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Dr. Willie Soon has been the go-to scientist favoured by climate change deniers for years. Used by the Fraser Institute and Koch Industries, Soon has proven invaluable in giving ammunition to the right to ‘prove’ global warming doesn’t exist.
Turns out it’s as we expected – nothing more than a scam. It seems Dr. Soon’s science is one more about the greenback than going green. Soon has been taking money from big oil companies – lots of money – to make dubious claims dressed up as science (emphasis mine).
Now, in response to a Greenpeace investigation, Dr. Soon has admitted that U.S. oil and coal companies, including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and the world’s largest coal-burning utility, Southern Company, have contributed more than $1 million over the past decade to his research. According to Greenpeace, every grant Dr. Soon has received since 2002 has been from oil or coal interests. This despite the fact that he once told a U.S. Senate hearing that he had not been hired by, employed by, or received grants from any organization “that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
Dr. Soon has also been affiliated with a number of industry front groups, including the coal-funded Greening Earth Society, and Koch-Exxon-Scaife-funded groups including the George C. Marshall Institute, the Science and Public Policy Institute, the Center for Science and Public Policy, the Heartland Institute, and Canada’s Fraser Institute.
Correspondence uncovered by Greenpeace also found that Dr. Soon led a plan in 2003 to undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report years before it was even released in 2007.
Cross posted at Let Freedom Rain.
Dr. Willie? Dr. Willie? And he has been taken seriously to date? I am starting to think that the US Congress may not be comprised of the swiftest people after all.
Um he’s been paid about $100,000 per year on average. Sounds like a lot.
A report in the Washington Examiner, entitled “Working for Big Green can be a very enriching experience” by Mark Tapscott, showed that the leaders of 15 top Big Green environmental groups are paid more than $300,000 in annual compensation, with a half million dollar plus figure for the top “earner”.
He mentions that Environmental Defense Fund President Frederic Krupp, receives total compensation of $496,174, including $446,072 in salary and $50,102 in other compensation.
Close behind Krupp among Big Green environmental movement executives is World Wildlife Fund- US President Carter Roberts, who was paid $486,394, including a salary of $439,327 and other compensation of $47,067.
Willie Soon is a lightweight compared to Big Greenies. He should be paid more!
klem – you’re referencing a ‘report’ from the ultra right wing Washington Examiner. That’s as reliable as News of the World. And who cares how much the lying son of a bitch is paid. He is paid to lie. End of story.
West Coast George Reply:
July 17th, 2011 at 2:03 PM
Jymn, until you provide Fredric Krupp and Carter Roberts’ actual salaries, then the figures quoted by klem stand and provide a reference point of how lucrative a career in environmentalism can be. It also provides the point of how it can be in one’s best interest to promote a cause, even if the facts point to the cause being flawed.
In addition, if you cannot provide proof that Dr Soon is being paid to lie, then the default is that Dr. Soon is being paid to do research.
ck Reply:
July 17th, 2011 at 2:42 PM
Climate change deniers. They’re so adorable. Gotta love how they tie themselves into pretzels.
klem Reply:
July 22nd, 2011 at 12:36 PM
“Gotta love how they tie themselves into pretzels”
Ouch my knees are wrapped around my neck and my arms are wrapped around my knees. Is that what you mean?