Smithsonian

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JDV TOLD TO GET RID OF WOKE DEI

SEE LIE GASLT REVISION MEMORY HOLE WWW

SEE CULTURE CAPT

see CULT WAR RUFO CRT STORY 1

see prager U

NO MERRI

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9 26 RWW

Alec MacGillis @ ProPublica: How the Smithsonian Became the Latest Front in Trump’s Culture War

Trump tried to fire one Smithsonian official and, after finding “ideological capture,” plans to install anti-woke warning signs outside the history museum.

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RWW 9 26

Kelsey Ables @ The Atlantic: The Next Change Trump Has Planned for the Smithsonian

A letter from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum revealed new details about warning signs the White House will install near the American-history museum.

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rww 8 26

Kevin Roberts is quite proud about the role the Heritage Foundation has played in helping Congress and the Trump administration wage war on the Smithsonian.

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RWW

07/29/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Devlin Barrett and Alan Feuer @ The New York Times: With Blanche Nomination at Stake, Payouts to Trump Allies Continue

A seven-figure settlement is announced two days before a scheduled Senate committee vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general.

Nicholas Gutteridge @ Texas Monthly: Greg Abbott’s CAIR Terrorist Designation Looks Awfully Similar to an Anti-Muslim Think Tank’s Work

Months before the governor’s proclamation, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy emailed DPS a report that levies similar evidence against the Muslim civil rights group.

Molly Olmstead @ Slate: The FDA Just Handed Looksmaxxers a Big, Strange Victory

RFK Jr.’s MAHA movement is finding plenty in common with the bros who are obsessed with peptides.

Noel Sims and Rebecca Crosby @ **Popular Information: The fake historian advising Trump's anti-Smithsonian crusade

So why does the Trump administration care so much about controlling the Smithsonian Institution? One factor: the influence of right-wing Christian nationalist “historian” David Barton and his son Tim.

Kyle Clark @ 9 News: Victor Marx hunts for demons, and votes, in the race for Colorado Governor

The ministry leader says casting off evil spirits is his greatest achievement, but his exorcisms have drawn questions and criticism.

Leonardo Blair @ The Christian Post: Greg Locke reveals congregation down to few hundred followers

Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke, who is under federal investigation for allegedly misappropriating church funds, says his “tent” church, which drew up to 3,000 people in its heyday, is now down to a few hundred in the wake of his ongoing challenges.

rww

Religious Right Activists and GOP Members of Congress Call for Smithsonian Purge: ‘Let David Barton and Glenn Beck Run Our National Museums’

Religious-right activists and GOP Members of Congress want to force the Smithsonian to submit to Trump's demands; one calls for the Museum of the American Indian to be shut dow

....

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AN 6 26

President Donald Trump reportedly wants to seize the Smithsonian Institution, one of America’s most prestigious collection of museums, and to use them to whitewash the United States’ history on issues like slavery.

“When President Trump summoned Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for lunch at the White House on August 28 of last year, Bunch’s advisers assumed that the end was near,” The Atlantic’s Clint Smith wrote on Monday. “Trump had spent months threatening the Smithsonian’s independence; just nine days earlier, he’d written on Truth Social that ‘the Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.’”

Bunch, who unambiguously believes that slavery was a negative for America, was also the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is known to have pushed back against attempts by Vice President JD Vance and Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who sits on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, as well as others in the Trump administration to scrub so-called “woke” ideas in the museum that they described as a “divisive ideology.” Trump also tried to fire the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, even though the Smithsonian is meant to be independent of the government.

Despite these challenges, Bunch was able to avoid winding up in the administration’s crosshairs, at least for a while. Yet as various key personnel step down from the museums’ boards, Smith anticipates that Trump may ultimately get his wish of hiring loyalists who will reshape the museum to his liking.

“The current and looming vacancies, and the need for congressional and presidential approval, raise the possibility that Trump could attempt to install new board members who are loyal to his agenda,” Smith wrote. “(Trump’s March 2025 executive order said that the White House would work with officials ‘to seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.’)”

Smith added, “In April, The New York Times reported that the regents had agreed on nominations for some of the replacements, but the House committee responsible for reviewing and vetting the nominees before they move to the full legislature for approval had yet to receive the names under consideration—intrigue that suggests some manner of strategy, although it’s far from clear whose. Minutes from board meetings earlier this year show that the regents have voted to give existing members additional duties because of the current and expected vacancies.”

Despite these pressures, Bunch vowed in an internal memo to staff that “we remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research and the arts to all Americans. We will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections and objects, rooted in expertise and accuracy.”

Earlier this month, federal Judge Angel Kelly ruled against Trump’s attempts to remove historic content that is featured at national parks. Trump specifically targeted content that discussed America’s history of racism, including slavery.

"To establish a likelihood of success on the merits, Defendants must do more than express disagreement with the Court’s prior ruling; they must make a strong showing that they are likely to prevail on appeal," Kelley explained in response to the administration’s objection to being forced to allow the National Parks Service to accurately represent American history.

She added, "To establish irreparable harm, Defendants bear the burden of demonstrating that, absent a stay, they will suffer irreparable injury that is substantial, certain, and inadequately remedied by monetary damages or later appellate relief. ... Here, Defendants raise three theories: (1) the Injunction Order hampers government speech by preventing the National Park Service (“NPS”) from proffering its preferred narrative at National Parks; (2) implementation of the Injunction Order is practically infeasible and costly; and (3) the Injunction Order conflicts with a recent order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit regarding Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, PA, thus subjecting Defendants to inconsistent obligations with respect to that site. The Court is unpersuaded by these arguments and explains why."

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AN 5 26

During President Donald Trump’s second term, one of his key goals has involved reshaping U.S. cultural institutions to suit his ideological project, and the Smithsonian in particular has become a target of his culture war against diversity and historical narratives that he perceives to be “woke.” Shortly after he entered office, he signed an executive order calling for the museum to remove “anti-American” narratives, which took special aim at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, arguing that aspects of it portrayed American and Western values as “inherently harmful and oppressive.”

While many speculated that this could mean the closure or radical whitewashing of exhibits involving issues like slavery or the struggles of minority communities, according to the Washington Post, the Smithsonian “has managed to push back and mostly hold its ground.” While it has been impacted by what the Post describes as “a few key losses,” it has succeeded at maintaining the majority of its programming through a strategy of sticking strictly to the facts.

For example, as the Post explains, “No single exhibition in Washington may be more scrutinized than the Portrait Gallery’s ‘America’s Presidents,’ and among its critics, apparently, was Trump, whose administration took issue with the wall texts that mentioned his impeachments among other low points of his first presidency.”

He took such issue with it that the White House forced out galley head Kim Sajet last June before hanging a new portrait of Trump along with what was referred to as a “tombstone” label bearing nothing but his name and basic facts of the image, eliminating text describing his administration.

But now, after a month-long closure for renovations, the exhibit has reopened, and arguably the biggest change is the return of a textual description of Trump’s first term, “warts and all.”

According to the Post, “Curators have found an elegant way to defuse political controversy around the most recent presidents. Trump’s tombstone label is gone, replaced with longer texts, one quoting from his Jan. 19, 2021, farewell address, and another that gives a basic résumé of his life, including his education, prior experience, inauguration dates, major legislative accomplishments and notable events. The same format, including extracts from farewell addresses, is now used for all the presidents since Jimmy Carter.”

But importantly, “among the notable events listed on Trump’s CV are ones that went missing earlier this year. The first and second impeachments, the insurrection, and the George Floyd protests of 2020 are included along with the Abraham Accords and the ‘Operation Warp Speed’ initiative that developed lifesaving covid vaccines.”

As the Post notes, the facts are back, if delivered with a much-changed tone.

“For all the presidents up to Carter,” explains the Post, “the Smithsonian uses an omniscient, authoritative voice, which it abandons for the more recent ones. ‘The presidency of James K. Polk reflected his belief in Manifest Destiny,’ begins one summary; Andrew Jackson ‘campaigned for president as a self-made man,’ reads another. Museum historian Mindy Farmer, who oversaw the refresh, says the move to just-the-facts bullet points for later presidents is a virtue, given that historians haven’t yet fully processed our most recent executives.”

“We want to wait for a scholarly consensus,” she said.

While the fight isn’t over, with the White House demanding a comprehensive content review out of a clear desire to continue pushing the Smithsonian toward the administration’s nativist historical agenda, as the Post notes, further meddling means “the administration will be in the awkward position of disputing basic facts rather than the interpretation of them.”

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RWW

03/02/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Will Neal @ The Daily Beast: ‘Peace President’ Breaks Record for Attacking the Most Countries

Trump has reportedly authorized more assaults in just the first year of his second presidency than Biden did throughout four years at the White House.

Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Trump Warns “The Big One” Is Still Coming for Iran

Donald Trump is ready to make it a whole lot worse for Iran.

Mark Wingfield @ Baptist Press: The Iran bombing is a religion story for all but one person

When the United States and Israel bombed Iran Feb. 28, the motivations and repercussions were religious as well as political.

Lee Moran @ HuffPost: Lindsey Graham Names 'Next' Country On Trump's Hit List: 'Their Days Are Numbered'

First Venezuela, then Iran — and now Cuba. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy on Sunday that the U.S. under President Donald Trump will next target the communist-led Caribbean island for regime change.

Liam Adams and Karissa Waddick @ USA Today: Trump's Freedom 250 hits the road with museum focused on faith, civics

Six mobile history museums, part of President Trump's Freedom 250 program, aim to counter 'woke agenda.' Historians say it leaves out key facts.

Karin Brulliard and Brady Dennis @ The Washington Post: Confidential database reveals which items NPS thinks may ‘disparage’ America

An internal government database reviewed by The Washington Post demonstrates the vast scope of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to revise or remove information on African American history, climate change and other topics at hundreds of national park sites.

Chauncey DeVega @ Salon: Historians resist Trump’s effort to police the past

Attempts to reshape the Smithsonian reflect a broader campaign to control public memory and what Americans learn. // PREZ HOUSE PHILLY

Alice Gibbs @ Newsweek: What New Department of Education Banner Labels Charlie Kirk Raises Eyebrows

A large banner featuring conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has been hung on the exterior of the Lyndon Baines Johnson U.S. Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., prompting debate online over who should be publicly honored on government property.

Michael Kruse @ Politico Magazine: ‘I Don’t Know That I’ll Ever Be OK With Myself’

Nancy Mace opens up about her trauma, why she does what she does and Donald Trump as a “father figure.”

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AN 1 26

Smithsonian removes text referencing Trump’s 2 impeachments that 'upset' White House

Sarah K. Burris

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AN 2 26

Trump has successfully pressured the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) into adopting new guidelines — and some officials feel that they amount to ideological loyalty tests.

The official letter emphasizes "uplifting and positive narratives of our shared American experience" but also instructs “improper ideology” be scrubbed from federal cultural institutions, according to a report by The Washington Post. Because the IMLS distributes grants to museums and libraries, they have the power to make both personnel and curatorial choices. As such, all references to "inclusive," "equity," and "diverse" or "diversity" have been removed from the IMLS’ recent 13 grant notices, even though they were previously commonplace in competitive applications. On some occasions, it has forced people out of the funding process.

"It feels like organizations like ours are boxed out from telling a complete and true and honest American story,” explained Ashley Rogers, executive director of the Whitney Plantation in New Orleans. Because of what Rogers does for a living, it is practically impossible for her to request grant money while remaining consistent with the administration’s standards.

"Our mission is to educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery,” Rogers told the Post. “We're a nonprofit. This is the only thing we do. I don't know how to make that align with the current funding opportunities at IMLS and more fundamentally than that, if I did, would I be betraying my mission?"

Lori Byrd, a former museum professional and IMLS grant reviewer, expressed a similar concern more broadly.

"If you even apply for this, are you going to get pushback from either your museum community or your fellow museum professionals because you're kind of caving to the administration?" Byrd asked. Museum consultant Andrea Jones made the same point when talking about her own professional responsibilities.

"Not only is the risk to my livelihood too great … but I care about doing credible, nuanced work — not being part of a propaganda machine,” Jones said.

Because of the uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s approach, the IMLS grant cycle is already months behind schedule, The Post reported. Nor are Trump’s loyalty tests merely harming museums and libraries. A retired high-ranking military officer explained in a conservative publication that Trump’s policies are doing the same thing to America’s armed forces.

"The implications are immediate and corrosive," Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling wrote in The Bulwark earlier this week. "If promotions to general officer rank can be rescinded for perceived associations with others, officers may begin to prioritize 'safe' assignments or noncontroversial bosses. Candor — already fragile in large bureaucracies — may diminish if officers fear that honest service under controversial leaders will later be used against them. The apolitical ethic that underpins the profession of arms risks erosion."

Hertling added, "The Army's strength has always rested on trust: trust that performance matters more than patronage, that merit outweighs politics, and that the institution protects those who serve honorably in any job they are assigned. Undermining that trust does not merely harm an officer's career; it weakens the foundation of professional military service."

Loyalty oaths are not just in libraries, museums and the military. The US economy itself could be at risk because of Trump’s loyalty oaths, as evidenced by the controversy over National Economic Council directorKevin Hassett calling for Federal Reserve officers to be “disciplined” for issuing a report which showed Trump’s tariffs are hurting ordinary Americans.

“In the end, Mr. Trump’s decision evinced both the risk and reward for an economist whose previous views had morphed in service of the White House and its economic agenda," The New York Times recently reported. "The president did not want to lose one of his most forceful champions, whose full-throated advocacy had won deep praise from Mr. Trump but had fueled fears that Mr. Hassett could not guide monetary policy while resisting political influence.”

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AN 11 25

HARPERS FERRY, W.Va. — Despite concerns about attempted historical erasure at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park due to new Trump administration policies being unfounded, some historians worry other attempts across the country may have a detrimental impact on historical preservation in the U.S.

ABC 7 News first reported that Harpers Ferry was forced to remove items located in its slavery exhibit due to the Trump Administration’s March 27 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” According to the report, the order would force “the National Park Service [to] remove or cover up signs or displays that have been determined by the Trump administration to disproportionally emphasize negative aspects of American history or historical figures.”

However, Alan Spears, the senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, said a citizen watchdog group created to protect and enhance America’s national parks found the story to be false. As a historian, Spears’ work in the association is focused on protecting and promoting historic and cultural resources tied to the federal parks department.

According to him and other historians, concern is still being raised about how this order is affecting national parks and important historical exhibits across the country.

According to the order, it intends to “restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

Two months after the initial order was released, on May 20, the Secretary of the Interior released an additional order, SO 3431, which essentially “operationalized” the order for the United States Parks Service, according to Spears.

The order did three things. First, it set up QR codes that allowed parkgoers to enter comments about the location. Spears said he believes that the administration was looking for people to “tattle on the National Park service to say, ‘We don’t really like this interpretation. It’s too liberal, it’s too woke, it’s too DEI, it’s too anti-American.’”

However, what the Secretary of the Interior found instead was that many parkgoers had either positive things to say about the historical interpretation of these sites or that these sites actually needed more work when defining issues like slavery, women’s rights, labor rights, and Native and Indigenous history.

Next, the parks were ordered to submit lists of any interpretive materials that might fall into what SO 3431 is trying to remove. Finally, the Secretary of the Interior sorted through these lists and sent out letters of noncompliance.

According to Spears, not all parks submitted lists for review, and not all parks were sent letters from the Interior. Ultimately, Harpers Ferry was not included in either set.

There are some images that could trigger a letter of noncompliance, according to Spears, such as photographs from their “Protests in America” display of a man being arrested at an AIDS protest, a group protesting the Vietnam War and the National Women’s Party that protested for women’s suffrage, for example. However, the park has not received orders to remove them, and Spears said that as far as he is aware, they do not plan to.

However, he said he does believe that the administration is not running an entirely transparent process. Despite Harpers Ferry not being on the list, several other facilities in the country were told to scrub their historical sites and landmarks.

Signs about climate change at Acadia National Park in Maine have been taken down, an LGBTQ display at a Rosie the Riveter site in Oakland, California, was taken down and then put back after concern was raised, and references to transgender activism at the Stonewall Inn in New York City have been removed.

“The truth of the matter is that nobody really is talking publicly about what’s been on the target list,” Spears said.

The language of the order itself has also caused concern, with the focus framed on “the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape,” instead of outright saying it will enforce bans on historical knowledge focused on marginalized groups.

Another historian and graduate student, Peter D’Arpa, said he believes the wording is built to give it plausible deniability.

“[The administration] can’t, right now, just do stuff. They have to keep people happy, where we’re at right now.”

He compared this language to fascist states like Nazi Germany, in which Nazis would “build consensus amongst your population of who belongs and who doesn’t,” “get them angry at certain groups,” and only then, once they were used to ostracize members of the group, could they move on to their removal or inflict violence on them.

Spears said what’s happening now is an issue of “whether or not this country wants to come to grips with the lingering effects” of difficult parts of American history, including slavery.

In his perspective, some do and some don’t — and that is one of the crises at the heart of the historical erasure, he said.

“I think it’s important that efforts to soften, sanitize, erase this history is critically important,” Spears said. “If you don’t want to learn about slavery and its lingering impacts on this country, that’s your choice. I think it’s a bad choice, but it’s your choice.”

In the end, he said he does not want that choice to be taken away from those who actively want to seek out these stories and learn from them.

“I do believe that if we… want to bring people together, that we have to see each other and understand a little bit more about where we’ve come from. That means our history — that shared national narrative of ours — has to include the ugly parts as well as the beautiful parts,” Spears said.

D’Arpa has also raised concerns about the order and how it points to division within the country. According to him, the division and historical erasure happening now are a result of citizens being angry and scared that they are being forgotten by those in power.

“They hear that the Democrats say they want to take care of a specific group of people, but they don’t hear the Democrats say they want to take care of all Americans, and that scares people that are in rural America that might like American policies,” he said. “They don’t want to be forgotten, they don’t want to feel like they’re being forced to accept a certain ideology that they don’t agree with.”

Politically, D’Arpa said he believes the order to be anti-American. He said that it points to the president taking power away from the people and the states, using the power of the federal government to force the people and the states “to basically think the way the government wants them to think.”

The historical preservation and documentation that took place during this time also inspired the Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, an organization in which volunteers photograph and film different exhibits in the Smithsonian, should anything be removed or changed. The Smithsonian museums located in D.C. have been sent letters of noncompliance, but as of right now, nothing has changed.

Historically, similar censorship has happened in Communist China, according to historian and professor at Georgetown University and co-founder of the citizen historians group Citizens Historians for the Smithsonian James Millward.

After the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party worked very hard over decades to ensure people didn’t know the full story of what happened.

“They created their own version of what it was, and made it impossible to write about or talk about,” Millward said.

Lizzie Watts, who worked in the National Parks Service for 49 years, said she feels the order makes it harder to tell a complete story. She said she believes people work hard to preserve historical sites like Harpers Ferry because they tell an inclusive story of our history.

“All stories are not happy, all stories don’t end on a good note, but they’re history,” she said. “If we ever want to get back to a moderate world where everyone gets along and understands each other and works for the betterment of the United States, then we have to be inclusive. You can’t leave people out, you can’t avoid the sad things to just “try to save the positive parts of history.”

Ultimately, all these historians say that the order is unique to the United States in this moment, and although it is not clear what the future of it will look like, they worry about the preservation of the nation’s history for future generations.

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"How will Trump's executive order affect the Smithsonian?"

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lonnie bunch

XO 14253

aug 19th ts out of control unaccomplished downtrodden have been

woke is broke we have the hottest cty in the world that everyone talks about

smithson not exec branch a fed trust 17 member bd

citizen historians for the smithsonian, docced 1/2 .org

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian | Protect History

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian Is Creating a Digital Archive of Exhibits | Library Journal

teach-in nate dimeo linktree history teach in memory palace

Standing up for history on "the nation's front yard." | MetaFilter

PROFESSIONAL HIST

August 14, 2025

Advocacy

The OAH expresses deep concern and dismay about the unprecedented White House letter from August 12, 2025, to the esteemed historian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, directing an internal review of eight Smithsonian museums in alignment with the administration’s Executive Order 14253 on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” This correspondence and its underlying command represent an unacceptable instance of ongoing executive overreach, striking at the independence of one of our nation’s preeminent historical and cultural institutions.

:{:{No president has the legitimate authority to impose such a review. Established by Congress in 1846 as a unique and independent agency, the Smithsonian Institution is not, and has never been, under the authority of the Executive Branch. It is an independent statutory agency, led by the Secretary and governed by a bipartisan Board of Regents as established by law. This legal structure is ignored by the letter, as the stated goals of the review are to “ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”}:

The White House’s effort to assert control over the Smithsonian’s staff, archives, donors, public-facing content, curatorial processes, exhibition planning, and collection use constitutes an alarming infringement on the autonomy and integrity of this 179-year old distinguished institution. Moreover, it asks the hundreds of professionals who work at the Smithsonian to violate their ethics and their dedication to free and open historical inquiry.}:

The effort as outlined is divorced from the realities of an evidence-based, comprehensive telling of the U.S. past, and is part of an aggressive push to flatten American history into a narrowly conceived, unrepresentative, and simplified story. Historians, scholars, or subject-area experts will not be conducting this mandated review—and certainly not those whose exhaustive research, reviews, and consultations preceded the public staging of exhibits—but rather it will be undertaken by presidential appointees aligned with a specific political agenda. This is exactly what the architects of Smithsonian independence sought to avoid. The end result of this process will be the opposite of a fulsome presentation of the history of the United States that reflects the Smithsonian’s mission for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Instead, the review and the method used to compel it, will undoubtedly be in service of authoritarian control over the national narrative, collective memory, and national collections.

It is particularly distressing to see this effort of historical censorship and sanitizing tied to the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—what should be a moment for thoughtful reflection about and celebration of the American experiment with all its tragedies and triumphs. Together, these moves threaten to weaponize our shared past to serve political imperatives of the present and an imagined future. They politicize the artifacts, recorded stories, and historical experiences that belong to the American people and that help to bring a full, unvarnished picture of our democracy into public view not for indoctrination, but for education.

Across numerous surveys, a majority of Americans consistently say they want a full, honest, and unvarnished presentation of our nation’s history. This White House enterprise, therefore, is an affront to individuals across a wide spectrum of the American public who treasure their right to learn and think for themselves. For decades, the Smithsonian has been among the most visible and trusted interpreters of American history, reaching millions of national and international visitors annually and playing a critical role in public historical literacy. The Smithsonian museums are essential civic spaces where visitors engage with complexity, wrestle with contradiction, and learn that knowing and confronting the past is necessary for a democratic future.

In March 2025, OAH issued a statement condemning the Executive Order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” and the order’s grave misrepresentation of historical work and assault on scholarly integrity. Today, we reiterate that condemnation and the bedrock premise that when knowledge is distorted or suppressed, democracy is weakened. We call on all historians, curators, designers, and artists—and all who appreciate and love the search for our past—to resist and condemn, in whatever ways they can, this White House effort to control the American imagination.

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WIKI 10 25

Executive Order 14253, titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History", is an executive order signed by Donald Trump on March 31, 2025.

The order seeks to shape how the Smithsonian Institution's museums, education, research centers, and the National Zoo characterize American history, aiming to "remove improper ideology from such properties" in order to project "a symbol of inspiration and American greatness".^[1][2][3]

The order calls for the Department of Interior to determine whether, since January 1, 2020, any monuments, memorials, statues and markers, within the department's jurisdiction contain any descriptions, depictions, or other content that "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)". Additionally, it orders the reinstatement of any pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, and markers that have been removed or changed to "perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."^[4][3][5]

Provisions

Executive Order 14253 calls for the Vice President, the Secretary of the Interior, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget working with Congress, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Senior Associate Staff Secretary, Lindsey Halligan to enforce its policies "including by seeking to remove improper ideology from such properties" and "recommend to the President any additional actions necessary to fully effectuate such policies."^[6]

The order states that future appropriations to the Smithsonian Institution shall be informed by these guidelines and prohibits expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy". It stipulates that the Smithsonian Institution must "celebrate the achievements of women in the American Women's History Museum" and "not recognize men as women in any respect in the Museum."^[3]

The order also directs the Secretary of the Interior to determine whether, since January 1, 2020, monuments, memorials, statues and markers, within the departments jurisdiction contain any descriptions, depictions, or other content "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)". The department is also ordered to reinstate any pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues and markers that have been removed or changed to "perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."^[5][6]

Background

Confederate monuments and memorials

More than 160 Confederate monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America (CSA; the Confederacy) and associated figures have been removed from public spaces in the United States, all but five of which have been since 2015. Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn down by protestors. At least 90 monuments were removed in 2020, the most since 2009, the first year that removals occurred.^[7]

Cultural institutions

During the first 100 days of his second term, Trump focused on cultural organizations like the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which he alleged were influenced by a "woke" and "race-centered" ideology.^{[8][9][10][11}]

In Executive Order 14253, he made various unfounded claims about the institution, such as that "the National Museum of African American History and Culture has proclaimed that 'hard work', 'individualism', and 'the nuclear family' are aspects of 'White culture.'"^[8][12]

References

"Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History". Federal Register. April 3, 2025. Retrieved September 23, 2025.
. NPR. Archived from the original on April 1, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
Schuessler, Jennifer (March 29, 2025). "What to Know About Trump's Order Taking Aim at the Smithsonian". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
"Trump signs order to 'restore' American history with Smithsonian Institution overhaul". NPR. Archived from the original on April 4, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
"Trump wants to restore statues and monuments. Will that happen?". NPR. Archived from the original on April 4, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
"Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History". Federal Register. April 3, 2025. Archived from the original on April 4, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
"A record number of Confederate monuments fell in 2020, but hundreds still stand. Here's where". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 11, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
"What is the Smithsonian, and why is President Trump unhappy with it?". AP News. March 28, 2025. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
Avila, Joseph De. "Trump Orders Removal of 'Divisive Race-Centered Ideology' From Smithsonian". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
"Trump to attend Kennedy Center performance of 'Les Misérables'". New York Daily News. June 11, 2025. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
Veltman, Chloe (March 28, 2025). "Trump executive order seeks to 'restore' American history through Smithsonian overhaul". NPR. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
Smith, David (March 30, 2025). "'It reminds you of a fascist state': Smithsonian Institution braces for Trump rewrite of US history". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 2, 2025.

External links

Full text of executive Order 14253 in the Federal Register

Categories:

TABL

executive Order 14253, titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History", is an executive order signed by Donald Trump on March 31, 2025.

The order calls for the Department of Interior to determine whether, since January 1, 2020, any monuments, memorials, statues and markers, within the department's jurisdiction contain any descriptions, depictions, or other content that "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)". Additionally, it orders the reinstatement of any pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, and markers that have been removed or changed to "perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."[4][3][5]

Provisions

Executive Order 14253 calls for the Vice President, the Secretary of the Interior, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget working with Congress, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Senior Associate Staff Secretary, Lindsey Halligan to enforce its policies "including by seeking to remove improper ideology from such properties" and "recommend to the President any additional actions necessary to fully effectuate such policies."[6]

Background

Confederate monuments and memorials

See also: Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials

Cultural institutions

References

"Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History". Federal Register. April 3, 2025. Retrieved September 23, 2025.

"How will Trump's executive order affect the Smithsonian?". NPR. Archived from the original on April 1, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.

Schuessler, Jennifer (March 29, 2025). "What to Know About Trump's Order Taking Aim at the Smithsonian". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 4, 2025.

"Trump signs order to 'restore' American history with Smithsonian Institution overhaul". NPR. Archived from the original on April 4, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.

"Trump wants to restore statues and monuments. Will that happen?". NPR. Archived from the original on April 4, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.

"Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History". Federal Register. April 3, 2025. Archived from the original on April 4, 2025. Retrieved April 4, 2025.

"A record number of Confederate monuments fell in 2020, but hundreds still stand. Here's where". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 11, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2025.

"What is the Smithsonian, and why is President Trump unhappy with it?". AP News. March 28, 2025. Retrieved July 2, 2025.

Avila, Joseph De. "Trump Orders Removal of 'Divisive Race-Centered Ideology' From Smithsonian". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 2, 2025.

"Trump to attend Kennedy Center performance of 'Les Misérables'". New York Daily News. June 11, 2025. Retrieved July 2, 2025.

Veltman, Chloe (March 28, 2025). "Trump executive order seeks to 'restore' American history through Smithsonian overhaul". NPR. Retrieved July 2, 2025.

Smith, David (March 30, 2025). "'It reminds you of a fascist state': Smithsonian Institution braces for Trump rewrite of US history". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 2, 2025.

External links

Full text of executive Order 14253 in the Federal Register

vte

Executive actions of Donald Trump

Second presidency of Donald Trump (2025–present)

Categories: Executive orders of Donald TrumpMarch 2025 in the United StatesSecond presidency of Donald TrumpSmithsonian Institution

an ah 8 25

From universities to museums, President Donald Trump is making a concerted effort to purge institutions of what MAGA Republicans call a "woke" version of U.S. history.

But historians and Trump opponents are pushing back, stressing that discussing the darker side of U.S. history is not bashing the United States but rather, is an effort to learn from mistakes of the past and avoid repeating them. Presidential historian Jon Meacham, a frequent guest on MSNBC, often describes frank discussions as part of the journey toward a "more perfect union."

In an opinion column published by The Guardian on September 4, Sidney Blumenthal — a former adviser to ex-President Bill Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — argues that Trump is trying to whitewash U.S. history even though he has a painfully limited knowledge of it.

"Of all the presidents, Donald Trump — the man who would remake the Smithsonian and alter its presentation of 'how bad slavery was,' as he put it — is surely the most ignorant of American history itself," Blumenthal laments. "What Trump doesn't know fills the Library of Congress, whose chief librarian he has fired, along with driving out the heads of the National Archives and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as dissolving programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities and defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which as a result, has paused the acclaimed 'American Experience' documentary series."

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The former Clintons adviser adds, "Trump claims he is tearing down the entire federal support for history in order to reveal the true story."

A Trump White House aide, Blumenthal notes, bragged that one of Trump's goals is to "get the woke out of the Smithsonian."

"But this gospel of positive-thinking twaddle aside, Trump, proudly ignorant though he is, has for years articulated a vision of American history," Blumenthal warns. "That vision does not emphasize the strides the nation has made through tumultuous struggle since the abolition of slavery. Instead, it honors those who defended slavery, committed treason to preserve it and claim it to be a worthy American 'heritage.' Trump has repeatedly sought to shield the Confederate statues and symbols erected as tribute to the 'lost cause' myth."

Blumenthal continues, "He has expressed and unqualified admiration for Robert E. Lee as a quintessential American hero almost always coupled with belittling remarks about (President Abraham) Lincoln. His view of history squarely aligns him with neo-Confederates, not least those who carried the Confederate flag at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on 6 January 2021 and whom he subsequently pardoned. Trump's version of history is not, however, simply reactionary nostalgia, or treacly kitsch for the restoration of 'Uncle Herschel,' the 'Old-Timer' to the Cracker Barrel logo. His use of the culture war is a key element to advance his policy agenda."

Sidney Blumenthal's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.

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an 8 25

A new White House history exhibit has drawn fire from historians for using AI to generate fake quotes from founding fathers.

NPR reported Wednesdaythat the White House unveiled a striking new history exhibit, "The Founders Museum," which was presented in collaboration with the far‑right media group PragerU and was housed within the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.

The display features 82 original paintings depicting figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Betsy Ross, alongside more than 40 AI‑generated short videos in which Founding Fathers were animated to relay their stories, available both onsite and online.

The White House has asserted that AI brought “these people, places and events … to life, making history engaging to Americans across the country.”

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But historians have expressed concern. William G. Thomas, vice president of the research division at the American Historical Association, was quoted in the report as acknowledging the project’s ambition. However, he warned that AI could reshape historical figures’ words and stories without a clear factual basis.

Brown University history professor Karin Wulftold WGBH News that some portrayals — such as that of Mercy Otis Warren — felt watered down, reducing her critical voice to bland patriotic platitudes.

“In the video, it acknowledges that she’s a writer, and that writing wasn’t something that women were encouraged to do, certainly in public,” Wulf says. “But it then has her say these kind of pablum pieces about patriotism and liberty that are so much less stringent and so much less potent than what she actually said at the time," she said.

One AI video stood out. It featured John Adams declaring, “Facts do not care about your feelings,” a phrase popularized by modern conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro.

Moreover, Samuel Adams is presented as saying he was labeled a “troublemaker,” a term that only came into use decades after his death and didn’t enter common usage until well into the 20th century.

PragerU’s CEO, Marissa Streit, defended the project in comments to NPR, saying it had been developed through a joint effort involving White House experts, PragerU scholars and widely referenced historical sources.

According to the report, Streit also plans to take the exhibit on the road using mobile museum trucks and encouraged its adoption in schools, state capitols, and embassies leading up to America’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

Last month, President Donald Trump ordered a sweeping review of the Smithsonian museums, demanding their exhibits align with a more celebratory portrayal of American history. The president complained in a Truth Social post that they currently focus too much on “how bad slavery was” and lack optimism about the country's achievements.

His remarks were strongly denounced by historianswho said he was trying to "whitewash history" by going after the Smithsonian.

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RWW

[Christian Nationalism ## David And Tim Barton Blast The Smithsonian Institution's 'Obsession With Slavery'

Christian nationalist pseudo-historian Tim Barton cheers on Trump's attack on the Smithsonian, saying the museums should not treat slavery as "the most significant thing for American history" because "we had slaves for less than 100 years in our nation's history."

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/david-and-tim-barton-blast-smithsonian-institutions-obsession-slavery)

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the conv an 8 25

When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.

It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.

In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America’s official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, “reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”

This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a “DEI agenda” from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as “woke” universities, which culminated in Columbia University’s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution’s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

The review’s stated aim is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects “Americanism” through a commitment to “celebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”

Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here’s how.

Winners write the history

Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a “historical impulse,” or “the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.

Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.

As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America’s bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. Then, she says, “Americans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration … using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.”

This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. “By contrast,” writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, “the 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.” The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.

The Ministry of Truth

The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”

The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.

Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.

The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.

But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”

At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.

The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.

Down the memory hole

Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation’s official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes.

Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to “gay” and LGBTQ+ content on government websites.

Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life ofHarriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.

Public outcry led to the restoration of most of the deleted content.

Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its “divisive, race-centered ideology,” staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump’s two impeachment trials from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump’s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display.

Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that the placard’s removal was not in response to political pressure: “The placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”

Repressing thought

Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.

According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”

The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.

If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.

It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.

As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.

*This story is an updated version of an article originally published on June 9, 2025.

*The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.

Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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8 25

The top Trump official tasked with reshaping the Smithsonian’s collections into a more conservative presentation argues that, based on her experience and expectations, the institution should place less emphasis on the painful chapters of American history and more on its achievements.

Insurance attorney Lindsey Halligan is now Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, as well as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary.

On Wednesday, Fox News host John Roberts told Halligan that “like just about every other country in the world, the United States has got a checkered past.”

He reminded her that “some of the worst episodes in our history were formative experiences that led us to where we are today, and those typically are reflected in museums.”

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Halligan replied that from her point of view, “the fact that we had our country, was involved in slavery is awful. No one thinks otherwise.”

“But what I saw when I was going through the museums personally was an overemphasis on slavery. And I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”

She insisted that Americans “should be able to take our kids, our students, through the Smithsonian, and feel proud when we leave,” and that “we need to keep moving forward.”

“We can’t just keep focusing on the negative. All it does is divide us, and we really need to unite the country and focus on all the positive as we approach America’s 250th birthday.”

A section of a Trump executive order titled “Saving Our Smithsonian” directs Halligan, by name, to seek “to remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution and its properties, “and shall recommend to the President any additional actions necessary to fully effectuate such policies.”

In April, Halligan told The Washington Post that she believes “improper ideology” means “weaponizing history.”

Halligan has a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law, and does not appear to have any education in museum sciences.

When she first moved to Washington, D.C. she “didn’t like everything she saw,” at the Smithsonian, the Post reported.. “Some exhibits, in her view, did not reflect the America she knows and loves.”

“And so I talked to the president about it,” Halligan said, “and suggested an executive order, and he gave me his blessing, and here we are.”

She told Fox News that “it’s common knowledge that our education system in general has been just indoctrinated with political ideology and various ideological narratives. And the Smithsonian is really a version of education.”

“It could be the foundation of our American education,” she claimed, explaining the as a young child she went to the Smithsonian Museum on a class trip, “and the Smithsonian is really supposed to be a trust instrument.”

“And what’s happened is it’s become more of a platform upon which the curators and leadership at the Smithsonian can push ideological narratives and we really want to help the Smithsonian be the gem,” she said. “Represent our nation, properly and truthfully.”

Critics denounced Halligan’s remarks.

U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) remarked, “400 years of brutal bondage, torture, and murder should be emphasized. The generations of Black Americans who built this nation with their own hands and their own pain should be emphasized. The true history of this country SHOULD BE EMPHASIZED.”

“White American woman who went through the museum said there was an ‘overemphasis on slavery.’ What a thing. To say those words out loud,” wrote former Republican Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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AN 8 25

The Wall Street Journal reports the White House will conduct a sweeping review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations to align it with President Donald Trump’s interpretation of American history.

Three top White House officials, said the Journal, sent a letter to Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, claiming they want to ensure the museums’ “unity, progress, and enduring values” reflect President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

The White House intends to inspect and adjust public-facing exhibition text and online content. It also wants to have a say in future exhibition planning, as well as the use of collections and artist grants, say Journal reporters.

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” states the Aug. 12 letter.

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Critics railed against Trump’s January executive order demanding a Trump-approved version of U.S. history that erases chapters that fail to align with Trump’s vision of American greatness, reports the Guardian.

“He’s ignorant of economic history, he’s ignorant of political history. And his idea for the 250 [anniversary] is to use it as a way to celebrate him,” said Jonathan Alter, a historian and biographer to the Guardian. “We don’t know yet exactly how he’ll hijack that event next year, but he will certainly try to do so.”

The Journal reports Trump singled out the Smithsonian Institution in his executive order, claiming the Smithsonian had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” that promotes “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents had already agreed to conduct a thorough review of its museum and zoo content to eliminate political influence and bias, according to the Journal.

This may not be the first time the White House has tinkered with museum exhibits. After outcry, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History restored references to Trump after removing them from a presidential impeachment display in late July.

Read the full Wall Street Report at this link.

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7 25 trump smithsonian impeach removed

'Walking a tightrope': Here's what the Smithsonian now says about Trump's 2nd impeachment

Carl Gibson

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exxon ceo denier lee raymond: Smithsonian Institution for Corporate Citizenship during a dinner held in his honor in Dallas, Texas in early 2003

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AN 6 25

'Absolutely none': The Smithsonian just unleashed a brutal smackdown on Trump

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JDV CHARGED WITH DEI DE WOKE? 5 25? ZOO?

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baliunas uses cfa email at heartland 521

wsoon@cfa.harvard.edu

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/people/willie-soon

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https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20150227082307275

climate crusader’s profitable link to Harvard exposed

Paul Basken, The Chronicle of Higher Education 27 February 2015

Years of using a Harvard nameplate to flog his insistence that polar bears are doing fine, and that sunspots might explain planetary warming better than the Industrial Revolution does, may finally have caught up with Wei-Hock Soon.

This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America’s leading higher education publication. It is presented here under an agreement with University World News.

Soon, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, endured a barrage of news reports last week detailing his acceptance of US$1.2 million in support from energy companies and others hostile to government limits on fossil-fuel use.

In response, the Smithsonian Institution announced plans to investigate whether he had properly acknowledged his political alliances.

"We’re very concerned to get to the bottom of this, and make sure we have all the facts," W John Kress, the Smithsonian’s interim under secretary for science, said in an interview on Tuesday.

The investigation threatens serious repercussions for Soon, commonly known as Willie. But it may raise an equally tough question for Harvard University, the Smithsonian, and arrangements for their shared astrophysics observatory: How did the scientist trade on Harvard’s name to gain a leading role in climate politics?

In a series of scientific journal articles over the past decade, Soon has routinely listed himself as representing "the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics".

In turn, various reports describing his activities and beliefs – often published by organisations dedicated to opposing government regulations – have short-handed his identification to "Harvard scientist". Even The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student-run newspaper, has referred to him that way.

The problem, according to Charles R Alcock, a Harvard professor of astronomy who also serves as director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is that the "centre" refers primarily to a shared set of physical facilities. Almost everyone working at those facilities, Alcock said, is either an employee of Harvard or an employee of the Smithsonian, a federally administered collection of museums and research centres.

"From a legal point of view," he said, "there is no such entity as the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics." And Soon is employed only by the Smithsonian, Alcock said. "It’s always been that way. He has never had any Harvard appointment."

But confusion over Soon’s relationship with Harvard, even if it bolstered his profitable political alliances, may not be entirely or even primarily his responsibility.

One example is his email address: wsoon@cfa.harvard.edu.

Kress said that such shared identifications reflect the level of scientific partnership felt by Harvard and Smithsonian scientists, whose observatories merged facilities in 1972 (now four locations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and observatory facilities in Arizona and Hawaii).

He also acknowledged that the blurring might bring "more prestige" to his side of the alliance, in which 200 Harvard scientists are vastly outnumbered by about 700 Smithsonian counterparts. Either way, he said, the email domain is among the matters that the Smithsonian may now re-evaluate as a result of the disclosures about Soon.

Corporate benefactors

:{:{The institutions seem less open, however, to reconsidering the financial arrangements exposed by Soon’s activities. Last week’s revelations were based on records of internal Smithsonian email discussions provided under an open-records request to Greenpeace, the environmental-advocacy group, which supports restrictions on fossil-fuel use.}:

The records showed that Soon and the Smithsonian had received money from groups that included the energy conglomerate Southern Company, the Charles G Koch Foundation, and Donors Trust, a fund for anonymous contributions identified by a 2013 Drexel University study as the largest single provider of money to political efforts to fight climate change policy.}:

:{:{Alcock confirmed through a spokesperson that the donors disclosed by Greenpeace had provided Soon and the Smithsonian with a total of US$1.2 million over a period of 10 years. }::{He also confirmed that, under standard observatory procedures, less than half of that amount was passed through to Soon as salary. Most was kept by the Smithsonian to cover facility operating costs.}:

:{:{Most Smithsonian researchers receive their compensation through such "soft money" payments rather than a salary from the institution, Kress said. But unlike Soon, most of those at the observatory draw funding heavily from government sources, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation, which in turn rely on peer-reviewed award processes.}:

In a typical year, the Smithsonian observatory receives about US$95 million in grant support, said Alcock’s spokesperson, Christine Pulliam. "Only a small fraction of 1 percent of that figure comes from corporate sources," she said.}:

At the same time, the Smithsonian has no policy requiring its researchers to disclose potential financial conflicts of interest in any scientific journal articles they produce.

Instead, its promised investigation of Soon will focus on whether he violated financial-disclosure requirements of the journals themselves. At least one of them, a Chinese journal called Science Bulletin, has promised its own review of the matter.

Before the issue of financial disclosure arose, the scientific quality of Soon’s published work hadlong attracted complaints from experts in the field. Gavin A Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has repeatedly accused Soon of vastly overstating the effect that variations in solar output might have on the earth’s warming climate.

Kress even admitted a lack of confidence in his own employee’s work. "Up until now, it has not been an issue of our scientists' not disclosing their sources of funding," he said.

"As far as we can see, up until just recently, that appeared to be the case with Willie Soon. He was publishing science. He may have interpreted his results in various ways, but the actual data and the results reflected his research, which, although I would say is not the highest-quality research, was research carried out in a scientific process."

Soon did not respond to requests for comment.

A Harvard University spokesperson, Jeff A Neal, provided a written statement saying the institution "takes the appropriate use, and the inappropriate misuse, of the university name very seriously. When made aware of a potential issue related to the misuse of the Harvard name, we communicate our expectations to the relevant individuals or organisations".

Asked if that applied to Soon or the Smithsonian, Neal said he would not discuss specific cases.

The roles played by both Harvard and the Smithsonian in burnishing Soon’s credentials and scientific authority are key to Soon’s saga, said Andrew J Hoffman, a professor of sustainable enterprise at the University of Michigan. Hoffman is making plans to host a conference in May at his Ann Arbor campus on the risks and benefits for academic scientists participating in public-policy debates.

"Why is anyone even listening to him?" Hoffman said of Soon. "Because he’s got ‘Harvard’ after his name. Once you take that away, who is Willie Soon? He’s nobody."

Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.

---

climate investigations [ref to orsekes documetery]

https://climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-scandal-topics-for-smithsonian-institution/

here we update the plot…(with research by Cindy Baxter)

In the wake of this past weekend’s release of documents from our investigation and media attention around climate denier Dr. Willie Soon’s $1.25 million in payments from the fossil fuel industry, his employers, the Smithsonian Institution, launched an investigation by their Inspector General on Monday.

Remember, Willie Soon works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA as they call it) on the Smithsonian side of the building called the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It helps to have that data when looking through the documents.

The documents we got from Smithsonian during our 5 year investigation definitely don’t contain the full record of correspondence between Soon, the Smithsonian and the corporate funders, but what we do have paints a very clear picture. Every time Dr. Soon made a proposal and then got a grant from the Koch Foundation, from ExxonMobil or Southern Company, CfA Director Alcock and his grants department staff were deeply involved in making it happen, crafting budgets, sending email, signing contracts and letters of thanks.

Willie Soon, the Smithsonian says in its announcement of the IG investigation, was “hired to conduct research on stellar and solar variability. The Smithsonian does not fund Dr. Soon; he pursues external grants to fund his research”

They continued “The Smithsonian does not support Dr Soon’s conclusions on climate change. The Smithsonian’s official statement on climate change, based on many decades of scientific research, points to human activities as a cause of global warming.”

The statement from the Smithsonian raises a number of questions that we hope the Inspector General will look into during his investigation.

From the documents we have received from the Smithsonian during the investigation, it is very clear that the Institute has worked hard to help him get his grants and benefitted from those grants through funding for overhead and staff time other than Dr. Soon.

Let’s start with the ExxonMobil grants.

In 2008, Soon writes to his colleagues at the Smithsonian, asking for help to “stretch” the proposal to ExxonMobil for $60,000.

“Any way you can help me stretch this proposal to maximize my work at SAO would be appreciated,” he wrote.

Two years later, in 2010, the Smithsonian’s “Advancement and External Affairs” officer, Amanda Preston, wrote to colleagues about the $76,106 ExxonMobil grant, of which Soon hadn’t managed to use all of for his project.

Preston talks about the $22,181 that was left over.

“On instruction from [CfA head] Charles Alcock, I asked ExxonMobil to allow us to reclassify that amount as an unrestricted contribution,” she writes. They wanted to allow the money to be used for “general support” instead of what it was meant for, Willie Soon’s work.

Exxon eventually agrees the documents show. This was Dr. Soon’s last grant from Exxon, so they probably could have cared less. In 2010, Exxon unceremoniously dropped Soon, telling him that budget priorities had changed. But in a possible indication of how important the ExxonMobil grant was, and perhaps the naiveté of Ms. Preston, the letter is sent to ExxonMobil thanking them for permission to shift the money and then makes a final pitch to Exxon to support the CfA’s fine telescope program and its research goals including studying star and planet formation and the physics of dark matter.

Little did she know that Exxon is only interested in planets with oil in them and one kind of dark matter…”oil that is, black gold, Texas tea…” (sorry, the Beverley Hillbillies theme song came into my head…back to questions for the Smithsonian)

The Charles Koch grants

Alcock was also heavily involved in sealing Soon’s grant from the Charles G Koch Foundation in 2009, with the $65,000 check sent by the Koch Foundation to Alcock himself on 21 September, referring to a previous conversation and agreement between them.

The letter is addressed to Dr. Alcock and signed by Richard Fink himself, who some describe and Charles Koch’s right hand man.

These are just a couple of examples.

The Southern Company grants

This one is ongoing, and Dr Alcock has acknowledged to reporters that the clause that appears to stipulate a covert relationship is a problem. Nature’s Jeff Tollefson writes:

The documents also illuminate the CfA’s role in the funding arrangements: in a contract signed in 2008 with Southern Company, a utility in Atlanta, Georgia, the CfA agreed to notify the company before disclosing it as the source of the funding. Alcock calls that “a mistake” and says that the CfA “would not do that again”.

We want to know if anyone at CfA has flagged that potential conflict of interest problem over the years?

We wonder if Smithsonian will query Southern Company officials about their understanding of the relationship and “deliverables”?

And finally the Donors Trust grants

These are also apparently a semi-covert deal. Donors Trust is not acknowledged as a supporter in any published work of Dr. Soon’s. Yet he reports to them “deliverables” including published studies, similar to the ones he reports to Southern Company.

More problematic is the language in the letter fromWhitney Ball of Donors Trust, (again, addressed to Charles Alcock) stipulating that the identity of the actual donor shall not be known by Dr. Soon or Harvard Smithsonian.

We ask, how can Willie Soon declare there is no conflict of interest in his published work when he doesn’t know what interests his anonymous donor indeed has?

How much did Smithsonian get out of the deal?

Willie Soon has remained quiet this week in the wake of all the publicity about him. We know, from the Boston Globe’s attempts to talk with him in 2013, that the Smithsonian has banned him from doing interviews on the Harvard campus.

But he did speak to one person: his friend and climate denying blogger, James Delingpole, who mentioned his chat with Willie on Breitbart.com.

“I spoke to Soon last night. He told me that of course he receives private funding for his research: he has to because it’s his only way of making ends meet, especially since the Alarmist establishment launched its vendetta against him when, from 2009 onwards, he became more outspoken in his critiques of global warming theory.

“Harvard-Smithsonian strove to make his life harder and harder, first by banning him from working on anything even remotely connected with issues like climate change or CO2, then by moving his office away from the astrophysics department to a remote area Soon calls Siberia. What the faculty couldn’t quite do was actually sack Soon because it had no cause: he was producing too many quality papers, and he was also bringing in too much money (40 per cent of which goes straight into the faculty coffers).”

While we need to take Soon’s comments to Delingpole with a grain of salt, second hand and paraphrased as they are, but if the Smithsonian did pocket 40 percent from his grants that Soon claims, that would mean the Institute has managed to get $500,000 from the fossil fuel industry – through Willie Soon’s grants – to help run its operations over the past 14 years or so. We wonder how much research money other astronomers bring in at Harvard-Smithsonian.

So while they have distanced itself from Soon’s climate denial, the Smithsonian has clearly been very happy to take big chunks of the money the fossil fuel industry funds him to do it, through their institution, and has bent over backwards to help him get those grants.

The API grants

We have questions about this relationship which goes quite a ways back to 1994 but ended in 2007. We did not get all the data on those grants from Smithsonian. Sallie Baliunas, who was Soon’s mentor at CfA, a fellow climate denier and ozone hole denier before that, acknowledged grants from Electric Power Research Institute, American Petroleum Institute, Mobil Foundation, Texaco Foundation in a December 1996 paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. Proud transparency. The dollar figures and terms of those contracts may never surface, but if the Smithsonian wanted to, I bet they could release the records they have of Baliunas’ funders too and come clean.

The Smithsonian takes a lot of corporate money. There is the Koch Hall of Origins anthropology exhibit at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. They renamed the Air and Space museum theater, Lockheed Martin theater, erasing the name Langley, an daviation pioneer. The museums newly renovated Hall of Oceans might have been called the American Petroleum Institute Hall of Oceans if not for the intervention of Sen. Leahy of Vermont and another corporate philanthropist, Roger Sant, then chair of the Smithsonian board and an energy industry millionaire.

But this funding to Soon (and Baliunas before him) is different still.

Another question…what is the total amount of fossil fuel funding that has come to Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics over the years for climate change denial?

What is the total from API from 1994-2007…a long stretch of support?

Soon’s use of the Harvard-Smithsonian affiliation to advance climate denial

We have still more questions that we hope the Inspector General can ask – about Soon’s use of his affiliation with Harvard and Smithsonian.

While he now prefaces most of his denier presentations with a caveat about how he is presenting in his personal capacity,that’s not the case when it comes to his “scientific” papers that have nothing to do with astrophysics, or the sun’s connection with climate change, nor anything else the Smithsonian says he works on while at the CfA.

If you want to get credibility for your pseudo-scientific, climate-denying papers, using the moniker of an institution that has the words “Harvard” and “Smithsonian” is a very good way to do it. It’s this affiliation that has gained Soon so much credibility in denier circles, for so many years.

The most recent example was his co-authorship of the flawed paper published in Science Bulletin last month that questioned IPCC models. This paper has no acknowledgement of any of Soon’s fossil fuel industry funding, but it does have Soon’s Harvard-Smithsonian CfA affiliation next to his name on the paper. Meanwhile, co-author Monckton can’t stop saying that none of the authors got paid for the study, essentially doing it on their own time. Then shouldn’t it say, Willie Soon, citizen of Boston? That would work.

If the CfA is really trying to distance itself from Soon’s climate denial, and if Soon really does write these papers in his own time, what on earth is the CfA’s name doing next to Soon’s in all these papers?

In an op-ed at the Wall St. Journal from 2011, written with Paul Driessen, another climate denier and not a scientist, Willie Soon’s byline is listed: Mr. Soon, a natural scientist at Harvard, is an expert on mercury and public health issues. Clearly that is inaccurate, yet Harvard has taken no apparent action to correct this. Has Smithsonian?

Has there been any communication of concern between Harvard and Smithsonian about Soon through the years?

Soon has used the Institution’s name on a number of other papers that have nothing to do with sun climate connections: from his 2003 paper supposedly debunking the Hockey Stick, to the 2007 polar bear paper, to one published last year that supposedly “debunks” the groundbreaking study by Cook et al that showed a 97% consensus amongst climate scientists that humans are causing the climate to change.

None of these papers are written based on Soon’s qualifications as an aerospace engineer (as Justin Gillis points out in the New York Times: Soon is not a climate scientist). They are way outside of his area of expertise. He is not a polar bear biologist, not a mercury expert.

Does Harvard or Smithsonian routinely let their scientists wander like this? Could a marine biologist pen an article about ancient Egypt and sign as a “Smithsonian scientist”? Could a Harvard Chinese history professor write about Obamacare and sign the article “Harvard healthcare expert”? Surely there are rules…

Hopefully the Inspector General can answer these and more questions

no lnx

https://climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-scandal-corporate-funding-year-by-year/

kert d

people keep asking how much Soon got from each of his corporate funders year by year, and why some places it says $1.2 million total and others $1.5M…

The total funding since 2001 that we know about from Greenpeace FOIAs to Smithsonian and corporate foundation 990s is $1,573,270, tabulated below.

That total excluding the ‘anonymous’ donation from Donors Trust, leaved known fossil funding at $1,248,471

Funder Grant Description from source Grant Year(s) Grant Amount Source

American Petroleum Institute 1994-1997 ?? 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

American Petroleum Institute Understanding Arctic Climate Change 2005, 2006 $50,000 Smithsonian FOIA

American Petroleum Institute The solar influence of arctic climate change 2006, 2007 $55,000 Smithsonian FOIA

API Total $273,611

Charles G. Koch Foundation Koch/Mobile Charitable foundation 2005, 2006 $110,000 Smithsonian FOIA

Charles G. Koch Foundation Understanding Solar Variability and Climate Change 2010 $65,000 Smithsonian FOIA

Charles G. Koch Foundation Understanding Solar Radiation and Climate Change 2010-2012 $55,000 Smithsonian FOIA

Charles Koch Foundation Total $230,000

Donors Trust Understanding Solar Radiation and Climate Change 2011 $50,000 Smithsonian FOIA

Donors Trust A Circum-global Teleconnection View of Regional Sun-Climate Connections 2011-2012 $64,935 Smithsonian FOIA

Donors Trust Wavelet Analysis And Solar Dynamo Theory of Solar Activity Variations 2013 $70,000 Donors Trust 990

Donors Trust Wavelet Analysis And Solar Dynamo Theory of Solar Activity Variations 2013 $49,864 Donors Trust 990

Donors Trust Wavelet Analysis And Solar Dynamo Theory of Solar Activity Variations 2013-2015 $209,864 Smithsonian FOIA

Donors Trust 2014-2015 $90,000 Two 2013 grants subtracted from 2013-15

Donors Trust Total $324,799

Mobil Foundation 1995-1997 ?? Acknowledged in Soon’s published papers

ExxonMobil Foundation listed by Exxon as a grant to SAO 2005 $105,000 ExxonMobil Worldwide Giving Report 2005

ExxonMobil Foundation Listed by Exxon as “project support” to SAO. 2006 $105,000 ExxonMobil Worldwide Giving Report 2006

ExxonMobil Foundation Exxon-Arctic Climate Change 2007, 2008 $55,000 Smithsonian FOIA/Exxon Giving Report

ExxonMobil Foundation “Exxon – Soon – Solar Variability” “Understanding Solar Variability and Climate Change: Signals from Temperature Records of the United States” 2008-2010 $70,106 Smithsonian FOIA/Exxon Giving Report

ExxonMobil Foundation Total $335,106

Southern Company Understanding Arctic Climate Change 2006, 2007 $110,000 Smithsonian FOIA

Southern Company Solar variability and Climate Change signals from temperature 2008, 2009 $120,000 Smithsonian FOIA

Southern Company Understanding Solar Radiation and Climate Change 2011 $60,003 Smithsonian FOIA

Southern Company Understanding Solar Radiation and Climate Change 2011-2012 $59,942 Smithsonian FOIA

Southern Company A Study of Solar Activity Variation on Multiple Timescales 2013-2015 $59,809 Smithsonian FOIA

Southern Company Total $409,754

Electric Power Research Institute 1994-1999 ?? Acknowledged in Soon’s published papers

Texaco Foundation 1996 ?? Acknowledged in Soon’s published papers

Free to Choose The sun’s influence on climate change 2008 $19,383 Smithsonian FOIA

Total known grants 2001-2015 $1,573,270

Total known Fossil grants $1,248,471

https://www.desmog.com/willie-soon/

just end 521]

...

Key Deeds

September 24, 2020

Soon appeared in Marc Morano’s 2020 film Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy, produced by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (:{CFACT:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:).

During a discussion concerning whether the RICO (Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organisations Act), initially intended to combat organised crime, could be used against climate skeptics, Soon stated:

“Yes, if the RICO law apply I think it should apply to them rather than us.” [118]

October 2019

Soon signed the “Realist Catholic Climate Declaration,” drafted by Heartland Institute policy analyst William Briggs, which stated, “the earth’s climate has always changed, is changing now, and will never cease changing. The extent to which man is responsible for climate change is not known, only surmised. There is no earthly force capable of stopping climate change,” and that, “the salvation of souls is of more pressing concern than the air temperature. Pray to God and pray for your neighbor, not to the planet.” [116], [117]

The declaration was endorsed by Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That, in a post by Charles Rotter, which stated, “please share this as widely as possible. With the concept of ‘eco-sins’ being bruited, and the return of paganism, this declaration is timely and important.” [115]

According to a post at William Briggs’s website: “This statement is to be in contradistinction to the hyperbolic and inaccurate ‘U.S. Catholic Climate Declaration’,” Briggs wrote of the draft. “The goal is to have something short, sweet, certain, and Catholic.” [114]

September 23, 2019

Soon appeared at a Heartland Institute panel discussion in New York City also featuring P atrick Michaels and D avid Legates, and moderated by John Stossel. The event was live-streamed to coincide with the UN’s Climate Summit and was announced with the tag line: “It’s time for both sides to make the case: What is happening to our climate and what can we do about it?” [111]

During the discussion, Soon said:

“I’m unable to find out what the carbon dioxide is doing to the atmosphere. It is increasing, but it’s not causing any warming.” [111]

“My message to all of them is that please don’t cry. I mean, I’ll hold your hand and sing lullabies to you. By 2030 I’ll still be here. Please don’t panic. There’s no such thing as climate catastrophe, these people are talking nonsense. It’s unbelievable that we have to answer all this kind of craziness.” [111]

“Carbon dioxide is the greatest gift on planet earth. Put it this way, if we can release more of it, we should have a whole lot more of it, as simple as that. Because according to the satellite data, I mean, we’ve been greening the planet, in a very, very nice way, in a sense, because the planet is a lot greener, the plants are using much more efficient in terms of water, require a lot less use of water. So a drought region becoming green, even in desert, a desert area. These are overall benefits, overall positive effects on the plants, as far as we can tell […] the impact on the temperature, we are unable to find it. I tell you that I’ve been studying this topic very carefully, only wanting to find a result on the impact of carbon dioxide on temperature, let’s say. I really cannot find [it] after 30 years.” [111]

December 14, 2018

The Heartland Institutereleaseda report written by Willie Soon and Patrick Moore among others criticizing Greenpeace, claiming the group promotes “socialist and anti-capitalist ideals.” According to the authors, “Greenpeace are not actually helping to protect the environment, or exposing real problems.” [106]

August 5 – 11, 2018

Soon gave a presentation at Camp Constitution, a group targeting children with the stated mission“to enhance understanding of our Judeo-Christian moral heritage, our American heritage of courage and ingenuity, including the genius of our United States Constitution, and the application of free enterprise, which together gave our nation an unprecedented history of growth and prosperity, making us the envy of the world.” [101]

According to the camp schedule, Soon presented on ” as well as [105], [101]

Among those listed at the camp’s “Speakers Bureau” isTom DeWeese, founder of the American Policy Center and a promoter of the Agenda 21 conspiracy that contends the United Nations are aiming to establish a totalitarian world government. [102],[103], [104]

Lord Christopher Monckton was also a speaker at the camp.

March 2018

Soon was one of several prominent climate change deniers who offered“friend of the court” briefs as part of a case in which San Francisco and Oakland are suing fossil fuel companies over the costs their cities face due to climate change. [93]

*InsideClimateNews* noted that the judge requested that the groups each file a statement declaring who paid for their research, whether they received support from anyone “on either side of the climate debate,” and whether any of them were “affiliated in any way (directly or indirectly)” with parties to the litigation. [93]

Soonoffered the following response(emphasis added):

“I have not received any funding for the climate-sensitivity research led by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley. In the past, I have received scientific research grants from Exxon-Mobil Foundation, Southern Company and the Charles G. Koch Foundation for my work on various topics, including scientific research on the Sun-climate connection.” (Emphasis added).[98]

*:{E&E:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: News* reportedthat David Legates, who had worked with Soon on some of his studies, “notified the court that his views have cost him federal research grants but did not mention that some of the studies he conducted with Soon received funding from fossil fuel companies, including Exxon Mobil.” [99]

As of March 19, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said he had received two of the briefs. One group included Soon, Christopher Monckton, David Legates, William M. Briggs, and Michael Limburgamong others submitted by the Heartland Institute’s Peter J. Ferrara. The other group included Richard Lindzen, Will Happer, and Steven Koonin. Koonin has advocated for a “red team, blue team” approach to debating climate science. [93]

Authors also included David Legates, who has received funding by various industry groups such as theAmerican Petroleum Institute, Charles G. Koch Caritable Foundation, Southern Company, and ExxonmobilWilliam M. Briggs, a statistician; Michael Limburg, vice president of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (:{EIKE:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:) that has co-hosted climate change denial events with the Heartland Institute; Dietrich Jeschke from the University of Applied Sciences in Flensburg, Germany; and James Morrison, whose only listing is as an undergraduate in Environmental Scienes at the University of West Anglia. “It’s unusual to list an undergraduate student as a scientific expert, particularly in a brief related specifically to a tutorial on the scientific evidence underpinning a case,” *Climate Liability News* noted. [97]

:{ICN:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: described the case—which included a “climate tutorial”—as an “an unusual arrangement, seemingly borrowed from patent litigation, where judges commonly hear initial testimony from both sides on pertinent scientific details,” would take place in a mock classroom and included a set of basic preliminary questions about climate to start the discussion. [94], [95]

Lindzen’s group summarized their message as follows: [93]

“To summarize this overview, the historical and geological record suggests recent changes in the climate over the past century are within the bounds of natural variability. Human influences on the climate (largely the accumulation of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion) are a physically small (1%) effect on a complex, chaotic, multicomponent and multiscale system. Unfortunately, the data and our understanding are insufficient to usefully quantify the climate’s response to human influences. However, even as human influences have quadrupled since 1950, severe weather phenomena and sea level rise show no significant trends attributable to them. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose. As a result, rising levels of CO2 do not obviously pose an immediate, let alone imminent, threat to the earth’s climate.”

Monckton and Soon’s group had their brief submitted by a Heartland Institute lawyer: [93]

“There is no agreement among climatologists as to the relative contributions of Man and Nature” to observed planetary warming, they claimed. As for the consensus view, it “says nothing about whether anthropogenic global warming was, is or will be catastrophic.”

“And why, he asked, did they wait so long to present their documents, limiting the time for others to respond to them?” ICN added. [93]

The case is one of several in which cities havefiled lawsuits against fossil fuel companies regarding knowledge about climate change, and damages related to to their products due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.[96]

February 4, 2018

In January 2018, more than 200 scientistsendorsed an open lettercalling on the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to remove climate change denier Rebekah Mercer from its board and to “end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation.” *The New York Times* reported that those among the AMNH letter calling for Mercer to step down were Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. [90]

Soon was among a group of climate change deniers whoresponded with their own open letter, calling for the AMNH “not to cave in to this pressure.” The letter was signed by numerous individuals with ties to groups funded by the Mercer Family Foundation such as Will Happer of the :{CO2:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: CoalitionRichard Lindzen, a fellow at the Cato InstituteCraig Idso, the chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. There are a number of signatories affiliated with the Heartland Institute, which has received over $5.78 million from the Mercer Family Foundation since 2008. [91]

The letter reads: [92]

“The Earth has supported abundant life many times in the geological past when there were much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is quite likely that future generations will benefit from the enrichment of Earth’s atmosphere with more carbon dioxide.

“Make no mistake, the agitators are not defending science from quackery — quite the contrary!”

July 25, 2017

Wilie Soon was listed as a contributor to Climate Change: The Facts 2017,released by theInstitute for Public Affairs (:{IPA:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:) and edited by Jennifer Marohasy. While investigating the authors, DeSmog noted that one of the IPA‘s listed “leading experts” involved in the book is New Zealand’s Ken Ring, who in addition to being a described “long range weather forecaster” has written “two, possibly three, books about cats” including Pawmistry: How to Read Your Cat’s Paws in 1998. [63],[74]

The book’s editor, Jennifer Marohasy, wrote in the :{IPA:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: press release: [80]

“However, our understanding of how the climate operates is incomplete and it is critically important to challenge the view that the planet is facing a global warming catastrophe.”

According to the book’s description: [75]

“Climate Change: The Facts 2017brings together contributions on the latest climate science from some of the world’s leading experts in the field including John Abbot, Sallie Baliunas, Paul Driessen, Tony Heller, Craig Idso, Clive James, Pat Michaels,Jo Nova, Ian Plimer, Tom Quirk, Peter Ridd, Ken Ring, Nicola Scafetta, Willie Soon,Roy Spencer, and Anthony Watts.

There are also essays by Matt Ridley, and Bjørn Lomborg on the economics of climate change, and by Simon Breheny on how the freedom to discuss climate change science is under threat.”

Prior versions of the book featured contributions from a range of prominent climate change deniers, and describes mainstream climate change research as “pseudo-science.”[76]

April/May, 2017

Soon is listed as a co-author of a paper in the Hydrological Sciences Journal on the “Re-calibration of Arctic sea ice extent datasets using Arctic surface air temperature records.” Other authors listed were Ronan Connoly and Michael Connolly, with acknowledgement to Professor Genrikh Alekseev of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute for sea ice estimates. The accepted paper was published online on April 29, 2017 and fuly published online May 22, 2017. [78]

The paper concluded that “current climate models are still quite poor at modelling past sea ice trends” after including a graph showing a decline in sea ice starting at the beginning of the “satellite era” in 1979. [78]

While the study by Soon and the other authors noted that they “agree with previous studies that have noted a general decrease in Arctic sea ice extent (for all four seasons) since the start of the satellite era (1979),” they suggest that it followed a general increase in prior sea ice. [78]

The Heartland Institute was quick to republish the paper, putting the initially submitted manuscript online as early as April 30, 2017, pointing to it as proof that “The recent decline in Arctic sea ice is not unique.” [79]

In the disclosure statement section of the paper, it notes that “No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.” [78]

March 23, 2017

Soon was a member of the “Climate Science” panelat the Heartland Institute‘s 12th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC12). He also introduced Lunch Keynotes by Patrick Michaels and Rep. Lamar Smith(R-Texas).[73]

Panel 1B) Climate Science

february 23, 2017

Willie Soon was asignatory of a petition (:{PDF:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:)organized by Richard Lindzenof the Cato Instituteurging President DonaldTrump to pull the United States out of the United Nations international convention on climate change (UNFCCC).[71]

“In just a few weeks, more than 300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals from around the world have signed the petition below,” Lindzen wrote in the letter. [71]

DeSmog investigated the list, and found that only a small handful of the signatories could be considered “even remotely ‘qualified’ or ‘eminent’ — but not in the field of climate science.” The list included individuals “interested in climate,” and one signatory who only identified as an “emailer who wished to sign the petition” while some signers provided no affiliation or address whatsoever. [72]

January 5, 2017

Willie Soon was a signatory to a Cornwall Alliance open lettersupporting Scott Pruittfor EPA Administrator under the Trump administration. [68]

“Mr. Pruitt has also demonstrated understanding of and open-mindedness toward scientific insights crucial to the formulation and implementation of environmental regulation. He is prepared to hear all sides in debates over the risks and benefits of various activities that come under the purview of the EPA,” reads the letter.

On January 12, 2017,Senate Democrats raised conflict of interest concerns regarding Scott Prutt’s fossil fuel ties. Pruitt had spent years working to combat the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. [69]

In an open letter to the Office of Government Ethics, members of the Senate’s environmental panel commented:

“During his tenure as Attorney General of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt has blurred the distinction between official and political actions, often at the behest of corporations he will regulate if confirmed to lead EPA,” the letter said. “Public reporting based on documents produced by Freedom of Information Act requests illustrate how Mr. Pruitt and members of his staff have worked closely with fossil fuel lobbyists to craft his office’s official positions.”

Pruitt was further grilled on his fossil fuel ties at his confirmation hearing on January 18. [70]

Some notable signatories of the Cornwall Alliance letter, as of January 5, 2017, included:

December 8, 2016

Willie Soon was a speaker at the “At the Crossroads :{III:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Energy and Climate Summit,” an event co-hosted by the Heritage Foundationand the Texas Public Policy Foundation (:{TPPF:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:). The event was billed as “the premier energy-and-climate policy event in America,” and attracted a range of prominent climate change deniers as well as a range of names connected to Donald Trump and his transition team. Video and choice quotes below. [65]

“I’ve been living under the dark cloud of censorship and intimidation as soon as I started my post-doc career at the Center for Astrophysics in 1992.“ [ $60:17\$

Speaking of Greenpeace: “But, as my mom taught me as a young kid, that you forgive all the bad people but then you never forget.” [ $60:26\$

Speaking of his 2003 paper: “Actually, I didn’t really want to write this paper. But as a professional scientist, the phenomenon that happened in between, let’s say, 2001 to 2003 is highly strange. When you tried to publish a paper at those times, if you don’t cite those famous papers like the famous hockey stick paper properly, and you will actually be taken to task, rather seriously actually, or else your paper will be rejected. This is the kind of coercion that should not be allowed in open science. But unfortunately they prevailed, so I decided I had to do something about it and so I wrote a paper.”[ $64:24\$

“I have never said this in public, so I’ll say it for the first time: that ultimately, that version that published in Climate Research was a hoax. […] It is really as if I give a damn about having another paper in publication.” [ $68:32\$

“I’m sick and tired of this system of collusion and coercions.” [ $69:13\$

“And then, you know the real reason why they need some kind of attack on me? It was mainly because guys like this—ok, shall be nameless, you read it yourself [points to slide with images of David Halpern, NASA and Mark Eakin NOAA]—Who at that time was actually working for NOAA and NASA and was funding some of those guys like Michael Mann and all that on paleoclimate study was saying, look man, we need some kind of cogent reply, some kind of serious critical discussion so they could pass on to somebody in OSTP. OSTP, as I hope most of you know, right, Office of Science and Technology of the President. And to say that ‘oh, we’ve got to have something going, let’s go and attack this Willie Soon.’ Really?” [ $69:18\$

Soon describes the “wall of shame” as “Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, so on and so forth. And then, the most important name I want you to remember is Ellen Mosley-Thompson.” Soon’s presentation slide features Wigley, Jones, Hulme, Briffa, Hansen, Santer, Tenberth, Karl, Bradley, MacCracken, Ellen Mosley-Thompson (editor of Eos), and Pachauri, who he calls the “choo choo train guy.” [ $70:00\$

Speaking on Mann’s rebuttal to his paper: “It doesn’t matter. You see? They still published that with the result in there, because you know Michael Mann was able to presuade all of them, ‘just give me your signature.’ Ok. This is how science works right. Because Wilie Soon is so bad that no matter what the cause is, even a giant bad result you should publish.” [ $71:18\$

“Steve McinTyre of Canada […] actually was able to find out you know, the AR5, which is one of those United Nations reports, was published in 2013, actually was able to confirm that we are kind of right, right? But then of course you must not let anybody know about this. Don’t ever cite Soon and Balliunas or Soon and Legates at all.” [ $72:44\$

“I want to remind you what climate actually is. What kind of expertise [you need to study it]. If you want to study climate just because of carbon dioxide, I’m sorry, it’s still not enough to study only the atmosphere. You’ve got to know all of this bunch of stuff. This is part of the reason why the struggle for answer is so hard. We may never know the answer, but then we’ve got to keep trying and follow the scientific method, please.” [ $74:28\$

“Since 2004, I just consciously do not want to get any more funding from the federal government so I stopped replying to NASA, NSF, and all those things. I quit. Put it that way. I rather seek all my funding from private sources, private donation, then by 2012, this particular reality sink in. In the sense I could no longer work on anything on sun and climate together, but I can work on the sun only. Ok. And this is the reality that sinks in. I fully accept that, but I want to tell you, if you want to study anything about climate, if you don’t study sun-climate, I don’t know, what am I supposed to study right?” [ $75:15\$

“I want to talk about this big bully in the National Academy of Science. In 2015, who are writing a small little note, correcting something that we think is not right. It doesn’t matter the content—if you want to know, of course, ask me and David Legates, and Willis Eschenbach, one of the volunteers actually. He had no proper science title, but he’s a good scientist. So we work on this stuff and guess what happened? We claim, as you know, this is a free time work, of course this only take like only less than a day. So we wrote this letter, it got published. Then you have this editor-in-chief appear, NAS. Sending me some kind of warning. That, you know, but you didn’t tell the truth. You didn’t declare. Let me blow this up [magnifies slide]. Trying to put a yellow star on my jacket. He’s trying to say, you know, we’re going to put this note in by saying you have not disclosed your conflict of interest. That you were funded by funding from Southern Company, for example. Things like that, okay.”[ $76:00\$

“I have never actually been able to have the opportunity to publicly thank my lawyer, which is Gordon Todd […] so this guy work for free for me, of course, obviously—I have no money, please. There’s no legal defense fund. So on and so forth. But then they fire back by saying ‘please don’t do that.’ Because I have told them that this is a short time work, it’s just a letter, it was not funded by anything, it is a volunteer work. Call it a service to science, because I care about science. ” [ $77:27\$ ]

“Even [Michael] Mann and [Peter] Gleik have published in PNAS and they clearly have conflicts of interest in terms of the subject, in terms of the stuff that they are receiving money for doing what their work is. […] Peter Gleik is another guy that is such a disgraceful, disgraceful guy. ” [ $78:22\$

“In 2004, David Legates and I releazed there’s something seriously wrong with Michael Mann’s Work, another aspect of it, which is the instrumental temperature record, how he smoothed the data. […] The sweetest thing about this climate gate is that there is proof that Michael Mann did that […] and we caught him with his pants down.” [ $80:07\$

“My basic conclusion is very simple. That you have this dark cloud of censorship and intimidation [that] has really inundated the climate science for a long time now. And climate science as we know it has been dangerously corrupted by scientism, all these bullies of censorship including the scientists, the scientific institution, even the funding agency—continue to hijack science with their own gain. So they must be stopped. I hope we can stop of course. Hopefully, with a political win, which is shown that depends on politics, that we can do something about this.”[ $82:12\$

Doug Domenech, director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s “Fueling Freedom” project, wrote about the proceedings at*The Hill.*Domenech outlined the common climate change denial message shared among the speakers: “Is climate change real? Yes, it has happened in the past and will happen in the future. Is man making an impact on the climate? Perhaps but in very small ways. But the overarching consensus remains the climate change we are experiencing is by no means catastrophic.” [66]

Speakers included:

December 3, 2016

Willie Soon is listed as a speaker at Freedom Force International’s “3rd Congress” event titled “Global-Warming; an Inconvenient Lie.” Freedom Force describes the event as “a gathering of the world’s top experts on this subject who will put an end, once-and-for-all, to the myth of anthropogenic (man-caused) global-warming.”[64]

Soon’s speech is titled “Man vs. Sun; Put Your Money on the Sun.” The complete speaker list is below: [64]

:{Lord Christopher Monckton:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}: – Global Warming Is A Monstrous Hoax
:{William Happer:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:– The Real Inconvenient Truth; More CO2 Benefits the Earth
:{Tim Ball:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:– Global Warming Is the Biggest Deception in History
G. Edward Griffin – Why Do They Deceive?
Holly Swanson – They Call It Education; Global Warming and Political Indoctrination
Dan Happel – They Call It Green; Global Warming and Agenda-21
:{Patrick Wood:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:– They Call it Science; Global Warming and Technocracy
Alex Newman – They Call It News; Global Warming and Propaganda
Debbie Bacigalupi – They Call It Smart Growth: Global Warming and The Depopulation of Rural America
Elaine Willman – Native Americans – Pawns in the Agenda-21 game
Jim Lee – Geoengineering, Weather Modification, and the Weaponization of Nature
Michael Shaw – Agenda-21; Bringing the Soviet System to America
Willie Soon – Man vs. Sun; Put Your Money on the Sun
Istvan Marko – CO2 Is Not Pollution. It is Our Friend.

August, 2016

Willie Soon is listed as a “Founding Member” of group named Climate Exit (Clexit) led by climate change denier Christopher Monckton. According to Clexit’s founding statement (:{PDF:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.” [59], [60]

Desmog reports on how the group grew in the wake of the UK‘s decision to leave the EU. A key member of Clexit’s “60 well-informed science, business and economic leaders” is Hugh Morgan, a former board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia and former :{CEO:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: of Western Mining Corporation with close ties to Australia’s Liberal party. [61], [62]

According to Clexit’s founding statement:

“If the Paris climate accord is ratified, or enforced locally by compliant governments, it will strangle the leading economies of the world with pointless carbon taxes and costly climate and energy policies, all with no sound basis in evidence or science […]” [60]

July 8 – 10, 2016

Willie Soon was a speaker at 34th Annual Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, co-sponsored by Access to Energy, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and Physicians for Civil Defense. [55]

Willie Soon’s talk was titled on “Beethoven’s Ice Cream, Tolstoy’s Fire, Happer’s Picosecond Pedestal—and Climate” (video below)

[vid

jane Orient

Willie Soon
David Legates
Mohan Doss
Arthur Levy
Geoffrey L. Shapiro
Steven Hatfill
S. Fred Singer
Tony Heller (AKA Steven Goddard)
Patrick Frank
Joe Leimkuhler
Donald W. Miller
Howard Hayden
Yuri Maltsev
Stephen Jones
Matthew Robinson
Arthur Robinson

June 13, 2016

Willie Soon was among individuals listed as creditors in Peabody Energy’s 2016 bankruptcy filings, reports the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD/PRWatch). [51]

While the available bankruptcy documents do not list the scale or dates of funding, they outline Peabody Energy’s financial ties to a large network of groups promoting climate change denial.[52]

Prominent individuals appearing in the documents include climate deniers Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer and Richard Berman. The long list of organizations also includes groups such as Americans for Prosperity, American Legislative Exchange Council, CFACT, Institute for Energy Research, State Policy Network, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens more. [53]

*The Guardian* also analysed and reported on the Peabody bankruptcy findings: [54]

“These groups collectively are the heart and soul of climate denial,” said Kert Davies, founder of the Climate Investigation Center, who has spent 20 years tracking funding for climate denial. “It’s the broadest list I have seen of one company funding so many nodes in the denial machine.”

The company’s filings reveal funding for a range of organisations which have fought Barack Obama’s plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and denied the very existence of climate change. […]

Among Peabody’s beneficiaries, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has insisted – wrongly – that carbon emissions are not a threat but “the elixir of life” while the American Legislative Exchange Council is trying to overturn Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting emissions from power plants. Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity campaigns against carbon pricing. The Oklahoma chapter was on the list. […]

“The breadth of the groups with financial ties to Peabody is extraordinary. Thinktanks, litigation groups, climate scientists, political organisations, dozens of organisations blocking action on climate all receiving funding from the coal industry,” said Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media and Democracy.

“We expected to see some denial money, but it looks like Peabody is the treasury for a very substantial part of the climate denial movement.”

Notable organizations also listed as creditors in the bankruptcy documents include:

April 5, 2016

Despite a new transparency policy by the Smithsonian Institution, Willie Soon obtained $65,000 in “dark money” to fund an undisclosed research project, reports InsideClimate News. Soon obtained the grant form Donors Trust (:{DT:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:). [56]

The Smithsonian’s new policy requires researchers to disclose the sources of their funding. Smithsonian officials said the Donors Trust disclosure was sufficient to satisfy its new policy. [56]

“It is as transparent as we can be,” said John Gibbons, the Smithsonian spokesman. “What we ask is: ‘Is the money coming from a legal entity?’” he said. “That’s as far as we can look into it.” [56]

December 7, 2015

Willie Soon appeared at the United Nation’s Conference on Climate Change, COP21, in Paris, France with the Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (:{CFACT:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (:{CEI:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:) to “hold a ‘counter-conference’ … called the Day of Examining the Data.” [49] Other notable climate science deniers that were in attendance at the “counter-conference,” included: Robert Carter, :{S. Fred Singer:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, Christopher Essex, James Taylor, Patrick Moore, Wolfgang Müller, James Inhofe, and Christopher Monckton. [50]

Watch Willie Soon’s “counter-conference” presentation with the Heartland Institute, below Willie Soon’s presentation begins at 2:01:35 /maxresdefault.jpg)):

June 11-12, 2015

Willie Soon was a speaker on Panel 1: “Climate Science,” at the Heartland Institute’s Tenth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC10) in Washington, D.C., with Patrick Michaels and David Legates. [47]

View Willie Soon’s Panel 1 presentation at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC10, below: [48]

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html

Justin Gillis and John Schwartz

Feb. 21, 2015

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.

One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.

But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.

The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

Though Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents, he has long stated that his corporate funding has not influenced his scientific findings.

the documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.

The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.

Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.

Continue reading the main storyFossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.

"The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a book about such campaigns. “Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.”

Funding That Climate Researcher Failed to Disclose

These documents show that Wei-Hock Soon, a part-time researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., received funding from fossil-fuel interests that he subsequently failed to disclose in a string of scientific papers.

Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.

“What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change,” said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.

Charles R. Alcock,[AIDED AND ABETTI NG, INST TOOK BIG CUT] director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some journals.

“I think that’s inappropriate behavior,” Dr. Alcock said. “This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally.”

Dr. Soon is employed by the Smithsonian Institution, which jointly sponsors the astrophysics center with Harvard.

“I am aware of the situation with Willie Soon, and I’m very concerned about it,” W. John Kress, interim under secretary for science at the Smithsonian in Washington, said on Friday. “We are checking into this ourselves.”

Dr. Soon rarely grants interviews to reporters, and he did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls last week; nor did he respond to an interview request conveyed to him by his employer. In past public appearances, he has reacted angrily to questions about his funding sources, but then acknowledged some corporate ties and said that they had not altered his scientific findings.

“I write proposals; I let them decide whether to fund me or not,” he said at an event in Madison, Wis., in 2013. “If they choose to fund me, I’m happy to receive it.” A moment later, he added, “I would never be motivated by money for anything.”

The newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr. Soon’s funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.

Southern is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in Washington. More recently, it has spent significant money to research ways to limit emissions.

“Southern Company funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have potentially significant public-policy implications for our business,” said Jeannice M. Hall, a spokeswoman. The company declined to answer detailed questions about its funding of Dr. Soon’s research.

Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch’s fortune derives partly from oil refining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.

As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.

Image[pix cspan

Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, praising scientists like Dr. Soon.Credit...CSPAN

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace was able to request that Dr. Soon’s correspondence and grant agreements be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Though often described on conservative news programs as a “Harvard astrophysicist,” Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.

Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.

Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.

Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.

“The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless,” Dr. Schmidt said.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances itself from Dr. Soon’s findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.

Dr. Alcock said that, aside from the disclosure issue, he thought it was important to protect Dr. Soon’s academic freedom, even if most of his colleagues disagreed with his findings.

Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.

In a Senate debate last month, Mr. Inhofe pointed to a poster with photos of scientists questioning the climate-change consensus, including Dr. Soon. “These are scientists that cannot be challenged,” the senator said. A spokeswoman for the senator said Friday that he was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

As of late last week, most of the journals in which Dr. Soon’s work had appeared were not aware of the newly disclosed documents. The Climate Investigations Center is planning to notify them over the coming week. Several journals advised of the situation by The New York Times said they would look into the matter.

Robert J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr. Soon’s papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about any conflicts of interest. “We assume that when people put stuff in a paper, or anywhere else, they’re basically being honest,” said Dr. Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.

“I think universities desperately need to look more closely at this issue,” Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon’s papers omitting disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals that published them.

2011

https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007%2Fs11270-011-0873-y

Water Air Soil Pollut (2011) 220:5–6DOI 10.1007/s11270-011-0873-yA Vaccine Against ArroganceWilliam M. Briggs · Willie Soon · David Legates ·Robert M. Carter

Received: 11 April 2011 / Accepted: 15 June 2011 / Published online: 1 July 2011© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

short

...Scientists acting in the name of science mustremain mute on morality. They must remain ag-nostic, and should not preach. It is, thus, obviousthat professional journals have no business pub-lishing poorly written and naively argued politicaltracts which are only loosely associated with theirstated purpose. Further, the forums available forscientists who feel utopian urges and the need toagitate politically are as multitudinous as they arefor any citizen.A journal devoted to water, air, and soil pollu-tion cannot be one of these forums. Yet for sometime, this journal has been routinely misused assoap box.For example, we read in Trevors and Saier(2011b) that the “USA is an example of a failedcapitalistic state” (an absurd and empirically falseclaim), that we need to develop “a deep feelingof compassion and responsibility towards all”, andthat, “inferior ideas and thoughts in ignorant hu-man minds” should be “eliminated”. History hasshown that civilizations made to cry out “Gemein-nutz vor Eigennutz! (“The Common Interest be-fore Self-interest!”, a favorite chant of the Na-tional Socialist German Workers Party) have notended well. Pollution is mentioned in passing butonly as one among many ills besetting mankind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93Smithsonian_Center_for_Astrophysics

does not mention soon or bali

The Smithsonian takes a lot of corporate money. There is the Koch Hall of Originsanthropology exhibit at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. They renamed the Air and Space museum theater, Lockheed Martintheater, erasing the name Langley, an aviation pioneer. The museums newly renovated Hall of Oceans might have been called the American Petroleum Institute Hall of Oceans if not for the intervention of Sen. Leahy of Vermont and another corporate philanthropist, Roger Sant, then chair of the Smithsonian board and an energy industry millionaire.

...the Southern Company, which generates power for nine states––largely from coal––has decided it will no longer fund Soon's work, which claims the sun is the primary driver of global warming.

"Our agreement with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory expires later this year and there are no plans to renew it," Southern spokesman Jack Bonnikson said in an email.

Soon is obligated to deliver one final report––"Solar Activity Variation on Multiple Timescales"––by November. Then no more.

Southern's decision comes at a time when the company finds itself in the midst of a firestorm of controversy surrounding revelations that Soon failed to divulge that fossil fuel interests were a primary source of funding for 11 studies published in nine scientific journals beginning in 2008.

Soon did not respond to a request for comment.

In an earlier interview with InsideClimate News, Stephen Smith, executive director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said a Southern Company executive told him the company is severing ties with Soon because it does not want to be associated with his brand of research any longer.

"They claim they do not want to influence the [climate change] science," Smith said. "What I was hearing is that they should not be seen as having a corporate policy on this kind of thing."

Southern has funded five of Soon's research projects for a total of $469,560 since 2005 and appeared to enjoy a cozy relationship with Soon and the Harvard-Smithsonian.

Soon once told a Southern executive that he was finishing a "big, super-duper" report in 2009 on how the sun affects climate.

The relationship between Soon and Southern was disclosed in documents obtained by Greenpeace through Freedom of Information Act requests and released by the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental watchdog organization based in Virginia. The records, released in February, show at least one of Southern Company’s contracts with Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian included a clause giving the company pre-publication review.

"Smithsonian shall provide SCS an advance written copy of proposed publications regarding the deliverables for comment and input, if any, from SCS," according to the document. (SCS stands for Southern Company Services, one of many divisions of Southern Company. The term "deliverables" refers to reports, studies, slideshows, speeches and such.)

The contract also states that Smithsonian may name or identify Southern Company in a publication only with "express written consent of SCS."

Soon has worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., since 1997 when he was hired to conduct research on long-term stellar and solar variability.

The Smithsonian Institution opened an ethics investigations in February, two days after the allegations surfaced that Soon failed to disclose his funding sources.

John Gibbons, press secretary for the Smithsonian Institution, said the inquiry is ongoing, with no timetable for completion.

But what may be most shocking of all is that the Smithsonian hasn’t fixed the misleading evolution exhibit at its National Museum of Natural History, which thoroughly whitewashes the dangers of modern-day climate change. This “Hall of Human Origins” was made possible by a $15 million grant from billionaire polluter David Koch. It has now been five years since Climate Progress exposed the myriad flaws in the exhibit, a story the New Yorker and others picked up.

Last week I spent some time going through the exhibit again with Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and climate expert who has been featured by The Smithsonian. We were both stunned by the “Don’t worry, be happy” picture it paints of current climate change.

In particular, the most embarrassing and scientifically misleading display the Smithsonian designed — which directly suggests that humans can simply evolve to deal with global warming — is still in the exhibit. The final section about the present and future has a nonsensical interactive video that lets visitors create a “future human” who evolves over a long period of time to a variety of changing conditions. These conditions include a new ice age or even — I kid you not — a future Earth that “smells.”

One screen almost singlehandedly exposes this entire exhibit as intentionally misleading. Smithsonian visitors are asked to “imagine” a time (“Era 3″) that is “far into the future” when “Earth’s temperature has risen and it’s really hot.” Unbelievably, you are then asked “How do you think your body will evolve?” Your choice is “Will you have a tall, narrow body like a giraffe? Or more sweat glands?”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/23/3637313/smithsonian-climate-change-koch

...

The group has issued an open letter to these museums from members of the scientific community, urging them to cut such ties.

It points to the Code of Ethics for Museums, adopted in 1991 by the Board of Directors of the American Alliance of Museums, which says, “It is incumbent on museums to be resources for humankind and in all their activities to foster an informed appreciation of the rich and diverse world we have inherited. It is also incumbent upon them to preserve that inheritance for posterity.”

“We are deeply concerned by the links between museums of science and natural history with those who profit from fossil fuels or fund lobby groups that misrepresent climate science,” says the letter. “Museums are trusted sources of scientific information, some of our most important resources for educating children and shaping public understanding. We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution.”

The letter points out that David Koch, one of the two billionaire Koch brothers whose big donations have funded climate-denying organizations, candidates and elected officials, is a major donor, exhibit sponsor and trustee at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

“David Koch’s oil and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States,” the letter says. “When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge. This corporate philanthropy comes at too high a cost.”

“We believe that the only ethical way forward for our museums is to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation,” it concludes.

The letter is signed by 36 scientists and members of the science community, including James Hansen, retired head of the NASAGoddard Institute for Space Studies; James Powell, former president and director of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum; George Woodwell, founder of the Woods hole Research Center; and Kevin E. Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section of National Center for Atmospheric Research, the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) reports that led to IPCC winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 3/15

Smithsonian Exhibit

Another July 2007 press release states that the Nutrients for Life Foundation, along with Fertilizer Institute, are major sponsors of a new Smithsonian Institution exhibit on soil. The groups "donated $1 million toward the exhibit's design and construction," reads a quote in the press release, attributed to Ford B. West of the Fertilizer Institute. "Considering that the exhibit will attract over 6 million visitors a year, we think it's a wise investment and strong reason for members of our industry to contribute even more toward our cause."^[14] The exhibit ran through January 2010 in Washington, D.C., traveled to Omaha, Nebraska from September through December, 2010, and as of August 2012 is in Spokane, Washington, according to the organization's website.^[15]

http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/volumn/home.shtml

Science Bulletin

2015, Vol. 60

Issue (1): 122-135 DOI: 10.1007/s11434-014-0699-2

	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	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	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	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

fter finishing a study contending that solar activity is increasing global warming, scientist Willie Soon of theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysicsreported his news to a utility company that was a major funder of his work.

"I have a big super-duper paper soon to be accepted on how the sun affects the climate system," Soon wrote in a 2009 email to Robert Gehri, a research specialist with Southern Company Services, a mega utility company in the southeastern U.S. that generates power largely from coal.

Soon, one of few skeptics in the climate science community, described the paper that was published in the journal *Physical Geography* as "fairly significant scientifically in that this is the first successful formulation of a sun-climate connection." He was writing a follow-up note to Gehri, whose company has provided more than $400,000 from 2006 through 2015 to fund Soon’s research—and part of his salary.

The emails and related documents were obtained by Greenpeace through Freedom of Information Act requests. They were made public today by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental watchdog organization based in Virginia.

The communications show that Soon called his peer-reviewed research papers "deliverables" in return for funding from fossil fuel companies. In addition, the documents reveal that Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian gave the coal utility company the right to review his scientific papers and make suggestions before they were published. Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian also pledged not to disclose Southern’s role as a funder without permission.

Although the emails don’t show a response from Gehri, an industry executive with a long track record of working behind the scenes to downplay the significance of global warming, they do show Soon sharing a collegial familiarity with industry executives, media skeptics and organizations dedicated to undermining prevailing climate science.

The theory advanced by Soon that the sun is a contributor to recent climate change has been widely discredited by scientists worldwide as well as by theUnited Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading international body on climate science. Nevertheless, the theory has stoked long-simmering public confusion about the sun’s role in global warming that continues to this day.

For decades, the industry has latched on to controversial findings like those advanced by Soon and a small group of contrarian scientists to create the impression that researchers are divided about the cause of climate change. It has pumped millions of dollars into research projects to cast doubt on mainstream climate science showing that the primary driver of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels.

The trove of documents released today offers one of the starkest glimpses yet into the workings of this strategy of peddling scientific doubt. Scientists, academics and policymakers say the strategy has helped the industry in delaying or thwarting decisive steps toward curbing global warming.

"The industry has had a longstanding, rather broad-based campaign to create doubt about the science," said Michael MacCracken, a former program director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Research Program. He is now the chief scientist for climate change programs with the Climate Institute, an independent climate research organization in Washington, D.C.

The campaign "has paralyzed implementation of what could have been a reasonable ramping up of control efforts over the last few decades, putting the nation and the world now into a situation where much more aggressive action to limit emissions is needed," MacCracken said.

One of the first worldwide calls to address global warming resulted in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that mandated greenhouse gas reductions.

In response, the American Petroleum Institute (API) coordinated a plan to spend millions of dollars to convince the public that the climate accord was based on shaky science. The institute pulled together a Global Climate Science Communications team to enlist scientists who shared the industry's views. The action plan developed by the team said "victory will be achieved when those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality."

Among the 12 people listed as members of the team was Robert Gehri, the Southern Co. executive who was Soon's corporate contact on the 2009 sun study. Others included representatives from Exxon and Chevron and organizations critical of global-warming science.

Today the industry persists in its campaign to muddy the picture of climate change. ExxonMobil, API and the Charles Koch Foundation for years were among the largest funders of research and lobbying intended to cast doubt on the science documenting global warming.

Soon, who is not paid a salary by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center but relies on grants for his wages, has tapped that largess. In addition to the research grants from Southern Co. totaling $409,754 between 2006 and 2015, Soon collected nearly $800,000 in funding from ExxonMobil, API and the Charles Koch Foundation between 2003 and 2012, according to years of public records obtained by Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center.

Soon declined numerous requests for an interview and when reached by phone Thursday after business hours said it was "rude" to be contacted at home.

The 49-year-old scientist earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in science and his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California. Soon has been affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics since 1991. (The group is not officially associated with Harvard University, though it is located on the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass.)

Soon and his co-authors have published dozens of papers in top scientific journals worldwide, sometimes without disclosing the source of funding for those projects, a practice that raises ethical questions and often violates the conflict-of-interest policies of the publications.

The reports cover a wide range of climate-denial perspectives. Many of the studies postulate that changes in solar activity are responsible for global temperature trends, such as the 2009 paper that Soon boasted about to Southern Co. The studies all question the extent, severity, cause and existence of man-made climate change.

Questions regarding Soon's credibility and impartiality have circulated for years and have been grist for environmental organizations critical of his research findings and his ethics.

Controversy erupted early this year with the publication of a paper co-authored by Soon in Science Bulletin, a scientific journal cosponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

In the paper, Soon and three other climate skeptics attempt to discredit the UN panel on global warming, the IPCC. Soon and his co-researchers contend the IPCC used flawed techniques to calculate changes in global temperature that exaggerated the threat of global warming by as much as 50 percent. The paper has been roundly criticized by climate scientists and academics.

Each of the writers said at the end of the piece that they had no conflicts of interest. But Davies of the Climate Investigations Center challenged that assertion because of the FOIA paper trail showing Soon has long accepted industry money.

The newly released documents show that the dust-up over the Chinese journal echoed a practice Soon engaged in with a variety of less obscure journals that published his work.

Although Soon has at times disclosed the support he received from Exxon, API and the Koch Foundation, the documents show he failed to disclose his special relationship with Southern.

"As further consideration to SCS [Southern Company Services], Smithsonian shall provide SCS an advance written copy of proposed publications regarding the deliverables for comment and input, if any, from SCS," according to a funding agreement signed by Smithsonian’s William J. Ford, contract and grant specialist; and Bryan Baldwin, Southern’s manager of environmental assessment.

Christine Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said Soon expressed his own opinion. She defended the center's funding agreements and its scrutiny of the research performed.

"The Smithsonian stands by the process by which the research results of all of its scholars are peer reviewed and vetted by other scientists," Pulliam said. "This is the way the scientific process works. The funding entities, regardless of their affiliation, have no influence on the research."

Southern Co. did not make an official available to explain its association with Soon. Company spokeswoman Jeannice Hall issued a brief statement that the company "funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have potentially significant public policy implications for our business."

Agreements such as those between Soon and Southern raised troubling issues, according to Juscelino Colares, a professor of law and associate director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland.

"It all goes to the matter of credibility," said Colares, who teaches courses on international environmental law. "Why are they hiding something? Why are they giving non-science the weight of science? This is manipulation that gives the funder the last word."

Davies said the close relationship with industry that the Soon documents reveal raises doubts about the impartiality that is supposed to come with scientific research.

"It shows that he is not just being funded to do science but to impact the public policy arena," Davies said.

As part of a final report to Southern in 2011 outlining the papers and presentations he produced for a $60,000 grant, Soon explained the policy relevance of the research he delivered: "The hypothesized dangerous consequences of rising atmospheric CO2 are too speculative for responsible regulatory policy."

In announcing the completion of his 2009 sun-climate paper to Koch foundation executives, who had contributed $65,000 to fund the study, Soon said his findings were consistent with the hypothesis that the sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.

"It...raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of preventing catastrophic climate change," Soon told the executives in a 2009 email.

One study Soon published—funded by Southern and the Koch foundation—has stirred the debate about the fate of polar bears in the face of climate change and the loss of sea ice. In the study, Soon dismissed the idea that polar bears in the Canadian Arctic were at risk from the impacts of climate change—and questioned whether the region was even warming at all.

Davies said Soon's polar bear research goes to the heart of how the industry employs research like Soon's to deflect attention from the true cause of global warming.

"Climate change isn't something you can go out and see like a polluted river," he said. "But with the polar bears, all of a sudden you could see the results of climate change."

They were starving as their hunting grounds melted away, and people were beginning to connect all of this to the consequences of fossil fuel and atmospheric carbon, Davies said.

"So the companies are happy having Willie Soon out there," he said "These companies are paying him to go out in the world to cast doubt."

InsideClimate News reporters Lisa Song and Sabrina Shankman contributed to this report.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022015/documents-reveal-fossil-fuel-fingerprints-contrarian-climate-research-willie-soon-harvard-smithsonian-koch-exxon-southern-company

soon and baliunas

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

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:(style="outline-style:none"):}:)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/**Smithsonian_Institution**

Smithsonian

Provisions

Background

Confederate monuments and memorials

Cultural institutions

References

External links

'Boggles the mind': Expert says a Supreme Court Justice is making it up as it goes along](https://www.alternet.org/supreme-court-trump-2673959899/ "'Boggles the mind': Expert says a Supreme Court Justice is making it up as it goes along")[

Not 'exactly skinny': Critics punch up on Ted Cruz’ backfiring body-shaming rant](https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-2673961017/ "Not 'exactly skinny': Critics punch up on Ted Cruz’ backfiring body-shaming rant")[

Watch: Trump official's 'lies' shredded in fiery exchange](https://www.alternet.org/what-you-said-were-lies-democrat-shreds-trump-official-in-fiery-exchange/ "Watch: Trump official's 'lies' shredded in fiery exchange")[

What Trump really wants](https://www.alternet.org/what-trump-wants/ "What Trump really wants")[

'Never been this bad': Young MAGA influencers say their income is 'tanking' due to Trump](https://www.alternet.org/trump-maga-influencers-2673961340/ "'Never been this bad': Young MAGA influencers say their income is 'tanking' due to Trump")[

'It's criminal': Legal experts condemn Trump's latest military operation as 'repugnant'](https://www.alternet.org/trump-military-operation/ "'It's criminal': Legal experts condemn Trump's latest military operation as 'repugnant'")[

We ignore this psychologist's warning at our peril](https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/this-sick-trump-doctrine-would-horrify-even-its-creator/ "We ignore this psychologist's warning at our peril")[

'Really big bomb': Dems giddy as ugly Republican brawl threatens political massacre](https://www.alternet.org/trump-musk-brawl/ "'Really big bomb': Dems giddy as ugly Republican brawl threatens political massacre")[

FBI was hunting for documents about Trump in raid on John Bolton's house: report](https://www.alternet.org/fbi-john-bolton-raid/ "FBI was hunting for documents about Trump in raid on John Bolton's house: report")[

Trump just accidentally revealed a dirty secret — and it has America's CEOs panicking](https://www.alternet.org/trump-dirty-secret/ "Trump just accidentally revealed a dirty secret — and it has America's CEOs panicking")

Key Deeds

Funding That Climate Researcher Failed to Disclose

Smithsonian Exhibit

FUNDING

PEOPLE

SOURCES

Key findings:

Willie Soon’s Backers: Big Coal and Big Oil

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

Attachments