Willie Soon's Climate Science Denial Wasn't Ever Credible: Climate Scientists

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โ€œThe science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless.โ€ย NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, to the New Yorkย Times

Recent revelations regarding Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon’s financing and coordination with fossil fuel companies for studies undermining the science of climate change has received quite a bit of attention. Our friends at the Climate Investigations Center have links to source documents, letters to the IRS and Congress, letters to journals that Soon appears to have mislead, and some of the press covering all ofย this.

The drama has largely outshone the main point among most scientists: Willie Soon’s work is vastly discredited. For those who aren’t familiar with Willie Soon’s fossil fuel company contracting over the last fifteen years, there is probably a legitimate question of whether or not this guy deserves to be in his currentย pinch.

Frankly, he had itย coming.

Scientists and science reporters have often had to waste their time addressing the interference of Soon and his cohorts, who take advantage of the public’s general unfamiliarity with scientificย nuance.ย 

But scientists too are talking about Dr. Soon’s work and what it means for the troubled peer-review process that the most stringent journals usually adhere to. Here is a summary of some of the most interesting conversations in science publications about Willie Soon’s #Fakexpert scandal.

First, Soon’s manager at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Charles Alcock, has time and time again said that neither he nor Smithsonian support Soon’s fossil-funded conclusions. From E&E Publishing’s ClimateWire:

โ€œI’d have to say that I’ve reached my conclusions independent of Dr. Soon’s work,โ€ Alcock said. โ€œDr. Soon is not actively engaged in actually gathering new data. He’s principally disputing the interpretation of data gathered by other people. And I think this is an area where most of the progress will be made by people who collect new [climate] data or who build newย models.โ€

Soon’s industry-financed papers have been debunked by climate scientists over and over. Just last month, Soon co-authored a paper claiming to debunk decades of science using a โ€œsimpleโ€ model of long term temperature projections. Scientists worldwide noted that Soon’sย methodology was grossly oversimplified, ignoringย key factors that scientists have warned will lead to unprecedented temperature increases in the comingย decades.

The Heartland Institute, a think tank with ties to the fossil fuel industry, paid to promote this paper inย Science Bulletin, a journal published by the Chinese National Academy of Sciences.ย Heartland has misrepresented the Chinese NASย for political purposes before, andย Science Bulletinย was the latest victim of Dr. Soon’s serial lack of disclosure of fossil fuel funding to science journals.ย Science Insiderย – published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) – interviewed editors at science journals who appear to have been fooled by Dr. Soon’s non-disclosure of his industryย payments.

But Soon’s work was widely disregarded before his controversial 2015 paper in Science Bulletin.ย The prestigious science journalย Nature notes that Dr. Soon’s haggard relationship with science isn’tย new:

The scientist has published numerous papers that go against mainstream climate science. Most famously, in 2003, Soon co-authored a paper in the journal Climate Research that questioned the standard interpretation of climate change over the past millennium and argued that recent warming is not unusual by historical standards. Subsequent controversy led to the resignation of several of the journalโ€™s editors. In that case, the controversy revolved around scientific issues, not disclosure of funding sources. [More on this scandal in our profile of Willie Soon]

NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt for RealClimateย re-starts, giving Soon the benefit of the doubt (selectย clips):

However, a valid question is whether the science that arose from these funds is any good? Itโ€™s certainly conceivable that Soonโ€™s work was too radical for standard federal research programs and that these energy companies were really taking a chance on blue-sky high risk research that might have the potential to shake things up.ย [โ€ฆ]

It is most succinctly highlighted in an article Soon wrote โ€˜Itโ€™s the Sun, stupidโ€™ย (not sure if it was ever really published anywhere, but he didย send itย to his contacts at Koch Industries). Towards the end heย states:

The evidence inย my paperย is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in theย Arctic.

It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2ย is a major cause of observed climate change โ€“ and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of โ€œpreventing catastrophic climateย change.โ€

It is the leap from the first to second sentence that drives Soonโ€™s research โ€“ the notion that if you can find enough correlations to solar forcing, the impact of CO2ย must be diminished, if not obliterated altogether. But this is a fallacy. It is equivalent to arguing that if total caloric intake correlates to weight, that exercise can have no effect, or that if cloudiness correlates to incident solar radiation at the ground, then seasonal variations in sunshine areย zero.

If you’re feeling masochistic enough to read more from scientists into the documented gap between reality and Willie Soon’s research, check older RealClimate posts on Dr. Soon here, here, andย here, and this generously-detailed debunk of Soon’s presentation at the latest Heartland Institute climate denial conference by ecologist Richardย Telford.

Telford isn’t the only scientist baffled by Soon’s awkward presentations. University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank details his โ€œdepressingโ€ encounter with Willie Soon, at an event and a personal encounter, from NPR:

When it was announced that Soon was giving a talk at the University of Rochester, I knew it would be interesting. I was more than willing to hear what the man had to say. The whole point of being a scientist is, after all, to try to leave your preconceptions at the door and let the work speak for itself. I also wanted to understand Soon’s own thinking about the role he was playing as a publicย skeptic.

On all counts I wasย disappointed.

Taken as nothing more than a scientific talk, Dr. Soon’s presentation was, in my opinion, pretty bad. I watch a lot of these things. It’s part of my job. If Soon had been giving a Ph.D defense, he would have been skewered. I was left without a clear line of argument or clear justifications for his claims. More importantly, for a topic this contentious there was insufficient discussion of the voluminous and highly detailed response critics have offered to his claims that solar activity accounts for most observed climate variability. Many of my colleagues listening to the talk said they felt the same way. I came away thinking, โ€œIs that the best theyย have?โ€

The presentation that Prof. Adam Frank found depressing was focused on Soon’s long-since-discredited thesis that the Sun, not industrial pollution, is responsible for climate change.ย Citing peer-reviewed material onย Skeptical Science, science reporterย Chris Mooney re-examines how Soon’s primary argument is debunked, for the Washington Post:ย 

[T]he idea that the sun is currently driving climate change is strongly rejected by the worldโ€™s leading authority on climate science, the U.N.โ€™s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whichย foundย in its latest (2013) report that โ€œThere is high confidence that changes in total solar irradiance have not contributed to the increase in global mean surface temperature over the period 1986 to 2008, based on direct satellite measurements of total solarย irradiance.โ€

The IPCC โ€œbasically says that global warming is not caused by the sun,โ€ saysย Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. โ€œThe strongest evidence for this is the record of satellite measurements of solar output since the late 1970s that show no increasing trend in solar output during a period of rapid global warming.โ€ย [โ€ฆ]

Aย recent scientific review articleย on climate and the sun similarly notes โ€œthe lack of detection of an underlying irradiance trend in the past three decades,โ€ and concludes, in rather strong terms,ย that:

Claims that the Sun has caused as much as 70% of the recent global warming โ€ฆย presents fundamental puzzles. It requires that the Sunโ€™s brightness increased more in the past century than at any time in the past millennium, including over the past 30 years, contrary to the direct space-based observations. And it requires, as well, that Earthโ€™s climate be insensitive to well-measured increases in greenhouse gases at the same time that it is excessively sensitive to poorly known solar brightness changes. Both scenarios are far less plausible than the simple attribution of most (90%) industrial global warming to anthropogenic effects, rather than to theย Sun.

So in sum: Itโ€™s not that the sun canโ€™t influence climate. It can, and it does. And climate scientists have accordingly been studying the influence of the sun for manyย years.

Discover Magazineย has a similar rundown of Soon’s debunked โ€œit’s the sunโ€ thesis, based on a video of a presentation Soon gave to a Koch-funded studentย group.

Even Koch-funded scientist Richard Muller has abandoned Soon’s solar theories in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, as Brad Friedman reminds us, in a study that Charles Koch Foundation itself helped finance (oops).

While most scientists may agree that Soon’s work is nothing to bat an eyelash at, Soon’s corporate funders aren’t trying to influence scientists – they’re trying to influence policymakers, and the people who vote for them.ย The Scientist quotes Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes, author of Merchants of Doubt, a book documenting corporate manipulation of science that is now being released as a critically-acclaimed movie (trailer here):

Though the vast majority of climate scientists agree that the Earthโ€™s climate is changing as a result of human activities that increase the amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, researchers like Soon foment debate by publishing alternate hypotheses or denials. โ€œThe whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,โ€ Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard, told theย Times. โ€œWillie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of politicalย theater.โ€

And the implications for this? Jay Michaelson at the Daily Beastย has a brilliant summary of why these climate deniers matter, when their work is so discredited and marginalized in the scientificย community:

Yet unlike 9/11 trutherism, and Obama-is-a-Muslim trutherism, the Climate Truther campaign has an air of respectability, a unanimous adherence among Republican presidential candidates. How is thatย possible?

The answer is money. Lots of money. Billions of dollars, in fact, spent to create an entire industry of scientists, publicists, think tanks, and legislative organizations.
ย 
Willie Soon, for example, should never have been given much credence in the first place. Like nearly all of the Climate Truthersโ€™ scientists, he is not a climate expert. Heโ€™s not even an astrophysicist, as he is often presented. As the New York Times revealed, โ€œHe is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering.โ€
This type of industry-funded public relations has frustrated legitimate climate scientists for a long time. Science writer Greg Laden sought comment from renowned climate scientist Michael Mann, whose work has been attacked by Soon and just about every other person in the fossil fuel rolodex. Quoting Mann:
โ€œWillie Soon (as amply documented in my book โ€œThe Hockey Stick and the Climate Warsโ€) was instrumental in the early attacks on the Hockey Stick by James Inhofe and other fossil fuel industry-funded politicians. Now we know for certain that his efforts were a quid pro quo with special interests looking to discredit my work as a means of calling into question the reality and threat of climate change.โ€ย 
Most of this denial is implemented through the vast web of Koch-funded front groups in theย State Policy Network, with presence nationally and in all 50 states.
ย 
For a look at how SPN uses science denial in the policy arena, check out Willie Soon’s climate denial testimony to Kansas legislators from January, 2013. This dismissal of climate science to Kansas legislators marked the opening of a nationally-coordinated attack on Kansas’ย clean energy incentives by SPN members. In that case, Dr. Soon failed to disclose his payments from the nonprofit Charles Koch Foundation for his work, which he cited in the Kansas statehouse.
ย 
Hence our letter to the IRS, asking about potential violations of law.ย The Charles Koch Foundation funded most of the groups working to attack the clean energy law, Koch Industries itself was lobbying against the law, and rumor has it that Willie Soon was flown in on the dime of Americans for Prosperity, a group founded, financed and governed by the Kochs.
ย 
PolluterWatch has more on the history of Willie Soon, whose denial isn’t limited to temperature changes, but the hazards of mercury pollution from burning coal, ocean acidification and polar bears’ increasing struggle to survive as their habitats melt. I’ll leave you with an image from InsideClimate News, which has done in-depth reporting on Soon:

Cross-posted fromย PolluterWatch.

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Connor Gibson is a researcher for Greenpeace USA and a guest author for DeSmogBlog. He focuses on polluting industries, their front groups and PR operatives. He specializes in tracking those who professionally deny climate change science and obstruct policy solutions to global warming. Connor Gibson is based in Washington, DC.

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