Two interesting updates to ongoing stories came out this week, starting with a Guardian investigation into two of the biggest "Dark Money ATMs" of the climate denial movement, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. The two "charities" sent around $125 million to various denial organizations over the span of just three years. By shielding donors from disclosure, the groups can operate as non-profit advertising firms, pushing industry messages without letting the public know who's behind the effort.
On a similar note, the Climate Investigations Center released a report on their interactions with the journals in which Willie "Prostituting Science" Soon published his "deliverables" for coal giant Southern Company. They contacted the journals to clarify Soon's failure to disclose his financial incentive for publishing climate contrarianism, and found that it he appeared to have violated at least six conflict of interest policies (with the remaining journals lacking a disclosure policy to violate.)
Rather humorously, a writeup in Science mentions that the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics stated that they don't have a disclosure requirement, because astronomy is "sufficiently removed" from any sort of financial bias. That said, the editor there was shocked to hear that Soon claimed a paper that made "no claim whatsoever of any relevance to climate" as a deliverable to Southern. He's quoted saying it "certainly does not reflect well on [Soon's] ethical standards".
So not only will Soon misrepresent his impartiality to journals, he's apparently not above misrepresenting his own work to his funders. Which perhaps shouldn't be surprising, given his long history as "a cog in the machinery of climate anti-science."
Willie's exposure as a tool of the fossil fuel industry should serve as a stark warning for Donors Trust that at some point someone will find a way to shine a light on their dark money scheme. We just hope it's Soon-er, rather than later.
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