Soon and Baliunas controversy

The Soon and Baliunas controversy was an incident in which a paper published by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research led to the resignation of a number of its editors. The paper reviewed over 200 previous papers on global warming and alleged that the 20th century hadn't shown any especially large amount of warming.
A number of the scientists whose research was used in the paper complained that their work had been misrepresented. Other scientists trashed everything from the paper's methodology to its conclusions. Due to the number of complaints, editor-in-chief Hans von Storch wrote an editorial on the state of the review process at the journal and questioned the judgment of Chris De Freitas, who had been responsible for the acceptance of Soon and Baliunas's paper. When De Freitas objected, von Storch and a number of other editors resigned from the journal. Von Storch said afterward that deniers "had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common."Some Like It Hot
Claire Goodess, one of the editors who resigned, said:
Michael Mann criticized the paper:
After the Bush administration attempted to include the paper in an EPA report, Jim Inhofe (Wingnut-OK) said:
The paper was later re-published with additional "research" added by the Idso family. Of course, Soon and Baliunas's work is still an article of faith among the denier crowd. After all, "it's peer-reviewed!"
E-mails regarding Climate Research and the controversy were quote mined during the Climategate investigations to make it appear as if scientists had been attempting to "censor skeptics" or "subvert the peer-review process" in some way.
==Soon and Baliunas==
Soon and Baliunas have acted as a climate denial duo for quite some time. They are employed both by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank founded by Frederick Seitz. When Seitz had begun to help distribute the Oregon Petition, Soon, Baliunas, and Arthur Robinson attached a brief "review" of denialist research to the petition. Robinson's organization has also published "research" by them claiming that global warming isn't bad because "carbon dioxide is plant food!"Environmental effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, OISM
In further "research," the two claim that solar cycles were largely to blame for any increased warming. The solar cycle hypothesis has become a common talking point among deniers, but repeatedly debunked. Solar activity has actually been decreasing in recent history. UV rays are also proposed to be causing this effect, but other research shows that they have only a local effect on temperatures at best, not a global one. The hypothesis also fails to explain a variety of other phenomena, such as the warming at higher latitudes.Solar Activity at Skeptical Science However, the two have been pushing this talking point hard for many years.Climate History and the Sun is a rather representative example, where they pull the "satellites show no warming" gambit and cherry-pick temperature proxies and use woefully outdated research to claim the hockey stick is broken, so therefore it's the sun...or something!
Baliunas' "skepticism" dates back to 1995 with her adventures in ozone denialism when she testified before Congress that CFCs were not responsible for the hole in the ozone layer (ironically, a few weeks before the Nobel in chemistry was awarded to the originators of the theory).Junk Science on Ozone, John Quiggin 
Soon himself has admitted to receiving loads of cash from oil and coal companies. He has also denied health risks related to mercury emissions from coal plants. For this, he was rewarded with column inches in (where else?) the Wall Street Journal.American climate skeptic Soon funded by oil, coal firms, ReutersWSJ Op-Ed Denies Dangers Of U.S. Mercury Emissions, Media Matters In 2015, Greenpeace revealed that Soon had received $1.25 million in funding from energy companies over a period of 14 years.Climate Change denier Willie Soon received $1.25 million from energy companiesDeception Dossier #1: Dr. Wei-Hock Soon’s Smithsonian Contracts
==External links==
*The Soon and Baliunas paper itself
*Soon and Baliunas' pages at the Marshall Institute
*Soon and Baliunas' profiles at DeSmog Blog
*Storm Brews Over Global Warming, Chronicle of Higher Education
*Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storm, Otto Kinne
*American Geophysical Union's response
*Deja Vu All Over Again, Chris Mooney
*John Stossel thinks Baliunas is a top expert on global warming.
*How Soon is now? Real Climate
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Denialism
Category:Climatology
Category:Global warming