doubt on the science: "the weakest links in our

knowledge . . . a lack of understanding . . . uncertainties . . .

considerable uncertainty . . . perhaps even greater uncertainty . . .

regarded as tentative."

But the clumsy caveats weren't enough to obscure the report's real

science. With the help of an EPA source, The New York Times filtered

out Cooney's waffling and filed a front-page story that called the

report "a stark shift for the Bush administration. " The report, the

Times observed, detailed "far-reaching effects that global warming

will inflict" and "for the first time mostly blames human actions for

recent global warming."

Cooney was horrified: An obscure government report he had tried to

whitewash now threatened to undermine his former employers in the

energy industry. Panicked, he called on an old friend for help. Myron

Ebell had been a key member of the coalition that crafted the

disinformation "action plan." In fact, casting doubt on global

warming is Ebell's full-time job: He heads the climate-denial

campaign at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that

was underwritten in part by ExxonMobil.

Ebell recalls that Cooney was frantic over the story in the

Times. "We tried to put some qualifiers on that chapter in the report," Cooney told him.

"We'd take the text from EPA, and then we'd

add a sentence like, 'We don't really know if this is really

happening.' So we tried to do it, but I can see now that we made a

total mess of it."

Ebell's advice to Cooney is contained in a e-mail dated June 3rd,

"Thanks for asking for our help," he wrote. "I know you're in crisis mode. . . . I want to help you cool things down, but after

consulting with the team, I think that what we can do is limited until there is an official statement from the administration

repudiating the report."

That repudiation came the very next day. President Bush himself dismissed the report, saying it had been "put out by the

bureaucracy. " Forget the headlines, he said - there was no shift in the administration' s policy.

What happened next, according to internal e-mails obtained by Rolling Stone, reveals just how seriously the White House took its

intelligence fixing on global warming. Cooney was put in charge of damage control and was apparently instructed to craft a letter to the

Times denying that the president had changed course on climate

change.But this time, Cooney's editor was not just Connaughton, but

Bush's chief political adviser,Karl Rove. The collaboration with

Rove raises questions about Cooney's congressional testimony last

March, in which he insisted, under oath, that he had not discussed

with Rove his work at the CEQ.

The letter drafted by Cooney - and vetted by Rove - insists that the

Climate Action Report"reinforces" the "significant scientific uncertainties" emphasized in the president's climate policy. Edits to

the rough drafts of the letter were blacked out by White House

censors, but Rove's pithy endorsement of the final draft

survived. "Great," he wrote in praise of Cooney's spin. "Defends the

report rather than staying focused on the policy." In other words, Cooney had succeeded in emphasizing the report's overhyped

uncertainties, thus shifting attention away from the White House's do- nothing approach to global warming.

Page 6

At the same time, Cooney got a pat on the back from Bill O'Keefe, his

old boss at API. In a letter to Bush's chief of staff, O'Keefe - by

that point a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil - urged the president

to tighten up the White House spin machine and make sure all

communications were "on the same page, with the same message."

O'Keefe also faxed a copy to Cooney with a handwritten note

reading, "P.S. You are doing a great job."

From then on, Cooney wielded a heavier pen when editing official

reports on global warming. Not content to obscure science with

uncertainty, he began to rewrite the science itself. Draft documents

made public by the House Oversight Committee reveal that Cooney now had veto power over federal scientists, including Richard Moss,

coordinator of the Climate Change Science Program Office, and even

James Mahoney, the assistant commerce secretary nominally in charge

of America's climate science.

In one document, Moss and Mahoney attempted to push back on several

of Cooney's more than 100 edits to an EPA document called "Our

Changing Planet" - each of which served to amplify uncertainty and

downplay the threat posed by global warming. Cooney repeatedly

overruled Moss and Mahoney with an aggressive "no" scrawled in the

margins. On another document Cooney marked up, he commanded

EPA officials that "these changes must be made." Beside one strike-

through marked with a star, Cooney wrote, "Red Flag: Do not cite

National Assessment" - dismissing the landmark report commissioned by Bush's father.

Although some of Cooney's edits were revealed in a New York Times

story in June 2005 that led to his departure, the full extent of his

interference has never been reported. His commissarial coup came in

April 2003, with his revisions to the EPA's Draft Report on the

Environment. He began by deleting the sentence "climate change has

global consequences for human health and the environment. "He then

deleted the top-line assessment by the National Research Council,

which establishes an unequivocal cause-and-effect link - "Greenhouse

gases are accumulating in the atmosphere as the result of human

activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean

temperatures to rise." In its place, Cooney wrote the following

mishmash of his own creation: "Some activities emit greenhouse gases

and other substances that directly or indirectly may affect the

balance of incoming and outgoing radiation, thereby potentially

affecting climate on regional and global scales."

The changes sparked a rebellion by the EPA's senior scientists. In an

internal memo uncovered by Congressional investigators, they wrote

that Cooney's edited text "no longer accurately represents scientific

consensus on climate change" and "may leave an impression that

cooling is as much an issue as warming." Whitman was also

furious. "The language that CEQ found acceptable was such pablum,"

she says now. "It was so much below the level of sophistication of

the report that I felt it would have denigrated it all." But her

solution to this problem was to simply delete the section on climate

change - handing Cooney a carte-blanche victory.

Whitman says she killed the section hoping that scientific documents

included with the report would speak for themselves.But the

capitulation helped drive her to the breaking point. Four days after

bowing to Cooney, she resigned as head of the EPA.

Internal documents uncovered by Rolling Stone reveal that Cooney did

far more than edit scientific reports to suit the administration' s

point of view. Just as neoconservative hawk Douglas Feith funneled

false intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs to the vice president,

Cooney steered industry-sponsored junk science on global warming to Cheney.

"What disturbed me most," Whitman says, "was the administration' s record of taking the most extreme of the science -

what I call the 'political science' - and giving it the same weight as the real science."

The most egregious example of cooked intelligence was a study

underwritten in part by the API, Cooney's former employer. The study,

which purported to show that the twentieth century was not unusually

warm, was authored by two astrophysicists, [gotta be Soon and Baliunas:

Baliunas has co-published numerous scientific papers with fellow climate change skeptic Willie Soon including a controversial paper in 2003 that suggested the climate hasn't changed in the last 2000 years. Several members of the Climate Research journal resigned in protest to the flawed peer-review process allowing Baliunas's paper to be published. desmog ]

both of whom were on the payroll of the George C. Marshall Institute, a climate-denial group

funded by ExxonMobil and now headed by Bill O'Keefe, Cooney's former

boss. The paper's publication in a minor German journal in January

2003quickly created ascandal, with the editor in chief and three

other editors resigning in shame after acknowledging that the paper

was fundamentally flawed and should never have been published.

"It was sham science," says McCarthy, the Harvard scientist. "It's

almost laughable, except that this study was held up by the

administration as a definitive refutation of the temperature record."

But even as the paper was being discredited, it was causing great

excitement in the White House. When Kathie Olsen of the Office of

Science and Technology Policy forwarded the study to Cooney, he

responded with an enthusiastic, "Thanks, Kathie!" Six minutes later,

according to internal e-mails, the study was in the hands of Kevin

O'Donovan, who served as Cheney's point man on climate.The study

also grabbed President Bush's attention, as revealed in an e-mail

sent two days later to a high-ranking White House official: "Bob - if

you din't [sic] already have, this is the study the President was

talking about."...

xian rothbard rip

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:(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"):}:2013; Benestad et al. :{Reference Benestad:(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"):}:2016; Kinne :{Reference Kinne:(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"):}:2003; Wagner :{Reference Wagner:(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"):}: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:(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"):}:2018, para. 3; see also Soon and Baliunas :{Reference Soon and Baliunas:(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"):}: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:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:-1px;padding:0px;border:0px;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"):}:2015, para. 6).:{Footnote:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:-1px;padding:0px;border:0px;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"):}:^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:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:-1px;padding:0px;border:0px;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"):}: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....

almost feel sorry for him, but then took in 1.2 million?

The Smithsonian has asked its inspector general to review Soon's ethical conduct. In addition, three U.S. senators -- Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) -- sent 100 letters to fossil fuel companies including Southern, trade groups and other industry organizations seeking to unearth the extent of what they call "climate denial-for-hire programs."

"We've known for many years that the tobacco industry supported phony science claiming that smoking does not cause cancer," said Boxer, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. "Now it's time for the fossil fuel industry to come clean about funding climate change deniers."

ref ltr

https://climateinvestigations.org/willie_soon_scandal_markey_whitehouse_boxer_letter_to_100_companies_industry_groups/

WASHINGTON (February 25, 2015) – Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today sent letters to 100 fossil fuel companies, trade groups, and other organizations to determine whether they are funding scientific studies designed to confuse the public and avoid taking action to cut carbon pollution, and whether the funded scientists fail to disclose the sources of their funding in scientific publications or in testimony to legislators.

This investigation follows the revelations regarding one of the chief climate denial researchers, Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, from documents released by Greenpeace showing that Soon received more than $1 million from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, and others to produce what he termed “deliverables” to push back on climate science or carbon-cutting policies in papers or Congressional testimony. Soon did not disclose this funding to peer-reviewed scientific journals that require such disclosure.

...The news about Willie Soon is further confirmation that the fossil fuel industry has taken a page out of the tobacco playbook by bankrolling scientists to cast false doubt on the existence of climate change,” said Senator Whitehouse, Ranking Member of the Fisheries, Wildlife and Water Subcommittee on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “The American people deserve to know more about this self-serving effort to distort the facts and prevent action on this issue, and I hope these letters will help.”

Full list of recipients:

ACCCE (American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity)

Alliance Resource Operating Partners LP

Alliance to Save Energy

Alpha Natural Resources LLC

Ameren

American Coal Foundation

American Electric

American Energy Alliance

American Enterprise Institute

American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers

American Gas Association

American Legislative Exchange Council

Americans for Prosperity Foundation

America’s Natural Gas Alliance: ANGA

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation

Apache Corporation

API (American Petroleum Institute)

Arch Coal Inc.

Armstrong Energy Inc.

Atlas Network (previously Atlas Economic Research Foundation)

Boich Group LLC

Bowie Resource Holdings LLC

Cato Institute

Chamber of Commerce of the USA

Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation

Chesapeake Energy Corporation

Chevron Corporation

Cloud Peak Energy

CNOOC (Nexen Petroleum U.S.A. Inc.)

Competitive Enterprise Institute

ConocoPhillips

CONSOL Energy Inc.

Consolidated Edison

Continental Resources Inc.

Denbury Resources, Inc.

Devon Energy Corporation

Dominion Resources

Donors Capital

Donors Trust

DTE Energy

Duke Energy

Ecopetrol America Inc

Edison Electric Institute

Edison International

Energy Future Holdings Corp

Eni U.S. Operating Co.

Entergy

EOG Resources, Inc.

Eversource

Exelon

Exxon Mobil Corporation

FirstEnergy

George C Marshall Institute

Hallador Energy Co

Hess Corporation

Hoover Institution

Hudson Institute

Independent Petroleum Association of America

Institute for Energy Research (IER)

John Locke Foundation

John Williams Pope Foundation

Koch Industries

Linn Energy, LLC

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

Marathon Oil Corporation

Murphy Oil Corporation

Murray Energy Corp

NACCO Industries Inc.

National Association of Manufacturers

National Mining Association

National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA)

National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

NextEra Energy

Noble Energy Inc.

NRG Energy

Occidental Petroleum Corporation

PacifiCorp

Patriot Coal Corp

Peabody Energy Corp

Peter Kiewit Sons Inc.

Petrobras America Inc.

PG&E

Pioneer Natural Resources Company

PPL

PSEG Public Service Enterprise

Rio Tinto Group

Searle Freedom Trust

Shell

Southern Company

Statoil

The Heartland Institute

The Heritage Foundation

Valero Energy

Walter Energy Inc.

Western Fuels Association Inc.

Westmoreland Coal Co

Wisconsin Energy

Xcel Energy

2003 bogus paper allowed B43 pivot?

guardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review

guard uk no links

...The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, as a top expert in his field, was regularly asked to review papers and he sometimes wrote critical reviews that may have had the effect of blackballing papers criticising his work.

Here is how it worked in one case.

A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?

In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised".

He did not specify which papers he had reviewed, nor what his grounds for rejecting them were. But the Guardian has established that one was probably from Lars Kamel a Swedish astrophysicist formerly of the University of Uppsala. It is the only paper published on the topic in the journal that year.

Kamel analysed the temperature records from weather stations in part of southern Siberia, around Lake Baikal. He claimed to find much less warming than Jones, despite analysing much the same data.

Kamel told the Guardian: "Siberia is a test case, because it is supposed to be the land area with most warming in the 20th century." The finding sounded important, but his paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that year.

Kamel was leaving academic science and never tried to publish it elsewhere. But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming." He does not, however, justify that conclusion with any data or analysis.Kamel says he no longer has a copy of the anonymous referee judgments on the paper, so we don't know why it was rejected. The paper could be criticised for being slight and for not revealing details about its methods of analysis. A reviewer such as Jones would certainly have been aware of Kamel's views about mainstream climate research, which he had called "pseudo-science". He would also have known that its publication in a journal like GRL would have attracted the attention of professional climate sceptics. Nonetheless, the paper raised important questions about the quality of CRU's Siberian data, and was a rare example of someone trying to replicate Jones's analysis. On those grounds alone, some would have recommended its publication.

Kamel's paper admits the discrepancy "does not necessarily mean the CRU surface record for the entire globe is in error". But it argues that the result suggests it "should be checked in more regions and even globally". Jones was not able to comment on the incident.

Critics of Jones such as the prominent sceptical Stephen McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog have long accused him of preventing critical research from having an airing. McIntyre wrote on his web site in December: "CRU's policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature and withholding data from critics have unfortunately placed issues into play that might otherwise have been settled long ago." He also says obstructing publication undermine claims that all is well in scientific peer review.

Dr Myles Allen, a climate modeller at the University of Oxford and Professor Hans von Storch, a climate scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, in Geesthacht, Germany signed a joint column in Nature when the email hacking story broke, in which they said that "no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since it began in about 1850." But that argument is harder to make if such evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals.

In another email exchange CRU scientist Dr Keith Briffa initiates what looks like an attempt to have a paper rejected. In June 2003, as an editor of an unnamed journal, Briffa emailed fellow tree-ring researcher Edward Cook, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, saying: "Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] – to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please."

Stahle is a tree-ring professor from the University of Arkansas. This request appears to subvert the convention that reviewers should be both independent and anonymous.

Cook replied later that day: "OK, today. Promise. Now, something to ask from you." The favour was to provide some data to help Cook review a paper that attacked his own tree-ring work. "If published as is, this paper could really do some damage," he said. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically, but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies, without showing that their improved [inverse regression] method is actually better in a practical sense."

Briffa was unable to comment. Cook told the Guardian: "These emails are from a long time ago and the details are not terribly fresh in my mind."

Jones did not restrict his harsh criticism of papers he saw as flawed to pre-publication reviews. He and Mann also had a reputation for harsh criticism of journals that published papers they disagreed with.

In March 2003, Mann discussed encouraging colleagues to "no longer submit [papers] to, or cite papers in" Climate Research.He was angry about that journal's publication of a series of sceptical papers "that couldn't get published in a reputable journal", according to Mann. His anger at the journal had evidently been building for some time, but was focused in 2003 on a paper published in January that year and written by the Harvard astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. The pair claimed that Mann's famous hockey stick graph of global temperatures over the past 1,000 years was wrong. After analysing 240 studies of past temperatures from tree rings and other sources, they said "the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1,000 years, nor is it the most extreme". It could have been warmer a thousand years before, they suggested.

Harvard press-released the paper under the headline "20th century climate not so hot", which would have pleased lobbyists against the climate change consensus from the American Petroleum Institute and George C Marshall Institute, both of which had helped pay for the research. Mann told me at the time the paper was "absurd, almost laughable". He said Soon and Baliunas made no attempt in the paper to show whether the warmth they found at different places and times round the world in past eras was contemporaneous in the way current global warming is. If they were just one-off scattered warm events they did not demonstrate any kind of warm era at all. Soon did not respond to Guardian requests to discuss the paper.

The emails show Mann debating with others what he should do. In March 2003, he told Jones: "I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted – the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper"

But Jones told Mann: "I think the sceptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set [the field of paleoclimate research] back a number of years if it goes unchallenged." He was right. The Soon and Baliunas paper was later read into the Senate record and taken up by the Bush administration, which attempted to get it cited in a report from the Environmental Protection Agency against the wishes of the report's authors.

Persuaded that the paper could not be ignored, Mann assembled a group of colleagues to review it. The group included regular CRU emailers Jones, Dr Keith Briffa, Dr Tom Wigley and Dr Kevin Trenberth. They sent their findings to the journal's editorial board, arguing that Soon's study was little more than anecdote. It had cherry-picked data showing warm periods in different places over several centuries and had provided no evidence that they demonstrated any overall warming of the kind seen in the 20th century.

The emails reveal that when the journal failed to disown the paper, the scientists figured a "coup" had taken place, and that one editor in particular, a New Zealander called Chris de Freitas, was fast-tracking sceptical papers on to its pages. Mann saw an irony in what had happened. "This was the danger of always criticising the sceptics for not publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. Obviously, they found a solution to that – take over a journal." But Mann had a solution. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

Was this improper pressure? Bloggers responding to the leaking of these emails believe so. Mann denies wanting to "stifle legitimate sceptical views". He maintains that he merely wanted to uphold scientific standards. "Please understand the context of this," he told the Guardian after the scandal broke. "This was in response to a very specific, particularly egregious incident in which one editor of the journal was letting in a paper that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal."

Naturally de Freitas defends his actions during the incident. "I was never ever found to have done anything wrong, even in the rumpus over the Soon and Baliunas paper. All accusations against me were fully investigated and my performance as editor of this journal was shown to be flawless."

But many on the 10-man editorial board agreed with Mann. There was a revolt. Their chief editor von Storch wrote an editorial saying the Soon paper shouldn't have appeared because of "severe methodological flaws". After their publisher Otto Kinne refused to publish the editorial, von Storch and four other board members resigned in protest. Subsequently Kinne himself admitted that publication had been an error and promised to strengthen the peer review process. Mann had won his argument.

Sceptical climatologist and Cato Institute fellow Pat Michaels alleged in the Wall Street Journal in December last year that the resignations by von Storch and his colleagues were a counter-coup initiated by Mann and Jones. This is vehemently denied by von Storch. While one of the editors who resigned was a colleague of Jones at CRU, von Storch had a track record of independence. If anything, he was regarded as a moderate sceptic. Certainly, he had annoyed both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics.

Also writing in the Wall Street Journal in December, he said: "I am in the pocket of neither Exxon nor Greenpeace, and for this I come under fire from both sides – the sceptics and alarmists – who have fiercely opposing views but are otherwise siblings in their methods and contempt ... I left the post [as chief editor of Climate Research] with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a sceptic's paper, at that."

The bad blood over this paper lingered. A year later, in July 2004, Jones wrote an email to Mann about two papers recently published in Climate Research – the Soon and Baliunas paper and another he identified as by "MM". This was almost certainly a paper from the Canadian economist Ross McKitrick and Michaels that returned to an old sceptics' theme. It claimed to find urbanisation dominating global warming trends on land. Jones called it "garbage".

More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL": "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is!"

This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean. Jones and Trenberth, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, had recently become joint lead authors for a key chapter in the next IPCC assessment report, called AR4.......

8/15

Leaked internal memos reveal a coordinated, decades-long disinformation campaign.

by Elliott Negin

When internal documents revealed earlier this year that ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel interests were secretly funding scientifically discredited studies authored by climate contrarian Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, the news didn’t come as a complete surprise.

Back in 2007, a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report identified Soon—an aerospace engineer with little formal training in climatology—as one of a dozen scientists affiliated with more than 40 ExxonMobil-funded think tanks that then constituted the backbone of the climate change–denier PR machine. Soon, who erroneously claims the sun is largely responsible for global warming, produced work for at least five of these ExxonMobil-backed groups, including the now infamous Heartland Institute.

But the latest cache of documents, obtained by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, lays bare a wealth of detail that was not available eight years ago. For example, they show that Soon received his funding exclusively from fossil fuel interests, including ExxonMobil, utility giant Southern Company, and Charles Koch. He described his scientific work and congressional testimony as “deliverables” to his funders. And some of his contracts specifically dictate that the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where Soon works, not disclose the names of his funders. These internal documents, on top of what UCS had already uncovered, indisputably establish Soon’s efforts as part of a calculated climate deception campaign.

Dossiers of Deception

pm dl doc

http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.Vc98KflViko

Willie Soon, however, is just a small part of a much bigger story, according to a new UCS report, *The Climate Deception Dossiers*. After spending nearly a year reviewing and analyzing a wide range of internal corporate and trade group documents, a team of UCS researchers has, for the first time, compiled a broader tale of climate deception. The Climate Deception Dossiers draws upon evidence culled from 85 documents that were pried loose by leaks, lawsuits, and FOIA requests.

Spanning nearly three decades, these documents reveal that the world’s largest fossil fuel companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, coal giant Peabody Energy, and Shell—were fully aware of the reality of climate change but continued to spend tens of millions of dollars to sow doubt and promote contrarian arguments they knew to be wrong.

Taken together, the documents show that these six companies, in conjunction with the American Petroleum Institute (API)—the oil and gas industry’s premier trade association—and a host of front groups, have colluded to intentionally deceive the public; their corporate officials have known for at least two decades that their products are harmful; and their disinformation campaign continues today—despite the fact that most of the companies now publicly acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change.

A team convened in 1998 by the American Petroleum Institute—the country’s largest oil trade association whose member companies include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell Oil—outlined a road map for climate deception including a plan to cultivate purportedly independent scientists as climate misinformers. The campaign would achieve “victory,” according to the memo, when “average citizens” believed that the realities of climate science were uncertain.[smoking gun?]

The collected documents reveal a variety of deceitful tactics, including creating front groups, secretly funding purportedly independent scientists such as Soon, and even forging letters from nonprofit groups to try to influence members of Congress. But you don’t have to rely on UCS’s interpretation. All 340 pages of the documents in seven “deception dossiers” are available online, so you can read them and reach your own conclusions.

A Damning Paper Trail

The 340 pages include not only Soon’s contracts, but also a 1998 API disinformation road map memo as well as a 2014 Western States Petroleum Association memo on creating phony grassroots consumer groups to challenge California’s climate policies.

One eye-opening, formerly secret document reveals that scientific experts commissioned by the Global Climate Coalition (GCC)—a coalition of 50 U.S. corporations and trade groups including British Petroleum (now BP), Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Mobil, and Shell—warned that heat-trapping gases were indeed causing global warming. Regardless, the GCC continued to conduct a multimillion-dollar lobbying and public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming.

One of the GCC’s “backgrounders” for legislators and journalists, for example, claimed “the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood” and emphasized that “scientists differ” on the issue. But the 17-page, internal 1995 GCC primer written by the companies’ own scientists states: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied[emphasis added].” The primer’s lead author, Leonard S. Bernstein, a staff scientist at Mobil Oil, would later participate as a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports in 2001 and 2007.

One draft version of the primer even addressed and dismissed the major arguments made by climate change contrarians, such as the “solar variability” argument touted by Soon. “The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes,” the draft stated, “but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.” This section was deleted from the primer’s final version.

Three years later, the API set up what it called the Global Climate Science Communications Team to try to derail the KyotoProtocol, the 1997 international agreement signed by 192 countries—but not the United States—to meet binding carbon emissions reduction targets. A leaked 1998 campaign memo from this team, cowritten by representatives of the API and API members Chevron and Exxon, laid out a road map for climate deception largely based on the tobacco industry’s strategy to stave off government regulation by deceiving the public about smoking hazards.

Echoing that strategy—encapsulated in the notorious internal tobacco industry memo claiming “Doubt is our product”—the API memo states: “Victory will be achieved when: average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.” The API team planned to emphasize “uncertainties” in climate science at least partly by identifying, recruiting, and funding previously unaffiliated scientists. After all, the memo notes, such scientists would have more credibility with reporters and the public than those already known to be working with the fossil fuel industry.

What makes the secret API memo so revealing is how closely its instructions seem to have been carried out in the Soon case. One of the API memo’s contributors, Robert Gehri, even negotiated one of Soon’s contracts on behalf of his industry backers. All told, Soon received more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel interests over the last decade and failed to disclose that conflict of interest in most of the scientific papers that money underwrote. More than $400,000 came from a subsidiary of the Southern Company, a large utility holding company with a fleet of coal-fired power plants. ExxonMobil gave Soon $335,000. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation kicked in another $230,000. The API, meanwhile, contributed more than $100,000.

What did they get for their money? The papers conclude that solar activity is the main cause of global warming and that carbon emissions have had little or no impact. Despite the speciousness of Soon’s findings,members of Congress—notably Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe—routinely cite his workto argue that climate science is a hoax.

iccc 10th

correction!

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/10062015/willie-soons-fossil-fuel-funded-work-draws-ethics-review-publisher

journal publisher that distributed studies written by a climate skeptic whose work was financed by fossil fuel interests has launched an ethics investigation over undisclosed funding.

The investigation by Elsevier, a global network of scientific journals, was prompted by documents showing that Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon failed to disclose industry funding in 11 studies published by nine journals.

Six of those papers were published in four Elsevier publications. Elsevier requires its authors to disclose financial conflicts that "could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work."

The documents were obtained by Greenpeace and made public in February by the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental watchdog organization based in Virginia. After the documents were released, the center alerted the journals that the lack of disclosure violates ethical guidelines requiring authors to identify their funders and potential conflicts of interest.

"We applaud your guidelines for ethical behavior in science, but we are concerned that your conflict of interest policy has been ignored and that Dr. Soon may have hidden his funding," wrote Kert Davies, the center's executive director, in letters to the journals. "Violations of ethical norms in scientific publishing may undermine the credibility of your journal."

Elsivier's ethics inquiry was made public in a report issued by the center Wednesday that includes the responses from all nine journals.

"We have referred the matter to Elsevier and they have an ethics team investigating," Rob Hyndman, editor of International Journal of Forecasting, said in a response to Davies. "We will not be taking any action until we have received advice from the Elsevier ethics investigators."

Chris Capot, a spokesman for Elsevier, confirmed the investigation, but declined to discuss the nature of the review or any potential outcomes. "The review is still ongoing. The results of our review will be published in any affected journals," Capot said.

In addition to the Elsevier inquiry, one publication, Journal of Climate, amended a 2009 paper that Soon co-authored to clarify his funding source. The editor of Ecology Law Quarterly, published by the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the school is considering instituting a formal procedure to address conflicts in all of its publications. Others responded with noncommittal acknowledgements thanking the center for the information. One journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, dismissed Soon's failure to disclose his funding as "irrelevant."

Soon, a well-known climate contrarian, works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which houses the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. Soon has been employed by Smithsonian since 1997, but relies on grants from outside sources for his research and salary.

Soon's 11 papers question the extent, severity, cause or existence of man-made climate change. Many of the studies argue that changes in solar activity are responsible for rising global temperatures. The studies appear to have had limited impact in the scientific world, according to the number of citations by other researchers.

Soon did not respond to a request for comment from InsideClimate News.

The public records show that since 2008, Soon has received more than $800,000 from ExxonMobil, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the electric utility Southern Company Services Inc., and Donors Trust Inc., an organization that facilitates contributions largely toward conservative causes from donors who wish to remain anonymous. The funds were earmarked to pay for research papers, public speaking appearances and presentations. Soon called his studies "deliverable" to funders.

Since the controversy broke, Southern Company, a major coal utility in the southeastern United States and one of Soon's primary funders, has said it will no longer fund his research once his final project is completed later this year.

Smithsonian officials directed its inspector general to examine Soon's ethical practicesregarding funders and launched separate internal and independent reviews of its ethics and disclosure policies. Soon remains a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian staff, though Smithsonian has distanced itself from his work, saying it “does not support Dr. Soon's conclusions on climate change.”

Here are the responses from the nine journals:

Ecological Complexity

Publisher: Elsevier

Journal disclosure policy: All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Response: Bia-lian (Larry) Li, editor:

Thank you for your message and mail, Director Davies. I was the Chief Editor when his paper was published. Our journal policies are set up by our publisher Elsevier, not us. The case you presented here, to my view, should be author's responsibility. We generally focus on scientific merit of the research papers. However, your concern is now well noticed.

Ecology Law Quarterly

Publisher: UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall

Journal disclosure policy: None found.

Response: Elise O’Dea, editor:

I want to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention; both ELQ and the law school take it very seriously. Your email brings up an important topic not only for ELQ, but for all the law journals on campus. Thanks to your alert, we are exploring the possibility of developing a conflict of interest policy of some nature for our law journals.

Interfaces

Publisher: The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Journal disclosure policy: None found.

Response: Miranda Walker, director of publications INFORMS:

Thank you for your letter of February 20, 2015 sent to Dr. Srinivas Bollapragada regarding the journal Interfaces and our conflict of interest policy. Maintaining the highest ethical standards is of paramount importance to Interfaces, our editors, our peer reviewers, and of course, those who read the articles published in our pages. We appreciate the information that you and others have shared with us and will ensure that it receives careful and deliberate attention. Please direct all future questions regarding or relating to [this article] to me.

International Journal of Forecasting

Publisher: Elsevier

Response: Rob Hyndman, editor:

We have referred the matter to Elsevier and they have an ethics team investigating. We have also received correspondence from Dr. Soon and from his lawyers which we have passed to Elsevier. We will not be taking any action until we have received advice from the Elsevier ethics investigators.

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics

Publisher: Elsevier

Response: Robert Strangeway, editor:

I am aware of the New York Times article, and I have contacted the Editorial Office of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics for guidance as to what the Journal should do in response to the allegations in the New York Times article. I have also forwarded your email and the associated attachments to the Journal Publisher. While we have not yet determined what action the Journal will take, the Publisher of the Journal has made it clear that such allegations are taken very seriously.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Publisher: EDP Sciences

Journal disclosure policy: None found.

Response: Dr. Thierry Forveille, editor:

I am a bit puzzled that you contact me. (The paper) makes no claim whatsoever of any relevance to climate. It therefore clearly falls well outside the purview of Dr. Soon's contract with Southern Company Services for “publication of both original and review papers on solar variability and climate change and various environmental impacts of that related change in leading scientific journals for the advancement of climate and meteorological sciences.” Astronomy & Astrophysics has no funding disclosure requirements, since astronomy is sufficiently removed from any monetary consequences that we have never found that necessary, but had we known about Dr. Soon's contract we would have judged its existence irrelevant to the evaluation of the paper. That Dr. Soon included this totally irrelevant paper in the Year 1 Report, which you forwarded me, certainly does not reflect very well on his ethical standards, but this is an issue that I don't think the journal has standing to act on.

Journal of Climate

Publisher: American Meteorological Society

Journal disclosure policy: All funding sources should be identified in the manuscript. Authors should disclose to the editor any financial arrangement with a research sponsor that could give the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Response: Ken Heideman, director of publications at American Meteorological Society:

AMS has amended the 2009 paper that Willie Soon coauthored with a publisher’s note and an amendment to the acknowledgments that make clear his funding source.

New Astronomy

Publisher: Elsevier

Response: Gianfranco Brunetti, receiving editor:

I received your documents (via mail), thanks a lot. In the last several [months] we had a discussion within the board of editors about this situation, I guess that similar discussions were taken by other boards and journals involved. Obviously I cannot reveal the details of the discussion and the outcome, however I would expect...a "fair note"...from Elsevier.

Physical Geography

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Online

Journal disclosure policy: Authors must declare any potential conflict of interest – be it professional or financial – which could be held to arise with respect to the article. Authors must disclose all sources of funding for the research reported in the paper.

Response: Carol Harden, editor:

Thank you for keeping us informed about this. An important piece of information missing from the letter you sent is that Physical Geography was not published by Taylor & Francis in 2009, and it did not have a financial disclosure policy at that time. That means that Physical Geography cannot make the claim that Dr. Soon violated the journal's policy.

Utility Giant Cuts Ties With Willie Soon

The Southern Company, which generates power for nine states––largely from coal––has decided it will no longer fund the work of controversial climate contrarian and Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon.

	ARTICLES

Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model	Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model	Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model
Christopher Monckton¹, Willie W.-H. Soon², David R. Legates³, William M. Briggs⁴	Christopher Monckton¹, Willie W.-H. Soon², David R. Legates³, William M. Briggs⁴	Christopher Monckton¹, Willie W.-H. Soon², David R. Legates³, William M. Briggs⁴
Science and Public Policy Institute, Haymarket, VA 20169, USA; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA; New York, NY 10021, USA	Science and Public Policy Institute, Haymarket, VA 20169, USA; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA; New York, NY 10021, USA	Science and Public Policy Institute, Haymarket, VA 20169, USA; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA; New York, NY 10021, USA

History

The SAO was founded in 1890 by Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Smithsonian's third Secretary, primarily for studies of the sun.^[1] Langley is remembered today as an aeronautical pioneer, but he was trained as an astronomer and was the first American scientist to perceive "astrophysics" as a distinct field. Langley invented the bolometer and discovered infrared radiation from the sun.

In 1955, the SAO moved from Washington, D.C. to Cambridge, to affiliate with HCO and to expand its staff, facilities, and most importantly, its scientific scope. Fred Whipple, the first director of SAO in this new era, accepted a national challenge to create a worldwide satellite-tracking network, a decision that would establish SAO as a pioneer and leader in space science research.

Smithsonian and the USAF Project Space Track shared observations and ephemerides throughout the early days of satellite tracking, 1957-1961.

In 1973, the ties between Smithsonian and Harvard were strengthened and formalized by the creation of the joint Harvard-Smithsonian CfA.

Remote stations

SAO has operated a number of remote stations over the years.^[2][3]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Station	Type	Latitude	Longitude	El. (m)	Opened	Closed	Coordinates
Mount Wilson, California	Solar	34º13'N	118º56'W	1737	1908	1920	1920

a research institute of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it is joined with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO) to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Currently, more than 300 scientists at the CfA are engaged in a broad program of research in astronomy, astrophysics, earth and space sciences, and science education.

FUNDING

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has received $467,212 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

2005

$105,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving

Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report

2006

$105,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving

Source: ExxonMobil 2006 Worldwide Giving Report

2006

$50,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving

Source: ExxonMobil 2006 Worldwide Giving Report

2007

$55,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving

Source: ExxonMobil 2007 Worldwide Giving Report

2008

$76,106 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving

Source: ExxonMobil 2008 worldwide contributions

2009

$76,106 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving

Source: ExxonMobil 2009 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments

PEOPLE

**Sallie Baliunas**

Scientist

Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report

**Willie Soon**

Scientist

Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report

SOURCES

ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report

Public Information and Policy Researchhttp://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=view&d=4387

ExxonMobil 2006 Worldwide Giving Report

Public Information and Policy Research downloaded from Exxon websitehttp://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=view&d=4381

ExxonMobil 2007 Worldwide Giving Reporthttp://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=download&d=4586

ExxonMobil 2009 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments

Exxon Mobil Corporation 2009 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investmentshttp://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/gcr_contributions_pub-policy09.pdf

ExxonMobil 2008 worldwide contributionshttp://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=download&d=5899

2008 suit: aei, nam, US CoC, Nat'l mining assoc, Am Iron and Steel Inst. (p196) joined pahlin 2007 ltr to kempthorne, ref'd soon paper a week before it was published 197 april 9 kempthorne did not want to list, tho his asst Hall (B2 appt) said no doubt about problem 197 foolme2x

legates and soon had worked together before ; not new data, just cherrypick

2003 soon paper ~ Mann by GCMI; sci figured out how to use tree ring density correlated to temp; mann extended: blue reconstructed, w/ red for actual and grey to show margin of error 199

polar bear suit:

greenpeace2010 on koch:

Case Study 2: Polar Bear Junk Science

In 2007, several prominent climate denial scientists published

a non-peer reviewed article,35 (Dyck, Soon et al, 2007 ??Polar

bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are

warming spring air temperatures the ‘??ultimate????? survival

control factor?”) concluding that polar bears are not being

threatened by anthropogenic global warming. One of the

paper???s authors:{, Dr. Willie Soon, disclosed in the acknowledgements

section that he had received direct corporate

funding for the work, }:stating ???W. Soon’s effort for the

completion of this paper was partially supported by grants

from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American

Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.” (Exxon

grants to Soon

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/CASE-STUDY-Dr-Willie-Soon-a-Career-Fueled-by-Big-Oil-and-Coal/

update:

CASE STUDY: Dr. Willie Soon, a Career Fueled by Big Oil and Coal

On this page

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

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

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 theUniversity 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 theEarth’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 theGeorge 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 fromSmithsonianuncovered 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, Texacoand theElectric 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 variabilityand 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:

(*source documents available below*)

Funder	Grant Description from source	Grant Year(s)	Grant Amount	Source
Electric Power Research Institute		1994-1999	??	Soon published papers
American Petroleum Institute		1994-1997	??	Soon published papers
Mobil Foundation		1995-1997	??	Soon published papers
Texaco Foundation		1996	??	Soon published papers
American Petroleum Institute	Sun's impact on climate over the last 1000 years	2001, 2002	$58,380	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	1000 years of solar variability	2003	$60,053	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	The 11-22 year climate responses	2004, 2005	$50,178	Smithsonian FOIA
ExxonMobil Foundation	listed by Exxon as a grant to SAO	2005	$105,000	ExxonMobil Worldwide Giving Report 2005
Charles G. Koch Foundation	Koch/Mobile Charitable foundation	2005, 2006	$110,000	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	Understanding Arctic Climate Change	2005, 2006	$50,000	Smithsonian FOIA
ExxonMobil Foundation	Listed by Exxon as "project support" to SAO.	2006	$105,000	ExxonMobil Worldwide Giving Report 2006
Southern Company	Understanding Arctic Climate Change	2006, 2007	$110,000	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	The solar influence of arctic climate change	2006, 2007	$55,000	Smithsonian FOIA
ExxonMobil Foundation	Exxon-Arctic climate change	2007, 2008	$55,000	Smithsonian FOIA/Exxon Giving Report
ExxonMobil Foundation	Exxon-soon solar variability	2008-2010	$70,106	Smithsonian FOIA/Exxon Giving Report
Free to Choose	The sun's influence on climate change	2008	$19,383	Smithsonian FOIA
Southern Company	Solar variability and Climate Change signals from temperature	2008, 2009	$120,000	Smithsonian FOIA
Charles G. Koch Foundation	Understanding solar variability and climate change	2010	$65,000	Smithsonian FOIA
Southern Company	Understanding solar radiation and climate change	2011	$60,003	Smithsonian FOIA
Charles G. Koch Foundation	Understanding solar radiation and climate change	2010-2012	$55,000	Smithsonian FOIA
Donors Trust	Understanding solar radiation and climate change	2011	$50,000	Smithsonian FOIA
Southern Company	Understanding solar radiation and climate change	2011-2012	$59,942	Smithsonian FOIA
Donors Trust	Understanding solar radiation and climate change	2011-2012	$64,935	Smithsonian FOIA
TOTAL		2001-2012	$1,322,980

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 theElectric 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*.

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 thefamous 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 Bucholtz, ExxonMobil’s Government Relations & Issues Advisor, the man responsible for doling out Exxon’s funding grants to deniers and front groups. Bucholtz 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 wasrepublished [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 bySenator 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 Hopehas 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. CRYPTO

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.

SOURCE FOIA DOCUMENTS FOR WILLIE SOON GRANTS:

Willie Soon Grants, 2000-2010 (Smithsonian Institution FOIA, SI-000030, 1/28/2011)

Willie Soon Grants, 2010-2012(with letter from Smithsonian, 8/8/2012)

Willie Soon Grants, 2012-2013 (and letter from Smithsonian, 2/26/2013)

Topics

global warming

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extensive greenpeace rept 2011:

CASE STUDY: Dr. Willie Soon, a Career Fueled by Big Oil and Coal

On this page

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.

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-SmithsonianAstrophysics 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 Million in corporate funding: The FOIA response from the Smithsonian reveals that more than half (over $1 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 or coal interests.

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.

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.

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 theElectric 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

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.

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,

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.

Dr. Willie Soon's known corporate funding 1994-2010:

Funder	Grant Description from source	Grant Year(s)	Grant Amount	Source
Electric Power Research Institute		1994-1999	??	Soon published papers
American Petroleum Institute		1994-1997	??	Soon published papers
Mobil Foundation		1995-1997	??	Soon published papers
Texaco Foundation		1996	??	Soon published papers
American Petroleum Institute	Sun's impact on climate over the last 1000 years	2001, 2002	$58,380	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	1000 years of solar variability	2003	$60,053	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	The 11-22 year climate responses	2004, 2005	$50,178	Smithsonian FOIA
ExxonMobil Foundation	listed by Exxon as a grant to SAO	2005	$105,000	ExxonMobil Worldwide Giving Report 2005
Charles G. Koch Foundation	Koch/Mobile Charitable foundation	2005, 2006	$110,000	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	Understanding Arctic Climate Change	2005, 2006	$50,000	Smithsonian FOIA
ExxonMobil Foundation	Listed by Exxon as "project support" to SAO.	2006	$105,000	ExxonMobil Worldwide Giving Report 2005
Southern Company	Understanding Arctic Climate Change	2006, 2007	$110,000	Smithsonian FOIA
American Petroleum Institute	The solar influence of arctic climate change	2006, 2007	$55,000	Smithsonian FOIA
ExxonMobil Foundation	Exxon-Arctic climate change	2007, 2008	$55,000	Smithsonian FOIA/Exxon Giving Report
ExxonMobil Foundation	Exxon-soon solar variability	2008-2010	$70,106	Smithsonian FOIA/Exxon Giving Report
Free to Choose	The sun's influence on climate change	2008	$19,383	Smithsonian FOIA
Southern Company	Solar variability and Climate Change signals from temperature	2008, 2009	$120,000	Smithsonian FOIA
Charles G. Koch Foundation	Understanding solar variability and climate change	2010	$65,000	Smithsonian FOIA
TOTAL			$1,033,100

The 1990’s:

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*.

Get funding from big coal, become expert in Mercury?

Dr. Soon’s WSJ byline stated: "Mr. Soon, a natural scientist at Harvard, is an expert on 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.

*“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”.

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.)

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

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…"

2003 testimony to Environment and Public Works Committee

“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."

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 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”

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

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.

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

The George C. Marshall Institute

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.

The Fraser Institute

Tech Central Station

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

ExxonMobil gave Frontiers of Freedom a total of $1.272 million in funding since 1998 according to Greenpeace 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.

International connections

Willie Soon

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This is part of the Center for Media & Democracy's climate change project.

Dr. Willie Wei-Hock Soon (who is most commonly referred to as Willie Soon) is a physicist at the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and, since 1992^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-Fraser-0), has been an astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory.^{[2]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-Marshall-1)

A biographical note formerly on the website of Tech Central Station, where Soon was listed as "Science Director" between approximately September 2003^{[3]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-TCS1-2) and May 2007, listed his "areas of Expertise" as "Global warming", "Mercury", "Solar Variability" and the "Arctic".^{[4]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-TCS2-3) His bio note on TCS stated that "Dr. Willie Soon's views expressed are not necessarily those of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics."^{[4]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-TCS2-3)

A biographical note from 2000 stated that he was "a contributing editor to *World Climate Report* and member of the American Astrophysical Society, American Geophysical Union, and International Astronomical Union."^{[5]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-4) Two years later, another biographical note stated that he was a former contributing editor to World Climate Report but added that he was then an "Adjunct Professor of the Faculty of Science and Environmental Studies of the University of Putra, Malaysia." It also stated that "for years, he has researched the topic of the orbital theory of climate change, the Milankovic theory for glacial and interglacial changes."^{[6]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-DDP2002-5)

Contents[hide]

Global Warming Skeptic

Soon has long been associated with various U.S. and Canadian think tanks disputing human-induced global warming. Many of the papers he has published on the topic have been co-authored with Sallie L. Baliunas and sometimes with her and other co-authors.

Between December 1998^{[7]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-6) and September 2001^{[8]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-7) he was listed as a "Scientific Adviser" to the Greening Earth Society, a group that was funded and controlled by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies. WFA founded the group in 1997, according to an archived version of its website, "as a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use."^{[9]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-8) While Soon remains listed on the websites of various think tanks noted for disputing global warming -- such as the Fraser Institute in Canada and the George C. Marshall Institute in the U.S. -- Soon has not written for them for a long time. (For example, the last paper by Soon published on the website of the Fraser Institute dates back to January 2003^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-Fraser-0) and for the Marshall Institute the last published paper was in May 2003^{[2]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-Marshall-1).) (Baliunas was one of the other "scientific advisers").

As of early 2009, Soon's current biographical note states that he "is chief science adviser for the Science and Public Policy Institute".^{[10]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-9) Prior to Bob Ferguson founding SPPI in mid 2007, Soon worked with him from mid-2003 at the Center for Science and Public Policy, a project of Frontiers of Freedom (FOF)^{[11]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-10) funded, at least in part, by Exxon.^{[12]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-11)

Background

Soon received his Ph.D. in 1991 in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California (USC). Both his undergraduate and Masters of Science degrees are also from USC.^{[13]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-GES-12)

Soon received in 2004 the Petr Beckmann Award from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) for "outstanding contributions to the defense of scientific truth".^{[14]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-13)^{[15]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-14)DDP is closely associated with Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Sallie L. Baliunas received the same award in 1997 and other global warming skeptics have been recipients in subsequent years.)

Affiliations

between Dec 1998 and September 2001 he was a "Scientific Advisor" to Greening Earth Society^{[16]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-15)
appropriately 2002: Professor of the Faculty of Science and Environmental Studies of the University of Putra, Malaysia ^{[6]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-DDP2002-5)
senior scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute between approximately November 1997 and May 2003^{[2]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-Marshall-1); some of these articles were republished by the Fraser Institute.^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-Fraser-0)
September 2003 - May 2007 science director for Tech Central Station (TCS)^{[3]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-TCS1-2)^{[4]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-TCS2-3)

Books

Willie Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas, Arthur B. Robinson, Zachary W. Robinson, Global Warming: A Guide to the Science, *Fraser Institute*, November 30, 2002, ISBN 0889751870
Willie Wei-Hock Soon, Steven H. Yaskell, Maunder Minimum: And the Variable Sun-Earth Connection, *World Scientific Publishing Company*, August 2004, ISBN 9812382755

Speaking Engagements

March 2-4, 2008: Speaker at the Heartland Institutes International Conference on Climate Change (2008)
July 13, 2008: "Endangering the Polar Bear: How Environmentalists Kill", 26th Annual Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, a conference in Tucson Arizona co-cponsored by Access to Energy, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and Physicians for Civil Defense.^{[17]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-16)
March 8-10, 2009: Speaker at the Heartland Institutes International Conference on Climate Change (2009).^{[18]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon#cite_note-17)

Articles and Resources

Did ExxonMobil Break Its Promise To Stop Funding Climate Change Deniers?

— By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Jun. 28, 2011 5:00 AM PDT

Back in 2008, ExxonMobil pledged to quit funding climate change deniers. But according to new documents released through a Greenpeace Freedom of Information Act request, the oil giant was still forking over cash to climate skeptics as recently as last year, to the tune of $76,000 for one scientist skeptical of humankind's role in global warming. This—and much more—came to light in a new report about the funding of Wei Hock "Willie" Soon, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Soon has been a favorite among climate skeptics for years, since coauthoring a paper back in 2003 that claimed that the 20th century was probably not the warmest, nor was it unique. That paper, published in the journal Climate Research, was widely criticized by climate scientists for its content, not to mention the funding it received from the American Petroleum Institute. An astrophysicist by training, Soon has also claimed that solar variability—i.e., changes in the amount of radiation coming from the sun—are to likely to blame for warming temperatures.

In 2007, Soon coauthored a paper challenging the claim that climate change harms polar bears. The paper drew plenty of criticism, as it was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute, The Charles G. Koch Foundation, and ExxonMobil—groups with a clear interest in the debate over whether the bears merited endangered species protections.

Given that Soon had previously disclosed some of his corporate funding, in December 2009 Greenpeace submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Smithsonian Institution asking for information about Soon's funders and any conflict of interest forms he may have submitted. In response, Smithsonian produced a list of his major bankrollers, which included more than $800,000 from major energy interests. According to the document, Exxon provided $55,000 for a study on Arctic climate change in 2007 and 2008, and another $76,106 for research into solar variability between 2008 and 2010.

ExxonMobil spokesman Alan Jeffers accused Greenpeace of "peddling this discredited conspiracy theory" about its support for climate deniers. He maintained that the company stopped funding Soon in 2009. "We made a decision to discontinue funding groups whose positions on climate change weren't very constructive. It was distracting," said Jeffers. "The issue of climate change is so important, it shouldn't be distracted by the type of things Greenpeace does," Jeffers said.

Even if Greenpeace and Smithsonian are wrong and ExxonMobil has stopped funding his work, Soon still appears to be getting significant backing from other fossil fuel companies, with the coal giant Southern Company providing $120,000 to look at "solar variability and climate change signals from temperature" in 2008 and 2009, and the Koch Foundation providing Soon another $65,000 last year.

"Dr. Soon needs to make clear what exactly these corporations expected from him," said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace. "There's been a long-term campaign of climate denial for over 20 years, organized by big coal and big oil. This is evidence that it continues to this day."

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/06/exxonmobil-soon-climate-change-denier

SOON, Willie

Leaked internal memos reveal a coordinated, decades-long disinformation campaign.

Dossiers of Deception

A Damning Paper Trail

Ecological Complexity

Ecology Law Quarterly

Interfaces

International Journal of Forecasting

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Journal of Climate

New Astronomy

Physical Geography

Utility Giant Cuts Ties With Willie Soon

History

Remote stations

FUNDING

PEOPLE

SOURCES

CASE STUDY: Dr. Willie Soon, a Career Fueled by Big Oil and Coal

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

Introduction:

Key findings:

Willie Soon’s Backers: Big Coal and Big Oil

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

The 1990’s:

Get funding from big coal, become expert in Mercury?

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

The Hockey Stick

2003 testimony to Environment and Public Works Committee

Fake science and polar bears

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

Dr. Soon and the Free to Choose Network

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

The Heartland Institute

The George C. Marshall Institute

The World Climate Report

The Fraser Institute

Tech Central Station

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

International connections

SOURCE FOIA DOCUMENTS FOR WILLIE SOON GRANTS:

CASE STUDY: Dr. Willie Soon, a Career Fueled by Big Oil and Coal

Introduction:

Key findings:

Willie Soon’s Backers: Big Coal and Big Oil

Dr. Willie Soon's known corporate funding 1994-2010:

The 1990’s:

Get funding from big coal, become expert in Mercury?

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

The Hockey Stick

2003 testimony to Environment and Public Works Committee

Fake science and polar bears

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

Dr. Soon and the Free to Choose Network

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

The Heartland Institute

The George C. Marshall Institute

The World Climate Report

The Fraser Institute

Tech Central Station

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

International connections

Willie Soon

From SourceWatch

Global Warming Skeptic

Background

Affiliations

Books

Speaking Engagements

Articles and Resources

Related SourceWatch Articles

Did ExxonMobil Break Its Promise To Stop Funding Climate Change Deniers?

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