A scientist favored by conservatives for his doubts about the reality of man-made climate change responded Monday to recent attacks that questioned his impartiality.
Wei-Hock “Willie”Soon, an aerospace engineer who works for theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the claimsregarding his alleged failure to disclose that the fossil fuel industry financed a number of his studiesamounted to a smear campaign against him. Soon contended he publicly revealed who paid for his research and that it didn’t influence his findings.
“I am willing to debate the substance of my research and competing views of climate change with anyone, anytime, anywhere. It is a shame that those who disagree with me resolutely decline all public debate and stoop instead to underhanded and unscientific ad hominem tactics,” Soon said in a statement.
Soon is not a climate scientist nor an astrophysicist, but congressional Republicans skeptical of man-made climate change have touted his research. Soonascribes much of the Earth’s warming to natural solar activity rather than the scientifically accepted effects of burning lightgreenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.
He allegedly accepted more than $1.2 million from organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, Southern Company and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, which he failed to disclose in at least 11 papers since 2008, the New York Times reported. The information was supplied by Greenpeace through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The fallout has spilled over into a broader controversy over fossil fuel industry funding of climate change research, which Democrats have compared to tobacco industry efforts to conceal the carcinogen effects of smoking cigarettes.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., has taken heat from the scientific community for requesting personal communications from a handful of university climate scientists who have questioned the share of global warming that comes from human activity. Scientists have said the request violates academic freedom.
“So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name,” Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado-Boulder scientist targeted by Grijalva, wrote last week in a blog entry adorned with a photo of former Wisconsin GOP Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led 1950s investigations into unsubstantiated claims that Communist sympathizers were subverting the federal government.
Scientists have compared Grijalva’s effort to then-Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s 2010 probe of ex-University of Virginia scientist Michael Mann. Cuccinelli alleged Mann manipulated climate data on taxpayer-funded research to support conclusions of man-made warming. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Cuccinelli didn’t have a right to university records.
Other Democrats have taken a different approach. Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island have questioned fossil fuel companies, rather than academic institutions, about research they’ve funded.
“For years we’ve known that fossil fuel interests have sought to block action on climate change and have denied the science. This investigation will help to determine who is funding these denial-for-hire operations and whether those who are funded by these fossil fuel interests are keeping their funders’ identities secret from the public and legislators,” Markey said in a statement last week.
Soon said he lamented the fallout from the charges made against him.
“I regret deeply that the attacks on me now appear to have spilled over onto other scientists who have dared to question the degree to which human activities might be causing dangerous global warming, a topic that ought rightly be the subject of rigorous open debate, not personal attack. I similarly regret the terrible message this pillorying sends young researchers about the costs of questioning widely accepted ‘truths,’ ” Soon said.
