When US climate denier
and astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon wrote
a controversial paper in 2003 that attempted
to challenge the historical temperature
records, we all raised eyebrows at revelations
that the American Petroleum Institute funded
it.
When he co-wrote a (non-peer
reviewed) paper in 2007 arguing that Arctic
warming wasn't happening and polar bears
were not threatened by the effects of it,
we found that ExxonMobil and the billionaire
Koch brothers had paid for it.
So we went digging and came up with more
– a whole lot more, released today in the
new case study: Dr. Willie Soon, a Career
Fueled by Big Oil and Coal. Not only did
Big Oil punt hundreds of thousands of dollars
to Soon, but Big Coal as well – specifically,
the Southern Company, one of the largest
coal burning electric utilities in the US
and in the world.
Could this be why Soon (an astrophysicist)
has been recently writing op-eds on how
mercury is harmless and the mercury emissions
from coal are minimal, with a byline saying
that he has a strong expertise in mercury
and public health.
Southern Company says
no in this June 28th Reuters story.
Soon has been relying
on the fossil fuel industry for most of
his career. Documents obtained from his
employer, the Harvard based Smithsonian
Astrophysics Observatory (SAO), show that
he has received no new funding from conventional,
university sources since 2002.
Since then, it’s been
all about the Southern Company, a Koch brothers'
foundation, ExxonMobil and the American
Petroleum Institute (API) – totalling over
$1 million since 2001. Together with his
colleague at the SAO, Sallie Baliunas, they
brought in $1,153,000 since 2001 and only
$842,000 from conventional sources.
Were these companies
working together? The API started funding
Soon's work as far back as 1994 (he only
graduated in 1991). The API was later joined
by the Mobil Foundation, then by the electricity
industry’s research arm, the Electric Power
Research Institute (EPRI). The US electricity
sector is dominated by coal.
In 1998, the API, ExxonMobil
and the Southern Company sat round a table
with other oil companies and think tanks
they plotted and funded a Global Climate
Science Communications Plan to undermine
the climate science and support for the
Kyoto Protocol that had just been agreed.
"Victory will be achieved when... average
citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties
in climate science"... read the plan.
"Uncertainty" was also their objective
for the media. The detail funding sources
from corporate purses going to think tanks
and front groups who will coach scientists
with messages counter to the rising consensus
on the global warming crisis. Even though
this 'scandal' was front page news at the
New York Times, our assumption is they did
it anyway.
So when they saw that
Willie Soon was writing papers to try to
show that it was the sun, not the increase
in carbon dioxide, that was causing warming
in the Arctic, did they then get together
to ensure he got the funding for his work?
Did they consider Soon (and Baliunas) a
good investment for their corporations?
In around 2003, Soon
saw that the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change was beginning work on its
next summary of climate science, the Fourth
Assessment (AR4). Another document obtained
by Greenpeace was a letter to colleagues
hatching a plan to undermine the outcomes
of the report, focusing on Working Group
1 (the science). "… I hope we can start
discussing among ourselves to see what we
can do to weaken the fourth assessment report..."
he wrote.
The letter was addressed
to a range of climate deniers, but also
to two people we can't find in our database
of denier "scientists". The only
names we can find that match two of the
addressees – "Walt" and "Randy"
– were the two Exxon staffers who had been
at the centre of funding the denial campaign.
Indeed, Randy Randol was the Exxon man sitting
at the table plotting with the others in
1998.
Willie Soon has been
embraced by the denial industry. This week
will see him speak, again, at the Heartland
Institute's annual "Denialpalooza".
The "sponsors" of that meeting
and organizations the speakers work for
have received millions in funding from ExxonMobil,
Koch Industries, the Scaife Foundation and
other corporate, 'free-market' and anti-government,
anti-regulation funders. (more on that soon)
Meanwhile, Exxon has
cut funding to a large number of climate
deniers. Late yesterday, Exxon released
its latest "Worldwide Giving Report",
over a month overdue. It reveals that more
career climate deniers have been dismissed
by their major funder, ExxonMobil Foundation.
What was a peak Exxon funding level of $3.5Million
per year to these mouthpieces of climate
denial, is now below $1M per year. Exxon
IS still funding deniers like the Heritage
Foundation in Washington DC and American
Legislative Exchange Council, but major
deniers like the US based Annapolis Center,
Atlas Foundation and others have now apparently
been cut, as of 2010.
