First, a moment to gloat: On Thursday we said, "we have yet to see anyone float the conspiracy that [the Soonami] is a brilliant marketing scheme for the Merchants of Doubt movie." Well, not long afterwards, JunkScience tweeted exactly that!
Getting back to business, scientists are reacting with mixed feelings towards Rep. Grijalva's investigations into the possible conflicts of interest of seven scientists, while they ignore the letters to 100 corporations.
Meanwhile, the deniersphere is still attempting damage control. WUWT gives space to Russell Cook for a post. Cook's a blogger who has tried for years to refute the notion that deniers are in the pay of big oil. His main target is Ross Gelbspan, a retired journalist who was one of the first to expose fossil fuel funding climate change denial with his 1997 book, The Heat is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate. Cook's argument that deniers aren't in the pay of fossil fuel companies is particularly ironic as he admits his site is funded by the oil-funded Heartland Institute.
The thesis of Cook's recent post isn't exactly clear, but it seems to be that because Soon's funding was revealed by someone who once worked for Greenpeace, it's somehow hypocritical to call out Soon's lack of disclosure. Particularly ironic in Cook's attack on the "gullible" media for using Greenpeace-supplied information, is that he states the news of Soon is "all guilt-by-assocation." In effect, Cook is claiming that an attack on a researcher who took fossil fuel money to promote fossil fuel interests is nothing but guilt-by-association, only to turn around and attack the media as guilty for using information supplied by someone with an association to Greenpeace.
This, coming from a denier sponsored by fossil fuels who argues that deniers aren't sponsored by fossil fuels.
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Administrative question: Would you like us to continue posting links to a handful of the day's top stories, or should we stick to the deniersphere?
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