Years ago the tobacco industry funded "researchers" who generated "studies" to show the evidence was still inconclusive on the harmful effects of smoking. This fed their narrative that nothing ought to be done until more "conclusive" results were available. It has long been suspected that the fossil fuel industry has been operating the same way regarding greenhouse gas accumulations and the rising temperature of the atmosphere. Now there's proof.
It turns out a prominent global warming "skeptic," often quoted by conservative politicians and pundits, has been paid $1.2 million by oil industry sources, including the Koch brothers. Wie-Hock (Willie) Soon, an aerospace engineer and part-time employee at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has published 11 papers since 2008 claiming that the sun is heating up and that is the main cause of earth's warming climate. The Nobel Prize-winning U.N. International Panel on Climate Change has studied the data and finds changes in the sun account for less than one percent of the effect of greenhouse gases.
Soon's papers were published without mention of this funding, in violation of academic ethics guidelines. The facts came out thanks to a Freedom of Information request by the environmental group Greenpeace. In communications with his corporate paymasters Soon even referred to his writings for them as "deliverables."
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