Where a Prominent Climate-Change Denier Got his Funding

[Necromancer-AMV]

NYTimes Article

Wei-Hock Soon, an aerospace engineer at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is perhaps best known for the multitude of papers he has written on the subject of how sunspots, not fossil fuels, are the cause for warming over the last century. 'Willie', as he is affectionately known, has been the go-to guy for climate change deniers for years, due in no small part to his credentials.

He has insisted that scientists concerned with human-caused climate change are "out of their minds" and has also said that he only takes grassroots funding, and even then, only for small amounts, and would never be motivated by money to put an agenda into his work.

This, as a joint investigation between the New York Times, Greenpeace, and the Climate Investigations Center has shown, is bullshit.

In eleven papers, Wei, failed to disclose from where he was receiving his funding, in eight of those papers likely violating codes of ethics. And the sources of funding are, perhaps, not surprising.

Wei received over 1.5 million dollars, 1.2 of that from fossil fuel concerns such as the U.S. based Southern Company, one of the country's biggest electricity providers that produces most of its electricity through the burning of coal, the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon-Mobil, and, drum roll, please... the Charles G. Koch Foundation, frequent funders of anything right-wing. The remaining money came from right-wing think tanks such as Americans for Prosperity and the Heartland Institute.

[Gez]

It's funny because these guys accuse the 97+% of climate scientists that they try to contradict of being paid by "Big Climate" lobbies, as if such a thing even existed.

And I can't tell whether it's the Stalinian approach of accusing your opponents of your own faults, or whether it's because in their worldview everyone is necessarily bought and therefore there must be an uberwealthy lobby that is funding every other scientist to say things that annoy Big Oil.

[Maes]

Maybe Big Oil is grassroots, at least in the USA? After all, the USA became big (also) thanks to the "oil biznis" (in my best faux Southern accent).

After all, don't we all know that ONLY IN THE USA people find oil literally in their own backyard?

And that, mah fellow 'murricans, is what made this country great.

[Cupboard]

I'm voting the for the oil companies in 2016. Those financial sector Wall Street boogeymen are always using scare tactics.

[Kontra Kommando]

Maes said:

After all, don't we all know that ONLY IN THE USA people find oil literally in their own backyard?

Some of those people only got a marginal sum of money for it though. People that knew how to drill it, made the big bucks.

[Doomkid]