{"id":4812,"date":"2015-06-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-prod.greenpeace.org\/usa\/dr-willie-soon-a-career-fueled-by-big-oil-and-coal\/"},"modified":"2024-12-13T21:10:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T21:10:11","slug":"dr-willie-soon-a-career-fueled-by-big-oil-and-coal","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/climate\/climate-deniers\/koch-industries\/dr-willie-soon-a-career-fueled-by-big-oil-and-coal\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Willie Soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Career Fueled by Big Oil and Coal<\/span>
\nOf all the climate deniers, one scientist has been particularly closely involved in the campaign against the climate science consensus for the majority of his career: Dr. Willie Soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dr.
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UPDATE Feb. 2015:\u00a0Newly released documents reveal Willie Soon\u2019s contracts with Southern Company, the Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil, and DonorsTrust.<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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See the New York Times expose from February 2015<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

UPDATE\u00a0Feb. 2013: New FOIA results show new funding to Willie Soon from\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>secret DonorsTrust<\/a>network,\u00a0<\/em>Koch brothers and Southern Company.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Click here to see the fossil fuel financiers of Willie Soon\u2019s career<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

PolluterWatch.org has more on Dr. Willie Soon<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction:<\/h2>\n

This investigation shows that Dr. Soon<\/a> has received substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry for most of his scientific career and heavy corporate funding in the last decade.<\/p>\n

After graduating in science (Bachelor and Masters), Dr. Soon<\/a>received his Ph.D in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1991.<\/p>\n

His thesis focussed on \u201cCollisional-radiative properties of high-temperature, partially ionized nitrogen, oxygen, helium and hydrogen plasmas at conditions relevant to the Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u201d He has never had any formal training as a climatologist and stated, in a reply to Sen. Jeffords in 2003 after a Congressional testimony, that one of his main teachers in climate science was denier David Legates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After graduating, Dr. Soon began work at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. The chair of Mt Wilson\u2019s Board of Trustees was climate denier Robert Jastrow, who set up the George C Marshall Institute, the think tank that was arguably the first to engage in active climate denial, as documented by science historian Naomi Oreskes in the book \u201cMerchants of Doubt<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dr. Soon is now employed as astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory (SAO). He is most famous for his work with fellow astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, writing the first paper that attempted to challenge the \u2018hockey stick\u2019 graph of temperature records published by Dr Michael Mann.<\/p>\n

Key findings:<\/strong><\/h3>\n