Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show (funded by ExxonMobil)

[kpete]

Source: Guardian UK

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.

In addition, freedom of information documents suggest that Soon corresponded in 2003 with other prominent climate sceptics to try to weaken a major assessment of global warming being conducted by the UN's leading climate science body, the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/climate-change-sceptic-willie-soon

[PoliticAverse]

1. Are people like this funded because of their views or do they hold their views because of funding ?

[0rganism]

2. I suspect a bit of the first and a lot of the second

I remember, back in the '80s, one of the gov't physicists (at Livermore, IIRC) when asked about why he and his colleagues were taking money from the DOD to develop Raygun's "Star Wars" missile shield that could never work, answered something to the effect of, "Physicists need Porsches too." Something similar is probably at work here.

You'd have to be the sort of "scientist" who's willing to take a position like that for money in the first place. But once you've gotten started, the fame and fortune gained from your views would be hard to resist.

[pdefalla]

3. "People like this"

It's hard to believe that a real scientist would deny climate change. People like him must be extrordinarily hard to find, so when the oil and coal industry discovered him they funded the hell out of him because he's one of the very few who will actually get up and say this crap with a straight face.

So I guess your answer is "both".

[madokie]

6. Whatever, whichever, they are bought and paid for

[defendandprotect]

8. Hartmann was talking about this today ... some of them aren't even practicing scientists ...

work in other fields -- but sell themselves --

[fascisthunter]

4. how low can you go?

1 million for this? That's all? When you don't have a conscience(assuming) is it worth it? If ya say yes, you are stupid as well as being a sociopath, because global warming will effect you in some way.

[glinda]

5. K & R n/t

[defendandprotect]

7. 50 years of ExxonMobil lies -- oil industry spent tens of billions hiding truth of Global Warming -!