Climate sceptic received $1m from oil companies

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » 28 Jun 2011, 20:55

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... illie-soon

"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."

Article continues...

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 28 Jun 2011, 23:22

Fuel to the debate in a recent PS thread about the supposed divine impartiality of scientists...

2 As and a B · Post by **2 As and a B** » 29 Jun 2011, 07:05

Deleted

snow hope · Post by **snow hope** » 29 Jun 2011, 09:35

Hmmmmm. Didn't know that.

But lets not start to talk about all the scientisists receiving Government Grants, where it is obviously in their interest to raise "Green taxes"...... this doesn't get us far does it?

Better to concentrate on the science as we know it and forget about ad hommes.

My understanding of the effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (let's discount for the moment the biggest greenhouse gas - water vapour) is that their effect is logarithmic, ie. the more greenhouse gas added to the atmosphere, the smaller the increase in warming effect.

Would anybody like to counter that understanding?