No surprise to those who saw this video last year, Dr Willie Soon, one of the most frequently cited climate deniers with any science background, (although his Phd is in aerospace engineering, not climate..) is in the news, as a new Greenpeace report shows where the bodies are buried.
Soon has admitted the details are correct, that he has received a million dollars in funding from a rogues gallery of climate criminals – according to Desmogblog,
“The documents show that Willie Soon has received at least $175,000 from Koch family foundations (Soon is a key player in the Koch brothers’ climate denial machine, as Greenpeace documented previously), $230,000 from Southern Company, $274,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, and $335,000 from ExxonMobil, among other polluters.”
Soon is also well known as one of the authors of the pathetically flawed and inaccurate “study” originally mailed to scientists with the so-called “Oregon Petition” documents, wherein Dr.Arthur Robinson mocked the document up to make it appear to be from the august National Academy of Science, drawing a rare and stern rebuke from the Academy.
That sordid affair, of course, was the topic of yet another video, below.
Although not trained in epidemiology or toxicology, Dr. Soon has also questioned the toxic effects of mercury from coal plants, (“Mercury has always existed naturally in Earth’s environment”…sound familiar?) — and he has, although not a biologist, claimed that polar bears are not in danger from climate change. We await with great anticipation his collaboration with Lord Monckton on a cure for cancer.
Is there evidence that Soon knows what he is doing, or does he actually believe the stuff he publishes?
It sounds like he has the same view as Singer and has no qualms with such an obvious conflict of interest.
More Soon data is flawed or let’s say fabricated to fit his bought agenda…
Recently, there has been a renewed focus on how much money Willie Soon has taken from fossil fuel companies for his ‘research’ (over a $1 million dollars). While that is impressive, the real issue is not how he gets paid, but the quality of his science. The discussion last week about his finances did lead people to notice his publically accessible website where he has posted papers, emails, calculations and reviews going back to 2003. There is quite a lot of interesting stuff there, including a few curious tidbits.
So, the picture here is quite clear. Soon knew that the relevant data series for discussing the AO influence on Western Hudson Bay temperature (and by proxy, sea ice) was from Churchill and despite being reminded of the fact by the first set of reviewers, nonetheless continued to only show the AO connection to a site 1000 miles away, which had a much higher correlation without any discussion of whether this other data was at all relevant to Churchill or the bears nearby.
There was much else in the Dyck et al paper that was worth criticising (see Stirling et al (2008) for details), but the evidence of the cherry-picking of data for the sake of an (irrelevant) higher correlation from the files is a very clear black flag.
In my opinion, this kind of ‘scientific’ sleight-of-hand is far more egregious than Soon’s ability to get funding from coal, oil, and fossil-fueled foundations.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/how-soon-is-now/