Now that we've gotten the Right Wing's phoney Climategate behind us we've come across the very real Climategate being perpetrated and paid for by guess who? Oil and Coal Companies. What a shock!
Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show
Documents obtained by Greenpeace show prominent opponent of climate change was funded by ExxonMobil, among others
One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.
Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.
But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Insitute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world's largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.
This news shows a pattern that professional climate skeptics' work is being funded by Big Oil and Coal. Dr Willie Soon's tainted "research" was produced with the political goal to cast doubt on real Climate Science.
This news should cast doubt on the whole commercial enterprise that climate skepticism has become instead. A commercial enterprise masquerading as science funded by Oil and Coal Companies.
Will America's corporate media give a real Climategate as much play as they gave the phoney Climategate? We have to old their feet to the fire on this.
Dr. Willie Soon: a Career Fueled by Koch, Big Oil and Coal
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.