from N.Y. Times, Greenpeace Smear Warming Skeptic Dr. Willie Soon

Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon is no stranger to the “art” of the media smear. A courageous scientist and outspoken critic of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, AGW, Dr. Soon has been subjected to relentless attack for more than a decade. As with many of his fellow scientists who challenge the shrill propaganda claims of the climate apocalypse choir at the United Nations and its amplifiers in the establishment media and academia, Dr. Soon’s scientific findings are rarely debated; his attackers merely resort to ad hominem, accusing him of shoddy science and shilling for the fossil fuel industry.

The New York Times launched the latest salvo against Dr. Soon on February 21, with a hatchet piece by a couple of its AGW acolytes, Justin Gillis and John Schwartz, entitled “Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher.” The hit-piece of the Times was immediately picked up and trumpeted by the usual AGW choir members: The Guardian, the Washington Post, theBoston Globe Raw Story, Gawker, and the growing mega industry of climate-alarmist blogs and organizations that receive billions of dollars from government agencies, tax-exempt foundations, and major corporations. Following the typical smear pattern, many of the stories attempt to tar Dr. Soon with the “denier” label, a vicious assault aimed at equating AGW skepticism with Nazi Holocaust denial.

from Breitbart, DR. WEI-HOCK SOON’S PEERS FIRE BACK AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING WITCH HUNT

It is apparent that the well-funded, highly-organized, concerted campaign of hatred and libelous vilification against Dr Soon has a rankly political motive. Certainly, as you will see from the attached note of the various instaquotes from rent-by-the-hour climate “scientists”, their attempts to attack the science in our paper have been remarkably insubstantial, unmeritorious and too often intellectually dishonest. Once it became apparent to climate campaigners that the science in the paper was uncongenial to their political position and not at all easy to refute, they began what has become an all-out campaign of hate-speech, libel and innuendo against Dr Soon

from Powerline THE SMEARING OF WILLIE SOON

This is the point I really want to make: the New York Times and other pro-government sources assume that government funding of research is lily-white, while corporate funding is inherently suspect. This is ridiculous. Put aside, for a moment, the fact that the American environmental movement is funded by Russia’s state-controlled oil company.

That isn’t the real scandal. The real scandal is that the overwhelming majority of money spent on climate research comes from governments. Governments, most notably ours, fund climate hysteria to the tune of billions of dollars per year. Why? Because the whole point of global warming alarmism is to persuade voters to cede more control over Western economies to government. (No one actually cares about CO2 emissions from India or China, which together vastly exceed ours.)

Governments fund climate research–but only climate research that feeds alarmism–because they are the main parties in interest in the climate debate. Governments stand to gain trillions of dollars in revenue and unprecedented power if voters in the U.S. and other Western countries can be stampeded into ceding more power to them, based on transparently bad science.

The New York Times and other left-wing news sources assume that government funding is no problem, but private funding is a scandal. I think the opposite is true. It is a scandal that our government spends billions of dollars, enriching many compliant climate scientists–Michael Mann is just one of many examples–to promote its own power. Thank goodness that there is a tiny amount of independent funding that supports objective research and contributes to a debate that is being won, hands down, by climate realists like Dr. Soon.

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