The Integrity of Soon
Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon is an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer and is a researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division (SSP) of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). In an interview with Professor Franco Battaglia of the Italian University of Modena and Reggio Emilia on October 7, 2022, Dr. Soon provides answers to specific climate change queries asked by Battaglia. The original interview is only available on a pay-walled Italian media site but is revealed in English on the linked website.
My synopsis of the interview is a little shorter than the interview itself.
As an astrophysicist, contesting anthropogenic climate change, the first question before Soon is if he is paid by the fossil fuel industry as the group Greenpeace has charged. After responding in the negative, Soon goes into his yearly remuneration or compensation based on the research grants provided to the CfA. As one can see by his nominal salary calculation, the avenue of his career was not chosen for its monetary rewards. He says had he sold his soul to the “manmade global warming money trail” and written advocate climate change papers, he would be significantly wealthier, but certainly unhappy about the failures to his integrity.
As one can see the major funders were the American taxpayers through such agencies as The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Much of this funding dries up for truthful opposition science as researched, proven, and delineated by Dr. Soon.
Next, he was asked about a critical hit piece written about him by the New York Times with the misinformation and detrimental information provided by Greenpeace. With the assistance of Greenpeace cofounder Dr. Patrick Moore in documenting the “strategy and operating principles of Greenpeace” in the linked paper, Soon was able to explain the reasons Greenpeace was constantly after the scientific credibility and integrity of opposing scientists like Dr. Soon.
As I have written previously, and as explained by Dr. Moore, Greenpeace went from being an altruistic, caring environmental concern to a leftist organization hating the free-market economy and encouraging economic transformation to political collectivism.
In the third question, Soon delves into the question of the 97% consensus claimed by the proponent global warming community. Many times, I have called consensus science or science by vote or popularity as no science whatsoever. Further, Soon explanation of the 97% consensus by crafted by John Cook a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub in Melbourne, Australia shows just how synthetically this number was devised. I had written about this hocus pocus in a Substack article I link here.
Again, Dr. Soon did a full paper on the John Cook controversy and it is linked here.
Soon Writes, “According to their results, only 64 of their 11,944 abstracts (or 0.5%) explicitly said that climate change was mostly human caused. We examined those 64 and found only 41 (so only 0.3%) actually endorsed the claimed “consensus”. After knowing these values how anyone can accept a consensus or agreement of 97% – the easy answer is no advocate has ever questioned it.
In the next question, Dr. Soon is asked what he thought of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their Assessment Reports which arrived every 6 to 7 years. In the inception of the quasi-governmental group, the mission was not to prove climate change existed but to look at potential adversities and mitigating factors and further, not to be political. The reality though, especially with the Summary for Policy Makers, is that the reports are absolutely political, advocating for continuing climate change policies and strategies.
Unless scientists are supporters of anthropogenic climate change, they can forget about an invitation to join the group. Despite Soon being invited to submit peer-reviewed papers to the IPCC, they have all been rejected.
The concealment of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 950 AD to 1250 AD has been an enduring quest of advocate science. Without the MWP they could claim temperatures began to rise only in the early 1900s. When Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania introduced the Hockey Stick temperatures graph which was constructed using temperature proxies such as tree rings, ice cores, corals, and lake sediments, they thought this was the answer they absolutely craved. However, It was debunked and discredited right from the outset.
I write about the discrediting of the hockey stick temperature graph (HSTG) and Michael Mann’s abusive legal actions against detractors here. Soon wrote on the Medieval Warm Period topic here. Before the disgrace, destruction, and disproval of the HSTG, the IPCC was more than happy to insert the graph into their 2001 Assessment Report and many advocate scientists still continue to herald and proclaim the merits of Mann’s deceptive artistry as science.
One other issue the activist scientists endeavor to hide, and disguise is their global cooling scare of the 1970s and 80s. It is covered in the 285 research papers that are linked in the article here. This goes against their climate change declaration that the warming, without, impedance, commenced from 1900 onward.
In summation, Dr. Willie Soon has been constantly victimized throughout his career, but he continues to study, research, and write about the truths and alternatively, the falsehoods, of climate change science. When it comes to upholding principles and integrity, Soon is the epitome of stick-to-itiveness.