3.2
February 22, 2015

Breaking News: NY Times reports that “Leading Climate-Denier Harvard Scientist Caught Accepting Bribes from Fossil-Fuel Corporations as well as the Koch Brothers.”

elephant obama mccain climate change global warming

Leading Climate-Denier Harvard Scientist Caught Accepting Bribes from Fossil-Fuel Corporations as well as the Koch Brothers.

Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.” ~ NY Times.

“Ouch.”

~

A reminder: last year was the warmest atmospheric year on record, despite no El Nino.

The leading climate change denier 1) accepted money from the Koch Brothers, 2) is not a climatologist, 3) did not disclose the conflicts of interest in his funding. 4) this is not a surprise: 

“The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate…Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.”

“…Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation…Though he has little formal training in climatology.”

There are three types of anthropogenic climate change deniers:

  1. People who have not sufficiently studied the topic.
  2. People who have studied the topic but lack the ability to comprehend such a vast and complicated subject.
  3. People who have studied the topic, are capable of understanding it, but are lying for some gain.

That’s it. 100% of climate deniers are either lazy, stupid or lying… and now we know which box this guy fit into.

Source: I’m a geochemist/geophysicist doing paleoclimate and environmental work for a very large oil company.

 

~

Two great comments, from Reddit, on climate change skepticism:

I hate how they have bastardized the word “skeptic.” I am a skeptic about all things, including climate science. What that means is I don’t accept anything on faith. I believe in nothing unless it’s proven to me, or at the very least there is strong evidence pointing in that direction.

The vast majority of the evidence shows that CO2 concentrations are increasing, the temperature is increasing, and that human activity is the chief cause of it.

These so-called “skeptics” are doing the exact opposite of what a real skeptic does. They’re ignoring data, cherry-picking what they want to hear.

And:

I agree. Skepticism (for me at least) means proportioning belief according to evidence. And the evidence for anthropogenic climate-change is overwhelming.

Read 2 Comments and Reply
X

Read 2 comments and reply

Top Contributors Latest

Elephant Journal  |  Contribution: 1,510,385